An interesting and provocative preprint by the Johnson group that challenges the decades old hypothesis that PGR5-cyclic electron flow is required to balance ATP/NADPH requirements for carbon fixation @biorxiv-plants.bsky.social worth a read doi.org/10.1101/2025... #photosynthesis

Nice paper characterizing rubisco mutants www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

#plantsynbio peeps, has anyone played around with cell penetrating peptides? some of the papers look fairly convincing for delivery of DNA e.g. 10.1021/acs.biomac.8b00323. but am curious why not used more widely. Viruses and agro are just easier for most applications?

🌱🚨 Funded PhD for UK students 🇬🇧🌿 Take a look at this Plant BioDesign Doctoral Training Program. Come work with me and @michaelwebster.bsky.social to study plant rubiscos. High throughput biochem at Cambridge and Cryo-EM techniques at the John Innes Centre. www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

Very excited to finally share my PhD paper, about advancing #chloroplast #synbio through high-throughput plastome engineering of #Chlamydomonas. Huge thanks to the whole team! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

I have a PhD studentship available to work on PIF proteins in wheat with Stephen Pearce @rothamsted.bsky.social and @colleendrapek.bsky.social at Phytoform labs. Any reposts greatly appreciated.

Very happy to share that this paper is now online on @currentbiology.bsky.social !! 🥳🧪 Check out the final published verion here: www.cell.com/current-biol... #mimuluspropaganda

New preprint - it has been my sad duty to help get this out after the passing of Steve Long and Amy Marshall-Colon. Testing combined effects of VPZ phenotype and eCO2 in soy (attempt to mimic improving both light use efficiency and CO2 assimilation). What exactly VPZ is doing remains unclear 1/n

Work started by Don Ort's lab. How is rubisco activase regulated? There are suggestions that phosphorylation acts redundantly with redox to control activity. This paper shows if it does, this is likely limited to Arabidopsis. The role of PTMs (if any) in regulating Rca is still unclear #plantsci

Pls help: I've read in several papers about use of kits from "Genmed Scientifics" which is quoted as a US based company, although the city quoted varies. No amount of Google searching can actually find this company, or the kits. Does anyone know what this is? I don't think it's fraud, but its weird

The @uncchapelhill.bsky.social Department of Biology is searching for tenure-track Assistant Professor in Plant Molecular Biology. Chapel Hill is a wonderful place and Biology is an amazing group of people. To apply, see: unc.peopleadmin.com/postings/307...

🚨 Please repost widely!🚨 I am recruiting a PhD student to join my lab next fall to work on forest and climate change ecology projects in southern Appalachia! Come join me in one of the most beautiful, biodiverse, and understudied parts of North America. Details below and happy to answer questions

Interesting read -10.1093/plphys/kiaf465 "Allelic variants of IRKI contribute to photosynthetic efficiency by regulating rubisco activase in Populus" there is a lot we don't know about regulation of photosynthesis here a receptor like kinase interacting protein has a role @plantphys.bsky.social

New #PhD opportunities! NorthWestBio projects now online for 2026! Including a #photosynthesis project w/ @marjorielundgren.bsky.social looking at how photosynthetic diversity may affect future crop nutrient quality. Plant projects and the full set of projects available here: tinyurl.com/529yz4jd

We really enjoyed putting together this Darwin Review for JXB. Fun to think about how carboxysomes work and why plants don't have them. @jxbotany.bsky.social Function, Evolution, and Future of Carboxysomes url: academic.oup.com/jxb/article-...

Just came across this paper "Dual-cycle CO2 fixation enhances growth and lipid synthesis..." www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

I'm deeply saddened. A tireless champion of plant #synbio and man of integrity. His insistence on focusing on real-world problems, calling out BS and bringing together lab and Ag, industry and academia will be sorely missed

We are hiring! The #PlantBio department at UIUC is looking to recruit an Assistant Professor in Plant-Fungal interactions. Application deadline is October 31st @dallingjim.bsky.social see the link below for more details: illinois.csod.com/ux/ats/caree...

Big news from the Demirer lab: first 4 research papers are preprinted! Check them out, feedback welcomed: eCIS for plant protein delivery: tinyurl.com/mrx4d878 R2 for targeted insertion: tinyurl.com/5n73za6h Transient expression: tinyurl.com/38p2ud6w Chemotaxis assay: tinyurl.com/3nw9haes More ⬇️

👉 my.corehr.com/pls/uoxrecru... Join us and be part of shaping the future of #plantscience at Oxford as we move to the new Life and Mind Building lifeandmind.web.ox.ac.uk/home (recognised for its potential to change the World edition.cnn.com/2025/01/01/s...) @biology.ox.ac.uk www.biology.ox.ac.uk

A great example of how comparative genomics across the full range of vascular plant lineages can be used as a catalyst for gene discovery! Exciting new single cell datasets for gymnosperms, ferns and lycophytes! The scale of this study is really amazing! www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...

