"Perhaps I'm old and tired," he continued, "but I always think that the chances of finding out what really is going on are so absurdly remote that the only thing to do is to say hang the sense of it and just keep yourself occupied. Look at me: I design coastlines. I got an award for Norway."

European plant scientists welcome the EU Trilogue Provisional Agreement on New Genomic Techniques (#NGT), as EU-SAGE reports, the network representing plants scientists at 134 European plant science institutes and societies www.eu-sage.eu/news/Europea...

Registration to close for the @molplantsci.bsky.social annual meeting in Hennef #MBP2026 organized by @kunzlab.bsky.social

Congrats indeed @petrollromy.bsky.social and also @dvarshney.bsky.social - well done!

Good morning. Here you can see a windmill growing next to its siblings.

Autumn. Has its advantages.

Plant Science Research Weekly Oct 31, 2025. plantae.org/plant-scienc... What makes a tree a tree? Secret strategy of far-red photosynthesis; Unwinding the Spirogyra genome; H2O2 role in P starvation response; Viral evasion of cap-independent translation defense (1/2)

Very happy and proud to share the #Spirogyra genome: 50 Mbp small, lacking almost all plastid division proteins and many transcription factors. Kudos to all the many people involved in this multi year project! @jandevries.bsky.social @watertoland.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Das #StarterPack der #UniFreiburg 🎉: go.bsky.app/BspXE1o

...and if you missed it, here are 60 phylogenetically diverse brown algae genomes www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...

📢Announcement! The call for 𝐓𝐏𝐉 𝐅𝐞𝐥𝐥𝐨𝐰𝐬𝐡𝐢𝐩 𝐬𝐜𝐡𝐞𝐦𝐞 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝟐𝟎𝟐𝟓 is now open! 🌟 It is designed to offer support and mentorship to researchers transitioning from post-doctoral scientists to principal investigators Info: 👉http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/page/journal/1365313x/homepage/TPJ-fellowships & in 🧵

...and 10 new phylogenetically diverse hornwort genomes here: www.nature.com/articles/s41... @fernway.bsky.social @jandevries.bsky.social @watertoland.bsky.social

Here's 123 new bryophyte genomes for you! Apparently, bryophytes time and again include microbial genes in their genomic repertoire, and occupy a langer gene space than vascular plants. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Kigelia africana, Leberwurstbaum, in Namibia

Dollar Bush, Zygophyllum stapffii, #Namibia

So happy to have seen it in the wild! #Welwitschia #Namibia

🌱Big news 𝐍𝐞𝐰 𝐰𝐞𝐛𝐢𝐧𝐚𝐫 𝐬𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐬 with @globalplantgpc.bsky.social to highlight TPJ papers 1st features researchers from our 𝑆𝐼 𝑜𝑛 𝑃𝑙𝑎𝑛𝑡 𝐸𝑛𝑔𝑖𝑛𝑒𝑒𝑟𝑖𝑛𝑔 🌱🧬 🗓️Sept 29 ⏰17:00 CEST 🎙️Hosted by EiC @katherinedenby.bsky.social 🔗 Register us02web.zoom.us/webinar/regi... SI onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/toc/10.1...

Science management job in plant science @dfg.de dfg.concludis.de/prj/shw/5218...

Auxin does everything, but how? The story just got more complicated by the discovery of a B class ARF degron providing a means of protein (in)stability regulation. @mjprigge.bsky.social @dolfweijers.bsky.social @jorgehg.bsky.social

Job for data scientists: Cluster of excellence Future Forests searching for a full-time permanent data steward associated with the Central Data Facility @uni-freiburg.de uni-freiburg.de/en/job/00004...

How conserved are plant transcription factor binding sites? academic.oup.com/plphys/artic... Great study by @andreabraeutigam.bsky.social lab shows a mixed pattern. Thanks for making good use of #TAPscan onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... also. C2H2 neofunctionalization fits ny thoughts.

An exciting negative result!

Das Konsortium #DataPLANT @nfdi4plants.bsky.social unter Leitung der #Unifreiburg entwickelt seit 2020 Infrastruktur für die riesigen Datenmengen, mit denen moderne #Pflanzenforschung arbeitet. Nun hat die @dfg.de die Förderung bis 2028 verlängert. ➡️ ufr.link/dataplant-foerderung @fz-juelich.de

Good morning

Freshly appointed @simonelsasser.bsky.social presenting his research @biologyunifreiburg.bsky.social - welcome @uni-freiburg.de !

Congratulations to the winners of @uni-freiburg.de liga soccer tournament; great day full of sports organized by Hochschulsport

Big fun with @bahn.de yesterday and today on my way to Hamburg and back: 2h+3h delays. New record, yeehah.

