🌱 Great to be in Reno, NV, celebrating the 80th anniversary of @sivbbiology.bsky.social ! 🎉 A fantastic opportunity to learn about the latest advances in plant biotechnology & genome editing, while reconnecting with colleagues. #SIVB2026

Timely preprint by @pennyhundleby.bsky.social and colleagues on the global 🌍regulatory status of gene-edited crops! 🧬🌱 zenodo.org/records/2014... Also a great initiative to maintain up-to-date global regulatory maps 🗺️ cropgeregulations.com

Golden Gate 🧬 builds complex T-DNAs for plant transformation & gene editing — but what if we used it to make binary vector backbones? Glad to contribute to Jonas De Saeger's (Jacobs lab @psb-vib.bsky.social ) preprint on BackBone Builder 🔧🌱 tinyurl.com/4ycydjhe

Last week we hosted our first workshop in the context of the #MeioCOntrol @fwovlaanderen.bsky.social anderen project! 🔬🧠 Researchers from @ILVO, De Storme lab @kuleuvenplantinst.bsky.social and Pauwels lab @mobi-ugent.bsky.social came together to learn and brainstorm about CRISPR in plants 🌿🧬

Welcoming Anne Muia from Kenyatta University @kenyattauni.bsky.social & NBA Kenya, as she joins us for a month of lab work; via @VIB_IPBO! @fbwugent.bsky.social

🌿 Plant Immunity in Focus - Join us on Dec 9, 2025 at Coupure, Ghent @fbwugent.bsky.social 🕒 15:00 Melissa Mageroy (NIBIO) 🕒 15:45 @jurriaanton.bsky.social (Sheffield U) 🎓 Followed by PhD defense of Jasper Matthys at 17:00. #PlantScience #Epigenetics #PlantImmunity #UGent #DoctoralSchool

🌱 Our latest: in Plant Biotech J we study transgenerational #CRISPR editing in #maize🌽 using a split Cas9/gRNA system, highlighting importance of event quality & choice of promoters. 👏 Christian Lorenzo, Dirk Inzé and Hilde Nelissen @fbwugent.bsky.social @psb-vib.bsky.social doi.org/10.1111/pbi....

In this new paper from the Ying Wang lab in PBJ, a VIGS system for sugar beet was optimized using a BSCTV vector. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... Excited to welcome first author Zhangyao Nie later this month to our lab on a CSC preference scholarship 🎓!

🎉 Great news from MoBi! Gerard Serrat Mayayo will start as an FWO SB doctoral fellow in Prof. @laurenspauwels.bsky.social EDIT group, and Dylan Cool obtained a Baekeland mandate with Prof. Tina Kyndt (EPIC), Prof. Kris Audenaert & BASF Congrats — we look forward to 4 exciting years! 👏

First 🌽 maize plants for the #MeioCOntrol @fwovlaanderen.bsky.social project are now in soil at the @fbwugent.bsky.social greenhouses in Merelbeke 🌱 Together with ILVO and @kuleuvenplantinst.bsky.social , the EDIT group @mobi-ugent.bsky.social will use these to study meiotic recombination in crops

Had a great week sharing our experiences on plant transformation & gene editing at the 1st @aabiologists.bsky.social PlantEd Training School, HHU Düsseldorf. Expertly organised by Goetz Hensel, with great lectures from @sadiyehayta.bsky.social, @marksmedley1.bsky.social & Katrijn Van Laere

Our 1st PlantEd Training School is underway now in Düsseldorf! 🌱🧬 With early career scientists attending from all over the world to train up on targeted plant mutagenesis, we're happy to see them out enjoying the sights yesterday evening after a packed first day! #plantscience #earlycareer

PAPER from @bertderybel.bsky.social, @moritznowack.bsky.social and @laurenspauwels.bsky.social in @theplantcell.bsky.social academic.oup.com/plcell/advan...

🚨 Vacancy PhD student 🚨 Passionate about #CRISPR, plant biotechnology, & breeding? Join our project on meiotic recombination in #maize 🌽 A collaboration of our lab @fbwugent.bsky.social, ILVO & @kuleuvenplantinst.bsky.social 🔗https://www.ugent.be/en/work/scientific/doctoral-fellow-41

🚨 New preprint alert! 🚨 We used single-cell RNA-seq + GRN analysis to uncover novel morphogenic genes that boost #maize transformation frequency 🌽 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... Thanks to @vandepoelelab.bsky.social @bertderybel.bsky.social and all other co-authors! #PlantScience

Our latest on cell death and our second on maize: Using single-nucleus RNAseq of maize endosperm, Nicolas Doll (now @rdplab.bsky.social‬) shows that KIL transcription factors promote endosperm cell death to facilitate embryo growth - with a genomic imprinting twist! academic.oup.com/plcell/advan...

