Faculty got a standard of living increase from the University of California this month. I used mine to donate to the Sacramento Food Bank, because the majority of politicians in the US do not want to feed those in need. www.sacramentofoodbank.org

"If it pleases the court, our position is that the poor people should go hungry"

So my mom was in charge of the surveillance system?

Cool new paper on receptor specificity. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

USDA issued the following statement today, AFRI deadlines extended: www.nifa.usda.gov/grants/progr...

Please register for BAPG at Stanford 12/6, especially if you want to give a talk or a poster. The deadline is Nov 16. bapg2025.github.io/bapg2025stan... And please reshare on bsky!

“I wish Andrew Cuomo the best in private life” - Mamdani’s victory speech

Long lines on UC campus on Nor and So Cal for the special election on #prop50. Ballot called literally 1 second after the polls closed. A blowout. It’s a yes. Voters are mad.

🧬🌱Research Specialist Position Open🌱🧬 -Please spread the words HHMI, UT Austin. NGS-based analyses/single cell biology to investigate environmental and hormonal control of plant stem cell differentiation. Requires both wet lab and bioinformatic skills. hhmi.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/Extern...

Beautiful work by Ingrid Berenice Sanchez Carrillo on the in situ structure of the Arabidopsis nuclear pore complex. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Happy Halloween

🚀 New preprint! We introduce K-PROB, a k-mer–based Bayesian framework that mines pangenomic promoter and expression diversity to predict cis-regulatory elements driving gene expression variation in crops 🌽🌱 🔗 biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.10.27.684862v1 #Genomics #GeneRegulation #Maize #Soybean

Sunset was cooperating during my run but not my dog.

🌱From Nature Communications: A newly cloned resistance gene, Lr.ace-4A/Lr30, provides near-immunity to leaf rust in durum wheat, offering a powerful tool for future wheat breeding. (Jorge Dubcovsky) ▶️ www.nature.com/articles/s41... #PlantScience

Come join us in Knoxville! The Dept. of Microbiology 🧫🦠 at the University of Tennessee is hiring 2 Assistant Professors (tenure track, 9-month appt.). Microbial Drivers of Chronic Disease: apply.interfolio.com/173153Quantitative Microbe-Plant-Environment Interactions: apply.interfolio.com/173345

Hey Yaniv Brandvain is not on Bluesky but his most recent biostats ebook is live ybrandvain.github.io/biostats/. His stats resources have been so helpful to me as I develop my own stats course, so check it out. Github repo here: github.com/ybrandvain/b...

Lab postdoc appreciation lunch

Nice! I was there last weekend for the waves and this one I stayed home to join a local protest.

NYPD announces that zero arrests were made at the massive No Kings protests today after Republicans spent days claiming the protestors are violent terrorists.

An astonishingly large crowd! Chicago

#NoKings Davis, CA

I think there is nothing to gain by engaging with bad actors. Block and spend energy elsewhere. I’m looking forward to some nice live music tonight and tomorrow is a lovely day for a protest.

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

Recognition of a phytocytokine by the DEPR1-SERK2 receptor complex confers multi-pathogen resistance in wheat #research #MolecularPlant cell.com/molecular-pl...

I'm very excited to announce that UNC Biology has 6 faculty positions open this year! The first is for an Asst Professor who studies organismal resilience using an integrative approach 1/n unc.peopleadmin.com/postings/307...

Everything sounds horrible, but I still think California is one of the most beautiful states. In the winter I can surf, hike and ski or snowboard in one weekend. I’m excited to go surfing tomorrow at Ocean Beach.🏝️

Self sabotage. Let’s just break everything is the mantra.

1/13 Thankfully, both you and your plants have a lot of sophisticated ways to fight off invading pathogens. In our new preprint, we describe a new way in which animals and plants share a common strategy to ward off harmful bacteria. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Let’s keep it weird Portland. The lizard frog is killing me.

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

Out First Release in @science.org this week: The development of a directed evolution strategy with proof of concept in plant immune protein engineering. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Our @elife.bsky.social Version of Record is now out 🎉 : elifesciences.org/articles/105... Congratulations to @sohambio.bsky.social , @asimjaved.bsky.social , and @jiaxuwu.bsky.social on this beautiful work. We also wrote an easy-to-read eLife Digest for a general audience 👏

Deadline for our 2nd cohort of the Pivot to Plants program at the Danforth Center is Oct 15th. Excited to identify 5 participants for a 1-year NSF-funded internship. Hands-on research experience in cutting-edge #plantscience, #imaging, #datascience, and more! www.danforthcenter.org/our-work/edu...

UNC Chapel Hill is hiring an Assistant Professor in Plant Molecular Biology. Per Jeff Dangl MPMI candidates are also highly desired in the search. unc.peopleadmin.com/postings/307...

Job alert ‼️ UChicago Micro is hiring! Open to tenured/tenure track faculty at all levels in any area of microbiology. Come join our amazing and growing department. apply.interfolio.com/174404

Consider donating to your local food bank. The cost of groceries has increased a lot and many families are in need. The lines for food distribution are much longer than this time last year. www.sacramentofoodbank.org

Great to be in Kansas State for a celebration of Barbara Valent’s career- what an impacts she’s had on rice blast research

A long road to the Cover of Science! www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Sleepy kitten

🌱Tenure-track Assistant Professor Position OPEN🌱 -Plant Interkingdom/Environment Interactions & Plant Immunity- at The Univ. Texas at Austin, Molecular BioSciences. Deadline Nov 1st. Please spread the words and APPLY! Contact me if you have any questions. apply.interfolio.com/175001

Our story describing the Panoptes bacterial immune defense system is now finally peer-reviewed and published today! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

🧵How does a pathogen know it has entered its host? New preprint!🎉It’s a pleasure to share my first first-author preprint from my PhD journey! We uncover a novel co-evolved peptide–GPCR system in the fungus Ustilago maydis that senses host entry and triggers infection (doi.org/10.1101/2025...) (1/5)

#ICYMI Applications are open! The OIP International Research Achievement Award honors APS members advancing plant pathology. The award includes a Certificate of Achievement + a $500 award. Apply by December 5: https://bit.ly/42mc9p7 #plantdisease #plantpathology #research

So embarrassing and incompetent. My husband served for 8 yrs and encountered some truly difficult situations that test your humanity and still impact him today. International and customary laws governing the conduct of warfare and armed conflict are there for a reason.

🧪 Were you one of the many thousands of STEM students (and mentors) impacted by the sudden change in #NSF #GRFP eligibility last week? We created a petition to NSF leadership and Congress to reverse the changes - please sign and share your stories here!! laurenkuehne.github.io/grfpChanges/

A recent cool preprint by John Whitney's lab on a new family of antibacterial proteins secreted by Gram-positive bacteria that enter and kill a broad spectrum of bacteria. Cell entry is receptor-independent and relies on cleavage by a co-secreted protease and the PMF. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

A milestone for plant genomics just out @natgenet.nature.com 130 bryophyte genomes! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Tylenol doesn’t cause autism. It just treats the headache I get listening to this nonsense. And today, there isn’t enough Tylenol.