Almost forgot to thank @reneinckemann.bsky.social for helping us set up the chloroplast transformation system we relied so heavily upon! Go read his cool paper here: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

How does molecular valency shape condensate assembly and function? We used the CO2-fixing organelle in algae—the pyrenoid—to find out… 🧵 Preprint here!: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... @cellarchlab.com @phaips.vd.st @biologyatyork.bsky.social #Rubisco #PhaseSeparation #Condensates #Pyrenoid

FoldMason is out now in @science.org. It generates accurate multiple structure alignments for thousands of protein structures in seconds. Great work by Cameron L. M. Gilchrist and @milot.bsky.social. 📄 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... 🌐 search.foldseek.com/foldmason 💾 github.com/steineggerla...

Rational improvement of pennycress using CRISPR. #PlantScience From: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

🚀 New preprint! @jacobsenucla.bsky.social x @doudna-lab.bsky.social collaboration: High-activity TnpB (Ymu1-WFR) + a multi-gRNA system in TRV enables heritable, tissue-culture-free multiplex editing in plants. Big potential for plant biotech 🧬🌾🌱 doi.org/10.64898/202...

New Brief Communication: "A CRISPR-based sequence proximity binding protein labelling system for scanning upstream regulatory proteins" rdcu.be/eZLUP CRISPR-based proximity labelling system to profile DNA-binding proteins such as PIF4 transcription factor .

My poster on flower bioengineering at the #AIEBaB26 conference in Bristol last week 🌹 🧬 ✨

Why I’m genetically engineering a rainbow flower… And how a Russian fairy tale inspired the idea 🧵

Genetic engineering, painting, sculpting, floristry, and fantasy are united in @nickdesnoyer.bsky.social 's flower design art project. New essay out now on a blossoming frontier of transgenic art!

Pleased to share this thoughtful essay by Jess on my flower design project🌹🧬 As a small thank-you for spreading the work, I'm randomly giving away 5 of these new morphogenesis hoodies to whoever reposts this!

‼️Please RT: The CEPLAS Graduate School call for 2026 is now open! Detailed info on our website: bit.ly/4q19JWk @hhu.de @unicologne.bsky.social @mpipz.bsky.social @fz-juelich.de @leibnizipk.bsky.social @plantsciencedbg.bsky.social

European plant scientists welcome the EU Trilogue Provisional Agreement on New Genomic Techniques (#NGT), as EU-SAGE reports, the network representing plants scientists at 134 European plant science institutes and societies www.eu-sage.eu/news/Europea...

AI model Helixer predicts eukaryotic genes ab initio, directly from a plain text FASTA file. No RNA-seq. No protein homology. No repeats, hints, or curated evidence. Raw genome → accurate gene models. Deep learning + HMM, published in @natmethods.nature.com www.nature.com/articles/s41...

After 10 Fridays, 10 flowers, and 100+ drawings, the Florédex is complete! ✨ Come take a tour of the design and science behind 10 iconic flowers 🌺🧵

New paper is online! We used single cell RNA-seq & phylogenetics to identify 2 additional cell type specific TFs that control late-stage vinca alkaloid biosynthesis. The key insights originated from Camptotheca, another species that produces alkaloids. doi.org/10.1111/nph.... #PlantScience #SecMet

New OA Article: "A modular high-throughput approach for advancing synthetic biology in the chloroplast of Chlamydomonas" rdcu.be/eOdZP Modular-cloning-based platform for high-throughput chloroplast engineering in Chlamydomonas reinhardtii.

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 am delighted to share our latest work on memory gene circuits for plants. This work was led by the phenomenal PhD student @patrickgong.bsky.social A lot of debugging & highlights how even simple components in synthetic biology can have unexpected properties. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Don’t miss my presentation @iGEM tomorrow at 14:00 main stage! I will be throwing out bio-designer shirts to the back row 🧬🤘

Genetically engineered color-changing Arabidopsis 🧬📷- attempt #3 I think I finally nailed it with this one.

Friday Flower 008: Tulip 🌷 Tulip’s pastel colors and waxy cuticle that scatters light give them a soft watercolor look. The “broken” petals of Semper Augustus, created by a virus, became some of the most famous and valuable flowers in history... and their genome is 34Gb 🤯

One of my Arabidopsis micro-roses next to its wild type sister ✨ Now just to make it rainbow 🧬...

Friday Flower 007: Petunia 💮✨ Petunias carry the active transposon dTph1, which powers mutant screens and paints stripey patterns as it jumps. Their five petals are fused, with diverse color designs tracing the corolla’s fusion seam.

Independent research fellowships leading to tenured positions at the John Innes Centre. Repost = nice. Thank you very much!!!

A tiny white-petalled weed beloved of plant biologists has received a CRISPR-fueled makeover, turning it into a supersized ruby-colored bloom www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Color changing flowers 🧬🎨- attempt #2 Older flowers (bottom) show dark red/ orange tints whereas young buds (top) display strong fuchsia color. Getting closer..

