In our latest preprint we report the unexpected discovery of Epi-STR, an R-stereoselective ortholog of the S-selective canonical Strictosidine synthases (STRs). Found in the rather obscure plant Pogonopus specious. This work was led by my stellar student Clara Morweiser! #natprod #PlantScience

Our funky R-stereoselective Epi-STR is now available online and open access at its permanent home @angewandtechemie.bsky.social. 🥳 This is Clara's first first-author paper, makes me extra happy! @mpi-ce.bsky.social #PlantScience #natprod doi.org/10.1002/anie...

I'm glad I'm not in this sector any more. Working seven days, having to fight for every cent, receiving zero support, and then they turn around and spend billions on their mates. Why should I (or anyone) burn myself out for that www.abc.net.au/news/2026-03...

I just got an e-mail asking me to "collaborate with data" that offers to put my name in a publication in exchange of experimentally testing some LLM-generated statement. I will not dignify that with an answer; my blood pressure can't deal with writing the appropriate answer.

the upshot of all this is that universities shouldn't be chasing industry trends, or trends of any sort, probably. we cede our power to *set* intellectual and cultural trends when we do that. this power demands that we always remain a bit out-of-step. i'd give anything for us to see that.

I just had that conversation earlier this week. The college dean is deciding if they will (dis)continue the bioinformatics training program for grad students. An argument for discontinuation is that students will use GenAI to help them code, so they don’t need to learn bioinformatics.

Biosynthesis of cinchona alkaloids From: www.nature.com/articles/s41... #PlantScience #SpecMet

The process by which the cinchona tree produces quinine has been elucidated. In a new study published in @nature.com, researchers from the @oconnorlab.bsky.social and the @universityofga.bsky.social unveil the biosynthetic pathway behind this 400-year-old secret. www.ice.mpg.de/548102/PR_Ki...

I’ve seen ppl discuss how over 50% of their grants wouldn’t have been awarded @ current success rates. That’s an important reflection. What about the cost of living and the benefits you received at the start of your career? Expectations are higher, and many schools aren’t even offering startup $

In case anyone needs it for their syllabi, my statement in gen-Ai from the minicomic I made as a syllabus for class last semester. All online and printable here spinweaveandcut.com/fall-2025-sy...

🪴 🫘 🫛 Come work with us in beautiful Copenhagen! This is the erfect position for you, if you like: - natural products - working with plants - solving complex metabolism puzzles - having an applied impact shorturl.at/iIjW3

I forgot to ad hashtags!! #Biosynthesis #Olive #plantscience #NaturalProducts #SecMet I may have to repost this later this week; anyone know hashtags on natural product biosynthesis or enzyme/gene discovery?

We're closing in on oleuropein biosynthesis in Olive! Oleuropein is the reason we can't eat raw olives, and also the "spicy" taste of olive oil. People assumed (and some wrongly reported) that the pathway was the same as in Catharanthus, but that's not entirely true! 🧵 www.cell.com/plant-commun...

You know, it would really add a bit credibility to your article if you would use correct structural formula of the (well-known) compound that you are studying. #chemsky www.mdpi.com/1999-4923/17...

I like to tape these graphs next to the asbestos monitoring air pumps that have been running in my building since 2014.

In #Profile: Laila P. Partida-Martínez 👇 📖 nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... #LatestIssue

There's something that breaks inside me whenever I read "human - AI collaboration" in a formal, scientific article. I don't collaborate with Excel or R anymore than I collaborare with a pipette or a mass spec. It's a marketing term that overstates capacities that editors should not allow.

I need to start making my exams less dependent on NCBI; good thing it's 10mins to the end of the test, and that I also taught them to use the EBI. But there was some panic.

Our latest New Phytologist paper has been assigned an issue. #PlantScience #SecMet nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.... Both papers advanced our understanding of how specialized metabolism are regulated in rare cell types to achieve cell type specificity. 1/n🧵

The Matthew Effect is alive and well in academia - always makes me wary of programs aimed at identifying rising stars in an already highly talented pool... elifesciences.org/reviewed-pre...

That's why funders hold the power here. Funders can decide to pay for services or not. They can decide to support authors who publish in for-profit journals, or not. They can decide to pay APCs in for-profit journals, or not. 9/n

🌱plantiSMASH 2.0💥 is now live! I’m very excited to share that the 2.0 version of plantiSMASH is now available online and as a preprint on bioRxiv 📄https://lnkd.in/dN4F56pf 🌱 What’s new in plantiSMASH 2.0? ⬇️

SAVE THE DATE! The annual meeting of the PSNA will be on June 15-19 in Wisconsin! Check the website go.wisc.edu/PSNA2026 and follow @psna-official.bsky.social for updates. And if you do research in phytochemistry, consider joining the PSNA; I've found the community to be very welcoming.

Faculty opening in Cornell Chemistry at the Assistant Professor level in the area of chemical biology, broadly defined! academicjobsonline.org/ajo/jobs/30338 #chemjobs

Essentially, narratives about the efficiency and efficacy of AI have flooded our cultural conversation about AI thereby resulting in the uncritical uptake of anything branded as "AI" as inherently more valuable, more effective, than anything without AI, EVEN IF AI IS NOT NECESSARY.

