Interested in plant development and/or cell walls? We (Sam Amsbury, Andrew Fleming and I) have three PhD positions at the University of Sheffield open for applications until 7th January. We offer a friendly, jointly-run lab, great facilities, an affordable city and proximity to the Peak District!

Very excited to share my first solo Tansley Insight. An integrated view on the hydraulics of aboveground plant meristems, and the framework of my future work as part of this community #PlantScience @newphyt.bsky.social nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Systemic and local regulation of root growth by vascular trehalose 6-phosphate is correlated with re-allocation of primary metabolites between shoots and roots https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.11.13.688188v1

New OA Article: "Cambium LBDs promote radial growth by regulating PLL-mediated pectin metabolism" rdcu.be/eP4mp LBD TFs in the cambium drive radial plant growth by regulating PECTATE LYASE-LIKE (PLL) enzymes that remodel cell wall pectin, promoting cell expansion.

Congrats, Momoko @prunus-persica123.bsky.social and all! Excited to see how our former postdoc's work unfolded the mutual inhibitory mechanism bet/w EPFL2 peptide hormone & auxin underpins the intervals of auxin maxima 🌿🔬🥳 Just published @natcomms.nature.com www.nature.com/articles/s41...

@atinygreencell.bsky.social What happens in the meristem can vary.

By combining molecular genetics with cell-ablation experiments, we found that vascular cambium stem cells and xylem-identity cells form an interchangeable unit, a stem cell niche. Meticulous work by @xixizhang9001.bsky.social, Ondrej Smetana, Jing Zhang & Xiaoyu Wang 1/x www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

pre-writing a devastating obituary for your enemy is god-tier hating of a kind you don’t often see anymore. renaissance haterism. beautiful stuff.

Check out our story in @plosbiology.org about how a nonrandom, clustered giant cell pattern forms in the sepal and leaf epidermis! It has been a great journey with @gweissbart.bsky.social, Frances Clark, Xihang Wang, @roederlab.bsky.social and co-authors. journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...

Fern and gymnosperm SPCH/MUTE and FAMA can regulate multiple cell fate transitions during stomatal development https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.11.10.687565v1

rdcu.be/ePnoK CellWhisperer: a multimodal AI that enables interactive scRNA-seq data exploration with natural-language conversations.

A multiscale growth atlas of Arabidopsis: linking cell dynamics to organ development Alimchandani et al. @virajalim.bsky.social @elvisbranchini.bsky.social nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

UK science and technology is suffering from a lack of investment, a hostile immigration system, and fragile university finances, reports @cathleenogrady.bsky.social 🧪 #scipolicy www.science.org/content/arti...

Are you looking for a PhD in Plant Science? Check our our project on barley canopy architecture. Combine genetics and physics to understand how awns influence barley grain development. Find out more here: lnkd.in/eWhWammJ Apply by 14th December. #PhDPosition #PlantSci @instmolplantsci.bsky.social

Excited to share our pre-print on how Sphingolipid-driven interleaflet coupling orchestrates ROP6 recruitment to nanodomains upon auxin. Great job from my PhD student Matheus Montrazi, @arthur-poitout.bsky.social, @alexmartiniere.bsky.social, @yvonjaillais.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Undergrads from Canada, Ireland, UK, & US: Don't miss the DAAD-RISE #plantscience funded internship at @ipbhalle.bsky.social with @snp2prot.bsky.social. Apply by Nov 30th: daad.de/rise/en/rise-germany/find-an-internship 🌱

Immensely proud to share that I am the designer of the official badge for LGBT+ History Month 2026. Last night, @lgbthm.bsky.social revealed that the 2026 theme for the month will be 'Science and Innovation', so get ready to learn about some amazing queer scientists next year!

A Sharon Begley byline, almost 5 years after her death. Upon hearing the news James Watson had died, a STAT reporter said in our Slack, "I wish I could read what Sharon would have written." Incredible news: Sharon in fact did pre-write a Watson obit. And it is masterful and excoriating. 🧪🧬🧫

Few Plant science programmes are left in the UK and they are critical to train the next generation. This move by @uniofnottingham.bsky.social goes against recommendations made in the recent PS Education manifesto. Big mistake! Sign the petition! nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

Excited to announce our paper is out! Congrats to @pauformosa.bsky.social, @gweissbart.bsky.social, Frances Clark, and Xihang Wang on this fun and beautiful story. We answered a question about the randomness of giant cell spacing that I have had for at least 15 years.

Sphingolipid-driven interleaflet coupling orchestrates Rho-GTPase recruitment to nanodomains for signal activation in plants https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.11.06.686946v1

PhD opportunity in plant developmental biology for UK based students of Black heritage! How do they know when to grow up? Join us at the University of Bristol to find out. Application deadline Jan 6th www.findaphd.com/phds/project... #PlantSciencePhDs @blackinplantsci.bsky.social

A real privilege to have Claudia Martinho (University of Dundee ) at our university @kent.ac.uk sharing the research of her group on paramutation in crops! @cssmartinho.bsky.social

Inspiring the next generation of plant scientists 🌻 Professor Alessandra Devoto, from @rhulbiology.bsky.social, has been honoured as a Pioneer Member by @aspbofficial.bsky.social for her outstanding mentorship and training of future change-makers. An outstanding accolade: ow.ly/c3QF50Xoeqy

