Interesting that a 𝘥𝘦𝘧𝘦𝘯𝘴𝘦𝘭𝘦𝘴𝘴 mutant (𝘢𝘣𝘪𝟣-𝟣 𝘤𝘰𝘪𝟣 𝘦𝘥𝘴𝟣 𝘦𝘪𝘯𝟤 𝘳𝘣𝘰𝘩𝘋 𝘴𝘪𝘥𝟤) is less sensitive to fungal infection than a 𝘤𝘺𝘣𝟩𝟫𝘣𝟤/𝘣𝟤 mutant (Similarly, 𝘦𝘥𝘴𝟣 𝘴𝘪𝘥𝟤 is more susceptible to bacterial infection than the 𝘥𝘦𝘧𝘦𝘯𝘴𝘦𝘭𝘦𝘴𝘴). From @newphyt.bsky.social: shorturl.at/jYbOS #PlantScience #PlantImmunity

Here we go again! Join us in Vienna, May 21–22, for two days of plant science—talks, discussions, and celebration of what makes plants both beautiful and essential 💚Full program + registration here: www.oeaw.ac.at/gmi/news-eve... Come be part of it — each of you counts!

Model bacteria that lack (or have minimal) defense systems have been crucial for understanding bacterial immunity. Now, there is a model defenseless plant. One may expect that this model can accelerate discoveries on plant immunity

Congratulations, Dr @hsuanpai.bsky.social! Well done! 🥳🥳🥳 Thanks for the invitation, @kamounlab.bsky.social. It is always nice to discuss science with friends and colleagues @thesainsburylab.bsky.social, @johninnescentre.bsky.social and @earlhaminst.bsky.social

A new paper from the lab on virus-like particles called eCISs www.nature.com/articles/s41... How bacteria evolved thousands of precision nanoinjectors? Some bacteria don’t secrete toxins — they inject them using phage-derived machines called extracellular contractile injection systems (eCISs).

Our first wheat stripe rust avirulence (?!) effector is published "Defence Recognition of a Stripe Rust Fungal Effector Is Uncoupled from Disease Outcomes in Wheat" apsjournals.apsnet.org/doi/10.1094/.... It is not what we expected but this is the most fun part about science. 1/n

New Article: "Creating a new oilseed crop, pennycress, by combining key domestication traits using CRISPR genome editing" rdcu.be/e0NAR De novo domestication by identifying and stacking CRISPR-induced mutations to create a new intermediate off-season oilseed crop.

Recruitment for the EMBL International PhD Programme is officially open! 🔊 At EMBL, we train young scientists to become skilled and creative future leaders in academia, industry and other sectors. Start your career in the life sciences with us! 🔎 Read more here: tinyurl.com/4jdt2ra5

Thank you @marioncmueller.bsky.social, @binebrumm.bsky.social, Eric Kemen, Yiheng Hu and Thomas Lahaye for this nice common effort on effector diversity. Diversify and conquer: How effector diversity is shaped by host–microbe co-evolution doi.org/10.1371/jour...

Updated preprint: "Out of the blue: Family-wide loss of anthocyanin biosynthesis in Cucurbitaceae" doi.org/10.1101/2025... #Evolution #Pigments #Genomics #Bioinformatics @nancy-choudhary.bsky.social @bpucker.bsky.social @unibonn.bsky.social

This is a very special paper for me. I had the idea of combining transcription factor binding with chromatin in 2016/8. It took some time, but thanks to Fred and Vikas, we can finally share the story in @plos.org Genetics looking at chromatin states in Arabidopsis and Marchantia. #PlantScience

Cow Tools! We have lived alongside cows for nearly 10,000 years. We breed them and exploit them It is now, only now, that we have discovered THEY CAN USE TOOLS Here I describe our study (paper) www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... in @currentbiology.bsky.social with @auersperga.bsky.social

The scale of China's clean energy buildout is difficult to fathom. Check out these pictures.

Out Now! A phage protein screen identifies triggers of the bacterial innate immune system #MicroSky

Come and hear me yap about the #LiverwortHunt, a citizen science project which we (@slcuplants.bsky.social) ran in 2021, and was published last year as a part of the Marchantia polymorpha pangenome paper doi.org/10.1038/s415...

