The CapituLab
@thecapitulab.bsky.social
At Clemson University studying plant development and evolution in the Asteraceae (sunflower family) 🌻🥬 Lab Management: Daniel Jones www.thecapitulab.com
Hey #Botany2026! Don’t miss CapituLab talk/posters by @brannanrose.bsky.social and @saristolochia.bsky.social! They’ll be presenting later today on two of my favorite systems: Bidens and Baccharis (alongside additional Aster genomics and evolution)! 🌻
Don’t miss Sarita’s talk (or poster) at Botany! Really cool reproductive development and anatomy in Asters!
Sarita Munoz-Gomez@saristolochia.bsky.social · 6d agoI will be presenting at #botany2026 during the Development & Structure Part 2 session at 4:30 PM local time in San Luis 1. I will be talking about sex systems in the capitulum and the models we are using to approach questions on the links between floret sex, location, and symmetry! (1/2)
Very excited to announce that my NSF CAREER grant has been funded! We will be working on transcription factor evolution and function across the sunflower family (of course 🌻🥬). Keep an eye out for postdoc and PhD ads soon! news.clemson.edu/clemson-sunf...
Clemson sunflower genetics study could open new paths for crop improvement
Biologist Daniel Jones has received a five-year, $1.6 million National Science Foundation CAREER grant to study gene duplication in the sunflower family.
news.clemson.edu
🌾 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
We have officially retired the old stipend site, no more @reptilerhett.bsky.social .app - looking for Biology PhD stipends, make sure to use our new (and much cheaper) site: mlgaynor.com/BiologyPhDSt...
Biology PhD Stipends
Biology Ph.D. stipend database with live summaries from the shared Google Sheet.
mlgaynor.com
This is your regular reminder that Plant Reproduction is running a special issue on Epigenetics. We'd love to see your research on the topic! link.springer.com/collections/...
Cactus Flower Blooming Time-lapse
Alt: Time-lapse video of a giant pink flower blooming from a cactus
static.klipy.com
Such a great resource and a fantastic collaborative effort! Be sure to check out this story about evolutionary genomics in the Asterales! Especially proud of @brannanrose.bsky.social for her contributions to this story! Huge thanks to all the labs involved!
Jennifer Mandel@jennifermandel.bsky.social · 9mo ago🌻 Sharing this preprint where we assembled 3 new chromosome-level genomes, including the first for Asteraceae's South American sister Calyceraceae! Asteraceae uses all the tricks when it comes to being the most ecologically successful family of flowering plants. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Proud to share the preprint for some of my postdoctoral work in developing a high-throughput sequencing screen to find apomixis in plants. We sequenced 55 apple genotypes maintained by the USDA and over 1200 of their embryos. 🍎 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
biorxiv.org
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
Sarita Munoz-Gomez joined BSA in 2020 and quickly became involved by going to the conference, joining SciComm panels, being featured on a BSA Spotlight, and receiving travel awards. Celebrate #ADayforBSA by supporting students with a gift to the Endowment! Give today: crm.botany.org/civicrm/cont...
It’s been an awesome (but hectic) summer for the CapituLab! From packing and moving to Clemson to travel for conferences/talks. Also, our new lab space is coming together amazingly (thanks to the incredible @erikales.bsky.social)! Updates on that coming soon…
My first first author manuscript has posted! I’m very excited to share SWIF-TE with yall. It is a fast, memory efficient tool to identify novel TE insertions from short-read data. 🧬 #TEworldwide #transposons
bioRxiv Bioinfo@biorxiv-bioinfo.bsky.social · last yr.SWIF-TE: identifying novel transposable element insertions from short read data https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.07.30.667279v1
Hi #Botany2025 - In my quest to never do flow cytometry again, I am collecting sequence data (radseq, target enrichment, WGS, ect.) with confirmed ploidal level. If you have samples, reach out!
Hey #Botany2025! Be sure to check out CapituLab talks from grad student @saristolochia.bsky.social and postdoc Vandana Gurung! And a huge thanks to @botsocamerica.bsky.social for travel support!!
