Michael Hothorn

Phosphorylation on tyrosines control key pathways in immunity, cancer, and metabolism. For the first time, we can now design proteins that specifically recognize individual phosphotyrosines, even in disordered regions. (1/8)

Preprint: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Nutrient-driven TOR signalling controls a chromatin-associated complex for orchestrating plant growth and stress tolerance - Nature Plants A chromatin-associated complex, which is dynamically regulated by TOR kinase at the translational level, functions to suppress the transcription of stress-responsive genes marked by histone acetylation, thereby coordinating plant growth and stress tolerance.

Discovery of a chromatin-associated complex (CACG) of ~16 proteins that negatively regulates the expression of nutrient-starvation-induced gene. CACG is of course controlled by TOR! #PlantScience www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Amazing work by the Santiago lab @unil.bsky.social. The malectin-LRR receptor kinase IGP1 senses cello-oligomers to alert the plant immune system & enhance disease resistance. Very nice discovery & mechanism.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Be our new colleague! 🎉
The Dept of Molecular and Cellular Biology at the University of Geneva is hiring an Assistant Professor or Associate Professor.

👉 More details here: lnkd.in/e8Z9eAm4
👉 Our department: mocel.unige.ch

Please feel free to share this opportunity with your network.

Congratulations!!!

A very nice piece of work (again). Congratulations Ulrich!

One good way to identify what is missing or poorly understood about your favourite metabolic or signalling pathway is to teach a four-hour (6,8,12,14h) course on it. Teaching can act as a free hypothesis generator, especially if students start to asks those very basic questions....

Call for a tenure-track position at our Department of Plant Molecular Biology in Lausanne! We are searching for promising early-career researchers in the broad field of plant-organismal interactions. Deadline: November 30, 2025 - Please re-post!

career5.successfactors.eu/career?caree...

This looks like a great opportunity: #Tenure-track assistant #professor position at University of Lausanne on #MPMI
career5.successfactors.eu/career?caree...

Today’s department seminar on SnRK1 by Elena Baena Gonzalez from @ox.ac.uk

In future, fewer applications will be approved for the SNSF's main funding scheme Project funding and for Career funding than at present. For the next three years 2026 to 2028, the Research Council will decide on the extent of these cuts each year. 🥺

🚀 Exciting PhD opportunity in structural biology & plant science! 🌱 PhD Position – Structural and Functional Studies of Plant Membrane-Protein Transporters 📍 Molecular Biology & Genetics -… ... 🚀 Exciting PhD opportunity in structural biology & plant science! 🌱 PhD Position – Structural and Functional Studies of Plant Membrane-Protein Transporters 📍 Molecular Biology & Genetics - Aarhus Un...

Interested in structural biology, membrane proteins, biophysics and working to understand hormone transport in plants?☘️🔬👩‍🔬🧪
We have an open PhD position:
- 3 years fully funded.
- Details and application link: www.linkedin.com/posts/plant-...
Please repost 💚

Congratulations Laura, well deserved!

Come and join us in our new home - great colleagues and brand new facilities

Head of Service Unit Proteomics

📢 We’re hiring!

🌱 The @mpi-mp-potsdam.bsky.social in Potsdam is seeking a Head of Service Unit Proteomics (mass spectrometry-based proteomics).

🗓 Apply by 30.09.2025

👉 jobs.mpimp-golm.mpg.de/jobposting/8...

This one is a bit of a departure from the usual and definitely a work in progress!

We found that by using ab initio reconstruction at very high res, in very small steps, we could crack some small structures that had eluded us - e.g. 39kDa iPKAc (EMPIAR-10252), below.

Read on for details... 1/x

Examples of ABA created in Jsmol

Researchers are looking to develop ABA analogs that can be sprayed on crop plants during droughts to reduce the amount of water needed during irrigation.
More at September's Molecule of the Month look at the Abscisic Acid Receptor:
pdb101.rcsb.org/motm...