Ever wondered if diverse plant species respond similarly when infected by the same exact pathogen? Infect different asterids and rosids with the same Botrytis genotypes and teh short answer, quite differently. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... @annajomu.bsky.social @ccaseys.bsky.social (1/3)

A warm welcome goes to @miyapan.bsky.social who has joined the Max Planck Institute for Biology Tübingen as a new Max Planck Research Group Leader! Read more about her "Insect Sex Determination and Development" group here: tinyurl.com/9sbj5b3u We wish you a great start Miya! #MaxPlanck #Biology

📢 We are hiring 📢 1st round of recruiting for our ERC project BacImmune-Decode! @erc.europa.eu We are looking for a postdoc for wet-lab work on regulation of phage defence systems in bacteria using high-throughput microbial genetics. Check it out: lnkd.in/es7AE968 #Hiring #Postdoc #Microbiology

📣New database resource📣 We are delighted to announce a new addition to #DSMZDigitalDiversity. Together with the #PlantVirology Department at @leibniz-dsmz.bsky.social, we have developed a new tool dedicated to plant viruses.🌱🦠 The 1st prototype of PVDive is now available online! 👉 pvdive.dsmz.de

Bacteria chromosomes contain Genomic Islands that provide virulence, antibiotic resistance, MGE-defence,... They transfer between cells, but the mechanism of most remains elusive. Here we explore the conjugative capacity of these mysterious Genomic Islands. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

A new Plant & Zo newsletter is out discussing a strategy for protein characterisation, how to use a pathogens own trick to gain resistance, the meaning of meristem, my top 5 of this week’s scientific articles and plant science in the media. plantenzo.substack.com/p/plant-and-... #PlantScience

For the nerds tired of algorithmic curation: my paper roundups are now weekly! 🧪 I wade into the stream of press releases, journal RSS feeds, newsletters, and preprint servers and pan for little gold nuggets that I collect each week in a human-curated newsletter. Here's the first one:

Visited a hospital here in Berlin this morning and I will say, if I was deciding who to quote on the walls of my hospital corridor, Kafka would probably not be the first person to come to mind… 🫠

The world dedicates a Poland-sized area of land to producing liquid biofuels such as bioethanol & biodiesel. Is there a more efficient way to generate energy? Putting solar panels on the land used for biofuels, e.g., would produce enough electricity for all cars and trucks worldwide to go electric.

We have an open POSTDOC position to explore Marchantia immune receptor biology that is closing on the 18th of Jan. Apply using the link below, and/or email me for more details. www.jic.ac.uk/vacancies/po...

If you're interested in #PlantScience R&D work at a plant breeding company: @kwsgroup.bsky.social is hosting its annual R&D TalentCampus here in Einbeck on May 29th. More info here: www.kws.com/corp/en/care...

These plants repurposed amber stop codons

Our new article is now online on @natplants.nature.com! ✨ We identified and characterised AvrPm4 and SvrPm4, a pair of powdery mildew effectors controlling avirulence on the wheat kinase fusion resistance protein Pm4 🌾 check it out ➡️ www.nature.com/articles/s41...

With the new year, is my time to say bye to @gmivienna.bsky.social as I move to @zmbp-tuebingen.bsky.social in Tuebingen. I will start my solo Group Leader career as a Emmy Norther fellow. Thanks to everyone that helped on the way. I will be advertising PhD and Postdoc positions soon, stay tuned!

Goldenberries, Physalis peruviana, are sweet tasting and highly nutritious. They are mainly grown in South America. Their biggest drawback to becoming more mainstream is that they grow on unruly bushy plants. Making them hard to harvest. 🧵1/6 #PlantScience Image credit: Shuttershock

The (Yoav) Voichek lab has opened its gates at the Weizmann Institute, and is actively recruiting students and researchers at all levels - come explore gene regulation and computational genomics in a fun, friendly sprouting lab 🤗🥼⚗️🧪 www.weizmann.ac.il/plants/voichek

An in planta single-cell screen to accelerate functional genetics--very cool application of the TMV vector pTRBO by Elizabeth Sattely’s Lab 😎 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Wei Shi @wshisky.bsky.social & Merle‘s work is online. Wei really pushed this work from scratch and Merle linked it to MLA diversification…3rd (co-)first author paper in her PhD. Very proud PI! And only possible through collaboration with G. Döhlemann, @grandpahiro.bsky.social &, Matt Platre. (1/x)

Scientific discoveries are rewarding, but the journey of entering a new field and learning new techniques has been the real highlight for me. So grateful for the mentorship of @plantevolution.bsky.social and the amazing lab!

