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.)

Once dismissed as a nuisance, this humble weed is now at the center of cutting-edge science 🌱 Researchers are using Arabidopsis as a model organism to boost crop resilience, fight climate stress, and even inspire new biotech innovations. 🔬 knowablemagazine.org/content/arti...

Rick van de Zedde was here at @kwsgroup.bsky.social to talk about his work making sense of the tons of data generated by the #PlantScience NPEC phenotyping platform run by @wurplant.bsky.social & @utrechtuniversity.bsky.social. Very interesting work, including producing smartphone apps for easy use.

YAY! this is excellent! From Knowable Magazine: How Arabidopsis thaliana, a humble weed, became a superstar of plant biology | Knowable Magazine knowablemagazine.org/content/arti...

Arabidopsis, a little weed in the mustard family, joined the celebrity ranks of Drosophila, E. coli and other model organisms in the 1980s. There was a lot of pushback-- in some circles it was referred to as the "A-word" (!)

1/ It is my pleasure to share the latest preprint of the team: "Symbiotic diversification relies on an ancestral gene network in plants" doi.org/10.1101/2025... Here, we identified and functionally validated a novel master regulator of intracellular symbioses! A thread ... #PlantScience

Arabidopsis thaliana was always an unlikely candidate for the limelight. But 25 years ago, the diminutive thale cress launched the botanical world into the molecular era. ✍️ Rachel Ehrenberg knowmag.org/4hImL8e

A very good historical perspective why you want to work on the weed… knowablemagazine.org/content/arti...

new paper! this one holds a special place in my heart--it's the project that brought me to South Africa--just a short 6 years later, we have a product Myrothamnus is a resurrection plant with deep cultural roots. it's been a privilege to study this iconic species that survives with so little.

Guns in rosettes: The Arabidopsis chemical weapons arsenal (Marc Somssich, Daniel J Kliebenstein, Tonni Grube Andersen) doi.org/10.1093/plph... #PlantScience @aspbofficial

Nature suggests you use their "Manuscript Adviser" bot to get advice before submitting I uploaded the classic Watson & Crick paper about DNA structure, and the Adviser had this to say about one of the greatest paper endings of the century:

My new Emmy Noether Group is recruiting! 🔬 Two PhD positions in plant pathogen evolution 🧬 Start: April 2026 (flexible) 📍 Dept. of Phytopathology & Plant Protection @rstam.bsky.social @uni-kiel.de ⏰ Apply by 15 Dec 2025 🔗 More info: www.uni-kiel.de/personal/de/... Do get in touch or share 😊

A wheat NLR conferring broad-spectrum resistance against powdery mildew by recognizing two structurally diverse AVR effectors. Interested? Check out our newest preprint: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Registration is open to take part in the Molecular Biology of Plants (#MBP2026), which especially invites early career scientists to present their molecular #plantsci research www.pflanzen-molekularbiologie.de/en/conferenc...

Plant Science Research Weekly -- Review: The plant chemical defense arsenal (Plant Physiol.) @somssich.bsky.social (Summary by Mary Williams) buff.ly/GwdOqZN #PlantaePSRW

Nature Communications will publish ~10K papers in 2025 pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov?term=%22Natu... That's ~$70M in revenue, while many of the non-profit journals that used to occupy that slot in the journal hierarchy have seen a precipitous decline in submissions in the 15 years it's existed.

Plant Science Research Weekly -- Review: The why, why and how of symptom development in viral disease (Annu. Rev. Phytopathology) (Summary by Mary Williams @PlantTeaching.bsky.social) @geminiteamlab.bsky.social buff.ly/dsQwgbo #PlantaePSRW

🤫Registration for #MBP2026 will start very soon. Please tell all your friends 🌱.

👏 Congratulations to Dr. Lara Van Dijck from Jane Parker’s lab @mpipz.bsky.social on successfully completing her PhD! Wishing you continued success ahead! 🎓🌱 #PhDSuccess #PlantScience #PhDone #ScientificAchievement

PSA: Many of you may have noticed a website floating around called formatmypaper(dot)com. People rightly noted something was fishy. I dig into what happened here: open.substack.com/pub/ubadah/p...

If someone wants to write a new article on this, and highlight how current genetics tools have opened the door for many more, I'd be happy to consider it for CSH Protocols.

An article on Model Organisms, published in Science in 2005, lists the Models that together represent "the diversity of life". Guess which model is missing from the list? This view is one major reason why it's so difficult to obtain funding for basic plant research. #PlantBlindness #PlantScience

Humbly share our latest work led by @himanshuchhillar.bsky.social my phd student And thanks to all collaborators Henk-jan @brunongou.bsky.social @jonathandgjones.bsky.social

It’s been 14 years since I uploaded a video on YouTube showing that Striga does not infect other members of the Orobanchaceae family.JSPS Fellow Simon came to Japan and carried out mutant screening to find mechanism and it was 10 years ago that the mutant was finally obtained. A long journey.

