A new issue of CSH Protocols is out! The cover image highlights the work by Marcon, @hochholdingerf.bsky.social et al,who provide a detailed protocol for Mu-Seq, an approach to identify and map mutations in Mu-tagged insertional mutagenesis populations in maize. ⬇️Links below

Could all reviewers please be as kind as reviewer 1?

Congratulations to Michaela Matthes for successfully completing her habilitation.🎉🍾👏

Me: "What did you learn at journal club today?" Intern: "That one day I'm going to publish a paper, and a bunch of people are going to sit around a table and rip it apart."

We have sent sequence indexed BonnMu maize 🌽 stocks to 130 labs worldwide. See their location on the maps below. 👇

Congratulations to Marion Pitz for successfully completing her PhD 🎉💐🍾

Ready to move!

376 applications for a single PhD position in my lab that was only advertised via the website of @plantsciencedbg.bsky.social 😳

Pro tip: always delete the ChatGPT prompt before sending your motivation letter for a position in my group.

#PlantSciJobs #PlantSciJob PhD position: systemic modulation of #maize root system architecture by seminal roots to adapt to #drought In Frank @hochholdingerf.bsky.social ‘s lab @unibonn.bsky.social www.deutsche-botanische-gesellschaft.de/en/job-openi...

We are happy to join the #plantscience community here in BlueSky! Follow us to know more about our research at the ZMBP @unituebingen.bsky.social in beautiful Tübingen

🔬 An image competition was organised at the Biologists @ 100 conference in Liverpool. The extraordinary image of the mature leaf epidermis of Brachypodium by Lea Berg @lbmountain.bsky.social is one of 15 finalists 🏆 in the Company of Biologist's @focalplane.bsky.social competition.👏 #Biologists100

🔬 Maize embryo at 8 days after pollination, prepared by Dr Guojing Jiang, University of Regensburg. 💡 Plant embryogenesis is the process by which embryos develop from the fertilized zygote, involving the establishment of apical-basal polarity, meristem initiation, and lateral organ formation.

Excited that this paper from my group is now out! 🥳 congrats to all the authors.

Great paper by the group of lab alumnus Changzheng Xu on auxin regulation of fiber development in poplar. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

The maize collaborator award is now on display in my office together with some #MGM2025 memorabilia and the two awesome books by Helen Anne Curry that just arrived. Everything is guarded by Gregor Mendel.

Finally time to celebrate our maize genetics collaborator award together with Caroline and the lab.

Without Karen & Don, BonnMu would not have been possible. They gave advice on MuSeq & even provided their whole dataset to test our bioinformatics pipeline. After thanking Karen that they provided their whole data she said: „What else could I have done?“. That‘s the spirit of the maize community!

Due to a delay of my ✈️ back, I visited the St. Louis Art Museum. They host the world’s largest collection of Max Beckmann (1884-1950) paintings, one of the most eminent German 20th century artists. After he fled Nazi Germany, he lived in the US & worked from 1947-49 at Washington Univ in St. Louis.

When you do your travel planning for the 2026 maize genetics meeting in Cologne, Germany (Feb 26 - Mar 1) consider some extra time before or after the meeting to visit some interesting place in or around the city. In brackets time to reach these destinations by train.

The 2026 maize genetics meeting in Cologne (Feb 26 to Mar 1) is easily accessible from all US locations. #MGM2025 > #MGM2026.

The 2026 maize genetics meeting will be at the Maritim Hotel in downtown Cologne. #MGM2025 > #MGM2026.

The 2025 maize genetics meeting is over. Looking forward to having the 2026 maize meeting from Feb 26 to March 1 in Cologne (Köln), Germany 🇩🇪. Please already mark your calendars. #MGM2025 > #MGM2026.

Marion Pitz @unibonn.bsky.social gave the final talk of the 2025 maize meeting about her work on heterosis in maize 🌽. Very well done Marion 👏. #MGM2025.

Ed Buckler received the 2025 McClintock prize for his groundbreaking research contributions. The McClintock prize for plant genetics and genomics is the most prestigous award of the maize genetics community. #MGM2025 en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/McClint...

This years‘ Maize Genetics Coop early career award went to Erin Sparks (sorry forgot to take a photo). Mid career award to Sherry Flint Garcia and lifetime award to Zac Cande and Brian Larkins ( posthumously).

Earlier today, Xuelian Du from Caroline Marcon‘s BonnMu group gave a excellent lightening talk on the status of the BonnMu collection. #MGM2025

What an honor to receive the 2025 maize genetics cooperator award together with Caroline Marcon for our work on BonnMu and together with Karen Koch and Don McCarty for their UniformMu work.

