It was a pleasure to be a small part of this story!

🧪A fantastic opportunity to join an interdisciplinary research environment! Interested in combining mathematical modelling with cell wall biology? Take a closer look at the first project, led by @laurabacete.bsky.social, Christiane Funk and Yanjun Zan, and 📅 Apply by 17 September

Join the team for this very cool project! Don’t hesitate to reach out if you have any questions. And since it’s a very interdisciplinary project, reposts to reach the right person (not necessarily with a plant background) are appreciated 😁

We are hiring! Come and join the team reach out here, by email, or find me in person at #ICAR2026 if you happen to be in Singapore this week 🌱🧱🚨

Just presented at #ICAR2026 in Singapore: What if plants use nanoscale vibrations to communicate cell wall states? Exciting to share our latest thinking and hear what the community makes of it 🌱. Thanks to the organisers for the opportunity!

Heading to the #ICAR2026 poster session today 18:00–19:00? Make sure to visit @manju-mhj.bsky.social at #A095! Find out how we are using cutting-edge tools like Brillouin microscopy and O-PTIR to capture the earliest stages of plant cell wall integrity 🌿🔬 (Catch her Thursday at the same time too!)

🌿 A slice of the PlantWallK delegation at #CellWall2026 in Porto! If you want to know more about COST Action and how to get involved, come find us, we are happy to chat! 😊 #PlantWallK #COST

Poster session today 15:45–16:15 at #CellWall2026. come find our very own Klaudia Ordyniak at PO9_11! Mild stress or real damage? Find out how ZAT11 and ZAT18 help plants tell the difference 🌿

Thrilled to be at #CellWall2026 in Porto! Yesterday I presented our lab’s latest work, with a focus on our Chlorella research. Fantastic discussions and great connections so far! Want to know more? Find me around or catch Klaudia at poster PO9_11, we’re happy to discuss cell wall signalling! 🌱🧱🚨

The 1st #PlantWallK meeting brought together 80+ researchers. Cell biologists, physicists, biochemists, modellers, all converging on 1 structure: the plant cell wall. Two days of talks, posters, and cross-disciplinary debate later, the collaborations are set. The work begins! #PlantBiology #CellWall

Register now for the 2nd webinar in our new series on quantitative plant imaging, hosted by @ajcellbio.bsky.social & @joemckenna.bsky.social. In this webinar we’ll hear from @laurabacete.bsky.social on Brillouin microscopy & @sventruckenbrodt.bsky.social on expansion microscopy. 🗓️16 July, 15:00 BST

"If 100 people apply for one job, 99 will fail" –and it's not random who those 99 are. Great interview on women, failure, and who academia sometimes feels built for 👇

🧵 It’s happening! The #PlantWallK kick-off meeting is officially underway in sunny Prague 🇨🇿 Over the next 2 days, researchers from across Europe (and beyond!) will come together to push the frontiers of plant cell wall science. Stay tuned for live updates! #PlantWallK26 #COSTAction

🧪🌾NEWS - @laurabacete.bsky.social receives an Emerging Investigator Grant from the @novo-nordisk.bsky.social🔬 The project DYNAMO explores how chemical and mechanical changes in the plant cell wall help coordinate growth and stability. Read more: www.upsc.se/about-upsc/n...

Watching your 1st PhD student reach their half-time seminar is something else🥹Klaudia is an excellent scientist and a reminder that progress is a steady, purposeful process: one step after another, until you stand up and tell your story with real care and enthusiasm. So proud of how far you’ve come🌱

And they won!! Congrats team Umeå and particularly congrats to @manju-mhj.bsky.social!!! 🎉🎉🎉🎉 It was like watching the Eurovision Song Contest but much better!!

Want to support Manju and the Umeå delegation or just enjoy a fantastic science contest? 🎙️🔬 Tune in to the EC2U Science Contest live from Turku right here: 🎥 www.youtube.com/live/l7NNk-3...

And to close the day, we’re watching live the EC2U Science Contest from Turku, with our PhD student Manju representing the Umeå delegation on stage! Go Manju! 🏆🔬 (3/3)

Then we had the pleasure of hosting an excellent invited seminar by Prof. Yoselin Benitez-Alfonso @yoselin.bsky.social from the University of Leeds. A fantastic talk on cell walls, plasmodesmata and callose. So great to have you in Umeå! 🌱 (2/3)

Very busy day in the Cell Wall Dynamics lab today! We started with our master’s student Sehyeon Kim defending a brilliant Master’s thesis at @umeaplantsciencecentre.se. Congratulations Sehyeon! 🎉

Hi Genetics/Comp-Bio community 👋 Interested in mentoring a comp-bio research student in East Africa over the summer? Do you have any experience in bioinformatics, biostats, genome/RNA-seq analyses, ML, or metagenomics? We'd love to have you as a mentor in our new program! 🧵 (1/n)

Gita Gopinath writes “A painting of the end of meritocracy: A meeting of the two largest economies and not one woman at the table.”

🌱 Big news! We received a Novo Nordisk Fonden Emerging Investigator Grant (DKK 12.5M – around €1.7M) for project DYNAMO. 5 years to understand how plant cell walls signal the growth to strength switch. So proud of the whole team. Let's go! 🧱⚡ Read more: www.cellwalldynamics.com/time-to-cele...

