Wow 'MHRA-led study reveals major inconsistencies in global microbiome research' www.gov.uk/government/n... 'Species identification varied from 63% to 100% accuracy across different methods, meaning that some laboratories failed to detect a third of the bacterial species present in the sample'

Yup, right is RUBY driven by 35s and left petal is RUBY driven by my broken lotus ubiquitin promoter. Gonna fix the 3' intron and try again. Should be very strong once its fixed. Dang introns, lol.

A great teaching moment here for genetic design students: NEVER assume any annotation that just says "promoter" and always inspect the elements along with the publication where said genetic part was designed/discovered no matter how long ago the article was written.

Arrg, 3bp messed up my experiments lol. I was having problems getting any expression from this UBQ1 promoter from lotus, and it turns out the promoter is actually promoter+exon1+INTRON where the YAG acceptor is CRITICAL for proper splicing. Wasted 1 month on 3bp; fixed it now.

I heard y'all like cells... Petunia leaf disk cells undergoing swelling due to exogenous phyohormones. Quite the departure from the jigsaw puzzle piece shape of normal plant leaf cells.

Having a formal title of flower designer on my CV, and it not be just something I made up, is low key a highlight of my uncareer. Dreams come true in the strangest ways.

I know we are shutdown but wow are US court document databases slow to register new users. Waiting for my PACER account to be updated so I can read the actual Center For Food Safety vs USDA APHIS case that changed everything. Meanwhile my account authorized for days now...

If anyone wants to read the drama regarding unraveling the progressive GMO plant rules to pre-2019, here is a letter from the plantif, the activist group Center For Food Safety www.centerforfoodsafety.org/files/cfs-pa...

I'm slowly becoming a plant GMO deregulation sherpa, lol. Been neck deep in the repeal documents; that activist lawsuit set plant biotech back a decade and folks entering this industrial space should read the gudience the USDA put out to help. The game is back to Ultra Hard Mode.

I love the industrial atmo and string synergy in Nigel's work. One of my favorite albums for deep work.

Oooooh, so it seems the plasmolysis buffer + vortexing, even without any whiskers or binding buffer, seems to be causing some necrosis. MS NEG = MS media, no vortex MS POS = MS media, yes vortex PLAS NEG = plasmolysis, no vortex PLAS POS = plasmolysis, yes vortex Plot thickens!

Just spent a sesh going over my lab student's PhD app personal statement, and omg how she's grown as a writer and scientist. My heart is absolutely singing for stuff like this.

NSF is open again! A few comments: *Please be patient. During a shutdown NSF employees cannot open computers or respond to emails. *Merit review will continue. However panels won’t resume until after Dec 8th. *POs remain excited and committed to advancing science and the scientific workforce.

“Bin Chicken” is now published in Nature Methods! It substantially improves genome recovery through rational coassembly 🧬🖥️. Applied to public 🌍 metagenomes, we recovered 24,000 novel species 🦠, including 6 new phyla. doi.org/10.1038/s415... @benjwoodcroft.bsky.social @rhysnewell.bsky.social 🧵1/6

Precious lil petunia paws

I got the flower design job at Neoplants !!!! Gonna make very cool plants with da crew again. So very thankful for these folks believing in me, and my crazy ideas. What a huge relief in these so incredibly uncertain times. Gonna have real health insurance for once, lol. 🇫🇷🧬🌺

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

OMG MY ACYANIC SNAPDRAGON MUTANT IS SELF COMPATIBLE!!! All my other ones need to be crossed since they have an s-locus self incompatibility. THIS ONE DOESN'T???? Reference: academic.oup.com/mbe/article/...

Carbide Whisker Experiment #2 underway! Exploring the effects of plasmolysis and/or vortexing on necrosis in petunia leaf disks. I want to systematically go through the variables and attempt to link cause to the necrosis I saw in the first experiment. 24hrs in and disks healthy!

Blarg, I needed a positive control for my whacky tungsten gene gun experiments so I caved and bought some premade gold. Enough for about 100 shots. Expensive but adds a critical control to my experiments so I'm not literally shooting in the dark. My wallet tho 😭

Big scam's afoot. Block and report for clear ToS violation. Fly safe, friends!

