Love to see one of my favorite colleagues, Pat Gensel, profiled on the UNC website: " Indiana Jones — but for plants" www.unc.edu/posts/2025/0...

A milestone for plant genomics just out @natgenet.nature.com 130 bryophyte genomes! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Some more fun Streptocarpus floral symmetry issues. First photo is typical S. michelmorei, 2nd and 3rd have patterning issues, and the 4th is wonderfully/horrifically fasciated.

The lab is moving to the Salk Institute! We are thrilled to join an inspiring community where we will continue to explore plant growth and development. Deep gratitude for the years of support and collaboration at Duke/NCSU/UNC. www.salk.edu/news-release...

The community of Drosophila researchers is amazing, mutually supportive and collaborative. Right now a key resource for our community, @flybase.bsky.social , is threatened by the cancellation of its NIH grant and is seeking community help in raising short term funds 1/n 🧪 please share

A very pretty peloric Streptocarpus flower opened up today

New #symbiosky paper from Cory Bishop and collaborators (including me 😊) on the remarkable specificity of the symbiosis between spotted salamanders and the alga in their eggs. Cory organized colleagues to get egg fluid from NC USA to NS Canada. He found extremely low... tinyurl.com/2jmwce2s

A fantastic and thorough paper, and the imaging is breathtaking

delighted to share work from my postdoc @cshlnews.bsky.social - here, we use TurboID in maize meristems to be able to resolve CLV receptor interactions, unlocking its potential to resolve in vivo receptor interactions important for meristem signaling.

This is a heart breaker, attending this meeting last year for my PGRP postdoc fellowship was a great opportunity

I’m thrilled to announce that next summer I’ll be joining the University of Maryland Department of Biology as an assistant professor! The Van Etten lab will study how horizontal processes (DNA and gene transfer + organelle acquisition) drive and are driven by ecology and evolution. vanettenlab.org

Newest software stuff from team @viralemergence.org and maybe the most widely-useful thing we've developed? Huge congrats to Alexander and Steph, this is such an amazing bioinformatics tool. (Just wait until you see what they're doing with it!)

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

We are absolutely thrilled to share this work on CLV signaling in the sunflower family! This project was only possible through the efforts and contributions of our incredible collaborators! It also represents the CapituLab’s first preprint! (more to come soon though…) www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

A new really exciting preprint from @thecapitulab.bsky.social, my PhD lab, and many others One of the many interesting findings - The sequence evolution of CLV3 and changes to CLV signaling is required for capitulum development. CLEs make sunflowers! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Elizabeth made so many high order CRISPR mutants for this great paper! Florigen bypasses defects in CLE signaling!

New review: WUSCHEL: The essential regulator of the Arabidopsis shoot Apical Meristem. doi.org/10.1016/j.pb... Message me if you need a free access link.

Based on some quick math, this alone could fund the NSF Plant Genome Research Program for ~4 years; the NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biology, which was totally axed in the NSF budget request, for ~9 years; and ~ half the total NSF GRFP budget

Private funding of research cannot and will not compensate for the lost public research funding

Oh big deal, it's not like soybean is *checks notes* the 2nd biggest crop in the US and is *turns page* currently under threat by a major pest

"the number of staff, students, and researchers involved in NSF-supported science would drop from more than 330,000 to about 90,000—a whopping 73 percent cut."

I just got back from one of these workshops, and it was probably the best meeting I have ever attended

Biomolecular condensates are critical for organizing cellular contents, but most studies focus on phase separation driven by salt, pH, or temperature. But what if intracellular movement also matters? Here, we explore motility-induced condensation in the cell. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Our editors write: - "Symbiosis signalling: Mycorrhizal CLE mimicry" rdcu.be/elQ6S

I made some lovely new friends over the weekend with @couchmicroscopy.bsky.social, @andrewilloughb.bsky.social, and these fantastic (and tiny--15 micron cells) #rhizarian #protistsonsky Paulinella sp. The eukaryote with totally unique and recently acquired photosythesis.

You can even see my Streptocarpus shirt (which I demanded shown to the world)

In the field with @burnsajohn.bsky.social and @andrewilloughb.bsky.social. We found our first photosynthetic Paulinella cell of the day! Only took 4 hours to find 🥴. Now isolating this and the other few we’ve found since! Very very hard, tedious work but we are in good spirits.

