and the winner of the "2025 best thing on Internet" has just arrived neal.fun/size-of-life/ @carlbergstrom.com

An early Christmas present from our team for all of the tomato 🍅 & recombination fans: Chromosome-scale Solanum pennellii and Solanum cheesmaniae genome assemblies reveal structural variants, repeat content and recombination barriers of the tomato clade biorxiv.org/content/10.648…

Merry Xmas from the department of Chromosome Biology!

‼️Please RT: The CEPLAS Graduate School call for 2026 is now open! Detailed info on our website: bit.ly/4q19JWk @hhu.de @unicologne.bsky.social @mpipz.bsky.social @fz-juelich.de @leibnizipk.bsky.social @plantsciencedbg.bsky.social

Two researchers at UC Davis have been awarded a VinFuture Prize in recognition of their work developing self-cloning crops, a breakthrough for sustainable agriculture. Read more: ucdav.is/4oJ41Hx

www.nature.com/articles/s42... Latest from the lab. The conclusion is in the title! Basically, we found that the KMN complex (outer kinetochore) is fully conserved between plants and fungi/animals, showing deep origin. (reminder, you are closer to a mushroom than a mushroom is to a plant.)

On mange des OGM tous les jours depuis plusieurs décennies (les plantes obtenues par mutagénèse chimique ou radiative) et ça ne pose aucun problème

The Author List

Only those who know🐖🎮

“The scientific Nobels announced this week underscore that point. All three awards — granted each year in physiology or medicine, physics and chemistry — honored achievements rooted in fundamental research…Decades of inquiry paved the way for the technology, treatments and toys of tomorrow.” 🎁

Thanking the reviewers

This is the work of a tremendous PhD student, Benoit Madec, who did everything in this study (genetics, molecular biology, all the bioinformatics analyses) He defended his PhD on Monday and is now Dr Madec! I am very proud of him and all the work he has accomplished!

🚨 First pre-print from my team !! TL;DR: presence of polymorphism (sequence differences between the homologous chromosomes) can *increase* the local rate of recombination in Arabidopsis thaliana, turning cold regions of the genome hot (purple v. grey) !

Writing: just add coffee **Hey, my new book comes out on Tuesday! 👉 amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1419764063

Out First Release in @science.org this week: A large scale analysis of the epigenetics of transposable elements in Arabidopsis shows transgenerational stability www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... #PlantScience

I feel incredibly privileged to share this study on Fanconi anaemia, based on a small but important cohort. This work describes the genetics and clinical outcomes of patients in Australia and New Zealand with a diagnosis of FA. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

This is a great opportunity to start an independent group in one of the best research environments you could think of!

Springboard for an international scientific career! 🧬🧪🔭⚛️🧠🌱 Call for #MaxPlanckResearchGroups launched; applications are possible until October 14, 2025 www.mpg.de/max-planck-r... #ScienceCareer

www.nature.com/articles/d41... Interesting journalist piece on apomixix. With pieces of MiMe inside :-)

Six more years—plus a lot of blood, sweat, and tears—later, we are thrilled to finally share it: a cytological framework of female meiosis in Arabidopsis! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Preprint Alert! 🚨🧬 Not one, but two preprints! Meiotic orientation of kinetochore at meiosis is inforced by...[see below] www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... and Unlocking meiotic crossovers next to plant centromere www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... #meiosis4ever #everythingisconnected a thread👇

@alisondawnscott.bsky.social et al. use genome data from >400 Arabidopsis lyrata sampled across Eurasia to show it as the most polyploid-rich species complex in Arabidopsis, with multiple origins of autotetraploidy. 🔗 doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msaf153 #evobio #molbio #PlantSky

Introducing the 1,000 Flower Collection 🧬🌹 I’m creating 1,000 genetically designed flowers each crafted with new colors, patterns, and shapes. Here’s how I’m making it happen… and how you can join me on this journey 🧵(1/7)

Interested to know more about a new theory relating the #evolution of #sexchromosomes to the rules of #speciation? Check out this paper that we published with Denis Roze in the last issue of #Science. PDF here: www.science.org/stoken/autho...