🧬 UPCOMING SPECIAL ISSUE 🧬 🔬 Single-Cell and Spatial Transcriptomics in Plants 🔬 📝 Edited by Shahid Mukhtar 📅 Deadline: 28 February 2026 📣 Got a suitable manuscript? Contact us: bit.ly/JXBissues @smukhtarlab.bsky.social @sebiology.bsky.social #JXBspecialissues #PlantScience 🧪 (1/2)

Sadly I heard today that Jim Peacock has died. Jim was the foremost pioneer of plant molecular biology in Australia & globally. He was both my mentor and friend and will be sorely missed by many #plantscience 🧪 www.science.org.au/news-and-eve...

We warmly welcome Professor @uhammes.bsky.social as the new Head of the Department of #Botany I at our university! He is investigating the proteins that help #plant #hormones reach their sites of action. We wish him every success in his research and teaching! ➡️ www.uni-wuerzburg.de/en/news-and-...

We have an open Post Doc position in plant-volatile interactions, starting April 2026. Ideal if you love to use molecular tools to understand the natural world and improve agriculture. Interested? Send your CV, grades, motivation letter and refs (single pdf!) to [email protected]. Please share.

Some of my favourite research from my PhD was submitted today... I feel very lucky to have worked on this project with such wonderful scientists (and lovely people!) Please check it out on bioRxiv here👇🌱🦠

An elevated environmental temperature impairs accumulation of the pattern recognition receptor FLS2 https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.10.20.683271v1

"Mehr Gentechnik im Essen?" Debate between Matthias Berninger (Former advisor to Renate Künast, now lobbyist for Bayer (Weird turnaround) and Karl Bär (German Green Party) on genetic engineering of food crops and the proposed changes to EU-regulation of NGT-derived crops. #PlantScience #PlantGMOs

And @newphyt.bsky.social continues it's great series of Profiles with this one on @pdchristine.bsky.social: nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.... #PlantScience #PlantDevelopment #PlantImmunity #PlantLuminaries

I came across this beautiful obituary for Chris Lamb in @annualreviews.bsky.social, authored by Richard Dixon: www.annualreviews.org/content/jour... It's very well written, putting his science into perspective & also painting a picture of Chris as a person and mentor. #PlantScience #PlantImmunity

PSRW OCT 17 plantae.org/plant-scienc... 4 reviews: Beautiful mutations: Chemical defense arsenal; Understanding viral symptom development; Cell fate determination. Also, Reprogramming somatic embryogenesis. (1/2) @somssich.bsky.social @geminiteamlab.bsky.social @likeyoda1.bsky.social

We have a bunch of new job ads out @arcadiascience.com. If you haven’t checked them out, take a look! www.arcadiascience.com/careers

How do you detect transgenes in genome-edited crops? We tested several methods and report our findings in 2 back-to-back papers: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... rdcu.be/eLgUi

I’m looking forward to reading this! The title alone caught my eye 👀 l do want the boxed set!

Engineered pattern recognition receptors enhance broad-spectrum plant resistance - @zmbp-tuebingen.bsky.social go.nature.com/474nnA9

New pre-print from the team! The manuscript is @emma-raven.bsky.social's PhD work showing that whether a leaf is a carbon sink or a carbon source influences how they execute immune responses. Have a read! #PlantScience @johninnescentre.bsky.social

Xylan engineering in vascular tissue for biomass valorization #plantscience

Our latest work is out! We set out to see if we could recreate soil-nurturing plant growth in vitro. The plants looked happy and we see microbiome-induced cell-type-specific responses! A modest step but a fun challenge 😁

FRET sensor for SA developed. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

I was a member of a scientific society for many years before joining the staff nearly 20 years ago, and I endorse this position! I encourage everyone to find and join a relevant scientific society (or several). You can engage with their programs and benefit directly, or just support their mission.

Lingua wanka is a hilarious moniker for scientific writing

Coincidentally, for our "Guns in Rosettes" article,we actively tried to use a more plain language for the exact reasons discussed in the editorial. Here are real Reviewer Comments: "It sounds a bit immature" "I find the tone too popular" "This style may raises concern about the quality of the paper"

Fantastic editorial on #ScientificWriting. 👇

Our article "Guns in Rosettes: The Arabidopsis chemical weapons arsenal" is finally published @plantphys.bsky.social! You can download the #OpenAccess PDF here: doi.org/10.1093/plph... But real connoisseurs of #AntimicrobialCompounds will want to get the vinyl boxset: #PlantScience #PlantImmunity

Headliner at the #KWSScienceSlam was Max Koch from @uni-goettingen.de, talking about how he accidentally became famous with beer. As a side-project, the physicist studied how the POPP! sound is produced when a swing-top beer bottle is opened. #BeerScience See below for his paper & media coverage.

Nataliia Rybchenko from @kwsgroup.bsky.social Ukraine presented her 'Sunflower' documentary at the #KWSScienceSlam. Ukraine is the global leader in sunflower oil production, but amid the war, the sunflower has also become a symbol of freedom for Ukraine. Documentary: www.youtube.com/watch?v=2u2U...

Our KWS colleague Anja Matzk will speak at an event organised by Plants for the Future ETP and co-hosted by three MEPs, discussing how #NGTs can help make European farming more resilient and competitive. Looking forward to the interesting exchange! 💡