Navigating shoot apical meristem plasticity for plant adaptation #TansleyReview by Zhu et al. nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... #plantscience

Happy #FluorescentFriday! Here's some autofluorescence of #Mimulus trichomes on tiny leaves and I saw something very interesting - the brightest cells appears to be a small "neck" cell connecting the long stalk and the head of the trichome! No idea why but they look like cute tiny shiny donuts 😋🍩🔬🌱

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

I love these funky basal epithelial cells in axolotl. Looks just like plant pavement cells

A #drought-induced MYB transcription factor regulates pavement cell shape in aspen leaves Sijia Liu (刘斯佳), et al. nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... @srobertgroup.bsky.social #PlantScience

How plant stem cells are kept robust summarized by GreenRobust PIs Jan Lohmann (@meristemania.bsky.social) and Thomas Greb (@thomasgreb.bsky.social). Enjoy! www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Plant stem cell systems: Robust by design

Plants maintain active stem cell populations throughout their lives, yet these systems are remarkably resilient to genetic, environmental, and mechani…

sciencedirect.com

NEWS - Researchers uncover the inside story on plant organ growth 🍃 Research has shed intriguing new light on the genetics underlying the diverse plant organ shapes we see in #agriculture and #nature. www.jic.ac.uk/news/researc...

🌾 Every grass leaf shares the same repeating short-long cell pattern in its epidermis. Our new #preprint identifies the protein that builds it. 🔬🧬 📄 preprint: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... 🧵⬇️ 1/11

🌾 Grass leaves are the photosynthetic powerhouses of human civilisation. @lbmountain.bsky.social's transcriptomic atlas of nearly 70,000 cells from shoot apex to mature leaf follows the genetic programs that form a grass leaf 🧬 paper doi.org/10.1093/plce... expression browser shiny.ips.unibe.ch

Latest episode of #No_Time_To_Read podcast! I had a fantastic conversation with @penlindsay.bsky.social Penelope about her recently published paper @newphyt.bsky.social (also made it to the cover). Podcast: open.spotify.com/episode/34XW... Article: nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1...

🍃 Growing a flat leaf 🍃 Check out our new review to learn how plants generate, maintain, and modulate flatness. A pleasure to put this together with Alexis De Carufel, Elvis Branchini, in collaboration with Marja Timmermans 🙏 👉 www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

On the cover: Maximum projection confocal micrograph of a developing maize ear primordium expressing PIP2-CFP membrane marker (cyan) and developmental receptor BAM1D-YFP (yellow). Image is courtesy of Penelope Lindsay. 📖 See Jackson et al. nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... #LatestIssue

Mechanical forces & cell shape guide how plant stomata form🥬👄 @leoserra.bsky.social & Euan Smithers from @robinsonsci.bsky.social's team uncover how the interplay between cell shape & mechanical stress influences the orientation of stomata doi.org/10.1016/j.ce... www.slcu.cam.ac.uk/news/mechani...

We're happy to announce our new preprint! 🐸 easymode: general pretrained networks for cellular cryo-ET. Segment ~20 cellular features – ribosomes, microtubules, mitochondria, nuclei & more – with zero model training. 🔗 doi.org/10.64898/202... 🧵👇

Latest preprint from our lab: We've studied the development and functional genomics of cannabis glandular trichomes using single cell multiomics (simultaneous gene expression and chromatin status profiling).

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

Developmental and regulatory logic of cannabis glandular trichomes resolved by single cell multiomics https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.05.17.725801v1

How do cells break symmetry to generate new shape and form? Using the apical hook as a model, we @joeecker.bsky.social applied spatial and single-cell multiomics, and identify a regulatory hotspot in a transient cell niche that drives this U-shaped structure 1/8 bsky.app/profile/bior...

bioRxivpreprint@biorxivpreprint.bsky.social · 4mo ago

Transient cell states encode positional information to direct asymmetric growth https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.05.21.726925v1

academic.oup.com/plcell/artic...

