TOMORROW: Be a part of history! Show the world that the majority of Americans oppose the most corrupt, inept, criminal, orange "president" in U.S. History. NO KINGS. Also: NO SERIAL LIARS/CONVICTED FELONS/ADJUDICATED RAPISTS & NO ILLEGAL WAR IN IRAN Be there. Make your voices heard! 🇺🇸 ✊ #NO_KINGS

Watching the US brutally, stupidly destroying itself like this is one of the most heart-breaking, depressing things I’ve ever seen. The obliteration of American science and medical research is an unconscionable crime. I almost can’t believe it’s really happening. But it is.

anyway if you write bioinformatics software and include in your documentation any examples of the input and output file formats, I will buy you a beer if we ever run into each other IRL

Excited to share what we learned about Katanin in maize www.nature.com/articles/s41... 🧪

In which I say a bunch of things about getting older, about dying, and about art and legacy. Share if you care.

"genAI can be used to create podcasts from a paper to teach st-" Let me stop you right there. Before you feed somebody's paper to a slop machine, invite that somebody to talk to your students about their paper. We're right here. We academics won't shut up about our work, man. 🧪

Trust me--read this. You'll be glad you did. and thank you Dr. Bennet for writing it. 🧪

Our new experimental evolution study across 30+ locations using the plant Arabidopsis thaliana —— we direct "see" adaptation and extinction to different climates at the genetic as it happens! Read it in Science dx.doi.org/10.1126/scie... @ucberkeleyofficial.bsky.social @hhmi-science.bsky.social

Honored and thrilled to be among the distinguished @aaas.org Fellows announced this morning, alongside two fellow scientists from @cshlnews.bsky.social /Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. www.aaas.org/news/aaas-we...

after much deliberation and giving AI the benefit of the doubt, Wikipedia editors have had enough of AI slop. New policy bans LLM generated content, periodt www.404media.co/wikipedia-ba...

One thing I'd recommend: if you're not already part of a local organizing/activist group, check out the groups marching at your local No Kings protest and see if they might be a good fit for you. Few things are better right now than joining LOCAL groups in the real world to organize.

This is the most astonishing graph of what the Trump regime has done to US science. They have destroyed the federal science workforce across the board. The negative impacts on Americans will be felt for generations, and the US might never be the same again. www.nature.com/immersive/d4...

>10,000 STEM PhDs have left federal service over the past year (including 30% of the federal colleagues with whom I’ve worked closely). Those still left are holding federal science together with duct tape. What an extraordinary act of sabotage against the American people.

Defend Disability Rights. Protect our Health. Fight for our Democracy. NO KINGS 3 ACCESSIBLE RALLY · Online March 28th 12:30–2pm CT ASL interpreted · Live captioned · For everyone, everywhere. Organized by Stand Up for Science standupforscience.net/sufs-nk3 #NoKings #NoKings3 #NK3VR #Rally

NO KINGS 3 VIRTUAL RALLY Organized by Stand Up for Science Protect Our Health, Defend Our Democracy An accessible and inclusive rally for everyone, everywhere. March 28th, 12:30 - 2:00pm CT followed by live stream of flagship Twin Cities event Details coming soon #NoKings #NoKings3 #VirtualRally

Some reflections on #Fungal26 This was a great meeting as always but set against some turbulent times of course, which meant many regular attendees were not present. This thread is mainly for them. However, the proportion of first-time attendees was very high and very international. #Fungal26 1/15

"the decline in [academic freedom in] the United States has been more rapid and pronounced, particularly in the last year. It has deteriorated by 50% from 2015 to 2025 and is now evaluated as moderate autonomy by country experts" academic-freedom-index.net/research/Aca...

No Kings 3 is NEXT WEEK: Saturday, March 28! What are you protesting? Funding cuts, vaccine lies, climate change, job losses, attacks on research, education...? Find your event: zurl.co/nLl0L And we're hosting a Virtual Rally! Details soon. #NoKings3 #DefendDemocracy #SaveScience #ProtectHealth

Exciting news to share today! My grad student @ohazel.bsky.social Olivia received Linda Matsuuchi award! 🎉🍀🔬 She is the only grad student within the entire Faculty of Science from UBC @science.ubc.ca @ubcbotany.bsky.social received the award this year! www.ashraflab.com/mentees-succ...

Structural determinants and biochemical characterization of LORELEI as a GPI-anchored protein (Yanbing Wang (王燕冰) , Xunliang Liu (刘逊亮) , Nicholas Desnoyer , Gregory Howard , Ravishankar Palanivelu) doi.org/10.1093/plph... #PlantScience @aspbofficial

States have a moral obligation to develop universal health care systems, Pope Leo XIV said, stating that "health cannot be a luxury for the few."

YES!!!!! PROTECT TRANS KIDS!!! www.nytimes.com/2026/03/19/u...

The Trump Administration attempted to make an example of Minnesota during Operation Metro Surge. Instead, Minnesotans set an example for the rest of the country that decency and compassion will always triumph over fear and division. www.cbsnews.com/minnesota/ne...

Email your senators to urge them not to confirm Jim O’Neill as Director of the National Science Foundation. He's not a scientist, has no relevant expertise, promoted vaccine misinformation, helped gut the CDC, and his Silicon Valley ties raise questions about protecting the public interest. (1/2🧵)

I am reviewing a simply amazing paper from a relatively young US-based lab, which is in danger of shutting its doors later this year. My emotions are all over the place. The fact that this does not uniquely identify the lab I’m referring to just deepens the tragedy of this moment in US science.

