If you're in Ghent tomorrow ! I'll be sharing our recent progress deciphering the sRNA-based dominance/recessivity interactions at the self-incompatibility locus in Arabidopsis 🌱

A Sharon Begley byline, almost 5 years after her death. Upon hearing the news James Watson had died, a STAT reporter said in our Slack, "I wish I could read what Sharon would have written." Incredible news: Sharon in fact did pre-write a Watson obit. And it is masterful and excoriating. 🧪🧬🧫

Diploid origins and early genome stabilization in the allotetraploid Arabidopsis suecica Burns et al. [email protected] [email protected] nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

It’s going to break your heart how many people you know, love, and respect will turn out to be cowards. Prepare yourself as best you can. You are not alone, but you are your own center. Be a strong center.

@alisondawnscott.bsky.social et al. use genome data from >400 Arabidopsis lyrata sampled across Eurasia to show it as the most polyploid-rich species complex in Arabidopsis, with multiple origins of autotetraploidy. 🔗 doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msaf153 #evobio #molbio #PlantSky

That’s a wrap on the Cologne Spring Meeting 2025! A huge thanks to all participants, speakers, and organizers for making this event a wonderful success. Stay tuned for more news and discoveries from TRR341 and the world of plant science. #CologneSpringMeeting2025 #PlantScience #TRR341 #DFG

Just extended the deadline to March 21 for this position in the Plant Phylogenomics group at the University of Vienna. It is sort of a "post doc plus" position funded for up to six years. Please reach out if you want to chat - I'd love to talk to you about it! jobs.univie.ac.at/job/Universi...

Tough day for small grains research in the Twin Cities. Myself and four scientist colleagues have all been let go from the USDA because we haven't completed our 3 year probationary period - effectively gutting the Cereal Disease Lab. Taking a few days to be sad before I think about what comes next.

🥳Just published @nature.com. Over 25 years after the discovery of SPO11 as the enzyme responsible for initiating meiotic recombination, we finally succeeded in reconstituting its DNA cleavage activity.🧵 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

The dismantling of science in the USA continues. But culling the NSF, NIH, USGS, etc. is more than that. It’s the destruction of knowledge, and of progress, both of which have been bastions of this nation for centuries. These are truly dark days, and I fear there will be darker days yet to come.

A new tool, vcfsim, developed by Paimon Goulart, a stellar undergraduate researcher in my lab! vcfsim allows for the quick and easy simulation (via parameterized msprime simulations) of "all-sites" vcfs, with arbitrary ploidy and amounts of missing data. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

So well-deserved!

1st paper from my lab this year. Chelsea & Erica showed that self-incompatible plants of this little groundcherry change to self-compatible as they get old, but they are only passable selfers, making less than half the number of seeds as plants are fixed for self-compatibility rdcu.be/d7ZM8

I'm begging a major news org to cover the fact NSF is defying the courts to enact Trump's unconstitutional executive order

this is the thing not to lose sight of. yes, the biology of sex is complex and fascinating, with nearly endless diversity. but also we don't use biology to decide who gets human rights. like, historically speaking that has not led to good places!

As the transgender community continues to fight for civil rights in the U.S., one of the most common arguments against progress is that transgender people are a recent phenomenon. But it’s a fight that’s been happening here for decades and around the world for centuries. ⤵️

The German Society for Plant Sciences (Deutsche Botanische Gesellschaft DBG) is now on Bluesky 🌱 #PlantScience @plantsciencedbg.bsky.social

#Pag2025 #pag32 Join us for our evening workshop on all things CartograPlant - supporting landscape scale analysis for georeferenced plant populations

If you’re at #PAG32 & love crazy genome evolution, check out my talk on Thlaspi arvense pangenomics later today in the Analysis of Complex Genomes workshop! I’m also organizing the Polyploidy workshop with a great set of talks on various aspects of polyploid genomics & evolution tomorrow afternoon!

Go check out the Org.one workshop at #pag32! Org.one offers free ONT long-read sequencing costs for building reference genomes of IUCN endangered/critically endangered/extinct in the wild species. Today I just received confirmation for sequencing longleaf pine and the red-cockaded woodpecker!

This Sun afternoon (Jan 12th) #PAG32 @cynthiawebster.bsky.social will be leading #EASEL #EnTAP tutorials + community talks: structural & functional genome annotation for complex eukaryotes @nextflow.io #NSFfunded @alisondawnscott.bsky.social Schedule here: plan.core-apps.com/pag32/event/...

I'm building a Starter Pack of Early Career Evolutionary Biologists. It's hard to gather usernames using the search tool. Please add your name to this thread if you want to be added!

My work on a pangenome for the hexaploid oilseed crop Camelina sativa is now out early access in Genetics! This young polyploid genome has a small pangenome to match it's low SNP diversity, but regained lost diversity by packing in all the unique genes from its 3 diploid progenitors.

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