Pingtao Ding (he/him)

MSCA awards €404.3 million to postdoctoral researchers 1610 outstanding postdoctoral researchers were selected for funding among 17,066 applicants.

marie-sklodowska-curie-actions.ec.europa.eu/news/msca-aw... #MSCA fellowship this year is again very competitive, but it’s still a great program to support the independence of a postdoc to carry out innovative research. Our lab is lucky to host the third MSCA fellow this year @unileiden.bsky.social

Ubiquitin recognition integrates plant immune signaling by cell-surface and intracellular receptors www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Structural basis of canonical TIR-NLR activation in plant innate immunity https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.02.03.703613v1

Thanks a lot, Mary! 🍀

⏰Applications for ASPB's Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) close tomorrow, Friday, February 6.🌱

Finalize and submit your applications soon!👉https://aspb-surf.secure-platform.com/a/.

📢 2 PhD Positions Available in Plant Immune Receptor Bioengineering at Imperial College London
🌱 Start: Oct 2026
📅 Deadline: 10 Feb 2026
🇬🇧 UK/settled status only
💰 Fully funded (48 months)
ℹ️ Info: shorturl.at/po61I
#PlantImmunity #PlantPathology #SyntheticBiology
🙏 Share with interested candidates!

As a PI, this is a very special moment.

My first PhD student @himanshuchhillar.bsky.social has submitted their thesis on time, within 4 years, and officially became a Doctor.

Extremely proud. Congratulations! 🎓

Great thanks to @jonathandgjones.bsky.social Salma and Remko and all my lab members!

Four Images: A scientist in a lab looking at a pipetting robot, a greenhouse with lots of pots containing plants, a scientist with drones and other euipment in a field, and a tractor driver with lots of high-tech equipment in the cockpit. The text is: TalentCampus@KWS May 29, 2026 A look behind the scenes: All KWS research and development departments open their doors

The headline and text says: May 29, 2026 in Einbeck, 11 a.m. - 5 p.m. Seeding the future – breeding combines sciences and talents The image is a wheel showing all the R&D contributions to plant breeding, incl. Molecular Biology Experimental Fields Cell Biology Breeding Phytopathology Chemical Analytics Greenhouse Phenotyping Digitalization

Highlights of the program Information stands Breeders of our main crops explain their work From sowing to harvesting: all the special machines of a breeding station Digital tools for field trialing Root phenotyping: how roots grow in the soil Phenotyping with drones: multispectral from a bird's eye view Phytopathology: insects, fungi, nematodes and other pathogens Chemical Analytics and process analysis Catch crops - concepts for agriculture, soil health, CO2 balance Biological seed treatment Breeding technologies – data and genomics specialists support breeding Genome Editing: new breeding technologies and their application at KWS Regulatory Affairs: paving the way to approval From lab to market: how KWS protects intellectual property Marker lab: examine the DNA The art of engineering for seed production Career opportunities at KWS Hands-on activities The start of a new generation of varieties: crossing plants by hand Tissue culture: placing plant parts on a special diet in vitro Leaf harvest for the marker lab Live view of root growth: navigate a camera through the soil

If you're interested in #PlantScience R&D work at a plant breeding company: @kwsgroup.bsky.social is hosting its annual R&D TalentCampus here in Einbeck on May 29th.

More info here:
www.kws.com/corp/en/care...

A political cartoon from Grip magazine for April 1888. John A Macdonald hands a man in top hat smoking a cigar bags of money. Behind them, starving first nations people. The caption reads “Christian Statesmanship. Sir John: “Indians starving? Oh well, theyre not friends of Dewdney you know. Ill see that you dont come to want though, Mr Contractor.”

Screenshot from a Globe and Mail article. The title reads “John A MacDonald was no cartoon villain. He may have been our most human prime minister” by JDM Stewart

John A. Macdonald was, quite literally, in his own time, a cartoon villain

More academics should follow opera singer Denyce Graves’ example
www.nytimes.com/2026/01/03/o...

Bruce Hammock: 1947-2026 UC Davis Distinguished Professor Bruce Hammock at his desk, Feb. 24, 2009.

Bruce Hammock was a scientific legend, brilliant and kind. He was always happy to talk and collaborate without ego. Like many others, I will miss him. 💔

🧵 Just out in Cell after more than 10 years in the making!

🎓 www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...

Plants and animals evolve radically different body plans.

Do they also operate under fundamentally different molecular evolutionary constraints during organ formation?

@cellpress.bsky.social

Can we tune a plant’s epigenetic toolkit to disrupt plant homeostasis in ways that enable phenotypic innovation?

🌱Check out our new Opinion Paper with @thanvisrikant.bsky.social discussing this topic in @cp-trendsplantsci.bsky.social!