Science & sunshine 🔬☀️ We traded pipettes for drinks last Friday with a visit to GAZON (instagram.com/gazon.gent), Ghent's most popular summer bar and just next door to our campus! 🍻

The full Agrobacterium 2025 programme is now live! 📅 Early bird registration ends June 13 — don’t miss out! 🚶‍♀️ Join the Tall Tales of Leuven city walk (Sept 14) — included in the fee, but registration required. 🔗 tinyurl.com/4rdw84fa #Agrobacterium2025 #PlantScience

🚨 #Agrobacterium2025: Abstract deadline this Monday! 🚨 Our final invited speaker: Christoph Dehio @biozentrum.unibas.ch @unibas.ch — diving into β-glucan synthesis 🔬 👉 Check out this recent paper: www.nature.com/articles/s41... 📢 Submit your abstract now: www.biw.kuleuven.be/biosyst/crop...

Last week, Mobi explored how to use AI to transform our research and education 🤖. Great hands-on sessions by Evelyne De Caluwé and AnneMarie Leuridan that went far beyond ChatGPT 🚀✨ #PromptEngineering #VibeCoding #AITrends

Big news for #Agrobacterium2025 in Leuven, Belgium. Thanks to our amazing #sponsors, we’re able to offer travel awards for grad students + poster prizes! 🏆✈️ 📢 New abstract deadline: May 10 👉 www.kuleuven.be/agrobacterium2025 #SciComm #PhDLife #Microbiology #PlantScience

Our next invited speaker for #Agrobacterium2025 is Erh-Min Lai from Academia Sinica. Breakthrough report published this week by Chih-Horng Kuo, Erh-Min Lai and Chih-Hang Wu doi.org/10.1111/pbi.... 15-16/9 in Leuven, Belgium. Abstract deadline: May 1! kuleuven.be/agrobacteriu...

Happy to announce that our next invited speaker for #Agrobacterium2025 is Alexandra Weisberg from @osubpp.bsky.social! Seminal paper by @weisbergaj.bsky.social here: www.science.org/doi/full/10.... 15-16/9 in Leuven, Belgium. Abstract deadline: May 1! www.kuleuven.be/agrobacterium2025

Excited to announce Prof. Patrick Shih @innovativegenomics.bsky.social @ucberkeleyofficial.bsky.social as an invited speaker for #Agrobacterium2025 on 15-16/9 in Leuven, Belgium Recent publication Shih lab: www.nature.com/articles/s41... Abstract deadline: May 1! www.kuleuven.be/agrobacterium2025

Just arrived in Songdo, Korea! Excited to be teaching 🌱Plant Biotechnology at Ghent University Global Campus for the next few weeks. 🎓 #GUGC @mobi-ugent.bsky.social @fbwugent.bsky.social #plantscience

#Agrobacterium 2025. The 45th American Crown Gall meeting and the 5th European Agrobacterium conference: registration and abstract submission is now open! #deadline May 1, 2025. Thanks to our sponsors we will select some students for travel grants. www.kuleuven.be/agrobacterium2025

Again a superb example of the power of #CRISPR gene editing in crops by Xiao-Ya Chen and Caixia Gao labs! Engineering of Coenzyme Q10 production is rice and wheat using advanced prime editing and GRAND systems to make quintuple amino acid substitutions. #plantresearch www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...

March IPBO Online Café Series! ☕🌱 @laurenspauwels.bsky.social from @fbwugent.bsky.social and Prof. Runo, Kenyatta University will discuss Agrobacterium-mediated transformation and gene editing to manage witchweed in crops. 📅 Friday, March 7th, 2025 ⏰ 3:30 PM (EAT) 🖱️ Register: lnkd.in/gEMSBa3f

Vacancy @AgroBioTech in Gembloux! Full-time academic position in #plantgenetics to study plant genetic resources for supporting the agroecological transition #vacancy #plantresearch www.gembloux.uliege.be/upload/docs/...

Very happy to see our work on deleterious mutations in #tomato published in @naturegenet.bsky.social 🧬🌱🍅! We identify deleterious mutations that were enriched during #domestication and apply #CRISPR to repair a mutation in cultivated tomato. #genetics #plantscience www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Save the date! #AGROBACTERIUM2025 Joint event of the 45st American Crown Gall meeting and the 5th European #Agrobacterium conference SEPTEMBER 15-16 2025, LEUVEN, BELGIUM More info soon!

🎉 New @biorxiv-plants.bsky.social preprint from the @sebastiansoyk.bsky.social lab and Gwen Swinnen (a former PhD student of mine 😊) on the use of GRF-GIF and RUBY for transformation and #CRISPR in 🍅 Tomato. Great work! 👏✨ www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

New lab, new @Cuisinart ! #labessentials www.nature.com/articles/s41...

#CRISPR is revolutionizing plant breeding. However, plant transformation remains an obstacle. The 1st MoBi group we introduce is Plant Transformation & Gene Editing @laurenspauwels.bsky.social studying the processes behind #Agrobacterium mediated transformation & plant regeneration. #plantscience

First post on @bsky.app highlighting our collaboration with Ana Caño lab (CRAG) on on using BBM/WUS-technology and a ternary vector system to transform #sorghum and maize. Now published in @theplantjournal.bsky.social @psb-vib.bsky.social #Agrobacterium