If you claim to have discovered cell type specific x,y,z responses & all your the functional assays are done in whole plant mutants without a single cell type specific CRISPR or complementation exps, I am rolling my eyes at you!

Zendaya's Iconic Stan Twitter Eye Roll

ALT: Zendaya's Iconic Stan Twitter Eye Roll

static.klipy.com

Our latest views on deep ARF evolution are finally out in New Phytologist! nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

AUXIN RESPONSE FACTORs: from transcription factors to auxin effectors

Molecular evolution of AUXIN RESPONSE FACTOR (ARF) effector function.

nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com

Siobhán McSweeney's "Sister Michael" is the absolute best supporting actor in a streaming comedy series, change my mind. Literally every line is hilarious. Her deadpan is spectacular. #DerryGirls is maybe the best #GenX show ever made.

Sister Michael from Derry Girls: 'Am I in Hell?'

Alt: Sister Michael from Derry Girls: 'Am I in Hell?'

static.klipy.com

Super cool exploration of stomatal bHLH gene evolution in ferns and gymnosperms. A decade ago Anne Vatén @stomagenesis.bsky.social already knew these plants were critical missing links -- now her group has functional studies in spruce! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

What does an ovary actually look like as it ages—one oocyte at a time? We mapped >85,000 oocytes in >100 intact mouse ovaries, in 3D, across the reproductive lifespan. And the ovary turned out to be much more organized than we expected. 🧵 1/5 www.nature.com/articles/s43...

Three-dimensional mapping of intact ovaries reveals the aging dynamics of the ovarian reserve - Nature Aging

The spatiotemporal dynamics of the depletion of the ovarian reserve remain incompletely understood. Combining whole-ovary imaging, AI and modeling, the authors mapped over 85,000 mouse oocytes and fou...

nature.com

Extremely happy to see that my latest work on understanding how ARISC-RAP80 recognises and cleaves ubiquitin chains is now published @natcomms.nature.com Check it out if you are interested in #DUBs, #DNA repair, or #cryo-EM: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Mechanism of K63-linked polyubiquitin recognition and cleavage by the BRCA1-A complex - Nature Communications

How the BRCA1-A complex finds and removes ubiquitin signals at DNA breaks remains unknown. Here the authors show that ARISC–RAP80 binds K63-linked ubiquitin chains through multiple subunits and non-ca...

nature.com

Latest paper from our lab: Activation of pro-survival autophagy by a small molecule promoting p62 oligomerisation - Journal of Biological Chemistry www.jbc.org/article/S002...

Activation of pro-survival autophagy by a small molecule promoting p62 oligomerisation

Autophagy is a critical mechanism of cellular quality control, orchestrated by selective autophagy receptor (SAR) proteins. Pharmacologically enhancing the cargo-targeting capacity of SARs presents an...

jbc.org

Amid the rush to burn DEI infrastructure to the ground, it’s worth remembering that the goal was never favoritism. It was a fair shot for people long excluded by unconscious or real bias — prominent scientists, including Nobel laureates, openly argued some “races” were innately unsuited for science.

“AI makes knowledge cheaper and routine cognitive output faster. Paradoxically, that makes judgment, curiosity, critical thinking, communication and interpersonal intelligence more economically valuable.” www.forbes.com/sites/bryanr...

AI Is Creating A ‘Human Premium’—5 Career Skills Suddenly Worth More

Learn the five essential human capabilities—the "human premium"—that employers are starting to prioritize in hiring and that AI struggles to replicate.

forbes.com

@biorxivpreprint.bsky.social @richardsever.bsky.social Please help! We do have to use VPN and it takes ages to read a #preprint at university network, thanks to cloudflare

MadScientist@mads100tist.bsky.social · yesterday

Oh my fucking god bioRxiv why

Our science & scientists also becoming victims of climate change. A/C systems not designed to deal with consecutive heatwaves & continuing to fail. Nearly 50°C in the room with our plant growth cabinets (which couldn't cope) today. 3 rounds of failed experiments. #plantscience #climatecatastrophe

Perks to having a lab at the botanical garden @uniheidelberg.bsky.social

I think it makes a lot of sense to do a lottery for the gray zone applications. Use peer-review to find fundable grants, fund the excellent ones, do a lottery for the ones in the gray zone.

Thiago Carvalho@cyrilpedia.bsky.social · yesterday

'A mathematical model identified the proposals that were too close to separate and sent them into a lottery (...) Peer review still set the bar to qualify, but among the proposals near the funding threshold, a financed project and a rejected one would now be divided by chance.'

'A mathematical model identified the proposals that were too close to separate and sent them into a lottery (...) Peer review still set the bar to qualify, but among the proposals near the funding threshold, a financed project and a rejected one would now be divided by chance.'

When the best decision is no decision: the rise of randomization in grant funding

If reviewers can’t reliably tell the difference between top grant proposals, why should they pretend they can? A new wave of funders is turning to lotteries to break the tie.

nature.com

See thread by @metalichen.bsky.social on Tangerine - A Starship in the genomes of lichen-forming fungi - the peer-reviewed version is now online. Thanks to all co-authors. It's been a fun collaboration and there's lots more to discover!👇

Gulnara Tagirdzhanova@metalichen.bsky.social · 2d ago

Our study on giant transposons Starship 🚀🧬 in the genome of the lichen fungus Xanthoria is now out in @pnas.org! What did we find out about Starships in #lichen fungi? 👇Updated thread below 🖥️ 🧪 🦠 🧫 #SymbioSky 1/6 www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Fresh preprint online from our group! We find that stomatal maturation IS possible in the embryo, when they lack ERECTA signaling, but then still, only at the cotyledon tip. A thread. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

ERECTA signaling controls the timing of Arabidopsis Guard Cell maturation at the embryonic leaf tip

While cell identities are established early during embryogenesis, these cells remain immature until germination, and the mechanisms enforcing this developmental pause are poorly understood. Embryonic ...

biorxiv.org

Postdoc opportunity in Copenhagen! Interested in marine bioluminescence, comb jellies & experimental biology? A great 2-year postdoc (possibility of 1-year extension), working with CRISPR, imaging & EM in the labs of Anders Garm & Cornelia Jaspers. Deadline: 16.08 jobportal.ku.dk/videnskabeli...

