Recent weather events across the South have offered a reminder, from a Minnesotan’s perspective: nobody deals with ice like those from the Land of 10,000 Lakes.

I've slowly been reformatting notes from my population and conservation genetics course at Montana State University into a web book—a rough draft is now live here: elinck.org/popgen_conge...

🌻 Sharing this preprint where we assembled 3 new chromosome-level genomes, including the first for Asteraceae's South American sister Calyceraceae! Asteraceae uses all the tricks when it comes to being the most ecologically successful family of flowering plants. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

We're hiring! Please spread the word. We have an opening for an Assistant Professor in Plant Synthetic Biology for Strategic Resources Research. See ad for details – and apply to join us here in Athens, GA! 🪴 #PlantBiology #SyntheticBiology #PlantScience #AcademicJobs #UGA

Just spent waaay too long canceling Spectrum internet by phone. Big thanks to the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals (1 Bush, 2 Trump appointees) that blocked the Biden-era “click‑to‑cancel” rule before it took effect this month. Truly working for the people – clicking a button is *so* hard. /s

Happy to see this out and for the opportunity to contribute!! The puzzle of Asteraceae inflorescence development jumps one step forward (a big step 😅) 🌻

Have you ever wondered how sunflowers got their head? The answer lies in stem cells, a modified signal peptide, and a whole lotta evolutionary history. Happy to have played a role in this work. 🌻

Knock out science, observe the phenotype. It’s like reverse genetics, but with civilization.

So. I’m sitting here watching The Terminator and realizing that we’re just four years from SkyNet sending a killer robot back in time to ensure an apocalyptic future. I hope we make it that long.

Academics, do you need a simple way to explain IDC (F&A) rates? Imagine dining at a restaurant. You enjoy your meal but decide to pay only for the chef & ingredients, ignoring the waitstaff, rent, and utilities. Clearly, these “extras” make the experience possible. But imagine if everyone did this.

True or false… When a major international conference gives you an actual paper notebook as part of the swag, they should also give you a writing utensil. You can get those with sponsor logos, too, right? Or is a $1k-ish registration fee for academics and non-profits too low for such luxuries?

TFW you go old school and bust out a bunch of PCR primers that you published 18 years ago to validate some crosses… and you discover that the parents differ for a big ole indel in one of the genes. Few things are as satisfying as seeing genetics in action on an agarose gel. 🌻 🧬

Hey, if you have Spotify and like Christmas music, feel free to subscribe to this playlist of Christmas classics that I put together for our family… Complete w/custom cover art from ChatGPT. Enjoy. open.spotify.com/playlist/5TM...

For those who are fleeing that other place… I’d like to catch you up on things. Since I’ve been here, the only post of mine that’s worth amplifying is below… Sadly, so few people were here back then that it never got the attention it deserved… Or, at least, that’s what I keep telling myself… 😂

Has anyone sequenced @jrossibarra.bsky.social? I’m curious about what the human pun-genome looks like.

In theory, one could just post pdfs of their papers online so other can download. In theory, of course...

This afternoon, I caught a stinkbug in my office and fed it to my Venus flytrap. I later asked ChatGPT o1-preview about the wisdom of this. Turns out that it may or may not have been smart… At the same time, grabbing a stinkbug w/my bare hand *definitely* wasn’t smart, and I didn’t need AI for that.

Our Computational Biology Core at UConn is hiring a bioinformatics analyst as a facility scientist! Mix of research support and providing training. jobs.hr.uconn.edu/cw/en-us/job... 🧪

We just had a new paper go up on the AoB Plants website in advance of publication. "Our results demonstrate the importance of leaf anatomical traits in mediating drought responses in sunflower..." 🌻 @kristennolting.bsky.social @aobp.bsky.social academic.oup.com/aobpla/advan...

Check it out. Our latest paper on the genomic basis of nutrient stress tolerance in sunflower is available for early access via @jxbotany.bsky.social. 🌱🌻🧬

Back in the day, I defended my PhD on April Fool’s Day. Seems fitting. And now, a student whose committee I’m on has scheduled her own defense for what turns out to be the 25th anniversary of mine. April 1, 1999 🤝 April 1, 2024. Current status: Feeling old…

So… I decided to go through my contacts and clean them up, and guess what? I found the numbers of four now-defunct airlines dating back 15+ years. And yes, I deleted them as I doubt I’ll need to call USAir, Northwest, Continental, or America West anytime soon.

Reppin’ the Dawgs w/the family at lunch today in Boise, ID. 🐶

Got an early xmas gift w/J. Exp. Bot. accepting one of our papers for publication... Wrapping up 2023 and getting an early start on 2024. It’s a revised version of the linked preprint. 🎄🎁🌻 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

TFW when you logon to that other platform and you see UNLV and #VegasStrong trending and you know exactly why without even clicking…

I’m starting to think that I might have a problem with it comes to browser tabs… I had two windows open with a total of 456 tabs.

Those cats, though… 😼

What does this tell you about class attendance? Context: By allowing hourly (pay) parking in our deck, students who didn’t get a permit were filling the deck and freezing out faculty/staff/students who had permits. By restricting things 4 days/week, they solved the problem 5 days/week.

Super random thing… I’m in France for a meeting. Did a tour of the Eiffel Tour. Turns out that a member of our tour group was in my high school graduating class – same school, same year. And yet… We have no recollection of each other. What are the odds?

They're still trying to figure out how to profit from it.

If you're reading this, you should go ahead and follow @kristennolting.bsky.social. She's good people, and an excellent scientist. Even if she's a cat person. 🐶

Welcome to Bluesky. We have rules here: 1. You have one shot. 2. One opportunity. 3. Don't miss your chance to blow. 4. This opportunity only comes once in a lifetime, yo. 5. You better lose yourself in the music.

Twelve years ago today. At the Dawgs game with our (now) 18 yr old who is currently in his first year at UGA.

Go Dawgs!

I just joined Blue Sky and am excited to join the plant sciences conversation! #HelloWorld #IAmaBotanist

True or false: The person sitting in the aisle seat gets to decide if/when the passengers in the middle and window seats get to de-plane.

Agree 💯, transformation is a huge bottleneck for non-model folks. Sure, Arabidopsis might be easier, but sunflower is *way* cooler. 🌻

I asked ChatGPT to write me an R script to calculate the terminal velocity of an unladen sparrow, and it did. The future is now. Yes, it actually wrote a (Monty) Python script in R. Okay, I’ll see myself out now…

Went to the Grand Tetons. Took a photo. It’s now my desktop wallpaper. AMA. 😂