Our work on pattern formation in fossil and extant liverworts is out! @dev-journal.bsky.social Check it out if you are interested in fossils, evo-devo, and how mathematical modeling can help us understand the evolution of developmental processes! 🌿🧪 Thread ⬇️

Lateral inhibition governs ancestral cellular patterning in fossil and extant liverworts

Highlighted Article: Comparative and mathematical analyses reveal that oil body cell patterning in fossil and extant liverworts is consistent with a local activation-lateral inhibition mechanism, poin...

journals.biologists.com

Excited to share that our work on single-nucleus RNA-seq of the shoot apical meristem — the shoot stem cell niche — has found a home. #Plantascience #scRNAseq #stemcells www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Single-nucleus transcriptomics resolves multiple fate dynamics between inflorescence meristem and primary stem

snRNA-seq reveals shoot stem cell heterogeneity and traces their differentiation into primary stem cell types.

science.org

When did liverwort oil body cells originate? Here, Susan and I provide quantitative evidence that they emerged by at least the Middle Devonian (~390 Ma!), shedding light on a key anti-herbivory defense mechanism of early land plants!

New Phytologist@newphyt.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Homology of the dark cells of Paleozoic liverworts with the specialized oil body cells of modern liverworts (Marchantiophyta) Tremblay and Mercadal nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/share/BWYYSE...

Check out our Insight on the beautiful work by Clark et al. 🌱 How can stochastic giant-cell fate lead to non-random epidermal patterns? Cell fate, endoreduplication, and growth all matter. cup.org/3QYjVm0 @roederlab.bsky.social @pauformosa.bsky.social @matmajda.bsky.social

How stochastic cell fate and endoreduplication yield non-random epidermal patterns | Quantitative Plant Biology | Cambridge Core

How stochastic cell fate and endoreduplication yield non-random epidermal patterns - Volume 7

cup.org

Looking forward to giving a seminar at the @barcelonacollaboratorium.com seminar series, many thanks @n-martin.bsky.social for hosting!

Barcelona Collaboratorium@barcelonacollaboratorium.com · 4mo ago

Join our next Collaboratorium Seminar on 23 April, 10:00 at PRBB, Barcelona. Pau Formosa-Jordan (Max Planck Institute) will speak on plant multicellular dynamics and Arabidopsis development. Hosted by Nora Martin. #Collaboratorium

Our recent paper is explained here in a more accessible way! "We often think of the emergence of order as arising from self-organization or cell–cell interactions, but here, order emerges from random cell fate decisions amplified by the geometry of tissue growth." www.mpipz.mpg.de/pr-formosa-2...

Giant cells: from random initiation to nonrandom pattern

mpipz.mpg.de

A Postdoctoral Associate position is available in the Roeder Laboratory at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY with a focus on researching Polyploidy. Apply by March 1. Please spread the word. apps.hr.cornell.edu/recruiting/f...

Job alert🚨I am advertising a 2-year postdoctoral position to work on the mathematics of plant morphogenesis @mpipz.bsky.social. Candidates with interests in mathematical modelling, mechanics, or biophysics are strongly encouraged to apply. 🌱Reposts are appreciated! jobs.mpipz.mpg.de/jobposting/4...

New preprint on ancestral cellular patterning in fossil and extant liverworts! A story led by @josepmercadal.bsky.social together with Susan Tremblay, @leoniekraska.bsky.social, Martin Hutten. Check the thread below! @mpipz.bsky.social Link: doi.org/10.64898/202...

Josep Mercadal@josepmercadal.bsky.social · 8mo ago

Interested in fossils, evo-devo, and how mathematical modeling can help us understand the evolution of developmental processes? In our latest preprint, we uncover an ancestral lateral inhibition mechanism underlying epidermal patterning in liverworts.

Happy to see this out! We describe a patterning mechanism underlying rhizoid specification in Marchantia. Contrary to classic patterning mechanisms (e.g., Turing), rhizoid specification depends on both randomness and lateral inhibition, involves subcritical bifurcations, and occurs at criticality!

Cell-type specification at criticality underlies rhizoid patterning in the liverwort Marchantia polymorpha

Rhizoid specification in Marchantia polymorpha gemmae involves lateral inhibition mediated by the microRNA FRH1, which represses the rhizoid-specific …

sciencedirect.com

Are you an experienced PhD student or postdoc in plant science looking to connect, present your work, and discuss career paths? Join us at the 3rd Early Career Plant Researchers Network Meeting, Halle (Saale), 20–21 April 2026 Deadline: 23 January 2026 plant-ecr-networking.eu

Interested in doing a PhD on Plant Sciences? Check the program run by @ceplas.bsky.social !

CEPLAS - Cluster of Excellence on Plant Sciences@ceplas.bsky.social · 8mo ago

‼️Please RT: The CEPLAS Graduate School call for 2026 is now open! Detailed info on our website: bit.ly/4q19JWk @hhu.de @unicologne.bsky.social @mpipz.bsky.social @fz-juelich.de @leibnizipk.bsky.social @plantsciencedbg.bsky.social

Wondering about the dynamics during a developmental transition? Check out our preprint “Time-dependent bistability leads to critical slowing down during floral transition in Arabidopsis”, a very exciting collaboration with the Coupland lab @mpipz.bsky.social doi.org/10.64898/202...

Press release on our new work about inferring Spatial Ploidy (iSPy), a collaboration with the @roederlab.bsky.social and the Fox Lab, with @nickrussell31.bsky.social being the first author @mpipz.bsky.social @cp-cellrepmethods.bsky.social www.mpipz.mpg.de/5771290/pr-f...