🧵 Just out in Cell after more than 10 years in the making! 🎓 www.cell.com/cell/fulltex... Plants and animals evolve radically different body plans. Do they also operate under fundamentally different molecular evolutionary constraints during organ formation? @cellpress.bsky.social

At the end of 2024 I did a chronological round up of all the #plantscience in @science.org that year. So how did 2025 pan out? This year, I’m grouping papers thematically instead of chronologically so read on to find out what exciting plant science came out over the last 12 months. (1/22)

Genome editing in brown algae! 🧬🪸🌿 Now out in Cell Reports Methods! Excited to share this highly efficient, transgene-free CRISPR–Cas genome editing protocol for brown algae, requiring no cloning and no specialized equipment. doi.org/10.1016/j.cr... #CRISPR #BrownAlgae @mpi-bio-fml.bsky.social

Why are so many plant viruses phloem-restricted? New work from Xueping Zhou’s lab reveals how this tissue tropism is determined in a geminivirus — and why phloem confinement can turn out to be an evolutionary advantage! www.nature.com/articles/s41... 🌱🦠🚷🅿️🛫🌱

Don't miss Natanella Illouz-Eliaz' (Salk Institute) Community Dissemination of Arabidopsis Knowledge Award presentation “The World Around Us: Two Parallel Paths in Life"! youtu.be/Lqatc-yUpmY?... @natanellae.bsky.social

We are pleased to announce the official release of PLAZA 5.1, our plant genomics platform, which comes with a major front-end redesign. This results in improved performance, enhanced visualization tools, and refined Toolboxes. Src: www.vandepoelelab.be/plaza/news#28

Genome assembly and population genomic analysis of Aegilops caudata uncover a rich source for disease and insect pest resistance for wheat improvement https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2025.12.19.695602v1

We wrote a review on the mᴏdular properties of plant cell-surface receptors, and how this knowledge can be used to reprogram and engineer them: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Post-doc positions: "Academic freedom is under pressure today. This requires rescue havens of free research. ... [we] invite early career researchers, whose work is restricted due to political pressure in the USA..." uni-freiburg.de/frias/call-f...

Thanks @jcellsci.bsky.social for this opportunity to contribute to your centenary collection with our take on the state of the field - 10 years after its modern reincarnation 🧪🌍 W/ @alebenoit.bsky.social @eelcotromer.bsky.social @fritzlaylin.bsky.social journals.biologists.com/jcs/article/...

Excited to share our latest preprint on the conservation of RAR1-SGT1 across plants and their unexpected divergence in ferns! @hynmn-jeong.bsky.social @michaelwebster.bsky.social @johninnescentre.bsky.social @yusugihara.bsky.social. Check out the preprint here: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Science has named the seemingly unstoppable growth of renewable energy worldwide as the 2025 Breakthrough of the Year. Learn more about this year's #BOTY and other big advances in science: https://scim.ag/493Tpgx

We have a new preprint! In this study, we use #genomic data to uncover population structure and adaptive potential in the meadow #spittlebug, the main European #vector of #Xylella fastidiosa.

Our lab (Evolution of Plant Signaling Lab) together with El Kasmi Lab and @mpcontreras.bsky.social Lab enjoyed a very Christmassy evening with Glühwein and many 🎄🎄🎄 not far from Tübingen. Cheers to a new year at the #ZMBP full of discoveries on immune receptors 🥂 #JuniorPIs #EMCRs #MPMI

Another exciting preprint! Two additional HMA-TKP sensors from wheat and barley, swapping HMAs can confer recognition specificity. Evo analyses supporting HMA-TKP has differentiated to recognize different effectors through HMA diversification. other links below. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

New preprint🚨 Imagine (re)designing a protein via inverse folding. AF2 predicts the designed sequence to a structure with pLDDT 94 & you get 1.8 Å RMSD to the input. Perfect design? What if I told u that the structure has 4 solvent-exposed Trp and 3 Pro where a Gly should be? Why to be wary🧵👇