🧬 GENOMES IN THE WILD! 🌿💻🚀 This week, rising high school juniors and seniors stepped into the world of genomics at Catawba College at the Bill and Shari Graham Genomics Laboratory.
In such an extreme habitat, black-spored quillwort was particularly sensitive to the drought in Georgia this spring (one of the worst in a decade). Luckily ...
It isn’t just rare plants that rely on granite outcrop pools, they’re also home to aquatic invertebrates like shrimp, copepods, rotifers, and ostriches. Amphibians cross the vast expanses of bare rock to lay eggs there too.
For three hundred million years — since quillwort ancestors dominated Earth’s earliest forests — rainfall has eroded away these rocks with ephemeral rivulets and pools.
These little oases are entirely dependent on rainfall. The quillworts that live here have adapted by shortening their life cycle and shifting their growing season to winter and spring. Their spores mature in early summer as the pools dry out and plants enter dormancy.
Not many outcrops are well protected. They attract activities like trash dumping, off-roading, quarrying, and bonfires. As a result, about 50% of black-spored quillwort populations have been extirpated in the last 100 years.
An unusual Isoetes, black-spored quillwort grows over bare rock in a thin layer of sand where rainfall collects during the winter. It will survive the summer in the soil as spores and desiccation-tolerant rootstocks. Quillworts have adapted to this habitat several times around the world.
Back by request, my online quillwort course is happening this September! Registration at eaglehill.us
The United States National Herbarium is seeking a Lead Collections Manager! For complete requirements and application procedures, please visit USAJOBS (www.usajobs.gov/job/864499200). Applications and all supporting documentation must be received online by 1 May 2026.
USAJOBS connects job seekers with federal jobs across the United States and around the world as the official employment site for the federal government
<p>The Smithsonian Institution is the world’s largest museum, education, and research complex, with 21 museums and the National Zoo. The National Museum of Natural History (NMNH) is a major bureau of the Smithsonian Institution that is responsible for the acquisition, curation, and preservation of collections of objects and specimens of natural history within the specialization of botany for this position.</p>
usajobs.gov
It's the last week of the hornwort class, we'll be discussing species boundaries, ecology, biogeography and genomics. We'll have the pleasure of having @peterwschafran.com as our invited guest sharing his knowledge on hornwort genomics.
A couple years ago @tarobison.bsky.social asked me what I thought of this isoform in my gene models and I said it was probably just a bad prediction. Never underestimate the weirdness in your data!
Fay-Wei Li@fernway.bsky.social · 5mo agoOur work on #hornwort #pyrenoids is finally out in @science.org! 🎉 We uncovered how hornworts pack their Rubisco into pyrenoids and successfully recreated them in Arabidopsis. A key step toward engineering more efficient photosynthesis in crops @btiscience.bsky.social www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
Our work on #hornwort #pyrenoids is finally out in @science.org! 🎉 We uncovered how hornworts pack their Rubisco into pyrenoids and successfully recreated them in Arabidopsis. A key step toward engineering more efficient photosynthesis in crops @btiscience.bsky.social www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
An unconventional Rubisco small subunit underpins the CO2-concentrating organelle in land plants
In many algae, photosynthesis is boosted by biophysical CO2-concentrating mechanisms, which pack the CO2-fixing enzyme Rubisco into liquid-like organelles called pyrenoids. Engineering C3 crops with a...
science.org
It's the funding of taxonomic research & training that's dying out. Without an ability to identify life forms, we can't recognize/quantify invasions & extinctions and their impacts on ecosystems. Imagine trying to repair a complex steel structure if you can't distinguish different types of bearings.
Donna Giberson (Elbows UP!) 🇨🇦🇺🇦@donnag.bsky.social · 5mo agoIncredible article about Art Borkent, biting midges, and aging taxonomists. www.theguardian.com/environment/...
our hornwort paper got the cover of the @newphyt.bsky.social nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
📢 New publication 'Evolutionary history of sex and accessory chromosomes in #hornworts' by John Bowman and Jonathan Levins in @newphyt.bsky.social 🧪 doi.org/10.1111/nph....
Evolutionary history of sex and accessory chromosomes in hornworts
Click on the article title to read more.
doi.org
It’s hard to believe our summer undergraduate researchers are wrapping up in just a few weeks! This summer of science has flown by. Catch up on their adventures in the lab, out in the field, around Ithaca, and beyond!