For the 4th time in a row, we organise the UPSC (@umeaplantsciencecentre.se) Symposium for Early Career Plant Scientists! 🌱 We invite talented young scientists to present their research, meet our group leaders, explore collaborations, and tour our facilities. Let the day begin! 🧵👇 #PlantScience

Seeking a collaborator to apply for a grant on cotton fibre research! We need expertise in single-fibre analysis mechanical properties working with minimal material. EU member state or associated country required. DM if interested! #Academicsky #PlantScience #Biomaterials​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Very cool to attend today to the Ig Nobel European tour in their Lund stop. Science that first makes you laugh and then makes you think! And the value of doing the curiosity driven research that we love, not the one we’re supposed to.

Wrong fix. Score distributions show the pool isn't dominated by immature proposals, the real bottleneck is *underfunding*. There are other levers to pull, like simplifying the B1+B2 process, that would reduce burden on everyone without restricting who can apply. Hope the community weighs in on this.

Two more weeks until the deadline for abstracts for our first PlantWallK meeting! 📝 Register: plantwallk.org/prague-regis...

Microtubules in a growing root tip. A dynamic internal scaffold that reorganises as cells divide and expand. Their orientation helps shape growth patterns across the tissue. #PlantWallK #COSTAction #PlantScience

Postdoc (2 years) in mycorrhizal fungal biogeography & species distribution modelling @umeaplantsciencecentre.se Work with large-scale metabarcoding data and modelling. Deadline is 30th April www.umu.se/en/work-with...

Diving into my old hard drive, I found this English homework from when I was 17. Village girl from Spain writing about her dream job. A few thoughts.🧵👇

Enjoying the sunset of a sunny day in Brussels at the Palace of the Academies after a very interesting day with the Young Academy of Sweden 🇸🇪🇧🇪 — grateful to the Young Academy of Belgium – Flanders for the invitation and inspiring discussions on academic freedom and critical voices in research.

🌱 Exciting news for plant #CellWall researchers! The First PlantWallK Meeting is happening in Prague, May 25–26, 2026 — bringing together members of COST Action CA24116 for the first time. 📝 Abstract submission is open! Deadline: April 15 Register: plantwallk.org/prague-regis... #PlantScience

Bluesky is the new science Twitter, new study by @whysharksmatter.bsky.social and Julia Wester concludes! "Results show that for every reported professional benefit that scientists once gained from Twitter, scientists can now gain that benefit more effectively on Bluesky than on Twitter."

We asked Demetrio and Bastien, the first authors of our recent study on RLKs in green algae, about the motivation, bioinformatic advances, and open questions behind the work—and what this means for algal sensing and evolution. Read more in our blog post: www.cellwalldynamics.com/new-paper-re...

The Murphy Lab did our annual retreat this week. This year's theme was using AI (what it's good and bad for). I wanted to be open-minded to make sure we are not missing something we should be using it for, so we did a few exercises to test, and had presentations.

🧪🌾PAPER - When did cell wall sensing developed?🧬 The groups of @laurabacete.bsky.social and Christiane Funk showed that key cell wall integrity sensing components already exist in green algae, revealing deep evolutionary roots of extracellular surveillance. Read more in @pplplantarum.bsky.social👇

⏰ Last call – apply by 11 Jan! Are you finishing your PhD or recently graduated in plant science?🧪🌾 Applications for the UPSC Symposium for Early Career Plant Scientists (28–29 Apr 2026, Umeå, Sweden) are closing soon! 👉 www.upsc.se/about-upsc/e...

Starting 2026 with great news! Thanks to my co-authors Demetrio Marcianò, Bastien Dauphin, Fabian Basso, and Christiane Funk. If you want to know what we’ve been up to, have a look at the thread below ⬇️ #PlantScience #CellWall

One of my 2025 goals was visit every EU country I had not been to yet. I also tried to do it as sustainably as I could from a remote corner of Sweden. I had other personal and work resolutions too (some met, some not), but this one I can close today with a full tick. 🧵👇

‼️If you are finishing (or have just finished) your PhD and are exploring postdoc options, this is a great chance to meet people, share ideas, and build links. Come to northern Sweden ❄️🇸🇪 and connect with the community Message me if you have any questions 📩

🎄✨ Season’s greetings from UPSC! Looking ahead to the new year - are you an early career plant scientist interested in new research ideas and collaborations? 🌾Apply for the UPSC Early Career Symposium, April 2026!🧪 🗓 Deadline: 11 January 2026 👉 www.upsc.se/early-career...

Cheap imported Christmas presents under the tree hurt consumers, companies and customs. But an EU answer is years away.

New paper in PSPB on the benefits of giving positive feedback to students, especially from underrepresented groups. Although not the norm in STEM, giving positive feedback boosts self-efficacy and belonging, which increases STEM performance, attitudes, interest journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Really enjoyed being part of this #AcademicFreedom workshop. I learnt so much, and it finally filled in the global perspective that was kind of missing. Here is a summary for anyone interested. sverigesungaakademi.se/en/internati...

Last weekend we celebrated the winter holidays with a Christmas Potluck. From shared experiments to shared meals, gratitude for the teamwork that binds us, and hope for discoveries ahead. Grateful for our team in Umeå and Trondheim 🎄🔬 Our blog entry: www.cellwalldynamics.com/a-christmas-...

Reclaiming control: Europeans’ fight for a techno-democratic future

The joint American and Russian attack on Europe is ideological and if Europe is going to succeed in fighting back - rather than be reduced to an unhappy collection of vassal states - it needs to decide whether it is willing and able to defend its own liberal democratic ideals. My latest

Today we open our workshop “Academic freedom in times of crisis”, organised by @sverigesungaakademi.se Day 1 at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, day 2 at the Royal Swedish Academy of Letters, History and Antiquities. I’ll be posting key questions and takeaways in this thread #AcademicFreedom