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gene-boy.bsky.social
Plant gene editor 🧑‍🔬🌿🧬🔧 Making plants resistant to diseases 🦠🔨 Former hippy 🌺, now a scientist 🧪 PhD student at the Jonathan Jones Lab, TSL
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New preprint from @erdrich-science.bsky.social of our collaborative project with @borjana-a.bsky.social, @fz-juelich.de and @guidogrossmann.bsky.social @hhu.de: "Phage biocontrol reduces the burden on plant immunity through suppression of bacterial virulence" www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Some sompanies (Sony & Microsoft) have raised their prices abroad to help pay for tariffs in the US. As a European, I don't appreciate being made to pay for Trump's caprices. Such companies will not be getting my custom any time soon. www.reuters.com/business/xbo...

What a wonderful bit of good news!

"Stark’s team found that not only were Ramos’ vocal tissues healthy, but he was also moving structures in his larynx in ways that clean singers usually don’t and incorporating other structures that aren’t typically associated with singing." The endoscopy video is fascinating to watch!

Researchers are inviting death metal singers into the lab to understand how they can scream, growl, and squeal without hurting their vocal tissues. What they’re finding upends conventional wisdom on vocal health. ✍️ @ohyeahitscouch.bsky.social

One representative of a British funding agency: “Look around, there are all sorts of problems, cheating, and misconduct in all walks of life; for example, look what’s happening in the Catholic Church.” By Csaba Szabo #sciencecrisis forbetterscience.com/2025/04/22/f...

"The introduction of the less regulated gene-editing tech has allowed smaller companies to enter the fold – whereas genetic modification had been dominated by four multinational companies." A nice read on using crispr for consumer-tailored foods by Katrina Megget / @chemistryworld.com

"Tropical tree in Panama has evolved to kill its 'enemies' with lightning" www.livescience.com/planet-earth... by @jacklinkwan.bsky.social for Live Sciences #PlantScience

Re-analysis of mobile mRNA datasets raises questions about the extent of long-distance mRNA communication www.nature.com/articles/s41... Amazing detective work led by the Richard Morris group at @johninnescentre.bsky.social

I'm very excited our most recent work on plant tandem kinases (TKPs) has finally been published! TKPs are a fascinating protein family conferring disease resistance to fungi. Originally in bioRxiv. Many thanks to @yichangsung.bsky.social for leading this work. 🧵 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Semi-automated workflow for high-throughput Agrobacterium-mediated plant transformation. Summary of our efforts to accelerate plant transgenics with the @earlhaminst.bsky.social Biofoundry. Now published in @theplantjournal.bsky.social. #PlantScience #Synbio onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Following the playbook of the tobacco & fossil fuel industries, a #meat & #dairy industry coalition used a mud-slinging PR campaign to discredit the EAT-Lancet report, which it deemed an emerging threat to its business interests… (1/2) www.theguardian.com/environment/... #diets #PR

Current #agriculture policies encourage the growing of crops that are detrimental to human & planetary #health; there is an oversupply of #grains, animal products & #sugar, and not enough #vegetables, #legumes or nuts… (1/2) doi.org/10.1377/hlth... #meat #dairy

Great commentary by Salomon & Watts-Williams on why AMF are still underutilized in agriculture and how that can change Surprised to read so many basic applied questions remain unanswered, given the amount of research that's been going on for decades now nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

🎉 Excited to share that our work is now published in PLOS Genetics @plos.org! The helper NLR NRC3 evolved to evade inhibition by the cyst nematode effector SS15 over 19 million years ago. Check out the peer-reviewed version of our preprint: 🔗 doi.org/10.1371/jour...

Europe, my ancestral home! www.downtoearth.org.in/amp/story/af...

It‘s Complicated: Why Are There So Few Commercially Successful Crop Varieties Engineered for Disease Resistance? doi.org/10.1111/mpp....

📜 Fast & Fair peer review: a pilot study demonstrating feasibility of rapid, high-quality peer review in a biology journal 🧑‍🔬 @danielgorelick.bsky.social, Alejandra Clark 📔 @biorxivpreprint.bsky.social 🔗 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... #️⃣ #SciPub #ScientificPublishing #PeerReview

Environmental causes of ALS? This is a fascinating article suggesting mushroom toxins led to a 10-fold higher incidence of ALS www.theatlantic.com/health/archi...

1/ Transposable elements are often called "jumping genes" because they mobilize within genomes. 🧬 But did you know they can also jump 𝘣𝘦𝘵𝘸𝘦𝘦𝘯 cells? 🤯 Our new study reveals how retrotransposons invade the germline directly from somatic cells. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... A short thread 🧵👇

A wonderful initiative by the IGI! Helping people learn to do Gene Editing

Towana Looney's inspiring video for her survival record after xenotransplantation, wow mycrispr.blog/2025/03/13/t...

First post on Bluesky!! ☀️ Very happy to share that my main postdoc work ‘Systematic Discovery and Design of Synthetic Immune Receptors in Plants’ is finally out on Biorxiv! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... The full story is summarized here:

How exciting!!! 🥳 🎉

📜 Modular mechanisms of immune priming and growth inhibition mediated by plant effector-triggered immunity 🧑‍🔬 Himanshu Chhillar, @dinglab.bsky.social, et al. 📔 Cell Reports 🔗 www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... #️⃣ #PlantScience #PlantImmunity

Dr. Vasantavada: “The science is clear — biotech crops have led to enhanced farmer incomes, improved yields & greater environmental sustainability. If India is serious about food security & agricultural growth, it cannot afford to ignore this technology.”

#PlantScienceClassics #2: Radiation-induced mutagenesis. 100 years ago, in 1921, Emmy Stein developed radiation-induced mutagenesis of #Antirrhinum majus plants, a process she called ‘Radiomorphosis’. But today, her invaluable contribution is being completely ignored… Read on doi.org/10.1007/BF01...

BREAKING: Elon Musk's rocket explosion nearly hit a commercial flight. This kind of content is being downranked on X. Please share it here. This is so dangerous.

🥜 🚨BREAKTHROUGH ALERT!🚨🥜 Using a #CRISPR/Cas9 targeted knockout of the betaine aldehyde dehydrogenase genes AhBADH1 and AhBADH2, Xue et al. have created the first fragrant🥜peanut lines! 🔓 doi.org/10.1111/jipb... #PlantScience #Horticulture #FoodScience #OpenAccess

New sequencing technology by Roche! Purportedly up to 5Gb 😮 looking forward to longer and cheaper nanopore seq european-biotechnology.com/latest-news/...

Pls repost 🚨I'm looking for someone excited about #proteindesign and #synbio to join my lab @Durham_Uni at the CPBM @cpbm-heddlelab.bsky.social to undertake a PhD using #synthetic knottins as novel #bioinsecticides. If you're interested please get in touch and check out the advert below 👇

Come join us in making agriculture sustainable at Phytoform! We are looking for an R&D scientist with a background in CRISPR gene-editing optimization as well as a Plant genome engineer. Check out the description at the link. If you think this could be, please apply! www.phytoformlabs.com/careers

Nothing brightens your day quite like befriending a small fluffy creature

Excellent statement. Thank you @plosbiology.org 🙏 Time to ditch toxic commercial publishers once for all. Make this an opportunity.

Researchers at Fred Hutch have discovered an overlooked mechanism driving aggressive breast and brain tumors involving genes so ancient — more than 2 billion years old — that they fly under the radar of standard genetic sequencing methods. 1/9 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...