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!

Do you have a PhD in plant science 🌿 and are you excited by the commercial application of research? Do you want to grow your skills in IP management?💡 We have an exciting opportunity for you ⬇️ VACANCY: TSL Ventures Operations Officer www.tsl.ac.uk/working-at-t... Apply before 7 April '26

What is the role of the NLRs and Het genes in Starships? Are they critical for take-up & domestication? How is it that RIP is so successful in some species (like Neurospora), but other sexually reproducing fungi contain relatively RIP-free Starships? #Fungal26 5/15

There were eloquent expressions about the importance of international collaborations & exchange of ideas. Heartfelt, principled statements from Armin Djamei, Emile Gluck-Thaler and Nancy Keller, for example. Truly inspirational words & I greatly admire them for speaking out #Fungal26. 2/15

Density-dependent feedback and higher-order interactions enable coexistence in phage-bacteria community dynamics url: academic.oup.com/ismej/articl...

David Botstein was one of the giants of genetics and genomics, and my mentor, colleague and friend for more than 40 years. I’m sad that he is gone, but his larger-than-life persona comes through here. www.nytimes.com/2026/03/20/s...

Checkout this article I found at PLOS: dx.plos.org/10.1371/jour...

“Authors [&] reviewers tell us that they have had a more constructive experience…choosing eLife not because of our impact factor, but because of our process” 👆 eLife comtinues to provoke debate but this is perhaps the most important point elifesciences.org/articles/110...

Aging may feel gradual… but what if it’s not? In our recent paper, we tracked fish continuously from puberty until death. This gave us a unique view of how aging unfolds across the adult lifespan. 🧵

Mehr muss man zu #Banksy nicht sagen. Journalisten aus der Hölle!

Join us this Thursday for the next exciting talk in our DSSS series by Prof. Dr. Kevin Foster visiting us from Oxford University. Everyone welcome! ▶️More info: tinyurl.com/2s46mtzf 📆: Thursday 19th March at 11am 📍: Max Planck House lecture hall, Max-Planck-Ring 6 #DSSS

Beautiful story!

Love it... the wild in the wild 💜🌱

Here is my best Habermas story. I am grad student waiting in LONG line for Habermas talk. There is a tall man waiting in front of me. Line moves so we are eventually visible to organizers, a woman looks over & makes horrified face. Runs out: "Prof Habermas! You don't have to wait in line!"

Yes. And it goes beyond personal email. There are people who clog preprint servers with LLM texts, prompting calls for access control via reputation. Piles of LLM-written grant and job applications that drive reviewers to increase emphasis on authors' credentials rather than technical content.

Yes, that’s certainly plausible. I don’t like the direction in which this technology is bound to push our norms. (Though maybe we’ll start picking up the telephone again and actually talking to people, which might be for the better.)

I know a few people who told me their current method for screening when they open a call for PhD or postdoc is to have responses generated by the more used LLM platforms as a sort of negative control for the replies

1. Over the last few days I have received a set of queries about my research. The first one I thought was legitimate, and I was planning to answer when the second arrived, and then the third, from the same sender. Viewed together, they’re clearly LLM generated.

More lies from George Church's company. They cannot do what they claim. Perhaps not surprising from a scientist whose work was funded by Jeffrey Epstein www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

1/11 🔥 New preprint alert 🔥 We wanted to know what plants in the wild really care about. So we asked them 🎤. Here is what we learned: “Biotic-response networks are an important organizer of the transcriptome in wild Arabidopsis thaliana populations” www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

#biodiversity #bioinformatics Summer School .. 21-26 June in Siegen, Germany co-organised by @sib.swiss & @denbi.bsky.social www.sib.swiss/training/cou... 🟢 eDNA & ecosystems 🟣 pangenome diversity 🔵 population genetics 🟡 comparative genomics Register to apply, selections will start from March 16th

Hiding in plain sight! 2.3M conserved non-coding sequences traced back 300M years across 284 plant species Ground-breaking study out in First Release @science.org from labs of @madelaineb.bsky.social, @idane.bsky.social & Zach Lippman ▶️ doi.org/10.1126/scie... ▶️ www.slcu.cam.ac.uk/news/hiding-...