📘 EDITORIAL 📘 🌳 75 years and counting 🌳 🎉 Editor-in-Chief John Lunn announces the 2026 cohort of JXB editorial interns 🎉 The programme offers early career researchers insight into journal publishing and valuable career development opportunities 🔎 🔗 doi.org/10.1093/jxb/... #PlantScience 🧪

Thank you to Plant Science group at the University of Georgia (US) for hosting me yesterday! I had many excellent conversations about identity & science, & introduced our new ROOT & SHOOT SI-MI mentoring program. More info coming soon, but we'll be running it free and online starting this summer.

I don’t think any one person can be the best-fit mentor for every trainee. A good lab environment for one person can be bad for another. A good mentor grows with and for each trainee, but will have to stretch a lot for some personalities. Part of why I encourage trainees to always have >1 mentor!

Here is a graph with dollar amounts of funding committed. The curves look very similar to those based on the number of awards.

NIH/NSF funding is, for all intents and purposes, frozen again. This somehow almost feels worse than last year. They are running out the clock on biomedical science and all PIs can do is scramble to finish projects before our resources dry up. www.science.org/content/arti...

Annual reminder: if you’ve been accepted to multiple graduate programs and are still deciding, please let the ones you’re definitely not going to know as soon as possible! -Someone who got into his PhD off the waitlist the day after the deadline

please share! 🌱Application deadline is March 27 to apply for the Cold Spring Harbor Frontiers and Techniques in Plant Science 3 week summer course! 🌱 It's a great time- you learn a lot and really bond with others in the course. 🌱 I was in the class of 2000! 😀 meetings.cshl.edu/alumni.aspx?...

Breast cancer mortality dropped 58% from 1975 to 2019. Localized, early detected breast cancer has a 99% 5 year survival rate. Modern mammogram tech was developed by NASA for telescopes. Last year, RFK Jr. cancelled 87 research grants on breast cancer. www.nytimes.com/2026/03/16/u...

Writing out a conversation I’ve been having a lot at this conference: Things in US science are far, far worse than people know. Far worse than even other scientists know. 1/

Science professors and educators all have a role in combating this eugenics resurgence www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

NSF Update through March 13, 2026 1/2

Basically, all of US political life & discourse is premised on the illusion of symmetry between the parties, which requires vastly overstating the flaws of liberals & studiously ingoring the true nature of MAGA. Establishment journos & pundits will maintain that illusion at any cost.

My teen, who had dreamt of being an astrophysicist, just told me he wants to go to law school because, “Science isn’t going to be a priority in the US in the future…I don’t want a job where I’ll be constantly worried my funding will be taken away.” Gutting. How many future scientists have we lost?

My travel to Cosyne was barred by the Trump admin, so I'm here on my personal dime. I care about the COSYNE community, I committed to co-chairing. And I always learn here. But the worst part about this travel ban is my lab colleagues— students and fellows—couldn't come. /1

I certainly won't claim that all human scientific endeavors have always been good and noble and without any suffering to humankind. But I will say that the scientific impulse--the curiosity that drives us to work together to understand our universe--is one of my very favorite things about humanity.

🚨 I'm happy to announce that Plant Reproduction (official journal of @iasprr.bsky.social) is running a special collection on Epigenetic dynamics & functions. We aim to gather a range of research on the diverse epigenetic mechanisms at play during plant reproduction. Please share & submit your work!

Dogs evolved to eat your leftovers! Comparing dog & wolf genomes revealed dogs have up to 30 EXTRA copies of the amylase gene (AMY2B) that helps digest starch. This is a key genomic signature of living alongside humans & table scraps for thousands of years 🐕 www.nature.com/articles/nat... #2026MMM

Our Review "Development, Anatomy and Integrated Function of Grass Leaf Veins and Graminoid Stomata" is out doi.org/10.1146/annu... Alec Baird and I discuss the development and function of the anatomical structures that regulate water supply (leaf veins) and water demand (stomata) in the grass leaf.

New Article: "Grass inflorescence morphodynamics guides yield improvement in wheat" rdcu.be/e72m7 Morphodynamic modelling reveals how timing and fate shape diverse grass inflorescences. ID of an early-heading paired-spikelet mutant, which exhibits robust yield gains.

If you're a US-based scientist but have not been to a @standupforscience.bsky.social rally or contacted your lawmakers or otherwise defended science then please read this blog post. We need to defend science, not for our own self-interest/funding, but because its many gifts belong to society.

The Botanical Society of America's Impact Award is now accepting applications! These awards highlight those building a more inclusive community through research, teaching, or outreach. Apply, or encourage others to, and see info in link! @botsocamerica.bsky.social botany.org/home/awards/...

Hiding in plain sight! 2.3M conserved non-coding sequences traced back 300M years across 284 plant species Ground-breaking study out in First Release @science.org from labs of @madelaineb.bsky.social, @idane.bsky.social & Zach Lippman ▶️ doi.org/10.1126/scie... ▶️ www.slcu.cam.ac.uk/news/hiding-...

The 2026 National Science Foundation budget is $8.75 Billion.

It's official!!!! #Botany2026 here we come!