CESA7 and microtubules pattern complex secondary cell walls in explosive fruit of Cardamine hirsuta

Spatial control of secondary cell wall synthesis and assembly establishes the wall geometry required for explosive seed dispersal in Cardamine hirsuta frui

academic.oup.com

IN BRIEF: Hidden gradients before form: a spatial transcriptomic atlas of wheat spike patterning (Min-Yao Jhu , Travis A Lee) doi.org/10.1093/plce... #PlantScience @aspbofficial

Hidden gradients before form: a spatial transcriptomic atlas of wheat spike patterning

Few sights are as emblematic of agriculture as the wheat spike—an elegant, lanceolate-shaped inflorescence that determines grain yield. The highly producti

doi.org

🌾🧬C4 photosynthesis needs tight cell connections New study shows C3 to C2 to C4 steps use different trait combos. Multiple paths to better photosynthesis #plantsci @marjorielundgren.bsky.social @tamara-hverdeja.bsky.social @lancasterplantbio.bsky.social nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Improved mesophyll–bundle sheath connectivity is achieved via different mechanisms in C2 vs C4 Alternanthera

Leaf anatomy and biochemistry of C3, C2, and C4 plants.

nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com

May 2026 @ijpsjournal.bsky.social featured cover article 🚨Undergraduate research🚨 Morphological and anatomical changes during the flower-to-fruit transition in species of the parasitic family Loranthaceae @nataliapabonm.bsky.social et al www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/... #PlantScience

Excited to share our latest piece in Trends in Plant Science! 🌱🔬 www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... We highlight how single-cell laser ablation reveals plant development, wound responses, and root defenses. @TrendsPlantSci @KAUST_BESE @ESNematologists @umeaplantscie ncecentre.se #PlantScience

Single-cell laser ablation uncovers the blueprint of plant development

Understanding how positional information within plant tissues shapes developmental programs in real time has long remained a challenge due to technica…

sciencedirect.com

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

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

On this day, in 1961, two articles appeared in Nature announcing the isolation of messenger RNA (mRNA) www.cell.com/current-biol...

Who discovered messenger RNA?

Cobb looks back at the complicated series events that led to the discovery of messenger RNA, highlighting the often difficult problem of attributing credit for scientific advances.

cell.com

Cell fate acquisition at a de novo developmental boundary in the maize leaf | PNAS www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Cell fate acquisition at a de novo developmental boundary in the maize leaf | PNAS

The formation of boundaries separating developmental fields with distinct gene expression and cell fate trajectories is a universal feature of nonc...

pnas.org

This is a section of juvenile moss (Physcomitrium patens) tissue, called protonemata. The apical cells expand by tip-growth, while subapical cells sometimes divide to make lateral filaments. Cytosolic GFP is in green, and chlorophyll autofluorescence is in magenta. #microscopymonday #moss

Happy to see this out! Big congratulations to @nicolatrozzi.bsky.social and all involved! doi.org/10.1038/s443...

New paper on C4-CAM plants and using Portulaca as a model to study it 🌱 awesome collab with Ivan Reyna-Llorens! doi.org/10.1093/jxb/...

Open questions on facultative C4-CAM photosynthesis in Portulaca

Abstract. Plants have evolved carbon concentrating mechanisms (CCMs) to optimize carbon fixation under environmental conditions that increase photorespirat

doi.org

Happy to see this paper out!

Journal of Experimental Botany@jxbotany.bsky.social · 6mo ago

🌸⚖️ RESEARCH ⚖️🌸 Live imaging and hormone manipulation shows how auxin–cytokinin crosstalk drives differential growth at the cellular level in the gynoecium to establish the correct geometry for carpel primordia initiation – Gómez-Felipe et al. 🔗 doi.org/10.1093/jxb/... #PlantScience 🧪

🎙️🔬🍀 New episode of #No_Time_To_Read_podcast is online! In this episode, Laura told us about cell cycle regulation during plant regeneration. Podcast: tinyurl.com/2zv935d4 Article: tinyurl.com/mryz9e36