The poster session of the 2025 maize genetics meeting is in full swing. #MGM2025

Travel permits of all US government employees (USDA, NSF) have been revoked shortly before the the maize meeting affecting: - The chair of the meeting - The winner of the most prestigious McClintock award - A plenary speaker - Two short talk presenters - 22 scientists presenting posters. #MGM2025

#MGM2025 is about to begin.

Liuyang Chu from Michaela Matthes‘s group @unibonn.bsky.social gave a great talk about her work at the development and cell biology workshop prior to the maize genetics meeting in St. Louis. #MGM2025.

Excellent talk by Yaping Zhou of @unibonn.bsky.social and @cerealcell.bsky.social at the development and cell biology workshop prior to the 2025 maize genetics meeting in St. Louis. #MGM2025.

Interesting tour at the Bayer Crop Science Chesterfield campus. @unibonn.bsky.social we are very proud of our brand new climate chamber facility with 12 state of the art climate chambers for plant growth. At Bayer in Chesterfield they have 400 of those.

Marion Pitz gave an excellent talk about her heterosis work at Bayer Crop Science at their Chesterfield facility. I talked about seminal roots.

A new magnet for the fridge. #MGM2025.

St Louis seems to like classical German literature. Statue of Friedrich Schiller (1759-1805) in a park near Union Station. Schiller is considered the most influential German playwright of the classical era.

The Crop Functional Genomics group from @unibonn.bsky.social is ready for the maize 🌽 meeting in St. Louis.

Wir freuen uns ab heute Teil der BlueSky Community zu sein 👋 Was ihr von uns erwarten könnt? Aktuelles aus Pflanzenforschung, Pflanzenzüchtung und Saatenhandel. Wir freuen uns auf den Austausch!

Ready to leave for the 2025 Maize Genetics Meeting in St. Louis. #MGM2025

When Mendel performed his pea 🫛 experiments in the garden of his monastry in Brno, he always grew for each experiment some plants in pots in his greenhouse as control. He wanted to exclude the possibility that environmental factors, mainly insects, influence the outcome of his experiments.

Gregor Mendel ordered 40 offprints of his 1866 publication & circulated them among colleagues. The location of only 14 of these is known (e.g. at Uni Vienna, Uni Graz, MPI Tübingen). One offprint was auctioned in 2019 at Christie‘s, London for £287.500 ($358.818). www.christies.com/en/lot/lot-6...

Fantastic 700 page book by Mielewczik, Simunek and Hoßfeld on Mendel‘s landmark paper with tons of background & a sentence by sentence dissection of his paper. Sometimes you have one line of Mendel text and the rest of the page with explanations in the footnotes. In German.

Die @dfg.de wünscht sich das Potenzial der Pflanzen- + Agrarforschung für die Ernährungssicherheit durch die Schaffung rechtlicher Rahmenbedingungen für den Einsatz neuer Züchtungstechniken in der Europäischen Union (EU) besser auszuschöpfen #GrüneGentechnik

🔬 This cell arrangement of a barley root apical meristem (RAM) was visualized by Anika Dolata from Goethe University Frankfurt using Renaissance blue staining. 💡. The stem cell niche in the RAM provides a pool of undifferentiated cells that can be activated when needed for root growth.

If you are interested in plant stem cell systems, meristems and development of cereals: We are organising an international symposium on "Cereal Meristems and Stem Cell Systems", see attached announcement. www.cscs2025.de for more details

#ambassadorISRRWP6 Gwendolyn Kirschner @gwenkirschner.bsky.social – WP6 lead @rootscientists.bsky.social MarieCurie postdoc. researcher James Hutton Institute focus on root gravitropism:how do plants form and maintain their root angles?How can we adapt the root angles for better soil exploration?

Large clump of mail from the civilian settlement (vicus) near the legionary fortress of Bonn 🇩🇪 #RomanFortThursday Its discovery outside the fortress indicates there was a close relationship between Roman military installations and nearby settlements. 🆓 https://doi.org/10.15184/aqy.2024.178

To US colleagues who have lost or are in imminent danger of losing their jobs: please DM whether we can accommodate your research.

PRESS RELEASE - Professor Uauy appointed as Director of the John Innes Centre Following an international search, we are delighted to announce that Professor @cristobaluauy.bsky.social has been appointed as the next Director of the John Innes Centre. www.jic.ac.uk/press-releas... @ukri.org