PlantEvolution 🌱🌾

At @nationalacademies.org annual meeting. An award recipient (92 years old, born in Slovakia) just reminded us, in her acceptance speech,

“Science always survives - it even made it through Stalin.

Don’t let your curiosity be diminished.”

🌼🧪📈🩺

I was thinking of the work in primary metabolism with basically all small effect loci. Although even the glucosinolates have dozens to hundreds when you mask the major. Although I am never clear when oligo and poly begin and end as the definition of poly I hear is almost mathematically impossible.

Id call that oligogenic. I was thinking about truly polygenic traits such as height (dozens and hundreds of loci if not more).

Jesus, Mary, and Joseph were migrants too who fled an oppressive regime in order to seek a better life. They serve as the archetype for today’s migrants who look for a new place to call home.

Best poster I saw so far

A tweet from Molly Ploofkins says: “Inflatable frog costumes are sold out on Amazon.” The attached image shows a product listing for a green inflatable frog costume with dark spots, a white belly, and a blue bow tie. The listing title reads “Inflatable Frog Costume Adult Men Women Outfit… for Halloween Holiday Cosplay Party Animal,” and it’s marked as “Currently unavailable.”

I haven’t the froggiest idea why…

I think the interesting question would be whether it matters much for polygenic traits.

This morning my ChatGPT quota was inexplicably exhausted.

It took a while but I pieced it together. Voice mode somehow got activated when I went to bed.

The bot then engaged in a 10 hour conversation with my snoring dog, answering questions the pup wasn’t asking and praising him for his insight.

We come to similar conclusions (we cite them in our discussion), but they say - in a somewhat hopeless way - that paralog divergence is an obstacle to genotype-to-phenotype prediction. We actually think paralog divergence is quite predictable. We’re now trying to find and test such predictors.

A Tribal data repository to advance Indigenous health and sovereignty - Nature Genetics We present the first federally funded Tribal data repository — the Data for Indigenous Implementations, Interventions, and Innovations Tribal Data Repository. This repository takes a revolutionary app...

Our team is Legend (wait for it) dary! Ohio State, Stanford, UW Madison, UW Seattle, UC Santa Cruz, Arizona State & of course the Native Bio Data Consortium within the borders and legal jurisdiction of the Cheyenne River Lakota Nation! Woop woop! First time ever! The FOUR BANDS lead the way again!

Gene expression divergence following gene and genome duplications in spatially resolved plant transcriptomes After gene and genome duplications, expression divergence across cell types is not random, and it can be explained by a combination of gene age, gene funct

Our paper on the evolution (duplicated) gene expression divergence in spatially resolved plant transcriptomes is now out @theplantcell.bsky.social

w/ @yvdp.bsky.social

#PlantSci #Evolution

academic.oup.com/plcell/advan...

Solanum pan-genetics reveals paralogues as contingencies in crop engineering - Nature Gene duplication and subsequent paralogue diversification are major obstacles to genotype-to-phenotype predictability.

Nice!

How do your conclusions regarding paralog expression divergence compare to the ones from the recent Solanum paralog paper?

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

FT-like genes in Cannabis and hops: sex specific expression and copy-number variation may explain flowering time variation - BMC Genomics Cannabis sativa is a fascinating, yet under-researched, species. To facilitate the global expansion of C. sativa cultivation a greater understanding of flowering time control is crucial. The PEBP gene...

Paper alert. In which we study FT-like genes in #Cannabis and #hops
doi.org/10.1186/s128...

Three sisters intercropping system. Maize (blue), beans (red), and squash (yellow) are grown together. Factors making the system more robust and higher yielding than monocropping are listed in boxes.

#Intercropping & #CropRotation are ancient #agricultural practices that increase yield & #DiseaseResistance in #crops. This Essay discusses the role of plant-derived metabolites & microbes in these systems and how they can contribute to #SustainableAgriculture @plosbiology.org 🧪 plos.io/4op7k6W

De novo designed voltage-gated anion channels suppress neuron firing This study reports the successful de novo design of voltage-gated anion channels that are distinct from native channels. They exhibit voltage-dependent ion conductance and are capable of being tuned f...

😮😮😮
www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...

An ICE agent, who is being arrested for drunk driving and nearly killing his little kids & others, tries to stop the arrest by racially profiling the officers arresting him. Amazing to watch the courtesy given to him as he is belligerent and uncooperative

Penn rejects White House proposal for special funding treatment With the decision, Penn becomes the third university to decline the offer.

PENN IS OUT! That means both institutions that signed prior agreements with the administration have said no. We're at 3 rejections.

I told y'all once the second one hit yesterday, the clock started for the rest.

www.thedp.com/article/2025...

Accurate somatic small variant discovery for multiple sequencing technologies with DeepSomatic www.nature.com/articles/s41... (read free: rdcu.be/eLny0) github.com/google/deeps...

MSc in Environmental Change and Policy | University of Oxford About the courseThis MSc equips future environmental leaders with the critical thinking, research expertise, and analytical tools needed to design and evaluate policies for addressing the world’s

NOW OPEN FOR APPLICATIONS: Our new MSc in Environmental Change and Policy (ECP) at Oxford’s @ecioxford.bsky.social @oxfordgeography.bsky.social

Programme starts 2026. Apply here: www.ox.ac.uk/admissions/g...

British.

(Germany’s apparently quite large improvement is probably in no small part due to extremely large improvements in the former East. Sadly, many in the East don’t realize this and vote for the extreme right.)

Also, in 1990, the US was on top. It no longer is!

Some people tend to think that life nowadays is worse than in the past.
Objectively (statistically) speaking this is just wrong.

HDI measures education, life expectancy and purchasing power. In some countries (e.g. US) the improvement is mild, in others (e.g. China, India) it's dramatic.

🚨🧬Next Generation Sequencing scientist position!

Shorter link for easier access!
tinyurl.com/SRA-81640

🙏Appreciate the sharing!

@ucberkeleyofficial.bsky.social
@hhmi.org

ICE Detains Citizen After Saying She Doesn’t “Look Like” Her Last Name She even had her U.S. passport on her.

ICE agents kidnapped a US citizen in Chicago because she didn’t “look” American to them. She even had her US passport on her. 🤬

While California is at the forefront of the battery storage revolution, this trend is now being adopted worldwide.

Global capacity projected to increase by 67% to 617GWh this year alone and is expected to grow tenfold by 2035. By 2027 massive increase in capacity is forecasted for major economies.

Simons Postdoctoral Fellowships in Plant Biology Simons Postdoctoral Fellowships in Plant Biology on Simons Foundation

Great new postdoc fellowship for foundational plant research.
If you’re into genetics and genomics of plant reproductive evolution or adaptive convergence (incl in the cool and charismatic nightshades!) I’d be happy to talk about possible projects!
www.simonsfoundation.org/grant/simons...

You mean they don’t really take this seriously?

So a we’ll-known scientist founds a company that has RNA-seq as its core tech. Publishes a paper on a new RNA-seq data set with this conflict of interest statement. What gives?

Paris is beautiful — clean, few unhoused, limited car traffic. Is that because that’s what they are reading?