@dfg.de assembly with a view

🌿🧬 Plant Evolution Starter Pack from @barkerms.bsky.social‬ Scientists researching the evolution of plants and plant diversity - including population genetics, plant genome evolution, plant speciation, plant systematics, and macroevolutionary patterns of plant diversification.

🎉✨ Congratulations for the 70 newly @dfg.de -funded #ClustersOfExcellence ✨🎉 and especially for the 4 #PlantSci 🌿 🧬 🔬 🌱 🍀 clusters Those are (1/5):

Do you know who Douglas Prasher is? Many don't, even though he is the person who cloned the original #GFP gene in the late 1980s. In my short history of plant light #microscopy I also cover a bit of his story - & why he is relatively unknown today, despite the importance of his work. See this 🧵👇

𝐍𝐞𝐰 𝐒𝐩𝐞𝐜𝐢𝐚𝐥 𝐈𝐬𝐬𝐮𝐞! 🌱Plant engineering: advances, bottlenecks, and promise onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/toc/10.1... Focused Reviews & Technical Advances 🌿Plant transformation tech 🧬Gene editing & synthetic biology 🔧Emerging engineering strategies breakthroughs & challenges 🧵⬇️

How can we track interdisciplinary research using bibliometry? Here we tested a term-based approach using word frequencies from papers published in the field. Comments welcome! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... @watertoland.bsky.social @uni-freiburg.de

Cheers folks! @transcription.bsky.social @isabelmonte.bsky.social @kmerchante.bsky.social

Excited to host the UK NonSeed Plant Meeting in Norwich this year on Friday December the 12th. It’s a great community and these meetings are always fun and informative. Whether you’re a seasoned expert or a newbie looking to diversify your research, please consider joining us!

„Eine Technologie mit großem Potential für mehr #Nachhaltigkeit [in der #Landwirtschaft] ist die [moderne] #Gentechnik, mit der gewünschte Pflanzeneigenschaften gezielter+schneller entwickelt werden können“, schreibt Agrarökonom Matin Qaim in @faznet.bsky.social zeitung.faz.net/faz/wirtscha...

@uni-freiburg.de retreat at Herzogenhorn in Black Forest on strategic concepts relevant to collaborative research, great crowd, thanks to all involved and for good discussions!

May the 4th be with y'all

Multicellularity under pressure

THREAD The numbers are in. @bsky.app research sharing volumes vs X Formerly Twitter In March 2024, on most days, Bluesky hosts more posts linked to research published in 2025 than X. By quite a lot. Release the Kraken... #AcademicSky #HigherEd #Altmetrics 1/11

It's been a long time coming but I'm very happy to share this preprint with folks. 🙂 Thanks again to the Royal Society for funding this research. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... #Plantscience #Plantevolution #Fernbiology

Asgard archaea have actin - but what about microtubules? Where do they come from? 🧐 Our new paper www.cell.com/cell/fulltex... by @xujwet.bsky.social & @florianwollweber.bsky.social, in collaboration with the Schleper & Wieczorek labs, describes tiny Asgard microtubules! #TeamTomo #ArchaeaSky 1/6

"we have to honestly and aggressively attack the universities in this country" - keynote address by JD Vance at the second National Conservatism Conference 2021 www.youtube.com/watch?v=0FR6... Thanks to SIRIS academic for pointing to the video.

Most of my papers are open access, but it also lists those that are not.

These historical threads by @somssich.bsky.social‬ about various fundamental aspects of plant biology, and the long process of discovery, linking papers from a century ago to very recent publications, are such a joy to read, every single time.

Michael Scherer-Lorenzen and colleagues share new work in @nature.com www.nature.com/articles/s41...

In a new #OpenAccess study of dioicy–monoicy transitions in an ancient #liverwort haploid-dominant plant lineage, Fu et al. find evidence for #evolution of a new sex #chromosome within the haploid-dominant Marchantiales.🔓👇 doi.org/10.1111/jipb... #PlantScience

openRxiv has arrived! We’re thrilled to announce the launch of openRxiv as an independent, researcher-led nonprofit to oversee bioRxiv and medRxiv, the world’s leading preprint servers for life and health sciences. openrxiv.org/introducing-... #openRxiv #OpenScience #Preprints #bioRxiv #medRxiv

Very impressive tour of @cern.bsky.social with members of @uni-freiburg.de - thanks a lot to Karl Jakobs, Marco Gersabeck, Brian Moser and all others involved!

The 2025 #scicomm award of the @molplantsci.bsky.social section of @plantsciencedbg.bsky.social goes to @somssich.bsky.social - congratulations! You might know Marc by his plant science starter kit and his plant science classics post. #MBP2025