New OA Resource: "A transcriptional atlas of early Arabidopsis seed development suggests mechanisms for inter-tissue coordination" rdcu.be/fj8H2 Single-nucleus RNAseq profiling of early Arabidopsis seed development. #PlantScience
Satyaki PRV
@satyakirv.bsky.social
Assistant Professor, University of Toronto Scarborough. Genetics, plant development, epigenetics, climate change, science fiction and history. https://www.satyaki-lab.com/ https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=tPfWn1MAAAAJ&hl=en
Absolutely delighted that our paper on epigenetic dynamics during plant aging is out today in Science! www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
Aging drives a program of DNA methylation decay in plant organs
Plants display a wide range of life spans and aging rates. Although dynamic changes to DNA methylation are a hallmark of aging in mammals, it is unclear whether similar molecular signatures reflect ra...
science.org
For 61 years the #BBCWorldService has been broadcasting the latest in science via its weekly Science in Action programme. That dies in the next half hour, with this final edition, reflecting on the fall in trust in expertise driven by malign interests over recent years.
Roland Pease@peaseroland.bsky.social · 12mo agoIt's the end of the road for BBC Science in Action. But science itself is facing growing roadblocks. For this terminal edition of SinA I'm joined by @naomioreskes.bsky.social @drdebhoury.bsky.social @michaelemann.bsky.social & @angierasmussen.bsky.social for where now? www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w...
Snake bites kill/debilitate 1000s of people annually in Sub-Saharan African. A new nanobody cocktail is shown to be highly effective against 17 of the most dangerous African snake species. Unlike other anti-venoms it also protects against venom-induced dermal necrosis🧪 www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Nanobody-based recombinant antivenom for cobra, mamba and rinkhals bites - Nature
A recombinant antivenom composed of eight nanobodies provides broad protection against venom-induced lethality and dermonecrosis in mice challenged with venoms from cobras, mambas and rinkha...
nature.com
Transposable elements drive much of naturally occurring genetic lethality in Drosophila melanogaster https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.10.16.682755v1
genomebiology.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.... From the Gehring Lab. Ros1 prevents paternal hypermethylation of the endosperm genome.
Client Challenge
genomebiology.biomedcentral.com
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... Cool observation.
Inhibition of DCL4 activity by maternally supplied flavonoid aglycons induces a bicolor pattern in the saddle soybean seed coat
A model showing a proposed molecular mechanism for the bicolored pattern formation in the saddle soybean seed coat. The spatial feedforward regulation consisting of DCL4 and flavonoid aglycons includ...
onlinelibrary.wiley.com
Lab’s 1st preprint! Menstruation is understudied due to societal taboos + a biological challenge: mice (a key system for research + drug discovery) don’t menstruate. @cagricevrim.bsky.social made menstruating mice + used them to discover early events in menstruation. He is on the job market!
Çağrı Çevrim@cagricevrim.bsky.social · last yr.I’m thrilled to share my postdoc work and the first paper from the McKinley Lab! 🎉 @karalmckinley.bsky.social We built the first transgenic model of menstruation in mice. We used it to uncover how the endometrium organizes and sheds during menstruation. 🧪 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... 🧵
Dr. Jane Goodall filmed an interview with Netflix in March 2025 that she understood would only be released after her death.
Aww man, Smoot died. One of my dad's small points of pride that he handed a very special bottle of photoresist under the table as "test sample" to a pair of researchers who were never gonna order industrial quantities, but was enough to make COBE's detectors. news.berkeley.edu/2025/09/29/n...?
Nobelist George Smoot, whose satellite experiments validated the Big Bang theory, dies at 80 - Berkeley News
Smoot, a physicist at UC Berkeley and Berkeley Lab, shared the 2006 Nobel Prize in Physics for detecting minute temperature variations in the cosmic microwave background, a prediction of the Big Bang ...
news.berkeley.edu
Just an outrageous amount of structural variation in pennycress. While not yet reproductively isolated, its likely these shredded pericentromeres contribute to some reproductive incompatibilities.
Kevin Bird@stairwaytokevin.bsky.social · last yr.Whole-genome alignments revealed pennycress has nearly dichotomous genome compartmentalization: huge gene-poor pericentromeric regions (~300Mb; <1% genic) with frequent rearrangements and highly syntenic gene-rich chromosome arms (~150Mb; ~20% genic). What we call a "two-speed" genome structure. 3/
Out today in JAERE! We measure water pollution released at India's industrial clusters. Does it hurt agriculture? Surprisingly: Not by much Come for how we published a paper of null results & with no regression tables Stay for new ways to proxy for crop yields & map hydrological relationships 🧵
Some more cool single-cell powered gene regulatory atlases from the Schmitz lab.
A single-cell rice atlas integrates multi-species data to reveal cis-regulatory evolution - Nature Plants
This study maps chromatin accessibility at single-cell resolution in rice and related grasses, revealing how regulatory DNA elements evolve across cell types and species and identifying potential sile...
nature.com
Germline defence from TEs largely relies on piRNAs. Yet, @divyaselvaraju.bsky.social and I monitored a P-element invasion in Drosophila that was stopped by an internally deleted copy, no host intervention required! doi.org/10.1371/jour... Many thanks to @rpianezza.bsky.social & @rokofler.bsky.social
Rapid emergence of non-autonomous elements may stop P-element invasions in the absence of a piRNA-based host defence
Author summary Transposable elements (TEs) are short, self-replicating DNA sequences found in nearly all genomes. While they can be harmful to their hosts, many organisms have evolved defence systems,...
journals.plos.org
Nature reports on the development of “sexless seeds,” which are crops that seed their own clones and have a host of benefits for farmers. #plantscience 🧪
Is this the future of food? 'Sexless' seeds that could transform farming
Scientists are tinkering with plant genes to create crops that seed their own clones, with a host of benefits for farmers.
go.nature.com
This is a very cool article on a deeply under-researched topic.