NEWS: I just led 112 of my colleagues in demanding answers from the Trump Administration on their funding freeze of the National Science Foundation. Cutting off NSF funding threatens vital research, stalls innovation, and risks ceding global scientific leadership to China.

Good start but don’t stop with a letter.

THE NSB (NSF Board) announced the existence and exploration of a pilot program to privatize the GRFP graduate fellowship (my wording). This includes branding opportunities for the companies sponsoring fellowships. This is short sighted and self-destructive, and threatens the mission of the NSF. 1/

academic.oup.com/plcell/advan... A very timely commentary

Highly recommend this podcast, these are two great scientists speaking about things affecting so many of us

The cuts to science funding *alone* will generate a Great Recession-sized hole in the economy. "It’s less a 'self-inflicted wound' and more 'jumping head-first into a wood chipper.'”

So I joined American Horticultural Society (AHS) for the free admit to botanic gardens...But in latest edition of their mag, before articles on carnation history 🌸 and a re-evaluation of bamboo 🌱 as a garden pest you find.... Grant cancellations and database deletions. #withoutnsf #withoutscience

My NSF PRFB on the genetics of female polymorphism in hummingbirds was terminated yesterday. I don't have much to say, I'm just sad. We've discovered so much, and could have gone so much further. If anyone else is in the same boat, esp postdocs, please reach out, it would be good to connect.

Cells within cells within cells … and why diatoms, dinoflagellates, and DINOTOMS 😮 are important. Thank you, Julia Van Etten and Brittany Sprecher for this episode. podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/t...

My NSF postdoctoral fellowship was one of the grants terminated yesterday. Devastating is an understatement. Thankful for a supportive admin with a plan to support me for now.

The NSF postdoc fellowships give us so much independence and I'm very grateful for mine. A very unexpected tradeoff is the NSF yanking your paycheck away whenever it feels like it, because it has decided that there is no value in researching inconvenient truths.

🙏 We need your help 🙏 The government continues to cancel grants at both NIH and NSF to censor science it doesn't like. We're tracking terminations to organize and advocate. Please report your terminated grants: NIH: forms.gle/J2znQ7y7YpeP... NSF: airtable.com/appGKlSVeXni... w/ @noamross.net

The NSF is aware and seems self-conscious about how sounds like it violates two court orders blocking this

MLO-mediated Ca2+ influx regulates root hair tip growth in Arabidopsis https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.04.08.647801v1

Absolutely thrilled to share our story—please take a moment to check it out! Huge thanks to all the contributors and my amazing supervisor @lmueller.bsky.social . This was truly a team effort! #peptides #mycorrhiza www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Fungal CLE peptides!

Really excited to share this new paper with Amanda Agosto-Ramos & @spicybotrytis.bsky.social! We use glucosinolates in the Brassicales as an illustrative model to demonstrate what the improvements in genome quality & phylogenetic coverage are teaching us about the evolution of metabolic innovation.

Proud of fellow NSF PRFB postdocs @couchmicroscopy.bsky.social and @stairwaytokevin.bsky.social for sharing how funding cuts and the current administration's attempts to squash scientific research are hurting early career scientists

From William Proxmire’s Golden Fleece Award to Sarah Palin’s “fruit fly research in Paris, France” to Tom Coburn‘s annual “Wastebook,” politically-motivated attacks on basic science have always employed mischaracterization and mockery to belittle valuable research. www.propublica.org/article/ted-...

NEW: A study of mint plants. A device to stop severe bleeding. Technology for treating concussions. This is some of the scientific research that Ted Cruz calls “woke.” By @lisalsong.bsky.social and Agnel Philip

168 National Science Foundation employees are being terminated today, adding to the probationary purge across all federal agencies www.washingtonpost.com/politics/202...

The cost-saving claims don’t hold up. Every dollar in NIH research grants generates $2.46 in economic activity, research shows—a total of $93 billion in 2023 alone. “It’s incredible to me that we would give up this thing that has such obvious societal benefits,” says biologist Mark Peifer.