My lab has received an NSF CAREER Award funding for the next 5 years! Grateful to the NSF for continuing to support my lab's research and training (Award #2544620). The project asks the question: how do legumes differentiate between and select the best symbionts? Positions coming soon!

Barn swallows can be sardines.

When a topic is as big as specialized metabolism, it will almost always be possible to write "we don't know much about specialized metabolism so...". But at what point does that sentence loose utility in its repeating?

I'm very excited and so grateful to receive an NSF CAREER award - we'll be testing ideas about how CAM evolves using C3+CAM intermediate species and teaching students how plant physiology and genomics can simultaneously inform our understanding of plant biodiversity. www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/... 1/2

If you are a mystery solver, want to learn more about hybridization or just love boechera come check out my talk #Evol2026 tomorrow at 2:45 “What roles have polyploidy and hybridization played in the evolution of eastern Boechera stricta?”

The German shepherd hides close to me whenever there is a backup beep from a truck. The Mastiff knows he hates that sound and lays close to him to comfort.

What does fewer but better papers even mean? Tons more work in single papers? Feels like a way for labs with tons of support to churn through labor to create single papers. Can’t do that in labs living grant to grant as need papers for people to start their careers.

Amy Angert and I are recruiting 2 temporary field technicians to assist with demographic surveys across the range of scarlet monkeyflower in California and Oregon. Perfect for recent graduates who are considering applying for grad school. Apply here: jobs.ncsu.edu/postings/231.... Please share!

A co-proteomic view of metabolite-specific interactions in the Botrytis cinerea-Arabidopsis pathosystem https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.06.05.730517v1

ATML1-GIR1-TPL/TPR transcriptional repression module controls glucosinolates and giant cells in Arabidopsis thaliana sepals https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.06.03.724713v1

Happy to share our work! 🍄🍇 Botrytis cinerea grapevine-specialized strains harbor a specific repertoire of transposons. While retrotransposon-derived small RNAs do not appear to play a significant role in virulence on grapevine, a new giant transposon—a #Starship— confers arsenic resistance.

The whole robot driven research idea feels like it will drive all biology to single cell systems and any organismal or field level analysis will be largely lost. Not seeing a cost effective whole life cycle robot for plant or animal biology for a long time.

After 25 years if genetically Manipulating glucosinolates there is one key takeaway for synthetic biology; every single genomic background will behave differently and you can’t predict it using any existing data no matter how skilled the AI or human. There is simply not enough independent data.

Second study showed: How do diverse plants respond to the same pathogen? Using a cross-species transcriptomic atlas, we uncover conserved and lineage-specific immune responses. 📖 doi.org/10.1073/pnas...

First study ask: How does B. cinerea infect such a wide range of plants? We reveal conserved and host-specific transcriptional programs that underpin its broad host range. 📖 doi.org/10.1073/pnas...

Excited to share two new PNAS papers on Botrytis cinerea—the fungus that spoils nearly everything. Together, these studies explore how the pathogen infects diverse hosts and how plants respond across evolutionary diversity.

The problem is not coming up with hypothesis and experiments. AI doing that faster is nibbling at the edge of optimization. The problem is hands, money and training to do the crazy experiments needed. Robots will need a long time to have the throughput per dollar efficiency for plant research.

Let’s see if Turner and Hooch on? I love that Hooch, they’re hilarious.

🌱 From UC Davis: Gray mold can sense which crop it infects and tailor its attack, helping explain why broad resistance breeding has had limited success. (Dan Kliebenstein) ▶️ www.ucdavis.edu/food/news/fu... #PlantScience #PlantPathology

🌱 From PNAS: Plant defenses against gray mold rely on shared stress responses but highly species-specific immune networks. (Ritu Singh, Anna Jo Muhich, Cloe Tom, Celine Caseys, Daniel J. Kliebenstein) ▶️ www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... #PlantScience #PlantPathology

We are excited to release the BAT!🦇🚨 We've used this phylogenetic analysis pipeline in our lab for years, and grad Ben Sheppard now presents a Github release and preprint. I run BAT analyses almost daily. It makes exploring gene families routine, customizable, and fun🧵

From bioRxiv: Common genomic selection benchmarks may overstate breeding gains, prompting calls for more realistic evaluation methods in crop improvement. (Daniel E Runcie) ▶️ www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... #PLantScience #PlantBreeding

Excited to share new work from us in the @spicybotrytis.bsky.social lab on Botrytis-legume co-transcriptomics. Similar disease phenotypes between your hosts could be masking a ton of underlying transcriptional plasticity 🌱💥 academic.oup.com/g3journal/ad...

Interesting tidbit of pangenome variation. Showing something works in one individual each in two distantly related species doesn’t mean it is highly conserved across all individuals or even most species in between those two.

Only took a couple of months but the brothers are besties now.

