The strike and protests in the Twin Cities yesterday were incredible. Today, the force terrorizing the city executed someone in the street. They are not making our city safer. I'm tired of the lies. I’m tired of the fear. I’m tired.

There is video circulating on social media of a group of ICE agents beating a man near 26th and Nicollet in south Minneapolis, then one of the ICE agents shoots the man while he's on the ground numerous times. A witness can be heard yelling that the victim is dead.

We have a PhD studentship available for a student who wants to engineer immune responses by tinkering with the connectivity between cells. Based at JIC, collaboration with the Ezer lab, deadline 19th Jan, UK students only. Get in touch for more info! #PlantSciJobs www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

Engineering plant immune responses (Plant BioDesign JIC project) at University of York on FindAPhD.com

PhD Project - Engineering plant immune responses (Plant BioDesign JIC project) at University of York, listed on FindAPhD.com

findaphd.com

@letterboxd.social - how can we get Listers: a glimpse into extreme birdwatching on the app??? 🎥 🦅 📖

New from the team: A century of breeding has preserved genetic variation, accumulated favorable alleles, and shaped the Rht genes portfolio in North American spring wheat shorturl.at/LYYvr Part of my favorite figure showing how different breeding programs use various reduced height genes.

This is a great time to check-in with your international post-docs, students, and staff. This picture of our wheat plants has nothing to do with the post, but I felt like I needed some cheering up.

This is a great time to check-in with your international post-docs, students, and staff. This picture of our wheat plants has nothing to do with the post, but I felt like I needed some cheering up.

Join us on Bluesky and find out more about the www.wheatinitiative.org

The resistosome story continues... Another beautiful structure - this time from a (modified) wheat NLR 🌾

Sophien Kamoun@kamounlab.bsky.social · last yr.

First a pentamer, then a hexamer… now an octamer! The riddle of the enigmatic CCG10-NLR immune receptor family cracked open 🔥 Congrats Guanghao @GuanghaoGuo He Zhang @mhz1989 Selva @M__Selvaraj et al. #NLRbiology #plantsci #immunology

I'm very proud of this USDA funded work led by @harsimargill.bsky.social to analyze tons of spring wheat uniform nursery data painstakingly digitized by the Blueskyless Sarah Blecha. Lots more in the pipeline but this marks my official introduction as part of #wheat world. 🍞🌾👋 shorturl.at/v2nmk

Genetic gains from 60 years of spring wheat breeding in the Northern Plains of the United States

A significant positive genetic gain of 0.61% per annum was observed for grain yield in hard red spring wheat released in the Northern US region over the past six decades. Sustained yield improvement...

acsess.onlinelibrary.wiley.com

Bacterial Leaf Streak Meeting 2025 is over! Thank you so much to the organizers, attendees, presenters, staff, and volunteers who made it a success!

USDA scientists terminated from Cereal Disease Lab in St. Paul www.mprnews.org/story/2025/0...

Experts foresee negative ripple effects in termination of USDA scientists in St. Paul lab

A team at the U.S Department of Agriculture’s Cereal Disease Lab in St. Paul got notice last week that some of their jobs were getting cut. Experts warn that cutting jobs in this area will harm resear...

mprnews.org

"I’m feeling betrayed, gutted, lost, anxious, and furious." Our story for @science.org—on the ongoing mass firing of federal employees and reactions in the scientific community. www.science.org/content/arti...

Mass firings decimate U.S. science agencies

White House dismissals and rationale challenged by dismissed scientists and lawsuits

science.org

Here is a gift link to the article... www.nytimes.com/2025/02/18/u... 3/3

Trump Cuts Target Next Generation of Scientists and Public Health Leaders (Gift Article)

A core group of so-called disease detectives, who track outbreaks, was apparently spared. But other young researchers are out of jobs.

nytimes.com

In US, MN ranks #1 in oats; #3 in spring wheat; #9 in barley. $380M in #wheat exports alone. Scientists are needed to support farmers producing these crops! What's the future of #agriculture if we dismantle #AgriculturalScience research? #PlantScience #USDA-ARS #AttackOnScience #PlantPathology

Andy Read 🌱🦠@hashtag-read.bsky.social · 2y ago

Tough day for small grains research in the Twin Cities. Myself and four scientist colleagues have all been let go from the USDA because we haven't completed our 3 year probationary period - effectively gutting the Cereal Disease Lab. Taking a few days to be sad before I think about what comes next.

Tough day for small grains research in the Twin Cities. Myself and four scientist colleagues have all been let go from the USDA because we haven't completed our 3 year probationary period - effectively gutting the Cereal Disease Lab. Taking a few days to be sad before I think about what comes next.

US Undergraduates! You still have until next Friday to apply to the Plant Health Fellows internship program in New Haven, CT. Learn about plant health research and careers for 9 weeks, includes $5,000 stipend and apartment housing: www.southernct.edu/plant-health...

It's not always as simple as "one TALE, one S-gene" - very cool work from @kcox-bioguy.bsky.social and the team showing a single TALE targets 3 distinct cotton genes (2 SWEETs and a pectin lyase) to maximize virulence.

Kevin Cox Jr@kcox-bioguy.bsky.social · 2y ago

The last part of my PhD work was published yesterday in Nature Communications!! We found a TAL effector that targets three genes to confer bacterial blight of cotton disease. Congrats to all the other co-authors on this paper! 🎉🙌🏾 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Do you have regulatory experience but don't want to be a Fed? Connecticut needs a new State Plant Regulatory official! BS,MS, PhD applicants welcome from any area of plant health. Looking for someone who can lead a team, understand regulations, and help stakeholders. Great stability and benefits!

For enslaved men & women in America’s south, birds meant forced labor. But they also meant food, opportunity, and even freedom. The Library of Congress’s Slave Narratives Collection has amazing stories not just about Black suffering and resilience, but also relationships w/ nature. (1/7)🗃️🧵

Birds and Slavery

Enslaved men and women in America’s South developed their own ornithology. To them, birds meant forced labor. But they also meant food, opportunity, and sometimes even freedom.

birdhistory.substack.com

If you know anyone interested in nanotech and plant health, please share this postdoc opening! Spans phytobiomes, chemistry, and field crop management: isme-microbes.org/jobs/postdoc...

🟦 Hello Bluesky World 🟦 Finishing up my first week as a USDA scientist just in time for a potential shutdown 😅 I'm a wheat and oat geneticist 🌾 🧬🧪 still on the UMN campus. Looking forward to exploring these polyploid genomes and connecting with the wheat/oat communities