Postdoc in Marine Bioluminescence - re-advertisement

jobportal.ku.dk

www.cell.com/cell/fulltex... What a beautiful mechanism!

Co-option of retrotransposons promotes antibody diversification

A longstanding mystery in antibody diversification is how AID specifically targets immunoglobulin V genes. Ancient LINE-1 retrotransposons embedded within the immunoglobulin locus provide a recruitmen...

cell.com

🚨🪲🏆 The news is out! Our study has won the 2026 @entsocamerica.bsky.social Environmental Entomology People’s Choice Award! 🎉 Congrats, Abraão et al. and thank you to everyone who voted for this beautiful work. We are incredibly grateful! 🪲🌿 See other winners here: academic.oup.com/insect-scien...

We're hiring 🔬🌱🦠 We're looking for someone with confocal microscopy expertise to join our work on plant–microbe interactions @thesainsburylab.bsky.social . A whole new suite of genetically encoded reporters + 3D spatial gene expression tools like PHYTOMap and more. Please share!

The Sainsbury Laboratory@thesainsburylab.bsky.social · 2d ago

📣 VACANCY: Research Assistant / Postdoctoral Researcher - Tatsuya Nobori group @tatsuyanobori.bsky.social Join the team to work on work on live-cell and 3D spatial imaging of plant–microbe interactions 🔬🌱 📍Norwich, UK ⏰ Apply online by 14 Sept 2026 Apply here: www.tsl.ac.uk/working-at-t...

Our lab is now two years old! Feeling very lucky to work with such a talented and motivated group of people. Celebrated our lab anniversary (and some other good news) with a poolside lunch on campus🏖️

"The lack of a cell wall affords animal cells diverse functionality but renders them vulnerable to plasma membrane (PM) damage." 😕 It's a really cool story, don't judge it based on the opening sentence. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Our work is now online @cp-cellhostmicrobe.bsky.social Congrats to all authors @himanshuchhillar.bsky.social @leonardojo.bsky.social Amey Volkan @kaisakajala.bsky.social @jonathandgjones.bsky.social Supported primarily by the @erc.europa.eu #StG www.cell.com/cell-host-mi... @unileiden.bsky.social

Cell-type-specific activation of broadly perceived effector-triggered immunity restricts pathogen invasion in plants

Chhillar et al. reveal that plant immunity is organized across leaf tissues through specialized cell-type programs. While a shared core immune program is broadly activated, individual cell types deplo...

cell.com

🚨🪲🧫🌿 New preprint out! We talk a lot about obligate symbionts in insects, but what about environmentally acquired bacteria? Could they also help insects expand their nutritional capacities? Are they truly transient? Are insects transmitting more pathogens than we know? 🤯 🔗 doi.org/10.64898/202...

1/9 🧵New preprint from the lab! A midpoint in a long journey to understand specificity among bHLH transcription factors in plants. Part IV: how does an accessory domain guide specificity of heterodimerizing bHLHs? #PlantSci #TranscriptionFactors #stomata www.biorxiv.org/cgi/content/...

Another thing the #Arday saga reminded me of: very few people in academia speak up when they witness injustice (perhaps an inevitable consequence of the peer-review culture?). Yet once someone is down, everyone suddenly finds their moral courage, ready to kick them and make grand ethical gestures.

Very Courageous Eve

ALT: Very Courageous Eve

static.klipy.com

We are looking for a Scientist in #PlantCellBiology here at @kwsgroup.bsky.social in Einbeck. The position is in our Doubled Haploid Research Unit, and the work can be done onsite or remote! This is a two-year contract. jobs.kws.com/job/Einbeck-... #PlantSciJobs #PlantSciJob #PlantScience

📣 VACANCY: Postdoctoral Researcher - Wenbo Ma group Exciting opportunity to investigate small RNA-based plant immunity, applied to crop disease resistance 🧬 🌱 📍 Norwich, UK ⏰ Apply by 1 Sept 2026 ✨️ 2 positions available www.tsl.ac.uk/working-at-t...

Postdoctoral Researcher - Wenbo Ma group

The Sainsbury Laboratory (TSL), Norwich, United KingdomApplication review starts 1 September 2026

tsl.ac.uk

We are excited by the publication of our work on Torsin1A, its interaction partner CLCC1, and their role in membrane fusion during NPC biogenesis! A fantastic collaboration with @jagannathan-lab.bsky.social @labvanni.bsky.social @gautamdey.bsky.social and the Korkhov and Antonin labs!

The dystonia-associated Torsin1A sustains CLCC1 function in membrane fusion of the nuclear envelope for NPC biogenesis

Maslennikova et al. identify the ER membrane protein CLCC1 as an interaction partner of the dystonia-linked AAA+ ATPase Torsin1A. Torsin1A sustains the function of CLCC1, which is proposed to facilitate fusion of the nuclear envelope during NPC biogenesis by forming an oligomer that promotes lipid bilayer approach and remodeling.

cell.com

A major advice I try to pass on: science is only worth it if you can delight in the discoveries of others. It’s great to make your own discoveries but they are too few to sustain you over the long haul.