Gotta love all the canvas jokes when students out there are wondering if they will be allowed to graduate. Yes it’s a $&$& show but damn, this is a $&$& show that could mess up students majorly. Solve the immediate crisis then go after the long term problem.

In todays my brain is shot from 10,000 words after editing 30 writing assignments. Broad integrative research for a lab isn't the wise path. Wiser is a focused contributor to integrative research. Easy categorization facilitates understanding, or comfort therein, of the lab.

You gotta love the arguments that science (side note NIH is not a synonym for science) has lost the track on risky research and how do we reform science. But this never discusses the required reformation of politics/society discussions as risky science is the easiest to attack as a waste of money.

🌱 From The Plant Cell: Identifying an aberrant RNA trigger reveals why some engineered genes shut down, guiding design of more stable traits in crops. (Richard Michelmore , Blake C Meyers) ▶️ academic.oup.com/plcell/artic... #PlantScience #PlantBiology

congrats to José Alonso for this prestigious accomplishment and great honor supported by your colleagues! @alonsostepanovalab.bsky.social cals.ncsu.edu/news/nc-stat...

Over the moon for @jrossibarra.bsky.social ! A great scientist, colleague, and friend. Still terrible puns though.

Hiring at IPB Halle! Department Head & Director – Chemistry of Natural Products and Bioactives. Exceptional position with outstanding support & research environment. Apply now by April 24, 2026!-> berufungsportal.uni-halle.de #NaturalProductChemistry #AcademicJobs #IPB #PlantScience

Hey #MPMI crowd, we are having trouble finding co-proteome papers looking into the host and pathogen proteome at the same time. I know they must exist but can’t find them. Any suggestions?

Another paper hot off the press! We profiled protein abundance, acetylation, and phosphorylation in rice infected with Magnaporthe oryzae. Awesome work led by @pri-auler.bsky.social. It was great hosting her in my lab for a year long post-doc internship!!! onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

It is that time of the year when the @ipbhalle.bsky.social puts together an excellent lineup for speakers for our Plant Biochemistry Symposium. This time the symposium reflects Steffen Abel’s scientific interests as we celebrate his time at the IPB

The NSF BIO Plant Biology Act (H.R.7949) would strengthen investments in plant and microbial research—helping drive innovation and protect U.S. agriculture. Learn why it matters and how to take action 👉 buff.ly/xRu6Eqz #PlantScience #SciencePolicy

The brothers get along. The little one is 10 months and the big one is six years.

In the argument about AI, fundamentals and enabling creativity in education, I keep thinking back to art museums. What has always stunned me about impressionists and cubists is not how they created entirely new styles. It is their early works showing how phenomenal their fundamental skills were.

We are hiring! We’re excited to recruit a postdoc to our lab at UC Davis to work on plant immune engineering and single-cell analyses of plant pathogen interactions. Apply by June 1. Please repost. www.coakerlab.org/postdoctoral...

Gitta is an excellent scientist and mentor 🤩

Three Botrytis/Eudicot papers accepted. A reevaluation point on a question about generalism started with @katherinedenby.bsky.social 's sabbatical 24 years ago. Continued by a broad team of undergrads to post-docs including @annajomu.bsky.social @ccaseys.bsky.social and more not on bsky.

I have a feeling a lot of scientists need a intro genetics refresher.

One can easily predict 75-90% of the genes for a known specialized metabolite pathway in a new species with just phylogeny and co-expression. No machine learning needed. And no synteny needed. The problem is the edge cases of brand new genes that don’t coexpress. The Achilles of machine learning.

Full version available now of our new pennycress paper at @newphyt.bsky.social - great working with @stairwaytokevin.bsky.social, @spicybotrytis.bsky.social, @jotlovell.bsky.social, et al. Come for the pretty pictures, stay for the cool science! nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10....

Was not Andrew. IIRC, was Herman Höfte representing the Versailles groups and it wasn't on the schedule at Arabidopsis 1993 in Columbus OH. The talk was given on an overhead projector via transparencies. Bechtold et al 1993 was the sea change. This meeting was off the hook . 1/n

Community resource: Structure and sequence evolution in the pennycress (Thlaspi arvense) pangenome Bird, et al. nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... #PlantScience

It was a total delight to work with this team and be involved with this project! And we found such cool results!

Passed puppies.

Out now in @newphyt.bsky.social with @joannarifkin.bsky.social, @jotlovell.bsky.social, @spicybotrytis.bsky.social & more! Our high-quality pennycress pangenome is a striking example of genome architecture shaping different kinds of genomic variation, including some surprising centromeric movement

We also used this as an opportunity to look at the evolution of immunity gene clusters (NLRs) at a higher level across species and show that the well-documented turnover of these genes is juxtaposed against positional conservation across species. The clusters are the same but the players change