Researchers use less and less hedges (may, might, perhaps, probably ...) in their papers. Or in other words papers are becoming more like biblical texts. link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Another great collaboration with @trevormnolan.bsky.social and @nvukas.bsky.social where we give our vision on how brassinosteroid research can pave the way to precision plant engineering www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Very excited to share our work published in Nature Comms last week! Here we describe a range of cool things that can be done once you have the power to control deposition of H3K4me3… rdcu.be/eNEf4 A short thread:

Huge congratulations @jeremywyman.bsky.social @instmolplantsci.bsky.social for publishing the results of your masters thesis @annbot.bsky.social The work includes a new reconstruction of the Carboniferous isoetalean Oxroadia by the brilliant @palaeojules.bsky.social academic.oup.com/aob/advance-...

1/ Preprint alert:
 🌾 The developing leaf of the wild grass Brachypodium distachyon at single-cell resolution
 👉 doi.org/10.1101/2025... A 70k-cell single-cell RNA-seq atlas of the developing grass leaf—from the shoot meristem to mature leaf tissues. @cerealcell.bsky.social @lbmountain.bsky.social

Here is my @currentbiology.bsky.social dispatch on an excellent article by the @coudertlab.bsky.social. Re-visiting the shoot branching field (and learning many new things in the process!) brought back fond memories from my time at @slcuplants.bsky.social. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

I am pleased to share this paper. A beautiful and useful collaboration between a group of researchers and lecturers who care about plant Science education. Thank you to all that contributed! Check it out! nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

Great to see this manifesto for plant science education out! Shaped by discussions at our "Plant Biology Education: Creating a Vision for the Future" conference co-organised with @sebiology.bsky.social earlier this year - it outlines 5 key themes to cultivate a future for plant science 🌱

A manifesto for plant science education Alvey et al. 📖 nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/... Societal Impact Statement also available in French. #PlantScience @apaterlini.bsky.social @lizalvey.bsky.social @PlantTeaching.bsky.social @katharinehubbard.bsky.social

🌱🧪 So thrilled to have contributed to this manifesto for #PlantScience #Education, published in @plantspeopleplanet.bsky.social, and instigated by the visionary and enthusiastic @katharinehubbard.bsky.social and co-led by @apaterlini.bsky.social and @lizalvey.bsky.social 🧶 1/3

Pleased to have contributed a small part to this work and to continue the important conversation about plant science education. @envleeds.bsky.social

1/2 This manifesto is the result of a collaborative effort started earlier this year at the Plant Biology Education conference in Lancaster, UK. We are delighted to see it out and we are proud that our Comms team contributed to such an important resource for the community! 🌱

Community view on how plant science education should look like - I feel privileged about being able to make a small contribution. I think a lot of good ideas in this work!!!

Very happy to have contributed to this important piece. Andreas threat provides a great summary! @bucbotany.bsky.social @drmgoeswild.bsky.social @thebotanist.bsky.social

Super proud of this new paper! Thanks @lizalvey.bsky.social, @apaterlini.bsky.social @katharinehubbard.bsky.social for embarking us on this journey. It is one of the most collaborative papers I have been involved in and I hope that serves as reference for education in plant science @kent.ac.uk

It was great to have the opportunity to contribute to this piece 😁 and to attend such a great conference that inspired it

Very excited to announce that our collaborative manifesto for 🌱 #PlantScience #Education has now been published! Educators from >10 countries and 30 institutions have contributed to it and we are incredibly proud of the final output. Here is a short thread 🧵1/4 doi.org/10.1002/ppp3...

@instmolplantsci.bsky.social PhD students Anshika Bhatla, Yumali Hewage, Mengke Zhou, Emilien Krempf and Postdoc Dr Lara Esch had the pleasure of attending #Euroseeds2025 Congress in Edinburgh last week. Here is a short thread on their experience... 🧵1/3 #PlantScience #Agriculture

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.

Saanjbati Adhikari speaks with authors, @apaterlini.bsky.social, @wimvanderpoel.bsky.social & co, about their first impressions, their experiences with the peer-review process, their favourite aspects of publishing with BiO & how publishing in BiO has impacted their careers. doi.org/10.1242/bio....

@joann-trejo.bsky.social, @marymunson4.bsky.social and I have a commentary in @natcellbio.nature.com on recent attacks on DEI in biomedical research: "If scientific research, especially biomedical research, is meant to serve everyone, then it requires that everyone has an opportunity to participate"

Cell cycle-driven epigenetic resetting maintains stem cell fate for shoot branching https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.10.22.683900v1

Had a great time being interviewed for this editorial piece from @biologyopen.bsky.social!

In this issue: · Editorial catching up with our authors · Research articles 🔬 🐝 🐔 🧫 🦎 🪰 🐭 🐟 🐧 · Methods & techniques articles featuring mouse models of HexA deficiency and using E. coli to detect and estimate vitamin B12 content. · First person interviews

So excited to see who this soapieboi is!!!

Miriam Gifford @giffordlab.bsky.social from the Uni. of Warwick to @edinburgh-uni.bsky.social is an @instmolplantsci.bsky.social alum and it was fantastic to see her ground-breaking work on rhizobia-induced nodule formation, and the associated soil microbiome effects! #WomeninSTEM #PlantScience