So excited for this opportunity to join @kheyduk.bsky.social and team! 💚
Karolina Heyduk@kheyduk.bsky.social · last yr.Soooo excited to have @erikarmoore11.bsky.social joining the lab as postdoc starting tomorrow! www.ermoore-pollard.com She'll be helping us with some bromeliad genomics and ecophys (nobody gets to escape CAM muaha).
Grindelia spp. (#Asteraceae) are known as gumweeds, but they produce resin, not gum. The milky resin is visible pooling in the young inflorescence heads in this photo of Grindelia squarrosa by Linda in Fortuna CCBYNC2. Function: Defense? Antitranspirant? #resin #Botany 🌾🧪🌱
We are absolutely thrilled to share this work on CLV signaling in the sunflower family! This project was only possible through the efforts and contributions of our incredible collaborators! It also represents the CapituLab’s first preprint! (more to come soon though…) www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Floral innovation through modifications in stem cell peptide signaling.
Understanding how evolution shapes genetic networks to create new developmental forms is a central question in biology. Flowering shoot (inflorescence) architecture varies significantly across plant f...
biorxiv.org
So cool to see this work come out! Another piece to how temperature and CLAVATA signaling mediate flower development, and its florigen! Congrats Elizabeth and Nimchuk lab @andrewilloughb.bsky.social Def give it a read! 🌱 authors.elsevier.com/c/1lM293QW8S...
authors.elsevier.com
Here’s one that everyone knows: Sunflower (Helianthus annuus; 📷: hourourmono CCBY2). Of course, this is not one flower. It’s a head of showy, yellow, sterile flowers surrounding a disk bearing small, dark, fertile flowers. #Asteraceae #pollination #Botany 🌾🧪🌱
Happy to announce that I will be opening my lab in the PMB department at UC Berkeley this July. Our lab will study nectary development and evolution using non-conventional models. We are actively recruiting. Join us if you are also enthusiastic about development or evolution!
Gong Lab @ UC Berkeley PMB
yangonglab.com
Museum Collections 🌿 What is a Herbarium? It's basically a library of dried plant specimens. Herbarium specimens are always accompanied by a label that indicates the location where the plant was growing, the collector and the date collected. More: www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/science/what...
The #Gnaphalieae tribe is probably most iconic tribe of Asteraceae in Australia! #Waitzia nitida is one such species! They spot very showy involucral bracts, instead of the classic lingulate petals! These persist along with the color leading to many in this tribe being called Everlastings!
The news is out! The CapituLab is moving to Clemson University this fall 🌻 We are excited to get there and get started!
I'm excited to share this NAASC early career professional development seminar aimed at plant biology scientists considering faculty jobs! 🌱Lab Launchpad: The New PIs Guide to Starting Your Own Lab🌱 Register www.arabidopsiscommunity.org/register-car...
Our lab's first review article written with @yadhusankar.bsky.social and @vijayalakshmi.bsky.social is out now in The Plant Journal! 🎉🌱 We discuss temporal regulation of (plant) development. When and how do plants control organ and cell identity progression? onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
A space for time. Exploring temporal regulation of plant development across spatial scales
Developmental timing in plants is tightly regulated at the whole-organism scale, from germination to flowering. Less is known about when and how local transitions are temporally regulated. Not every ...
onlinelibrary.wiley.com
ASPB "remains committed to robustly supporting and strongly advocating for diversity and inclusion in the plant sciences, period." Read full statement 👉 https://blog.aspb.org/aspb-reaffirms-its-commitment-to-diversity-and-inclusion/.
In our latest @biorxiv-genomic.bsky.social preprint, we describe our approach to use PacBio HiFi reads to detect somatic TE transposition -- good enough to detect rare events that are present in only single cells. Led by Andrea Movilli. #plantscience www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Cornflowers are famous for their brilliant blue color. This genome sequence provides a valuable resource for studying the genetics of this striking flower. Read more: doi.org/10.1101/2025... #Genomics #FlowerColor