University closures and declining regional innovation: evidence from South Korea
Abstract. This paper empirically examines the impact of university closures on local innovation in South Korea from 2011 to 2021, against the backdrop of d
academic.oup.com
Please share! I'm looking for a postdoc. The position is to lead one of the following projects: 1) regulation of plant specialized metabolism by cell fate, or 2) foliar embryogenesis in the succulent plant Kalanchoe. Learn more abt projects: cxli233.github.io/cxLi_lab/res...
Plant cells are totipotent, meaning individual cells have the potential to develop into a full organism, a property unique to the zygote for animals. However, in most species for most cells, plant cells are not spontaneously totipotent, since they must be treated with specific hormone combinations to unlock their totipotency. Species within the Kalanchoe genus is unique as they spontaneously develop foliar embryos that are fully realized plantlets with shoot and root from notches along the edges of leaves. We speculate that the progenitor cells that give rise to these foliar embryos are totipotent, and we are using single cell techniques to identify & characterize them. In addition to being a fundamental process for plant biology, we foresee unlocking totipotency has many biotechnological applications, such as faciliating genetic transformation and the development of synthetic organs of biomanufacturing.
cxli233.github.io
Inactivation of β-1,3-glucan synthase-like 5 confers broad-spectrum resistance to Plasmodiophora brassicae pathotypes in cruciferous plants www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Inactivation of β-1,3-glucan synthase-like 5 confers broad-spectrum resistance to Plasmodiophora brassicae pathotypes in cruciferous plants - Nature Genetics
This study implicates GSL5 inactivation in high, broad-spectrum resistance to the clubroot pathogen Plasmodiophora brassicae in Arabidopsis thaliana, Brassica napus, Brassica oleracea and Brassica rap...
nature.com
Thrilled to announce our new paper is now out in @bmc.springernature.com rdcu.be/eCB2t
A species-wide inventory of receptor-like kinases in Arabidopsis thaliana
rdcu.be
My pick for In Other Journals this week: MSH1 suppresses organelle mutation - an investigation of how many plants maintain very low mitochondrial mutation rates My summary here: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... Paper here: doi.org/10.1371/jour... @sloanevolab.bsky.social #PlantScience
In Other Journals
Editors’ selections from the current scientific literature
science.org
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Emerging evidence of abrupt changes in the Antarctic environment - Nature
Abrupt changes are developing across Antarctica’s ice, ocean and biological systems; some of these changes are intensifying faster than equivalent Arctic changes, potentially irreversibly, and their i...
nature.com
Last week I requested a tech and a postdoc position to be created and submitted the ads for those positions. Stay tuned for the official ad. For inquiries, my contact can be found here: cxli233.github.io/cxLi_lab/
Our current carbon economy relies on fossil fuels, from which we isolate small organic molecules to produce medicines, plastics, cosmetic, or other chemicals that we use everyday. However, sustainability requires a more biomass-based carbon economy, where we engineer plants to produce precursor molecules, which can then be assembled to desired chemicals that we use daily. Plants have evolved an amazing diversity of metabolites, but these metabolites are not produced in every cell of the plant. Therefore, it is essential to understand how plants can express different metabolic pathways across different organs, tissues, and even cell types. We are interested in the following questions: How are metabolic pathways (especially specialized metabolism) controlled by cell fate? How can we reprogram plant cell fates for biomanufacturing? How can we toggle between differentiated cell states for metabolic engineering and totipotent cell state for genetic engineering?
cxli233.github.io
A reminder you/your lab can support FlyBase at Cambridge through the following link. Every bit helps. Please share if you yourself can't donate. www.philanthropy.cam.ac.uk/give-to-camb...
Drosophila Genetic Database
The Drosophila Genetic Database, FlyBase, is on the brink of collapse due to the sudden termination of the FlyBase NIH grant, which includes salaries for 5 literature curators based at the University ...
philanthropy.cam.ac.uk
Dr Sian Gramates@drglam.bsky.social · last yr.News via The Transmitter www.thetransmitter.org/community/ha...
What’s your favorite food fact that is true but sounds totally made up? I’ll start: about half of the mushrooms produced across the United States of America each year (more than 300 million pounds of mushrooms in recent years) are produced in *one county* in Pennsylvania.
Head of NASA Sean Duffy intends to destroy a satellite that collects key data on carbon dioxide and plant health, by causing it to burn up in the atmosphere. The U.S. Dept of Agriculture and private agriculture firms use the data to forecast crop yield, drought conditions and more.
Why a NASA satellite that scientists and farmers rely on may be destroyed on purpose
The Trump administration has asked NASA staffers to draw up plans to end at least two satellite missions that measure carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, according to current and former NASA employees.
npr.org
it's strange *how little* consciousness of the 1971 genocide in Bangladesh there is in the West, given how awful it was. a combination of racism and Cold War alliances with Pakistan, I suppose, but you'd think that there would have been *some* breakthrough book of the "Rape of Nanking" scale by now