Scientists have spent decades puzzling over potatoes’ origin story. The answer was juicier than anyone expected, @katherinejwu.com reports.

Director at Max Planck - a unique position! The Open Call for Expressions of Interest in Max Planck Directorships is open now and can be submitted by the 31st of October 2025. ➡️ mpg.de/directors - Please share the Open Call among potential candidates.

When the professor edits the student's draft

It's not procrastination i'm thinking

Cette année, les Journées Scientifiques et Techniques (JST2025) du Réseau des Microscopistes INRAE (RµI) sont à Versailles!!! C'est du 5 au 7 novembre 2025 et les inscriptions sont ouvertes !!! 🔬👑✨ @ijpb-versaillescly.bsky.social 👇👇👇 rmui-2025.journees.inrae.fr

For all plant developmental biologists out there - has been orange flowered for 20 years. Will be tracking the pink branch from now on!

Check out the Views & News piece that Joiselle Fernandes and I wrote for @nature.com on the recent work from @amarques.bsky.social and colleagues about one of the most bizarre ways to do meiosis rdcu.be/euabu. Explained for non-experts!

I am super happy to see our dog rose's paper featuring the cover of the July 3rd issue of @nature.com read more here: tinyurl.com/dog-rose

Nature research paper: Bimodal centromeres in pentaploid dogroses shed light on their unique meiosis https://go.nature.com/407PRGm

1/7 I am very excited to announce our🌹NEW PAPER OUT IN 𝑁𝐴𝑇𝑈𝑅𝐸!🌹 𝐃𝐑𝐈𝐕𝐄 𝐓𝐎 𝐒𝐔𝐑𝐕𝐈𝐕𝐄: Bimodal centromeres in pentaploid dogroses shed light on their unique meiosis With the Ritz and Kovařík labs we show a potential role for centromeres on 𝘙𝘰𝘴𝘢 𝘤𝘢𝘯𝘪𝘯𝘢 bizarre reproduction! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

🎉 We’re thrilled to share that our director Miltos Tsiantis has been awarded an ERC Advanced Grant @erc.europa.eu for his project CLONAL, which will explore the development and diversity of root suckers. Congratulations! 🌱👏Learn more: bit.ly/43KuvBe #ERCAdG #plantsci

Paper alert! #Meiosis4Ever Maximizing meiotic crossover rates reveals the map of Crossover Potential Juli Jing, Qiachao Lian and Stephanie Durand www.nature.com/articles/s41... We pushed meiotic crossover as much has we could, and had some surprises A thread 👇

Prepping my #datavisualization slides tomorrow's class means it is once again time for my favorite annual activity: finding new awful charts to include. What a beauty!

Published an op-ed for @cnn.com: “Nobel laureate: I owe America my success. Today, its scientific future is in danger.” A personal reflection on what’s at stake as science funding gets slashed. I’d be grateful if you could amplify both in and beyond the science world. www.cnn.com/2025/04/09/h...

Short read sequencing

Our (@jeffsekelsky.bsky.social, Corbin Jones, & me) #Meiosis, Recombination & Evolution of Sex class @uncchapelhill.bsky.social loved talking w/ @takashiakeralab.bsky.social about his lab's @biorxivpreprint.bsky.social on meiotic cohesin errors & sterility in hybrid mice. doi.org/10.1101/2025...

*Tenured full Professorship in Genetics and Molecular Cell Biology* at the University Of Cologne, Germany It's an opportunity to rebuild the place that used to be home to luminaries including Benno Müller-Hill, Max Delbruck, Campos-Ortega, Diethard Tautz Maria Leptin, Thomas Langer

I am thrilled to share our new review on holocentric chromosomes. It was a lot of fun to write it together with Ines Drinnenberg! Same but different: Centromere regulations in holocentric insects and plants doi.org/10.1016/j.ce...

🥳Just published @nature.com. Over 25 years after the discovery of SPO11 as the enzyme responsible for initiating meiotic recombination, we finally succeeded in reconstituting its DNA cleavage activity.🧵 www.nature.com/articles/s41...