Avocados come in 2 varieties - A-types start each day female and switch to male midday. B-types do the reverse. In work just published from the last chapter of my PhD, we show this system evolved 40+million yrs ago and is regulated by alleles of 1 transcription factor www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Balanced polymorphism in a floral transcription factor underlies the ancient rhythm of daily sex alternation in avocado | PNAS

In avocado and certain wild relatives in Lauraceae, a highly synchronized daily rhythm of floral sex timing promotes cross-pollination between two ...

pnas.org

Virome-wide ubiquitin ligase discovery reveals diverse mechanisms of immune evasion @science.org @harvardmed.bsky.social www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

How does a geminivirus replicate its genome using a pick&mix strategy with host proteins? 🦠🦠🌱🧬 Our new preprint identifies plant proteins repurposed by geminiviruses to carry out rolling-circle replication. Congrats @chaonan123.bsky.social , who spearheaded this work! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Heat stress induces the formation of unreduced male gametes by targeting translation in Arabidopsis meiocytes (Cédric Schindfessel , Albert Cairo , Pavlína Mikulková , Chunlian Jin , Laura Lamelas , Philip A Wigge , Karel Říha , Danny Geelen) doi.org/10.1093/plce... #PlantScience @aspbofficial

Heat stress induces the formation of unreduced male gametes by targeting translation in Arabidopsis meiocytes

TAM regulates the translation of meiotic cell cycle genes under heat stress to prevent premature meiotic exit and ensure ploidy consistency in the natural

doi.org

Happy to share our newest preprint. We developed guidelines and analysis workflows for FLIM Imaging in plants. Multiplexing with spectrally overlapping fluorophores in plants is now possible. Have a look. Any feedback is more than welcome. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

8 Recommendations for Europe's Seagrass Meadows 🌱 More than 50 scientists from 17 countries have developed the European Seagrass Recommendations 2026, the first continent-wide scientific consensus on how to protect, monitor, and restore seagrass habitats. 🔗 www.geomar.de/en/news/arti...

This is simply amazing! #gobenthi!

Nature Biotechnology@natbiotech.nature.com · 3mo ago

A single-cell screening platform accelerates functional genetics in plants - @sattelylab.bsky.social go.nature.com/4n8wzLv

Really cool to see this issue on Wild Plant Pathosystems Philosophical Transactions B with my picture online. royalsocietypublishing.org/rstb/issue/3... Articles on topics from community ecology, to genomics. Co-edited with @fletcher-h.bsky.social @ebruns.bsky.social and Rachel Penzcykoswki.

Volume 381 Issue 1951 | Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B | The Royal Society

Influential themed journal issues across the life sciences.

royalsocietypublishing.org

🍀🔬 Temporal changes in surface tension guide microtubule organization and accurate asymmetric division of Arabidopsis zygotes @natcomms.nature.com www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Happy to announce that I have started my own research group at the MPIPZ and that I am looking for a postdoc who would like to investigate Marchantia prothallus development with me! Please spread the word and/or apply if interested :)

Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research@mpipz.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Looking for a #postdoc? 📣We are #hiring📣 Join the Wallner Group @mpipz.bsky.social to work on tissue patterning, polarity & body axes formation with the liverwort Marchantia polymorpha.🌿 Apply now! #plantsci 👉https://jobs.mpipz.mpg.de/jobposting/54b1ba6d403b8a106f2595c1ef1171f8d729bb720?ref=homepage

Congratulations to @caroleduchene.bsky.social and all the authors on this beautiful work exploring the inheritance of endogenous viral insertions in algae. It was a pleasure to contribute to this study and I am sure this is only the beginning of many exciting discoveries! 🌿 @mpi-bio-fml.bsky.social

Nature Microbiology@natmicrobiol.nature.com · 3mo ago

Out Now! Latent endogenous giant viruses drive active infection and inheritance in a multicellular algal host #MicroSky

It's out! 🥳 In situ architecture of #plasmodesmata - plant cytoplasmic bridges - by #cryoET. 📝 Paper: www.nature.com/articles/s41... 🧵 Thread: bsky.app/profile/madi... #teamtomo #proteomics #AlphaFold

In situ architecture of plasmodesmata in Physcomitrium patens resolved by cryo-electron tomography - Nature Plants

Using cryo-electron tomography, the authors reveal how plasmodesmata (plant cytoplasmic bridges) are gated by cell wall remodelling and how helical protein assemblies scaffold internal membranes, with...

nature.com

Marcel Dickmanns | 🌿❄️🔬@madic.bsky.social · last yr.

New preprint: In situ Architecture of #Plasmodesmata. Using #cryoET, #AlphaFold & proteomics, we uncover the native organization of plant intercellular nanopores. 🔗 doi.org/10.1101/2025... 🧪🧵1/n #teamtomo #PlantScience #Physcomitrium #Arabidopsis #cryoEM

With Eugene Koonin, we wrote a rather comprehensive review on the origin, evolution and organization of the #virosphere. We describe all 10 viral realms and the logic behind them, and so much more. Check it out! comptes-rendus.academie-sciences.fr/biologies/ar...

