See my new post on our homepage ✍️ The journey to our newest publication on how plants cope with proteotoxic stress ♻️ www.cell.com/molecular-ce... From Doubt to Discovery: A 15-Year Journey into Proteostasis, Pathogens, and Persistence

SNI quantifies AlphaFold models based on features that define canonical protein complexes, incorporating prior knowledge. We applied it to NRC-type NLR immune receptors—typically hexameric—and it cleanly separates canonical hexamers from structural outliers. (2/n)

Exciting new work on parallel #evolution: — genetic variants across butterflies are located in similar noncoding regions in ivory and optix. — in … more distant moths, a large inversion containing ivory, closely mirroring the supergene architecture of Heliconius. journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...

LLMs are making me a better reviewer. After I write my review, I often ask an LLM whether there are things that I might have overlooked, both in the narrative and evaluation criteria. The typical outcome is that my review becomes more positive. I seem to be good enough at spotting flaws. 😎

This post is 💎. I endorse every lesson from personal experience. Some highlights: 1. The squeaky door hinge gets the grease, but the squeaky wheel never gets taken to the shop. 2. Leadership opportunities are available to everybody who wants to do the work. 3. You can't fake being genuine. Read on!

We are very happy and proud to present a study led by @jorgehg.bsky.social (now PI in Madrid – keep an eye on him!) in our team @bic-wur.bsky.social. In this work, we discover how auxin-regulated ARF transcription factors learned to activate transcription. A 🧵…(1/17) www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

We are thrilled to announce the election of 120 members and 25 international members to the National Academy of Sciences in recognition of their distinguished and continued achievements in original research. Congratulations to our new #NASmembers and welcome to the Academy! 🎊

What could be better than seeing a former member of your lab elected to the US National Academy of Sciences @nasonline.org? Huge congrats to Kirsten Bomblies @ethz.ch! Here are the two of us with @thanvisrikant.bsky.social , who was first a PhD student in my lab & then a postdoc with Kirsten.

Fantastic paper led by Matthew Davis from @grey-monroe.bsky.social, on genome degradation in long-term walnut tissue culture: Somatic embryogenesis increases mutation rates >30x, with aneuploidy, large deletions, somatic recombination, and elevated #TE activity. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

🚨Microbial genomics researchers🚨 Terrific FREE web apps from @midauthorbio.bsky.social midauthorbio.com/#freetools No coding or command line required ✅ breseq, A+ microbial variant calling ✅ SprayNPray, taxonomic profiling of metagenomes ✅ Pseudofinder 🔎 pseudogenes ✅ GToTree, phylogenomic trees

Thanks. I posted my overall sense of the article. Although there is some attempt at balanced input, it's way too exuberant compared with any (zero) actual evidence in humans

Can’t wait to hear what @erictopol.bsky.social has to say about this @nytimes.com article on #longevity research www.nytimes.com/2026/04/27/m...

This is a FRAUDULENT paper, AI-generated. My name was used as an author and I had nothing to do with it, never saw it until today e-pubmed.co.uk/journals/dig... The "Editors" Angelo Rossi Mori, David Mensah, and Zarnie Khadjesari and this "Journal" should be reported.

Please share widely! We will imminently be posting a technician position in our lab group since @rheasood.bsky.social is off to grad school 🙌! If you know of anyone excited about molecular biology, evolution, and functional genomics please have them reach out (schumer at stanford). Start date ~June

Denmark's coal-to-wind transition is one of the most dramatic energy transformations of the past three decades. In 1990, coal provided 90% of Danish electricity. Today it is under 3%. Wind now covers roughly 60% of electricity generation. The last coal plant is scheduled to close by 2028.

Cell-type-specific gating of gene regulatory modules as a hallmark of early immune responses in Arabidopsis leaves A #CommunityResource by Wang et al. 👇 📖 nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... #LatestIssue #PlantScience @plantevolution.bsky.social @shanshanwang3.bsky.social

That claim is false - it's because of vaccine disinformation, much of it coming from him. For example, the ongoing measles outbreaks in the US are connected and hence _specifically_ not from people traveling into the country. We know this, because, data 👇. bsky.app/profile/kgan...

RFK Jr. just said that immigration is to blame for the outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases in the U.S., not him.

If journalists had any integrity and courage, they would boycott the White House Correspondents Dinner. It should be as empty as a TPUSA event.

Spring evening in #Tübingen

Invitation to our next DSSS talk to be held on Monday next week. We welcome speaker Dr. Jarrett Gray Camp coming to us from the Institute of Human Biology in Basel. Please join us. ▶️More info: tinyurl.com/5hbs2n2z 📆: Monday 20th April at 2pm 📍: MPH lecture hall, Max-Planck-Ring 6 #DSSS

👀 👀 cool picture prompts new discovery--one of my favorite kinds of science 🧪

1/8 🔥 New preprint dropped: Dynamic co-existence of bacteriophages and their hosts 🦠 in the Arabidopsis thaliana 🌱 phyllosphere Work led by the indomitable @sheilaroitman.bsky.social‬ #plantscience #microbiome #holobiont www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

On this Peptide Panel at FDA My input: "“I just hope the committee does the right thing and does not lift the ban on these peptides for compounding in the U.S. given their vacuous data for safety and efficacy,." www.statnews.com/2026/04/15/p...

