With 3.8 million cows, the Netherlands is by far the BEST place for butterflies EVER! Right?

Wow!

We are very excited to share a new resource from our team: spatial subcellular proteome maps in plants! We developed an MS-based method that registers localizations of about 8000 proteins in Arabidopsis roots in a single experiment.

(1/9)
www.biorxiv.org/cgi/content/...

Today I found my first wild lycophyte (Diphasiastrum tristachyum) in the Netherlands! We only have 7 species and most are extremely rare.

I was wondering if it would be feasible to create a dedicated research facility in Europe to do this work? like you said, €500/line is still an interesting price. But using the existing systems is probably even smarter (if we can get access)

CRISPR edited lines for $100?! We have a problem considering how many hours PhDs and postdocs spend on creating and validating such lines… One would expect that high labour costs would lead to smarter solutions in Europe?

Recently, 3 academics posted a letter in the national newspaper to argue that universities are too left-winged and that this alienates right-winged students.. IMO, our former right-winged government posted such extreme budget cuts that they alienated themselves from the academics. @nrc.nl

18 februari verkiezingsdebat natuur en landschap! #gemeenteraadsverkiezingen2026 #Wageningen

Motif-based substrate mapping of the receptor-like cytoplasmic kinase BIK1 reveals novel components and regulatory nodes of plant immunity - Nature Plants Cell surface receptors perceive immunogenic elicitors, triggering downstream signalling via receptor-like cytoplasmic kinases such as BIK1. Here the authors define and use the phosphorylation motif of...

Very impressive work identifying novel BIK1 substrates (and immunity players) in Arabidopsis 🔽!

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

Bluesky Map Interactive map of 3.4 million Bluesky users, visualised by their follower pattern.

I made a map of 3.4 million Bluesky users - see if you can find yourself!

bluesky-map.theo.io

I've seen some similar projects, but IMO this seems to better capture some of the fine-grained detail

Excited to share our latest review on hydrosignaling: moisture-dependent molecular pathways that help plants grow towards water. Insightful review of the literature and discussion of moisture sensing mechanisms by Will Dwyer and @hhtormar.bsky.social. Enjoy!
link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Evolution and development: What makes a merry stem? From tiny mosses to giant redwoods, around 450,000 species of land plants show a huge variety of forms, yet all land plants develop from stem cells in proliferative meristems. What makes a meristem? T...

It was good to catch up on my reading for this dispatch in Current Biology. Sjoerd Woudenberg in the Weijers lab, Wallner et al. In the Dolan lab and Flores Sandoval et al. In the Bowman lab have done a great job! Evolution and development: What makes a merry stem?: www.cell.com/current-biol...

Full Professor and Chair Laboratory of Biophysics We are looking for a Full Professor in the Biophysics chair group, part of Wageningen University & Research (WUR)

www.wur.nl/en/vacancy/f...

Become our new colleague (and next door neighbor) and lead a chair/group/department of Biophysics at Wageningen University. Reach out to me for info and please spread!!!

Activities - GreenTE Activities Webinars ”MechanoBioTalks – Mechanics, Materials and Living Matter” is a webinar series supported by the GreenTE consortium and organized […]

A new webinar series is born - ''MechanoBioTalks - Mechanics, Materials and Living Matter", to bring together and inspire researchers interested in biomechanics, biophysics and biology across different kingdoms of life. Join us!

For info and registration visit green-te.nl/activities/

Reconstruction of Prototaxites in the Rhynie chert ecosystem. Reconstruction by Matt Humpage, Northern Rouge Studios.

Excited to share our new investigation of Prototaxites!
We found no support for a fungal affinity and instead suggest it is best considered an entirely extinct complex eukaryotic lineage
Great team effort @transitionalform.bsky.social Corentin Loron, and many others!
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Verkiezingsdebat - Mooi Wageningen Save the date! Op woensdagavond 18 februari organiseren we een verkiezingsdebat natuur en landschap in de spiksplinternieuw verbouwde Bblthk. Onder leiding van Jelle de Gruyter, Rob Janmaat en/of Simo...

Save the date!

Op woensdagavond 18 februari organiseert @mooiwageningen.bsky.social samen met Mooi Binnenveld, KNNV Wageningen en @vlinderstichting.bsky.social wederom een verkiezingsdebat over natuur en landschap.

www.mooiwageningen.nl/verkiezingsd...

Republicans Block Effort to Check Trump’s Power in Venezuela

Since when does the Congress limits its own power? This is a slippery slope…

Thanks @waarneming.nl for the thorough validation and app development! This would not have been possible without your platform!

As a molecular plant biologist, I always joked that I knew more proteins than plant species. Last year, I paid more attention to the biodiversity in my neighborhood and identified 1661 species (not only plants) in Wageningen alone. Bonus: I found really interesting places nearby. Highly recommended!

The 5.1 beta already worked like a charm! Highly recommended 😍

Infrared as a pollination signal Relying on infrared communication over visual color could have limited cycad evolution

#PlantResearch Enjoyed writing with @beverleycubg.bsky.social a perspective about wonderful paper by Valencia-Montoya et al. in this week's Science. Cycads use thermal radiation to affect pollinators. Is this why Cycads are not as diverse as angiosperms? share.google/Xj8iH9E4tqvN...

However, compared to the US, Europeans are happier, have higher life expectancies, work less hours, have better social+healthcare systems & have more or less functioning democracies. Macroeconomic numbers might be correct, but in the end they don’t tell you much about the life of an average citizen.

Time person of the year cover for 2025

I guess it's fitting that it's a reimagined, worse version of someone else's artwork

Out after peer review, collaborative study from Nordborg & Weigel labs with help from many others. Not the largest collection of new Arabidopsis thaliana genomes, but we hopefully put forward some good ideas for how to think about pangenomes and their analysis!
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

The main question here: in what kind of world do we want to live in? A world in which we can consume anything we want, but is devoid of all interesting life forms and biodiversity? Or shall we consume less and invest in more durable options (recycling) while embracing nature and its weird creations?

Last year, I saw this at a GRC conference and have been mesmerized ever since.. Great to see its final form (and being able to replay it for the rest of the day)

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...

The hidden danger of Biorender

(& the death of scientific illustration)

A short thread 🧵

Uitbreiding van industrie op plek waar Moerdijk ligt is volgens raadsleden onvermijdelijk. ‘Dit is het minst slechte scenario’ Gemeenteraad: Verdwijnt het dorp Moerdijk? Raadsleden noemden het voorstel van de gemeente ,,een immens offer” en ,,het minst slechte scenario” voor de bewoners. Ze stemden vrijwel unaniem in met het ...

“De raadsleden vroegen het gemeentebestuur scherpe voorwaarden te stellen aan de uitbreiding in #Moerdijk. (…) en niet zorgen voor toename van geluidsbelasting, milieueffecten en verkeersdruk in verschillende dorpen die in de gemeente liggen.”

Vreemde eisen voor een industriegebied… Wensdenken?!

Laser ablation 😂