Has anyone else seen an increase in manuscript submissions using triple quads for untargeted metabolomics? Are vendors telling people they can do untargeted with a TQD? Or did I miss something?

Call for Ambizione Ambizione grants are aimed at early-career researchers who wish to conduct and lead a project of their own. Interested in learning more about this call? Take part in our online info event on 14 August 2025. Submission deadline: 4 November 2025 ➡️ buff.ly/dDQl9QA

I’ve been mystified for years why my line of research (which includes genetic engineering of plants) makes (German) people so much more upset than the AI work of my campus neighbors. And why does eco-anxiety have a @wikipedia.org page, but not AI-anxiety?

Also, I can tell you exactly all the components on your sample with a single test, including concentrations and place of origin! That's why my screen has all these spinning structures.

Hello, I am a scientist in a film. All my liquids are brightly coloured. The time it takes to perform tests and experiments is dependent on plot requirements, not biology or chemistry. Also, my safety glasses are extremely stylish.

Fiiiine, apparently half my readers enjoy an info dump, so here we go! Grasslands Sequester Carbon Too or “Why trees are not the be-all and end-all.” Ahem. *takes a sip of water*

We owe this confidence to generations of scientists who pushed the boundaries of knowledge, not knowing if their efforts would make a difference. Oliver and Schafer didn’t put calf adrenal extracts into dogs to save my son but because they thought the world should know what adrenal glands do. 20/n

Started as a very successful master thesis, now published in JACS. Screening sequence similarity networks turned out to be a great way to discover oxidosqualene cyclases with unusual activity from more than thousand plant transcriptome sequence datasets. pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/...

Authoritarians love "Gen AI" because it - Sounds confident even when factually wrong - Broadly conforms to & reproduces their biases, off the shelf - Lets them create bespoke realities (text, audio, moving & still image) which agree w/ their biases - Degrades trust in knowledge/evidence/expertise…

Three back-to-back Salicylic Acid biosynthesis papers 1/3 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

The 64th Annual Meeting of the Phytochemical Society of North America (#PSNA2025) starts today at York University, Toronto. We welcome all attendees to dive into groundbreaking phytochemical research, vibrant networking, and fun experiences! #PlantScience #Phytochemisty Download detailed programme

"a fascinating case study on the limits of AI in biology and the harms of current publishing incentives" rachel.fast.ai/posts/2025-0...

Highly recommended read on the discovery of a very, very elusive enzyme!

Today in Nature we report a systematic strategy to activate & identify gene sets in plants. We identify 8 new genes from the yew tree's Taxol biosynthetic pathway, enabling us to engineer tobacco with 17- & 20-gene pathways to Taxol precursors baccatin III & deBz-deoxy-Taxol #SingleCell #secmet 🧬🧪🌾

Fantastic work by the Sattely group on taxol biosynthesis, featuring a highly innovative application of single nuclei sequencing to find elusive biosynthetic genes 👏 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Hi everyone! I’m new to Bluesky. At the beginning of the year, I moved to Zurich @UZH_en to start a postdoc with #CyrilZipfel and @pedrobeltrao.bsky.social, investigating protein phosphorylation in plants 🌱 If you’re nearby or working on something similar, let’s connect 😀

New preprint out from the @oconnorlab.bsky.social department led by Moonyoung Kang, Anh Vu and Lorenzo Caputi. Metabolomics and RNA-seq on the same single cell! Or as we call it here in the lab: "the split-cell method"

I got hit by some rather sudden and extreme financial hardship so if anyone is in need of remote wetlab contract research, strictly BSL1, do let me know. Currently scrambling for gigs. Plant, Bacterial, Archaeal Non-model Bioeng Custom Lab Hardware Turn Key Genetic Design Please repost for reach 💚

We're hiring! 🥼 2-year lab technician at UCPH from 01 Aug 🌿 Support our research in plant natural products with relevance in agriculture, nutrition, and medicine. 🧬 Your skills: plant molecular biology and/or tissue culture & transformation 📅 Deadline 18 May 2025 jobportal.ku.dk/administrati...

Hello Bluesky! 🎉 The Photochemical Society of North America☘️ is here! We'll be sharing all the latest updates on PSNA2025. Don't miss out on early bird registration – it's still available! Join us! #PSNA2025 #Photochemistry #Science www.psna2025.com/register

Is anyone else having problems with MASSive? Anyone know if the repository is going to remain active? #MassSpec

Our director Sarah O'Connor, head of the Department of Natural Product Biosynthesis @oconnorlab.bsky.social, has has been elected a member of the German National Academy of Sciences, the #Leopoldina! Congratulations! 👏 www.ice.mpg.de/492460/sarah...

Anyone knows of an alternative to GenBank for depositing sequences? An EBI mirror like the ENA is to the SRA?

Radicalize your loved ones before they get radicalized.

Opening at UdeM Biochemistry department for a professor position in bioinfomatics! www.umontreal.ca/public/www/d...