Somatic genome-doubling is the most parsimonious route to allopolyploidy #TansleyInsight by Burns et al. @robinburns.bsky.social @alisondawnscott.bsky.social @pnovik.bsky.social nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... #plantscience

Repeatedly we get stories about how groups like pollinators, fungi or top predators are critical for ecosystems All species functional groups are important, through their roles in the ecosystem and interactions with other groups

From personal experience, Plant genetic variation creates information knots that cause problems with compression approaches. I hope that I am wrong as a solution would be great.

I’m not sure it has broken through to the general public that the president is a megalomaniac crazy person. Hopefully posts like this help.

Thank you #NobelLaureate Jack Szostak for sharing these thoughts, which many US scientists and physicians resonate with newsletter.ofthebrave.org/p/im-a-nobel...

Hungary has chosen Europe. Europe has always chosen Hungary. A country reclaims its European path. The Union grows stronger.

This sounds great but does it work on organisms other than humans? (Human genomes are almost identical to each other, while species with a longer evolutionary history, such as most wild species and especially plants, have much more diverse genomes.)

Fredrick the Great paying close attention to a farming couple and their #potatoes. German History Museum, Berlin.

This is an incredible paper, chock full of neat results and very nice data visualization. A few of my reactions: - Correlation between synanthropy and research effort, LOL - Spillover associated not just with trade but illegal trade, yikes - Wait we eat HOW many species in the Carnivora?

I'm going to have to get my butt in gear if I want to get one last publication out before retirement (www.nature.com/articles/s41...) 🤪

Only one week left to apply for the full professorship in Experimental Biodiversity Research at our institute @unituebingen.bsky.social ! Please re-post.

I just published: #CelebratingAlumni: The Lab Is a Launchpad, Not the Destination These last weeks brought several alumni into sharp focus, and I couldn't resist writing it down. A celebration. With links. medium.com/p/celebratin...

Our PhD student Kennedy Orwa, who studies applications of AI to health care, was hastily deported today to Kenya along with his 13-year-old son without opportunity to speak to legal counsel. King 5 reports that he held a valid visa that was rescinded without explanation.

And in biology writing use “humans” not “man”, “humankind” not “mankind”, etc. Words matter; biases/assumptions are sustained. If you don’t believe that, just remember how many people can”t solve the surgeon riddle…

5 years. 3 research stays in Germany. One PhD across continents. Last month, Sandra Gyarteng graduated from the University of Ghana - completing a doctoral journey from fieldwork in West Africa to molecular research at MPI for Biology Tübingen. Read more about her journey here: tinyurl.com/er2x2jyu

Lufthansa's chatbot -- to which you are directed by an auto message after a flight disruption -- sums up what is wrong with Germany (this is after multiple tries). Lufthansa, are you trying to make @deutschebahn.com look good?

@forbes.com picking up the recent work by @carlbergstrom.com & Kevin Gross in @plosbiology.org on the future of peer review. www.forbes.com/sites/johndr...

Effector-centred proximity-dependent labelling enables the discovery of cell-surface immune receptors in plants https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.03.23.713615v1

Thank you very much for your kind words Detlef! We really had a blast being so well-integrated in your department and I'm very grateful for the excellent environment you provided for us!

United Nations University is the official academic and research arm of the UN. Unlike a traditional university with a single campus, it functions as a global think tank and bridge between academia and the UN political system. Story below. "From Host to Holobiont" ⬇️ unu.edu/biolac/news/...

Trust me--read this. You'll be glad you did. and thank you Dr. Bennet for writing it. 🧪

It might matter for the history of the earth - say evolution of photosynthesis is novel in my kind bc it allowed access to new sources of energy and it mattered

Thank you, @mexpositoalonso.bsky.social, @plantricia.bsky.social & @kseniakrasileva.bsky.social labs for generously sharing your science during my visit to Berkeley!

How much protein diversity can Life on Earth actually generate? With DIAMOND DeepClust, we show how billions of proteins across the tree of life can be clustered at low-identity for downstream analytics tasks. 📚Paper: www.nature.com/articles/s41... 💻Code: github.com/bbuchfink/di...

It’s time to say farewell to ERC Research Group Leader Thorsten Langner after nearly 3 years at the institute. He reflects on his time here, key milestones, and what’s next: tinyurl.com/2vce2d6k Congratulations on your new position—we wish you and your team all the best for the future!