An example of Africa taking the initiative: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

There are good initiatives focusing on training and leadership @UM6P (agc.um6p.ma) and @Stellenbosch's CERI (genomics.africa). Fruiting will take time but seeds were planted. Here is the blueprint paper from previous workshops: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Africa features heavily here, yet African researchers are not in the lead, and instead relegated to a couple of middle-authorship. Thoughts?

@zbao.bsky.social points out that this apparent #TE remnant is shared deeply in the Brassicaceae. So likely an example of ancient TE exaptation (or TE mimicry, which would be daily cool).

🔥Fantastic paper!🔥 TE with a role in vegetative phase change and gametogenesis, mediated by 24-nt siRNAs acting in trans to a wide range of genes. Found by GWAS in A. thaliana 🌱. Congratulations to the authors! 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻 #epigenetics #plantscience www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Very pleased to see this work from the group out in The Plant Journal - led by PhD student Diana Ruggiero from the Leiboff group, a truly collaborative project, addressing the question: how often does pollen genotype influence spatial patterns of inheritance? onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

"AI is here to stay...From writing to reviewing...It is essential to engage with it [&] develop use cases that benefit the community...The clear winning option is use of AI review by authors prior to submission.” link.springer.com/article/10.1... via @tlemberger.bsky.social @odedrechavi.bsky.social

Deadline reminder ⏰ Only a few days left to apply! Submit your application by 16 March 2026 (via the appropriate national authorities). Full details 👉 bit.ly/4kGfNSy

Ein historischer Moment: 65 Jahre nachdem der erste türkische Gastarbeiter nach Deutschland kam, wird mit @oezdemir.de erstmals ein türkeistämmiger Deutscher Ministerpräsident von Baden-Württemberg. Das erfüllt mich mit Stolz auf dieses Land. Glückwunsch an Ba-Wü und Cem!

dancing in Berlin, for #internationalwomensday

🌿 Postdoc opportunity in plant evolutionary ecology/genetics! My lab in the Dept. of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology at the University of Michigan is recruiting a postdoctoral researcher to start Fall 2026. We study plant adaptation, using weeds as model systems. #Postdoc #EcoEvo Pls RT!

“My wish is that this will provide a positive message to the young girls who would like to follow the path of science and to show them that women in science can also have an impact through their research.” Emmanuelle Charpentier, Nobel Prize winner and since this year ERC Scientific Council member.

Happy International Women's Day! To celebrate it, Project Gutenberg created a new bookshelf titled Women in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/books... #books #literature #womeninstem #womenhistoryMonth

Remembering Ada Lovelace on International Women's Day! A century before computers, she saw that machines could do more than just math. By writing the first algorithm for the Analytical Engine, she became the world’s first programmer and predicted the digital age we live in today!💻 #WomenInScience

Happy International Women's Day! 🧪 The EMBO #WomenInScience Lectures address issues related to gender and #diversity in #science. Find out more and apply here: https://www.embo.org/funding/lecture-travel-and-childcare-grants/women-in-science-lectures/#WomenInScience#diversity#science#LifeSciences #funding

Happy International Women's Day! 🧪 Don't forget to send in your nominations for the FEBS | EMBO #WomenInScience Award. Deadline: 15 May Read more: https://www.embo.org/the-embo-communities/febsembo-women-in-science-awardees/nominate-for-the-women-in-science-award/#WomenInScience#award

Works of the late David Lynch. Pace Gallery at the iconic Tankstelle in Berlin.

Impressive work from @saschalaubinger.bsky.social and colleagues, describing molecular and phenotypic footprints of climate in transcriptomes of native Arabidopsis thaliana. #plantscience www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Heinrich-Mora & Feldman: "results suggest that mutation rate is systematically structured by chromatin state within functionally constrained genes and that evolutionary processes may act not only on expected mutation rate but also on its variability across loci." arxiv.org/html/2603.03...

Die Forschungsministerin freut sich auf Insta darüber, dass jetzt "Porträts" von Frauen der Geschichte in ihrem Haus hängen. Nur: Die sind mit KI erstellt. Und schleifen die Gesichter der Frauen gemäß moderner westlicher Schönheitsideale glatt. Was für ein irres Projekt Z.B.

Must read: Democratizing climate change mitigation pathways using modernized stabilization wedges “Many of the strategies we identified require that individuals change their behavior and all require general public support.” www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...