My first first author publication is now out on BioRXiv! Super excited to share a new outlook in using the entire UV-VIS spectrum when analyzing plant samples on an HPLC-DAD! Super big thanks to my lab and all those who have helped me get here! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Untargeted Metabolomics of Plant Samples using HPLC-DAD and Gaussian Mixture Models

Premise: Plants produce millions of different chemical compounds, contributing greatly to their physiology and evolutionary trajectories. Most untargeted metabolomic methods are inaccessible, either d...

biorxiv.org

Hey new preprint from the lab and @justingambill.bsky.social’s first-first author paper ‘Untargeted Metabolomics of Plant Samples using HPLC-DAD and Gaussian Mixture Models’ www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Registration open for #Fungal26 genetics-gsa.org/fungal-2026/ at Asilomar.

Homepage - 33rd Fungal Genetics Conference

Visit our website to learn more.

genetics-gsa.org

This but for grants 👀

Hadas Weiss@hadas.bsky.social · last yr.

a data breach revealing peer reviewer identities would really spice things up for academia

Unpopular opinion 2nd year grad students in same competition as 1st years and UGs always seemed unfair. I’d rather see them keep this and bring back the DDIG

We’re proud to announce the 2025 Phytochemical Section Presentation Awardees! 🏅 Best Presentation: Melanie Madrigal 🏅 Honorable Mention: Chase Hearn 🏅 Best Poster: Karen Campos Secenas 🏅 Honorable Mention: Abbigale Baum Learn more: botany.org/home/awards/... #BSA2025AwardsBlitz #IamaBotanist

Hey y’all first grad student paper from the lab and @melaniemadrigal.bsky.social ‘s first-first author manuscript. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

HyPhy: A Skeletonization-Based Approach For Fungal Network Analysis

Premise: Traditional methods to quantify mycelial growth rely on destructive sampling to quantify biomass. However, these approaches limit continuous observation and require a large enough mass to mea...

biorxiv.org

Who got the link to them Etsy witches? I have some grants that need funded

When you devote your life to the message that empathy is evil and gun deaths are an acceptable price to pay for gun rights, you shape the world with your words. Maybe Charlie Kirk didn’t expect to be a victim of his own worldbuilding, but his death is consistent with the world he helped create.

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...

Labor Day Protest in Lafayette, LA

Really happy this is out in preprint - Congratulations to @graemekettles.bsky.social @zymohaider.bsky.social, and everyone involved for their hard work completing this study! It examines a Z. tritici effector that is a molecular mimic of plant LRRs, and suppresses PTI www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Molecular mimicry of plant cell-surface immune receptors by fungal secreted leucine-rich repeat proteins

Leucine-rich repeat (LRR) receptor-like kinases (LRR-RLKs) are important plant immunity proteins. The wheat pathogen Zymoseptoria tritici produces many virulence effectors during infection; however, m...

biorxiv.org

I feel like such a baddie there’s a waitlist for my Bayesian Stats grad seminar. Honestly thought it was just going to just be my grad students that I forced to take it.

Any ECR folks (esp postdocs) want to review a paper on polyploid gene expression? 🌾

Here's the latest preprint from my group's Drosera capensis project. We investigated what the plant can upregulate from a jasmonic acid signal alone (digestive enzymes) and what it needs raw materials from prey to make (flavonoids, lipids). www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Jasmonate-induced prey response in the carnivorous plant Drosera capensis

Drosera capensis is a carnivorous plant native to South Africa. Central to its prey capture and digestive processes is a complex array of biochemical processes triggering the production of both enzyme...

biorxiv.org

Are you an early-career biologist or ecologist who would benefit from an invited seminar? Would you like to come to UMaine next fall or spring to give a talk? Leave a brief comment with some info about what you do. I'm co-hosting our seminar series again, and am filling out our rosters.

#botany2025 has been such a wild ride I have to shout out @melaniemadrigal.bsky.social who won best phytochemistry talk on HER FIRST TALK EVER! for her work on GWA of Botrytis resistance to plant VOCs

Make sure to check out his poster and follow up talk on macroevolution of the leaf economic spectrum across temperate trees on Tuesday @ 2:15 in mesquite B

Justin@justingambill.bsky.social · last yr.

If you’re a plant chemistry nerd like me come see my poster! (P88) #botany2025

Our lab is out in force at #Botany2025 - come check out our talks and posters this week in Palm Springs!

Almost ready for #Botany2025 - come see the first project of my postdoc with @blackrim.bsky.social on Tuesday at 1:45pm in Mesquite B.

I need a count down until I’m poolside with a marg #botany2025

Check out the lab at #botany2025 I decided to kick back this year but all my grad students have amazing talks spanning ecophysiology and plant path along with posters on new methods for image analysis and HPLC-UV

Dowell Lab@dowelllab.bsky.social · last yr.

The Dowell Lab is headed to #Botany2025, come check out some of our amazing talks to see what we’ve been up to!

Ending the year on an awesome note! 5/5 grad students passed quals, 1 GRFP honorable mention to Melanie, a Rhododendron grant to Justin, the undergrads showed out at their conference, 2 papers, >$12M of funding applied for next year, and plenty of talks at botany coming up!!

I saw a colleague in line for coffee and asked him how things were going. He said fine with a slight shrug. So I asked him what was wrong with him. How could he be fine? This is pandemic-level chaos and we don’t even have a pandemic (yet).

Cheers to my first snow day in 15 years! Plus new lab mascot drop

"Ours is not the task of fixing the entire world all at once, but of stretching out to mend the part of the world that is within our reach." From Letters to a Young Activist www.mavenproductions.com/letter-to-a-...

"... the forces of racism have regrouped on the borders of legitimate science and transformed themselves into a dynamic and creative citizen science movement capable of exploiting features of human genetics... human geneticists need to contend with the evolving practices of this ... movement"

Confronting the “Weaponization” of Genetics by Racists Online and Elsewhere

Genomics research is regularly appropriated in social and political contexts to publicly legitimize unjust and malicious political views, policies, and actions. In recent years, there have been high-....

onlinelibrary.wiley.com

Got my first negative teaching eval. Apparently I shouldn’t be allowed to teach because I made the class easy to get a C and hard to get an A and that’s unfair to students who care about their GPA and want to exceed expectations 💀

How much money are people writing into their grants for conference travel? Like idk how everyone is doing these international trips every year

Thought of the day: How can we make glucosinolates more cute and charismatic?

a person is holding a piece of broccoli with a face on it .

ALT: a person is holding a piece of broccoli with a face on it .

media.tenor.com