Friday Flower 005: Arabidopsis thaliana 🌱✨ A tiny flower, but a giant in research, thale cress enabled our understanding of flower development through the "ABC Model". With this knowledge, their flowers can be essentially reprogrammed to produce micro-roses 🧬🌹

Friday Flower 004: Hibiscus trionum 🌺✨ Hibiscus trionum displays a dark bullseye in the center that acts as a landing pad for pollinators 🎯 The bullseye is made by a developmental boundary delineating distinct cell shapes and pigments.

Sneak peak of tomorrows Friday Flower! 🌺 Whoever guesses the flower correctly gets a gold star ⭐️

W1 Tenure-Track Professor for Plant Biochemistry. Tübingen, Germany. #plantscijobs #plantscijob uni-tuebingen.de/fakultaeten/...

The "Florédex" ✨, a pokémon-inspired vector collection of the greatest flower designs and their science is coming along nicely 🌷🧬 All hand-drawn, digitalised, and animated.

Friday Flower 003: Antirrhinum majus 🐉✨ Snapdragons are icons of floral symmetry. Their corollas are bilaterally symmetrical with dorsal (d), lateral (l), and ventral (v) petals. Mutations in CYCLOIDEA produce peloric flowers with all ventral petals in radial symmetry.

Flower Butts #BlossomBottoms

Color changing flowers 🌺 🧬 From pink to white in 3 days. My first Time-lapse at @thesainsburylab.bsky.social

Inducible RUBY expression in independent transformant lines of A.thaliana over 4 days. Several lines (top) show induction everywhere except the petals... cool but I'd prefer the opposite!!

New imaging setup for my micro-rose color prototyping 🌸🔬 This design has a wine red (#a53841) center radiating into muted salmon (#d47989) along the fringes ✨ 🧬

Friday Flower 002: Mirabilis jalapa🌺✨ Four O’Clocks, like other Caryophyllales, produce red (betacyanins) and yellow (betaxanthins) petal sectors through differential regulation of betalain biosynthesis during corolla development.

Friday Flower 001: Mimulus lewisii 🌸✨ Monkeyflowers are masterpieces of design with nectar-guide spots formed by an activator–inhibitor system of MYB transcription factors. These generate reaction–diffusion patterns across the ventral petal.

"Little Flower" A Cryo-SEM portrait of my micro-rose depicting the flower as a sculpture of cells, fractured and frozen in time. Full image is 10k x 10k pixels.

Cooking up a new expansion of my falcoponic system, using standardized NSF hotel trays. These are "sixth size" and cleanly fits 1L of water. Hydroponic matt cut into 5mm x 100mm strips. Slots in standard falcoponic collars. 3D Files here: www.tinkercad.com/things/avK4M... Writeup soon.

Engineering crop flower morphology facilitates robotization of cross-pollination and speed breeding www.cell.com/cell/fulltex... #plantscience

To promote the collection, I’ve launched a designer clothing line where synthetic biology meets aesthetics. I will give out 100 free limited edition shirts to the first who retweet and order with their handle in the name! Available here → nickdesnoyer.com 🧵(6/7)

Introducing the 1,000 Flower Collection 🧬🌹 I’m creating 1,000 genetically designed flowers each crafted with new colors, patterns, and shapes. Here’s how I’m making it happen… and how you can join me on this journey 🧵(1/7)

This team based in Uganda, Africa is a community led effort of people eager to learn synthetic biology and make an important impact on the world! I have had the pleasure of interacting with this passionate team. Their paypal donation page: www.paypal.com/donate/?host...

🌱 Flipping the script on plant engineering! New ‪‪@aria-research.bsky.social‬ grant for James Locke & Chris Micklem to pioneer stochastic synthetic biology using gene expression noise as a tool to design more resilient, climate-adaptive plants. 🔗 www.slcu.cam.ac.uk/news/aria-gr... #synbio #plantsci

Our story on the biosynthesis of anti-inflammatory triterpenes from pot marigold is published ☺️ We had a lot of fun working on this beautiful & interesting species. Well done team marigold! 🌼 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Our latest paper is out in its final form in @theplantcell.bsky.social We show that in plants the same DNA sequence can act as an insulator or silencer depending on the surrounding regulatory context. Read the full paper at: doi.org/10.1093/plce...

We're hiring! Need a microscopy wizard to help build the world’s first synthetic plant chromosome! Bring your lights, lasers, & lens-craft to characterise new artificial chromosomes. Join our ARIA-funded project at UWA in Perth & ‪@plants4space.bsky.social‬. Apply: bit.ly/3GKSRSA

Happy to share that I’ve been awarded a grant from @osventuresllc.bsky.social to develop a genetic toolkit for flower design! Here was my 1-minute pitch. More details of what I'm building coming soon 🌹✨