Decent minimalist vortexer with touch activation. $25 on Amazon. Fixed speed but it can sling a 50mL to a full tornado and thats enough for me. Force needed low enough to touch vortex an open eppi tube with one hand (my very specific genegun prep needs). 12v generic barrel jack. Nice a.co/d/bkrYeEz

Crossing blooms is my happy place 💚🌺

Antirrhinum flower shape: unravelling gene expression across developmental axes and boundaries https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.11.10.687484v1

I USED AVENGERS FONT IN A RAINBOW FIGURE ONCE!!! And THREE puns in one sentence. We really need to have a lot more fun and joy in our scholarly papers!

Some very cheap new old stock rupture disks arrived this morning. A bit too strong for my needs but I can simply lower the petri dish away from the barrel of the gene gun. Its just thick-ass kapton. Time to Cricut my own disks!

I love the aesthetic of this process. Very steampunk. I wish there were more models of gene guns and a healthy ecosystem of industrial designs. The DIY ones have charm, but also ample room for really cool innovations in this space, esp now that regulations are back to pre-2019.

Excited to share this perspective article out now! Come read about Streptocarpus and other great model systems! More extraordinary model systems for regeneration journals.biologists.com/dev/article/...

trying to be a real human on linkedIn is gonna be an interesting experiment. that site is a unique hellscape so lets see what happens when I post my usual way on there too. prolly gonna backfire spectacularly but worth a try lol

My breeding ledger is getting elaborate, lol. Link if anyone wants to browse: docs.google.com/spreadsheets...

These autoclavable polypropylene fly fishing bead boxes (TidyCrafts) have a convenient injection molding scar dead center which helps me orient leaf tissue for gene gun shots.

Kapowwwww 💥 Gene gun go pop and tungsten go zooooom 🧬🔫💥🌱

Exploratory shots with RUBY to track distance to target as a variable. Constant pressure (1100psi) and same shot stock.

🧬🔫💥🌱🌺

S-stock solution prepped 🤢

Another reason petunia so good is that it can tell you the pollination worked in 24hrs or less. Flower starts to wilt if pollen took. So convenient for crossing.

So many varieties out of this mutagenesis run!

YOU DO NOT NEED A GROWERS LICENSE IN NYS TO SELL SEEDS!!! OMG I CAN GO TO MARKET TODAY

Registering my home lab so I can grow my mutant plants for sale later next year! It's so nice working with non-gm plants since you can just go to market immediately. Gonna try to make some revenue to fund the harder projects I have baking. Yay, bootstrapped flowers!

Designed a quick mod to my gene gun's petri dish caddy to hold my 60mm autoclavable bead box dishes. It also supports standard 100mm, with a modest 2mm rise in elevation. Yay, rapid prototyping!

Nothing like a heap of unoptimized variables to keep my neurodivergent brain entertained, lol. Trying to decide which to follow first. I'm thinking to eliminate the really basic ones first like: Does plasmolyzing leaf disks cause necrosis in culture later? binomicalabs.notion.site/Whisker-Tran...

Oooh, exciting results! Seems the whiskering and/or (most likely) vortexing caused significant trauma to the leaf disks. Its not the bleach bc disks from same leaf plated immediately are perfectly green. Cooooool, got something to optimize for. Next up is to see if vortex alone.

I am trying to find everyone working on plant genomics: go.bsky.app/NqARJ7V Please let me know who is already on @bsky.app, but missing in this #PlantGenomics starter pack

I'm gonna throw some tungsten at petunia leaf disks tomorrow! Will document and share. Shooting in pCAMBIA2300-RUBYRED, my standard candle for transformation.

How much do y'all pay for syringe filters? I can't really find a supplier selling new sterile PES filters for less than ~$1/filter. Thoughts? Ideally 33mm, 0.22um, PES hydrophilic TYIA!!!

Would be cool to see vertical slice glimpses of what a culture we'd have across different countries if what currently makes the most money was not Ai. What if biotech was invested in at the pace of Ai saasworks? What if material science was? Fusion? water catalysts? Solar+30%?

At 2g psilocybin (B+), I grappled with my ego, stepped outside myself, felt more connected to the living world, and cried my eyes out for a few hours over mistakes, failings, and carelessness ive done in my life. It changed my world view and brought me peace. Powerful medicine.

So much gauche disrespect for a very serious medicine. So much spectacle and downplaying. Imagine doing this for a chemotheraputic or last line antibiotic. Psilocybin can rewire neurons. It ***changes*** you. Stop this techbro hype nonsense and respect the chemistry ffs.

I switched agar to save some cash and the snapdragons hate it, lol. Too dense. Gonna try for 6g/L instead of 7, at pH 5.70.

My mutant tricot is bloomin!!!