A little belated but I've started a faculty position at Ecology, Evolution and Marine Biology department at @ucsantabarbara.bsky.social. I'm absolutely stoked! I'll be recruiting at all levels and will be at #Botany2025 Reach out! www.martinezgomezlab.com
Martinez-Gomez Lab
Plant Evo-Devo
martinezgomezlab.com
This seems to work really well! Improved a draft genome with N50=0.5 Mb (flye 2.9.4/hifiasm-0.19.8), increased to N50=5 Mb (11 Mb after removing all the repetitive element contigs)
HHeng Li@lh3lh3.bsky.social · last yr.
Preprint on hifiasm Nanopore-only assembly. Led by Haoyu Cheng: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
#Phylogenetics & population structure of the western North American endemic Pacific Laurasian clade of #Isoëtes New #AJB research by Forrest Freund, Daniel Gates, Matthew Johnson & @crothfels.bsky.social doi.org/10.1002/ajb2... #botany #plantscience #genetics #biogeography #evolution
Preprint on hifiasm Nanopore-only assembly. Led by Haoyu Cheng: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Efficient near telomere-to-telomere assembly of Nanopore Simplex reads
Telomere-to-telomere (T2T) assembly is the ultimate goal for de novo genome assembly. Existing algorithms capable of near T2T assembly all require Oxford Nanopore Technologies (ONT) ultra-long reads w...
biorxiv.org
🎉 Great news! The paper ‘Distinct patterns of genome size evolution in each bryophyte lineage are not correlated with whole genome duplication’ in @annbot.bsky.social by Nikisha Patel and co-authors is now #free for a limited time 🧵(1/8) 👉 doi.org/pcjr @mossplants.bsky.social #AoBpapers
The reviews are in, this was the best Quillwort Conference ever! Thanks so much to our speakers: Gemma Milly Lisa George David Wickell @wickellomics.bsky.social Megan Nibbelink @megantheebotanist.bsky.social Jacob Suissa John Evans
(2/2) Giant sex chromosomes were discovered in Silene latifolia more than 100 years ago. Two papers back to back now show the sequence of the 550 Mbp Silene Y chromosome helping to understand sex determination www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... #plantscience
Rapid and dynamic evolution of a giant Y chromosome in Silene latifolia
Some plants have massive sex-linked regions. To test hypotheses about their evolution, we sequenced the genome of Silene latifolia, in which giant heteromorphic sex chromosomes were first discovered i...
science.org
I am very proud of UMN Duluth undergrad Isabel Smalley, whose summer REU project led to co-authorship on her first paper, now out in Nature Plants! 🎉
Fay-Wei Li@fernway.bsky.social · 2y agoPaper #2 - we generated 10 new chr-level genomes for hornworts covering all families and most genera. Also the first look into their U/V sex chromosomes! 3/4 www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Second paper of the year led by Peter Schafran from @fernway.bsky.social lab (Cornell University). Again hornworts rock !! www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Pan-phylum genomes of hornworts reveal conserved autosomes but dynamic accessory and sex chromosomes - Nature Plants
This study presents 11 new hornwort (Anthocerotophyta) genomes that clarify the structure and evolution of sex and accessory chromosomes in bryophytes and shed new light on the early evolution of land...
nature.com
First paper of the year, led by Tanner Robison from @fernway.bsky.social lab (Cornell University!). Hornworts rock!! www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Hornworts reveal a spatial model for pyrenoid-based CO2-concentrating mechanisms in land plants - Nature Plants
Hornworts are the only land plants with a pyrenoid-based CO2-concentrating mechanism. This study presents evidence that some of the key components in algal pyrenoid-based CO2-concentrating mechanisms ...
nature.com
Paper #2 - we generated 10 new chr-level genomes for hornworts covering all families and most genera. Also the first look into their U/V sex chromosomes! 3/4 www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Pan-phylum genomes of hornworts reveal conserved autosomes but dynamic accessory and sex chromosomes - Nature Plants
This study presents 11 new hornwort (Anthocerotophyta) genomes that clarify the structure and evolution of sex and accessory chromosomes in bryophytes and shed new light on the early evolution of land...
nature.com
Two new #hornwort papers from our group out in Nature Plants @natureplants.bsky.social today - a great way to celebrate the new year! 1/4
One thing yinz should all know is whenever you write a title of the form <Catchy Phrase> [colon] <Description Of What The Paper is About> I reserve the right to decide whether or not the phrase following the colon is interesting or informative enough to be worth the aesthetic cost to my bibliography