Computational design of sequence-specific DNA-binding proteins Nature Structural & Molecular Biology, Published online: 12 September 2025; doi:10.1038/s41594-025-01669-4The authors develop a computational method to design small DNA-binding proteins (DBPs) that target specific sequences. Designed DBPs show structural accuracy and function in both bacterial and mammalian cells for transcriptional regulation.

New online: Computational design of sequence-specific DNA-binding proteins

Conservation of heat stress acclimation by the IPK2-type kinases that control the synthesis of the inositol pyrophosphate 4/6-InsP7 in land plants Author summary Inositol pyrophosphates (PP-InsPs) are eukaryote-specific cellular messengers that control a plethora of critical physiological processes, ranging from cellular metabolism to cellular e...

Happy to share our work on identification of non-archetypal activity of IPK2 in producing inositol pyrophosphate 4/6-IP7 and regulating heat stress acclimation-conserved in studied land plants. Grateful to @jessenlab.bsky.social for wonderful collaborative efforts!

journals.plos.org/plosgenetics...

Genetically encoded FerriTag as a specific label for cryo-electron tomography Wang et al. present an optimized labeling strategy for cryo-electron tomography based on genetically encoded FerriTag. This system uses rapamycin to recruit iron-loaded ferritin to target proteins, en...

Paper alert🚨
Label your protein of interest and localize it in cryoET 👁️❄️

Genetically encoded FerriTag as a specific label for cryo-electron tomography: Structure www.cell.com/structure/fu...

ggplot2 4.0.0 A new major version of ggplot2 has been released on CRAN. Find out what is new here.

I am beyond excited to announce that ggplot2 4.0.0 has just landed on CRAN.

It's not every day we have a new major #ggplot2 release but it is a fitting 18 year birthday present for the package.

Get an overview of the release in this blog post and be on the lookout for more in-depth posts #rstats

Call for Applications / Ausschreibung

Springboard for an international scientific career! 🧬🧪🔭⚛️🧠🌱 Call for #MaxPlanckResearchGroups launched; applications are possible until October 14, 2025 www.mpg.de/max-planck-r... #ScienceCareer

Boltz v2.2.1 out. A few improvements including support for .pdb templates, better treatment of stereochemistry in guidance potentials, and improved documentation. As always a great thank you to all those in the community who contributed via PR, raising issues or directly reporting issues to us.

📢 A Junior Professorship (W1, tenure track) is open at the Center for Plant Molecular Biology at Uni Tübingen (@zmbp-tuebingen.bsky.social) — to work on plant protein biochemistry (composition, structure, dynamics, or regulation of protein complexes). 🌱 Great opportunity — Apply by Oct 17th!

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

Precision plant epigenome editing: what, how, and why Advances in genome engineering have paved the way for targeted epigenome engineering, providing fundamental insights into the role of epigenetic modifications in trait inheritance. Engineered epialleles have already delivered stable, heritable changes in agronomic traits. Despite this capacity, progress in the field has not yet achieved its potential, leaving many avenues of research unexplored. In this review we examine the factors influencing this progress, including the advances in current epigenome editing techniques, the key research goals and translational applications, and the challenges in the selection of ideal target loci. We propose that improved tools for the selection of target loci, particularly in large and complex genomes, are needed to propel the field forward.

Precision plant epigenome editing: what, how, and why #plantscience

We are hiring-join us!

I am not sure at which point in human evolution something qualifies as "scientific discovery" vs. "engineering" or "stumbling upon" but in terms of impact I would say
- hand axe
- use of fire
- earth's rotation
- electricity
- germ theory

Today’s Department seminar by @luciastrader.bsky.social @salkinstitute.bsky.social on auxin transcription factors.

We have two open Post-Doc positions in my group at the interface with:
1- @ataly.bsky.social for molecular dynamics
2- Bruno Guillotin from protein mobility

Apply by sending CV, two ref letters and a short motivation letter to me : emmanuelle.bayer@u-bordeaux.fr. Deadline 15 sept.