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

🌳Interested in doing a PhD within the Excellence Cluster Future Forests @uni-freiburg.de?🌲

We are hiring a doctoral researcher for the project "Stand Density Management for #Forest Adaptation to #Drought“

Application link: uni-freiburg.de/en/job/00004...

Website: uni-freiburg.de/futureforest...

Spatiotemporal transcriptional networks control the plasticity of chickpea root exodermis Abscisic acid (ABA) regulates plant responses to stress and influences the differentiation of root barrier cell types, such as the endodermis and exodermis. Despite the importance of the exodermis in ...

The projects were on

1) chickpea exodermis with me (www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...)

2) effector-triggered immunity with @dinglab.bsky.social (www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...)

3) far-red responses with @ronaldpierik.bsky.social.

What a crazy diverse set to see shared biology in! (2/4)

Are you interested in using synthetic approaches to promote arbuscular mycorrhiza symbiosis? Then our PostDoc position may be for you: jobs.mpimp-golm.mpg.de/jobposting/b...

Please RT. Post-doc opportunity alert! 💥 closing soon 10th December.. Come join our team (www.thelowlab.org) at Imperial, London, working on the structure and mechanism of bacterial secretion systems.

For more details and to apply please see

www.imperial.ac.uk/jobs/search-...

We are hiring! There is a PhD-position available in my group on environmental signal integration in plants. @swammerdamuva.bsky.social
More information:
werkenbij.uva.nl/en/vacancies...

An inositol pyrophosphate interaction screen provides insight into the regulation of plant casein kinase II Inositol pyrophosphates (PP-InsPs) are key nutrient messengers in plants, but their protein receptors remain poorly defined. Using a systems-level affinity screen with biotinylated InsP₆, InsP₇, and I...

Our latest collaboration with Fiedler lab @fmp-berlin.de and Panse labs UZH out on @biorxiv-plants.bsky.social. Using bead-adsorbed, non-hydrolyzable inositol pyrophosphate (PP-InsP) analogs, we isolated many putative PP-InsP-binding proteins from Arabidopsis.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... (1/6)

Great thanks to all my family, friends, mentors and colleagues for your love and continuous support in the last 8 months since I was sick. After a long break and many therapy sessions, today I went back to the office for the first time and started my work reintegration plan gradually. 🩷🩷🩷🙏🙏🙏

We deeply analyzed barley double stress responses and discovered this:

Metagenomic editing of commensal bacteria in vivo using CRISPR-associated transposases Although metagenomic sequencing has revealed a rich microbial biodiversity in the mammalian gut, methods to genetically alter specific species in the microbiome are highly limited. Here, we introduce ...

Are you expecting a new age of microbiome engineering
Metagenomic editing of commensal bacteria in vivo using CRISPR-associated transposases
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

My new Emmy Noether Group is recruiting!

🔬 Two PhD positions in plant pathogen evolution

🧬 Start: April 2026 (flexible)

📍 Dept. of Phytopathology & Plant Protection @rstam.bsky.social @uni-kiel.de

⏰ Apply by 15 Dec 2025

🔗 More info: www.uni-kiel.de/personal/de/...

Do get in touch or share 😊

Natural variation in regulatory code revealed through Bayesian analysis of plant pan-genomes and pan-transcriptomes Understanding the genetic code of cis-regulatory elements (CREs) is essential for engineering gene expression and modulating agronomic traits in crops. In plants, CREs underlying rapid evolution of ge...

🚀 New preprint!
We introduce K-PROB, a k-mer–based Bayesian framework that mines pangenomic promoter and expression diversity to predict cis-regulatory elements driving gene expression variation in crops 🌽🌱
🔗 biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.10.27.684862v1
#Genomics #GeneRegulation #Maize #Soybean

Humbly share our latest work led by @himanshuchhillar.bsky.social my phd student

And thanks to all collaborators Henk-jan @brunongou.bsky.social @jonathandgjones.bsky.social

Thanks a lot, Gitta! 💚

To my all friends: I’m partially recovered & feel nervous to present our latest work in an upcoming international plant immunity Conf in Sanya. Thanks to all the supports I received from my family, friends, mentors and colleagues during this difficult time. Look forward to seeing some of you soon!

Can ChatGPT help science writers?

Can ChatGPT help science writers? | Science | AAAS www.science.org/content/blog...
"These technologies may have potential as helpful tools for science writers, but they are not ready for “prime time” at this point for the SciPak team."

Assistant Professor of Plant Pathology University of California, Davis is hiring. Apply now!

My department at UC Davis is hiring a mycologist, broadly interpreted. Please repost, share, and consider applying. recruit.ucdavis.edu/JPF07339

Our department of Plant Molecular Biology at the University of Lausanne @unil.bsky.social is recruiting a Tenure-Track Assistant Professor in the field of Plant-Organism Interactions 🌱🐛🦠🍄! Application before November 30, 2025. See the official job ad for more details: tinyurl.com/mtxdcz6p