Shining a Spotlight on Polyploid Cells – a tool to uncover spatial patterns of DNA content across tissues

Several research teams have collaborated to develop a new computing pipeline that enables high-throughput quantification of ploidy, i.e., the number of copies of chromosomes, in different tissues base...

mpipz.mpg.de

Check out our story in @plosbiology.org about how a nonrandom, clustered giant cell pattern forms in the sepal and leaf epidermis! It has been a great journey with @gweissbart.bsky.social, Frances Clark, Xihang Wang, @roederlab.bsky.social and co-authors. journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...

A common pathway controls cell size in the sepal and leaf epidermis leading to a nonrandom pattern of giant cells

Arabidopsis leaf epidermal cells have a wide range of sizes and ploidies, but the mechanisms patterning their size and spatial distribution remain unclear. This study shows that the pathway controllin...

journals.plos.org

Only a few days left to apply! My group is looking for a postdoc to engineer and deploy new tools to precisely manipulate and decode how auxin coordinates plant morphogenesis. @starmorph-syg.bsky.social Research Associate - Reprogramming Development (closes 7 October 2025)

Please share & RSVP to join the November 25th webinar! Hear from the 2025 Philip N. Benfey Arabidopsis Community Lifetime Achievement Awardees! bit.ly/naascawards @plantevolution.bsky.social

The BM^2 Lab is hiring a Ph.D. student to work on a variety of problems connected to modeling of morphogenesis in plants (i.e. ovule curvature formation, fixed handedness establishment in certain plant organs and its link to cell wall mechanics). Please share!

Introducing five concepts from dynamical systems to decode developmental regulatory mechanisms, have a read! @perez-carrasco.bsky.social‬ @roederlab.bsky.social @mpipz.bsky.social This effort started in a morphogenesis meeting @kitp-ucsb.bsky.social‬ in 2023. journals.biologists.com/dev/article/...

Looking forward to visit @cragenomica.bsky.social tomorrow Wednesday and present our work!

CRAG@cragenomica.bsky.social · last yr.

🌱 Join us for the "Plant developmental dynamics: from cellular patterning to developmental transitions"  seminar by @pauformosa.bsky.social‬ from the @mpipz.bsky.social  💡 Free entry 👉 https://f.mtr.cool/unxcsfnomw

So glad that the new suberin work from @tonnigrubeandersen.bsky.social 's lab is out now 🙂 Thanks Tonni for giving us the chance to work on it too! Congrats to all co-authors and especially @leoniekraska.bsky.social and Tonni. See below Tonni's post!

Tonni Andersen@tonnigrubeandersen.bsky.social · last yr.

Time for another paper from our lab! This time it’s about passage cells. This work originated from a collaboration with @lauraragni.bsky.social and was spearheaded by the super-talented @leoniekraska.bsky.social Below you will find a thread that explains our findings. www.cell.com/cell-reports...

Very excited to participate tomorrow Friday the 23rd May at the @plantaeofficial.bsky.social webinar on 'AI in Plant Biological Sciences Research', looking forward to it!

Plantae.org@plantaeofficial.bsky.social · last yr.

📣 Join us for the upcoming Plantae webinar on May 23 at 10:00 am Eastern time, hosted by the 2025 Plantae Fellows.🌱 👉 Free registration at buff.ly/aA7HlDF #plantscience

Two fantastic positions in #plantscience: A junior AND a senior group leader position at the Gregor Mendel Institute (GMI), part of @viennabiocenter.bsky.social. Generous core funding, fantastic plant and non-plant colleagues, all in a very livable and beautiful city. www.oeaw.ac.at/gmi/join-us/...

Senior Group Leader Position

oeaw.ac.at

Finally! Im so excited to present to culmination of many years of work from the fantastic Defeng Shen and some great collaborators. For details, I have made a digested thread below, but if you are more interested feel free to reach out (and read the paper of course). www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Apoplastic barriers are essential for nodule formation and nitrogen fixation in Lotus japonicus

Establishment of the apoplastic root barrier known as the Casparian strip occurs early in root development. In legumes, this area overlaps with nitrogen-fixing nodule formation, which raises the possi...

science.org

⭐️ Please Fwd. Are you in Paris on 16th May? See👇 poster of symposium on « Information processing in biological systems » @collegedefrance.bsky.social Fantastic line of speakers 🤩. It is free, w/o registration, and it will be exciting.m! Follows from my series of lectures at CdF last fall.

Spatial ploidy inference using quantitative imaging, our new collaborative work in the Polyploidy Integration & Innovative Institute, with the @roederlab.bsky.social and the Fox lab. Try our pipeline with your images! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

I am recruiting an #ERC funded PostDoc to work on the evolution of vertebral counts in cichlids. This is an experimental project & will be looking for candidates with experience generating reporter lines, live-imaging and experimental embryology. Application deadline: 25th Feb. tinyurl.com/33jbu8fa

Nice to see the MPIPZ Community here on Bluesky growing, but we still need a lot more people from the Institute to join. More importantly, it's time the actual MPIPZ moves its account here. go.bsky.app/TZbbhVn @maxplanck.de #PlantScience

📢 Deadline approaching Doing research on #stomata? Submit your abstract to our call for papers by 14 February! 👉 https://www.newphytologist.org/news/view/353 #PlantScience

Call for papers: New Phytologist Special Collection on Stomata

Call for paper: New Phytologist Special Collection on Stomata

newphytologist.org

A couple of weeks left to apply to join Development's *Pathway to Independence* programme Support & mentoring for post-docs on the academic job market Deadline: January 31 journals.biologists.com/dev/pages/pi...