Dominique Bergmann

@stanfordstomata.bsky.social

Steel town kid gone west. Development, plants, resilience and flexibility. https://stomata.stanford.edu/

Our single-cell atlas paper made the cover 🎉 image by @lbmountain.bsky.social, showing the mature Brachy epidermis in all its beauty. #GoBrachy: yellow is lignin, and blue is cell wall autofluorescence.

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Michael Raissig@michaelraissig.bsky.social · last mo.

🌾 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

Our first Kalanchoë laxiflora story found its perfect home @Science Advances with a beautiful cover image of Kalanchoë thyrsiflora leaves. I am grateful that I can continue working with this incredible new model to learn more about succulent development 🤩 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

The picture shows Kalanchoë thyrsiflora leaf margins
Heike Lindner@heikelindner.bsky.social · 2y ago

This story was only possible through true team effort. Team Kalanchoë with Xin at the forefront. @jameshartwell.bsky.social, the most generous scientist who shared resources and answered countless questions. Read about MUTE during stomatal development in Kalanchoë www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Our first study on how the leaf succulent Kalanchoë laxiflora makes stomatal subsidiary cells is finally peer-reviewed & out - and it made the cover! 🌵 🧬 🔬 doi.org/10.1126/scia... Despite 150 years of evolution, grasses and Crassulacean succulents use the SAME gene to make subsidiary cells! 🤯

ONLINE COVER: Leaves of Kalanchoe thyrsiflora, a member of the Crassulaceae family of succulents also containing Kalanchoë laxiflora. Stomata, otherwise known as plants’ breathing pores, allow gas exchange between plants and the atmosphere, but little is known about how succulent stomata are formed or move. Cheng et al.’s investigation into K. laxiflora revealed that subsidiary cells can support the opening and closing of stomata and that the transcription factor MUTE, which drives stomatal development, also facilitates additional rounds of asymmetric division needed to generate subsidiary cells. Their work provides insight into succulent development and could be applied in agricultural contexts to engineer water conservation strategies.

Credit: Rob Tilley / MindenExcessive activation of the MUTE gene switch leads to unrestricted asymmetric cell divisions in the leaf surface of the succulent Kalanchoë laxiflora.
© Miro LäderachThe MUTE gene switch is active in all cells of the developing stomata. Gene activity is visible through a weak signal (in blue) in the future helper cells and a strong signal (in green) in the mother cell of the guard cells.
© Michael Raissig
Michael Raissig@michaelraissig.bsky.social · 2y ago

🌵Preprint alert 🌵 5y in the works & extremely proud of this one. Xin Cheng & @heikelindner.bsky.social established the eudicot leaf succulent Kalanchoë laxiflora as a dev model. Like in grasses, MUTE makes Kalanchoë’s stomatal subsidiary cells! 1/n www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... BSKY-tutorial 👇

This is an amazing opportunity for students and postdocs to learn new ideas and techniques at the intersections of biology/physics/AI. This course was transformative for me and my students! Summer in beautiful Santa Barbara as a bonus.

Adrienne Roeder Lab@roederlab.bsky.social · 7mo ago

Feb 1 deadline approaching for our @kitp-ucsb.bsky.social QBio summer course on Physical Principles of Morphogenesis in Plants and Animals. @streichan.bsky.social @maurazimmermann.bsky.social @maizel-lab.org @yusuke-mori.bsky.social @akankshi.bsky.social @nicolettapetridou.bsky.social

What a glorious day--waking up to see this lovely preprint that does it all--a comprehensive scRNAseq atlas of leaf development, hints at the txn of new cell types, and great hypotheses about how GRNs may differ among related TFs (and in other news, some hope for American Democracy)

Michael Raissig@michaelraissig.bsky.social · 9mo ago

1/ Preprint alert:
 🌾 The developing leaf of the wild grass Brachypodium distachyon at single-cell resolution
 👉 doi.org/10.1101/2025... A 70k-cell single-cell RNA-seq atlas of the developing grass leaf—from the shoot meristem to mature leaf tissues. @cerealcell.bsky.social @lbmountain.bsky.social