Unlike us, unicellular red algae activate sexual reproduction under stress: a pH drop triggers sexual life cycle, boosting survival odds in harsh conditions. New work in @theplantcell.bsky.social shows this in three Cyanidiophyceae genera, and builds a full genetic toolkit for them. In Brief here🌱👇🏻

A 10 °C shift and you leave the coat at home. Easy. For a green alga, the same shift rewires one-third of all genes, alters motility, mating efficiency, and carbon metabolism. New In Brief with Barbara Bourgade in @theplantcell.bsky.social about the amazing work of Prateek Shetty and colleagues🦠🌡️

Big news for 2026! 🚀 Honored to receive a @humboldt-foundation.de Postdoctoral Research Fellowship. I’ll be joining Prof. Ralph Bock’s team at @mpi-mp-potsdam.bsky.social in Potsdam to study the molecular basis of cell-to-cell signaling in Chlamydomonas🦠 Can’t wait to dive into this new project!🔬

Out now my first “In Brief” for @theplantcell.bsky.social, highlighting amazing new work from Holzner and colleagues @kunzlab.bsky.social. A long-needed characterization of the chloroplast ionome in model plants, together with new genetic strategies to manipulate it, has finally seen the light! 🌱🔬

Super excited to share that I’ve joined @theplantcell.bsky.social as an Assistant Feature Editor! I’ll be writing “In Brief” highlights, receiving editor and peer-review training, and helping share amazing plant science with a wider audience, all with a fantastic community of editors and authors 🌱🦠🔬

Exciting SWBio PhD opportunity to study cell signalling in marine diatoms during heat stress. Deadline 3rd December 2025 @swbiodtp.bsky.social @kehelliwell.bsky.social @thembauk.bsky.social @exetermarine.bsky.social

Honored to have received the “Franca Rasi Caldogno” Award 2025 from the Italian Society of Plant Biology (SIBV) for the best PhD thesis, today at the XIV SIBV congress in Palermo🇮🇹🌱 Endless thanks to the society for this recognition and to all the people involved in this PhD journey🙏🏻🦠🔬

How do diatoms cope with nitrogen and phosphorus colimitation? — Happy to share our new paper: "Nitrogen status exerts dynamic control over phosphorus sensing and acquisition via PSR1 in colimited marine diatoms" 🔗 doi.org/10.1126/scia... @exetermarine.bsky.social @thembauk.bsky.social

Out now in @pubs.acs.org our latest work on the production of the high valuable molecule geraniol from a genetically engineered green alga strain. Happy to have contributed to this amazing project, a collaboration with the Bielefeld University and KAUST. Have a look at it! 🦠🔬

Interested to know what happens C. reinhardtii cells upon overexpression of a cyanobacterial dual-function FBP/SBPase? Check out our latest work, out now in Algal Research!! 🦠🔬🇮🇹

Thank you to our brilliant delegates, mentors, speakers, the organising committee and our hosts at the University of Birmingham for making New Phytologist next generation scientists 2025 a great success!

What a great week at the @newphyt.bsky.social Next Generation Scientists meeting #NGS2025 in Birmingham!! 🌱🇬🇧 Honored to have presented a poster on our latest work on abiotic stress-induced calcium dynamics in C. reinhardtii 🦠🔬 Great science, fruitful panel discussions and a lot of new friends!!

Wandering what happens to Chlamydomonas chloroplast and cytosolic Ca2+ dynamics in response to different abiotic stresses? Our latest work about that is out now! 🦠🔬 A big thank to all the people involved @labcosta.bsky.social, Glen Wheeler and Matteo Ballottari.