📣 We are hiring! In the collaborative research center 'Plant Ecological Genetics' @teamthomma.bsky.social searches a PhD candidate to study the role of plant-associated microbiota in plant density responses and inter-plant competition. See project A07: sl1nk.com/b7z0doc Deadline July 10!

Happy to share our newest preprint. We developed guidelines and analysis workflows for FLIM Imaging in plants. Multiplexing with spectrally overlapping fluorophores in plants is now possible. Have a look. Any feedback is more than welcome. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Interested in learning about the latest and greatest research in how plants respond to excess salt, too little or too much water? Come to the GRC in Salt and Water Stress in Switzerland. Lots of opportunities for all career levels. www.grc.org/salt-and-wat.... Please repost!

Chemical probes + imaging can reveal spatiotemporal patterns of a wide range of physico-chemical features in plants, without the need for genetic access. We reviewed what tools exist and how they can be used & engineered. Chemistry meets plant cell biology! www.annualreviews.org/content/jour...

The second GreenTE meeting was hosted on May 7-8th. 2 days of exciting and inspiring science! 🌱🌱Read more here 👇

📣 New preprint on @biorxivpreprint.bsky.social: Bacteria rewire fungal antimicrobial gene expression in microbial arms races www.biorxiv.org/cgi/content/... This work, led by outstanding @jinyi-zhu.bsky.social, shows that bacteria suppress fungal antimicrobial protein expression to evade antagonism

Plasmodesmal closure triggers stress responses! Turns out cells are generally better off with connections to their neighbours. This manuscript represents a decade-long team collaboration, with heroic effort from Estee Tee to lead it over the line! #PlantScience link.springer.com/article/10.1...

We are very happy and proud to present a study led by @jorgehg.bsky.social (now PI in Madrid – keep an eye on him!) in our team @bic-wur.bsky.social. In this work, we discover how auxin-regulated ARF transcription factors learned to activate transcription. A 🧵…(1/17) www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

A bacterial lipid triggers membrane mechanosensing immunity in Arabidopsis https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.04.23.720373v1

Our new toolbox of plant membrane imaging probes: LipoTag. After CarboTag (cell wall probes), we have now developed a modular strategy to create non toxic, easy-to-use, and flexible probes for hassle-free live-cell imaging of plant membranes, and their tension, lipid order and oxidation. 🍀🔬

Previously the Type II actins were described to be angiosperm specific, but we now also identified those in the seedplants. and there is much more in the manuscript :)

I forgot to mention that seed plants have two actin types (renamed I and II), which are not interchangeable. Hence, we studied these differences in more detail and formed the hypothesis that the hydrogenbond conformations are the main determinant for the actin specialisation.

Next we were interested in the function diversification of these actin isoforms. Initially, we had high hopes for finding variable regions and found this variable patch. The AAs are not even close to each other in the sequence (eg 190&268). However, we could not find known interactors in this region

and because actin is highly conserved, we could even pinpoint specific substitutions per plant lineage that were conserved in evolution.

This indicates that the ancestral organism for each lineage only had a single actin that has been conserved in evolution. (Either there was only one, or the others were lost). Such events are marked with the orange dots in this summary tree.

We revisited the evolution of plant actins (last paper was in 1999), with the aim to understand why plants have many actin isoforms and how these isoforms can be functionally different. Strikingly, unlike e.g. the auxin response factors, actins are completely segregated per taxonomic lineage. (1/n)

Our first dive into protein evolution; revisiting the diversification of plant isoactins. Why do plants maintain so many isoactins that differ so little at a sequence level?