I’m proud to present the main work from my postdoc, 3+ years in making from scratch, my ultimate #MimulusPropaganda up till now: The Moment That Symmetry Breaks. #plantscience #development #imaging #microscopy 🧪🌸🔬 w. Captain Yaowu & @biancatash.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

This preprint from Helen Sakharova is one of the coolest things to come out of my lab: “Protein language models reveal evolutionary constraints on synonymous codon choice.” Codon choice is a big puzzle in how information is encoded in genomes, and we have a new angle. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

A truly enabling new approach by @taralowensohn.bsky.social Will Cody and @sattelylab.bsky.social to probe plant genetics at scale. Single-gene-per-cell delivery coupled to an effective transcriptional selection system www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Fantastic new paper by @reeserichardson.bsky.social et al. An enormous amount of work showing the extent of coordinated scientific fraud and involvement of some editors. The number of fraudulent publications grows at a rate far outpacing that of legitimate science. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Great to see our collaborative study with Ed Cahoon and colleagues on the front cover of PBJ, describing our successful efforts to engineer the accumulation of astaxanthin in GM camelina seeds. Astaxanthin is a ketocarotenoid that is a powerful antioxidant & used in aquaculture feeds as a pigment.

Lots of talk about teaching yesterday at #PlantBio2025. A few resources that might be useful. 1) From LUCA to Lily: 12 perspectives for teaching about plants blog.aspb.org/from-luca-to...

This is a great program. We started in in 2016 and it just gets better and better! Check out some past fellows who are on Bluesky: @philcarella.bsky.social @mattbnt.bsky.social @psaima.bsky.social @fromani.bsky.social @sjb287.bsky.social @aribidopsis.bsky.social @cavycavs.bsky.social

💥 Excited to introduce Bacformer 🦠 - the first foundation model for bacterial genomics. Bacformer represents genomes as sequences of ordered proteins, learning the “grammar” of how genes are arranged, interact and evolve. Preprint 📝: biorxiv.org/content/10.1... 🧵 1/n

"Postdoctoral Researcher in Organelle Synthe4c Biology at UC Riverside, Riverside, CA, USA" Read more here: https://arabidopsis.org/news/jobs/view?file=Yu_7-21-25.pdf #PlantSciJobs

Two amazing opportunities at the @johninnescentre.bsky.social

My department has open positions at Level B (Lecturer) or Level C (Senior Lecturer), - one position in Genomics and two in Ecology. #PlantSciJobs Applications close on Thursday 7 August Aussie time careers.pageuppeople.com/513/cw/en/jo... careers.pageuppeople.com/513/cw/en/jo...

A perspective: some relationships between the biochemistry of photosynthesis and the gas exchange of leaves (Planta 153, 376–387) link.springer.com/article/10.1...

The "reproducibility crisis" in science constantly makes headlines. Repro efforts are often limited. What if you could assess reproducibility of an entire field? That's what @brunolemaitre.bsky.social et al. have done. Fly immunity is highly replicable & offers lessons for #metascience A 🧵 1/n

Looking for investors in my CRISPR company recreating the golden ram. Relive the days of Jason and the argonauts. Come get fleeced!

Please RT! I'm hiring a postdoc to work in my new lab at UCSB (!) on an NSF-funded project investigating the phenotypic consequences of WGD for photosynthesis and respiration. Check out the full posting here: recruit.ap.ucsb.edu/JPF02986 And more info about the lab here: sharbroughlab.com

Nice work showing it is possible to engineer increased oxygen tolerance of fast rubiscos using in vivo directed evolution via @pnas.org doi.org/10.1073/pnas...

Specificity is still really tricky, the underlying mechanism remains almost entirely unexplained and red algal assembly is not yet understood (as you point out). But the field is moving quickly!

While we don't know how to assemble Griffithsia Rubisco yet, this expansion in SynBio capabilities (from Archer and friends) are very exciting - the high throughput engineering capabilities that they enable definitely bring us substantially closer to engineering higher specificity Rubisco.

Further advanced in synbio systems for expression of plant rubiscos in E. coli, exploring importance of Raf1 variants: academic.oup.com/jxb/article-... and accompanying perspective via @jxbotany.bsky.social doi.org/10.1093/jxb/...

New from the Stern lab, KO of both rubisco activase isoforms in setaria. Beta necessary despite C4 pump, but role of heat inducible alpha remains enigmatic @jxbotany.bsky.social doi.org/10.1093/jxb/...

Seen a number of groups working on this, but impressive work to produce transgene free heritable genome editing that avoids tissue culture in monocots. Importantly has potential for a range of species www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Cool preprint - what is the boundary between virus and life? Following the recent discovery of the nitroplast there are lots of interesting things to be discovered in marine microbe communities www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

New research by @egonzalezduran.bsky.social shows that DSB repair suppresses gene transfer from chloroplasts to nucleus. With DSB repair impaired, transfer rates jump 20× — revealing how plants protect genome stability, with lessons beyond plant biology. Read: nature.com/articles/s41477-025-02005-w

1/10 Today in @science.org in collaboration with the Liu group we report the development of a laboratory-evolved CRISPR-associated transposase (evoCAST) that supports therapeutically relevant levels of RNA-programmable gene insertion in human cells. drive.google.com/file/d/1I-Ub...

Tweeps, please spread the word. We're still looking at recruiting a structural biologist (any level) to study plant-pathogen protein complexes especially in the context of coevolution. Direct inquiries welcome. Please include a cover letter. Applicant from US welcome? medium.com/@kamounlab/2...