Frederica Theodoulou

Group photo of ~80 people outside a concrete and glass building

Photograph of a row of six people of African origin at a desk with attention focussed on an object to the right and out of view of the camera. Other faces in the background.

A photo of a white much with the words ‘connect, celebrate, cultivate’ in black capital letters sitting on a white branded notepad with the Black in Plant Sciences logo in green and black. These objects are on a conference chair with similar chairs out of focus in the background.

Last week we held the 2nd @blackinplantsci.bsky.social conference in Leeds, full of 🌱science, 🌸art, African crops, careers & mentorship and talent. Highlight was seeing the impacts of our Research Excellence Awards & Studentships. So proud to honour and promote the excellence in our community 💓

Don’t they know that we finalise (or more likely, write) our talks on planes and trains?

Amused to report that I was just energetically mixing some cake batter and my Apple watch announced that I had closed my exercise ring for the day 😆🍰🏅

Another great meeting to consider: @ukbspr.bsky.social is coming to Cambridge in 2026 for all things #proteomics. A great sense of community, excellent engagement from industry and cross-kingdom science. #BSPR2026

A conference about #proteostasis in a palazzo in Palermo; inclusive, affordable, and organised by the marvellous @giglionelab.bsky.social - what’s not to like? Oh, and there is a fantastic lineup of talks plus slots to spare #ProteinTermini2026

A glass platter with 14 cupcakes and a pink rose alongside

Lemon curd cupcakes (and the last rose from my garden this year) for this morning's bake sale. All in aid of suicide prevention charity theolliefoundation.org a very worthwhile cause.

The resilience of youth 🍃What makes young Arabidopsis leaves survive flooding longer than their seniors? We tried to find out - check out our new preprint to know what we discovered @freddietheodoulou.bsky.social @leeggangers.bsky.social @hans-van-veen.bsky.social @uuplants.bsky.social

Leaf-age specific flood resilience in Arabidopsis thaliana is determined by distinct processes contributing to post-submergence recovery While the molecular mechanisms mediating submergence tolerance have been extensively studied, those underpinning age-dependent resilience remain poorly characterized. In Arabidopsis thaliana, submerge...

How does leaf age affect flood resilience? 🌿🌊
New preprint from @rsasidharan.bsky.social with a little help from us
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Collage of Apprentice of the Year award winners and finalists

Collage of creative award winners

Collage of winners of the President's medal

Winner of the School Biology Teacher of the Year award with two members of RSB staff

Thank you to everyone who attended our #BiologyWeek Networking and Awards Ceremony last night! Congrats to all the awardees for their achievements, including those who entered our creative & careers awards, & the winners of the President’s Medal.

Read the full story: www.rsb.org.uk/biology-week...

Gorgeous photos- I'm so jealous!

🤩

Flier for an ARIA event showing photos of four panel members: Fabrizio Ticchiarelli-Marjot, Freddie Theodoulou, Rene Geurts and Sonja Billerbeck.

A Fairer Feast- How can technological breakthroughs work for everyone? Looking forward to this ARIA event at Venture Café London next week to celebrate #WorldFoodDay. venturecafelondon.org

😮

A (half-eaten), still- buoyant Victoria sponge on a glass cake stand.

Had my head in proteomics data spreadsheets all day but pleased to have whipped up this offering tonight ☺️🍰

Wow, congratulations Marco!

Happy to share that our multi-omic analysis comparing two Arabidopsis accessions is now published 🌿 The first story from our @ukri.org BBSRC sLoLa #plant #proteostasis project. A great collaboration between @rothamsted.bsky.social @richardmott.bsky.social @ucl.ac.uk and Kathryn Lilley at Cambridge.

Hello to all my floodie friends currently in Nagoya! 🌾🌊👋 I'm so sorry I couldn't make it to #ISPLORE2025JP this time: will be following the posts from @isplore.bsky.social and feeling wistful all week. Hope you have a great meeting ☺️

Great to be sharing exciting progress with #PrecisionBreeing in our #GreenEngineering BBSRC institute strategic programme @rothamsted.bsky.social Several valuable traits in the pipeline @ukri.org #PBO #GeneEditing

A slightly wonky square cake, covered in chocolate icing, with far too many sugar sprinkles, topped with a glass dome.

It's been far too long since my last baking post, so I wanted to announce a recent acquisition: a cake dome which I am launching with a grown up but still childish slab of cake. Dark chocolate icing with sprinkles tasted better than it looks!

I can't stress it more. This conference has been designed for us by us. Support @blackinplantsci.bsky.social conference at the University of Leeds funded by the SEB, Faculty of Biological Science at Leeds, the Grow More and New Phytologist foundations and Gastby. Join us on 24/10, details below.

🚨Job Alert!! Assistant professor vacancy ‘plant abiotic stress resilience’ in our group @uuplants.bsky.social Come for the science, stay for the amazing colleagues 😀More details here www.uu.nl/en/organisat... Please share!!

👏 Great to see plant scientists among the ERC StG winners 🌿 congrats all!

Great news, huge congratulations Vinay! 🥂

A double rainbow (almost complete arc) with a green lawn in the foreground

Stunning double rainbow @rothamsted.bsky.social this evening 🌈

So very sad to hear this. Andrew was hugely supportive of our engineering biology work at Rothamsted. A rigorous scientist and so full of interesting ideas.

Job opportunity: come join the excellent and friendly #ProteostasisUK community!

A Species of Small Antisense RNA in Posttranscriptional Gene Silencing in Plants by Andrew J. Hamilton and David C. Baulcombe Abstract Posttranscriptional gene silencing (PTGS) is a nucleotide sequence–specific defense mechanism that can target both cellular and viral mRNAs. Here, three types of transgene-induced PTGS and one example of virus-induced PTGS were analyzed in plants. In each case, antisense RNA complementary to the targeted mRNA was detected. These RNA molecules were of a uniform length, estimated at 25 nucleotides, and their accumulation required either transgene sense transcription or RNA virus replication. Thus, the 25-nucleotide antisense RNA is likely synthesized from an RNA template and may represent the specificity determinant of PTGS.

Had to look up an old paper to get the doi. It still completely boggles my mind that TWO Nobel prizes have been given for small RNAs and this work wasn't recognized by either. Abstract is literally like "yeah, we found these tiny antisense RNAs and think they're probably causing gene silencing"

Epic structure paper from @clausenlab.bsky.social @dangrabarczyk.bsky.social and collaborators providing mechanistic insight into how the UBR4 complex (=BIG in plants 🌿😊) fulfils apparently disparate roles in protein turnover 🤩

🤩 Wonderful work- huge congratulations! 🥂🥂🥂 Sets the scene beautifully for our whole plant experiments on Arabidopsis UBR4 😊🌿

🤯