Plasmodesmal closure triggers stress responses! Turns out cells are generally better off with connections to their neighbours. This manuscript represents a decade-long team collaboration, with heroic effort from Estee Tee to lead it over the line! #PlantScience link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Plasmodesmal closure elicits stress responses - EMBO Reports

Plant cells are connected to their neighbors via plasmodesmata facilitating the exchange of nutrients and signaling molecules. During immune responses, plasmodesmata close, but how this contributes to...

link.springer.com

Thank you so much @manavellalab.bsky.social for visiting us @mpi-mp-potsdam.bsky.social 🌱 It was a great day of discussion, especially with @claudiakohler11.bsky.social @carogutj.bsky.social @gesahoffmann.bsky.social @gerardodeltoro.bsky.social @fritz-kragler.bsky.social See you soon in Malaga!

Finally, here it is: after 12 years, and driven by the incredible hard work and innovation of two Ph.D. students, Bingyan Hu and Maria Prusicki, with biomathematical support from Katarina Stahlmann (UKE) — "A cytological framework of female meiosis in Arabidopsis". academic.oup.com/plcell/artic...

A cytological framework of female meiosis in Arabidopsis

Live-cell imaging reveals characteristic cytological stages of female meiosis in Arabidopsis and allows an assessment of their durations.

academic.oup.com

I am looking for a postdoctoral fellow to join my team to work on the interplay between endocytosis and autophagy. The 3-year project runs in collaboration with the Dagdas lab @plantophagy.bsky.social and can start asap. Interested candidates can apply via the link below. jobs.vib.be/apply/134365

The non-NLR gene JAX1 drives potexvirus nonhost resistance across the Brassicaceae Suzuki et al. nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

My colleague & I teamed up w/ Grounded AI to look for fake/hallucinated references. Our analysis suggests that at least tens of thousands of publications from 2025 likely contain such references. More detz at @nature.com, w/ input from @gcabanac.cpesr.fr, @mhmdhsini.bsky.social & @kowb.bsky.social.

Hallucinated citations are polluting the scientific literature. What can be done?

Tens of thousands of publications from 2025 might include invalid references generated by AI, a Nature analysis suggests.

nature.com

Preprint alert! I am extremely happy to finally (!) share our work on the redox-dependent regulation of the CRKs in plants! We integrated high-throughput interactomics, redox proteomics, structural modelling, and genetics to map a ROS-dependent CRK interaction landscape in Arabidopsis.

bioRxiv Plant Bio@biorxiv-plants.bsky.social · 4mo ago

Redox-dependent extracellular interaction networks of Cysteine-Rich Receptor-Like Kinases https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.03.26.714216v1

New #preprint 😍‼️ led by 2 incredible postdocs @ninizhani.bsky.social & Ranj Papareddy: transforming #UFMylation from a local ribosome rescue pathway to systems level regulator of mRNA splicing www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... A short 🧵

With Eugene Koonin, we propose a concept of “the selfish ribosome”, under which evolution of life is viewed as a ribosomal takeover, where the ribosome evolved to consume most of the cell’s resources, while other cellular componentry ensures the propagation of the ribosome. arxiv.org/abs/2602.23268

Ever felt constrained by the "4-color limit" in fluorescence imaging? We use DNA-barcoded labeling to build high-plex panels, enabling imaging of 15 targets across the full fluorescence spectrum. doi.org/10.64898/202... Grateful to @sinemsaka.bsky.social and all authors for making this possible.

This is why we love #CalciumSignaling Look how mechanical damage triggers long range Ca2+ waves in this plant !! By @annalisabellandi.bsky.social, who is now around here ;) Full www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... @science.org #microscopy #cell #mechanobiology 🧪🔬

The Virus Diseases of Plants Working Group of the Deutsche Phytomedizinische Gesellschaft e.V. (DPG) met to discuss “New innovations & techniques in plant virology”. Co-organised by @jki-research.bsky.social and DSMZ, there were featured talks, posters, and lively exchanges. 🌿 #PlantHealth 📷 DSMZ

1/11 🔥 New preprint alert 🔥 We wanted to know what plants in the wild really care about. So we asked them 🎤. Here is what we learned: “Biotic-response networks are an important organizer of the transcriptome in wild Arabidopsis thaliana populations” www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

A new mechanism for “RNA memory”! This time in Planaria! (Here's a video of a Planarian with mulitple heads, one of the heritable phenotypes we studied). This work summarizes >10 years of research and is an amazing collaboration with the labs of Jochen Rink and Omri Wurtzel labs. Read thrad below👇

Hiding in plain sight! 2.3M conserved non-coding sequences traced back 300M years across 284 plant species Ground-breaking study out in First Release @science.org from labs of @madelaineb.bsky.social, @idane.bsky.social & Zach Lippman ▶️ doi.org/10.1126/scie... ▶️ www.slcu.cam.ac.uk/news/hiding-...

Don’t use LLMs to review manuscripts if you’ve agreed to review them….

Mark Peifer (He, him)@peiferlabunc.bsky.social · 5mo ago

Holy smoke. What ultimately happened???