Jenn Brophy

My poster on flower bioengineering at the #AIEBaB26 conference in Bristol last week 🌹 🧬 ✨

#plantsynbio peeps, has anyone played around with cell penetrating peptides? some of the papers look fairly convincing for delivery of DNA e.g. 10.1021/acs.biomac.8b00323. but am curious why not used more widely. Viruses and agro are just easier for most applications?

Nominations are now open for awards to be presented at the 2026 North American Plant Phenotyping Network Annual Conference. This is a great opportunity to recognize our outstanding colleague’s contributions to plant phenotyping research and innovation. mailchi.mp/ce99f293f3f6...

Interested in learning about the latest and greatest research in how plants respond to excess salt, too little or too much water? Come to the GRC in Salt and Water Stress in Switzerland. Lots of opportunities for all career levels. www.grc.org/salt-and-wat.... Please repost!

Very excited to finally share my PhD paper, about advancing #chloroplast #synbio through high-throughput plastome engineering of #Chlamydomonas.
Huge thanks to the whole team!
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

The @plantcv.bsky.social team is hosting a workshop at the @nappn.bsky.social 2026 conference in Feb. at Michigan State and is able to support the travel of up to 20 participants. Please apply for the workshop and submit an abstract to the conference if you are interested: mailchi.mp/3afecdddf6de...

The UGA Plant Biology Department is hiring! Please help spread the word. We have an opening for an Assistant Professor in Plant Synthetic Biology for Strategic Resources Research. See ad for details – and join us here in Athens, GA!

Applications for Simons Postdoctoral Fellowships in Plant Biology Now Open Applications for Simons Postdoctoral Fellowships in Plant Biology Now Open on Simons Foundation

Looking to host a fellow to explore regulation of duplicate genes in plant development & adaptation using single-cell & spatial transcriptomics.
Ideal for candidates with backgrounds in genomics, evolution, or computational science moving to Plant Biology.
Reach out if interested and eligible!

Congratulations to 2025 #MacFellow William Tarpeh! The Stanford chemical engineer is working on sustainable and practical solutions to treat wastewater and recover valuable mineral resources.

🗞️: stanford.io/3IZIBqF

Engineered geminivirus replicons enable rapid in planta directed evolution Directed evolution can rapidly generate genetic variants with new and enhanced properties, yet efficient platforms for performing such evolution directly in plant cells have been lacking. We developed...

Out First Release in @science.org this week:
The development of a directed evolution strategy with proof of concept in plant immune protein engineering.

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Wonderful to see this beautiful image on the cover of Science this week highlighting a paper that uses high resolution imaging to show the spatial patterns of bacterial attraction to glutamine from roots.
Paper here: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
Perspective here: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Come join us at @stanford-chemh.bsky.social! I feel incredibly lucky to have launched my career here -- it is a fantastic place to do bold interdisciplinary science surrounded by creative & supportive colleagues. Applications are due 10/15/2025 -- DM me if you have questions about the search!

Game changer for cell-based plant genetics: the labs of Caixia Gao & Jin-Long Qiu have developed very efficient self-replicating vectors and they just published a very nice proof-of-concept paper.
#plantscience
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

It was our pleasure to write the perspective for such a beautiful piece of work on bacterial colonization of plant roots! 🌱❤️

Thanks also to the great perspective on our article written by @katekozaeva.bsky.social and @jennbrophy.bsky.social and our team @fbm-unil.bsky.social and @unil.bsky.social for their communications !

Localized glutamine leakage drives the spatial structure of root microbial colonization Plant roots release exudates to encourage microbiome assembly, which influences the function and stress resilience of plants. How specific exudates drive spatial colonization patterns remains largely ...

A long road to the Cover of Science!
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Congratulations to our Institute Scholar Hawa Racine Thiam for winning the 2026 Margaret Oakley Dayhoff Award. Hawa is being recognized for being a trailblazer of subcellular biophysics and unveiling new paradigms of biophysical immunology through her dynamic measurements of physical forces on organelles in real time.

Congratulations to our Institute Scholar @hawa-racine.bsky.social for winning the 2026 Margaret Oakley Dayhoff Award! @biophysicalsoc.bsky.social
www.biophysics.org/news-room/bi...

Color changing flowers 🧬🎨- attempt #2

Older flowers (bottom) show dark red/ orange tints whereas young buds (top) display strong fuchsia color. Getting closer..

EBRC In Translation EBRC In Translation is a podcast working to bring you conversations with leaders in the world of Engineering Biology. The show is the official podcast of the Engineering Biology Research Consortium St...

Explore plant synthetic biology with Stanford’s Jenn Brophy
@jennbrophy.bsky.social on EBRC In Translation. We discuss engineering genetic circuits in plants & microbes, lab sustainability, fostering the next gen of synthetic biologists, and championing diversity in science!
tinyurl.com/473b4dky

Great chatting with you Ross!
Here’s the link: www.buzzsprout.com/1581817/epis...

Had a fun chat with @jennbrophy.bsky.social! Listen in to hear about the solarpunk future of plant bioengineering ☀️🌿

Drought recovery in plants triggers a cell-state-specific immune activation - Nature Communications Post-drought rehydration triggers a preventive immune response in plants, revealing targets to enhance crop resilience by linking drought stress recovery with improved pathogen resistance.

Want to dive into the datasets from our recent @natcomms.nature.com paper? 🌱📊
Check out this step-by-step guide on how to explore and analyze the #drought #recovery #datasets with Omnibusx:

Check out the paper and datasets: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Tutorial: youtu.be/YI0RVFiQnMs

Inside a Plant Engineering Lab Challenges and opportunities in plant (genetic) engineering with Vivian Zhong and Alexander Borowsky from the Brophy Lab

Latest BIOPUNK interview by the amazing Sophia Sanchez is focused on plant engineering! @vivzhong.bsky.social and @atborowsky.bsky.social discuss their goals and motivations 🪴 💕 . www.biopunk.life/p/full-video...

Check out Sophia's whole series at biopunk.life

Is this real? Andrew is a beloved part of the plant synthetic biology community. I can’t imagine it without him. 💔

A great read on topsoil preservation by the multitalented @vivzhong.bsky.social!

For Better Soil, Get Better Data Relying on outdated soil quality data to value farmland creates a disincentive for farmers to invest in conserving topsoil.

Side quest # TooMany of this PhD: I co-authored an article for @issuesinst.bsky.social on the need for better soil data to monitor topsoil loss, plus farmland price valuation that reflects the true quality of soil to incentivize topsoil preservation. Feedback most welcome!
issues.org/better-soil-...

What a great photo! Looks like an awesome spot!

Amazing news Hattie, congratulations!!

Delighted to be speaking at Synthetic Biology Australasia November 2025 in Wellington!

I’ll be sharing our latest work in plant syn bio - come explore how biology can be redesigned to solve global challenges!
🔗 synbioaustralasia.org/upcoming-conference
#SBA2025 #SyntheticBiology #SynBioCommunity

Discovery of FoTO1 and Taxol genes enables biosynthesis of baccatin III - Nature An approach that combines single-nucleus RNA sequencing and multiplexed perturbation identifies genes that enable the biosynthesis of direct precursors of the anti-cancer drug Taxol, whose curren...

Today in Nature we report a systematic strategy to activate & identify gene sets in plants. We identify 8 new genes from the yew tree's Taxol biosynthetic pathway, enabling us to engineer tobacco with 17- & 20-gene pathways to Taxol precursors baccatin III & deBz-deoxy-Taxol #SingleCell #secmet 🧬🧪🌾