Lee Sweetlove

Research Fellow (Postdoctoral) at University of Birmingham An opportunity for an academic position as a Research Fellow (Postdoctoral) is available, as advertised on jobs.ac.uk. Apply now and explore other academic job openings.

I have a Postdoctoral Research Fellow position starting in January to study the evolution of seed gene networks using the fern Ceratopteris! Interested? More info here:
www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DNU179/r...

Closing date 31st July. 🙂
#PlantScience
#PlantSciencejobs

Sharing this in case anyone else missed this in @theplantcell.bsky.social. Arabidopsis research remains essential. The phenomenal resources mean complex pathways are so much easier to understand at the genetic level, and it's a great model organism! #plantsci #plantscience 🧪🌿

Great write up of work by @anyalb.bsky.social while in my lab on the use of biomolecular condensates for metabolic engineering. Thanks @ciara-obrien.bsky.social Some incredible papers highlighted in the roundup - well worth a read

Interested in trying out life as a scientific #editor? Based in the UK? Background in #PlantScience? The @plosbiology.org crew is expanding (again!), so a place in our lovely team might be for you...

Redox-regulated Aux/IAA multimerization modulates auxin responses Reactive oxygen species function as key signals in plant adaptation to environmental stresses like drought. Roots respond to transient water unavailability by temporarily ceasing branching through the...

Out First Release in @science.org today, nice work finding that redox regulates multimerisation of Aux/IAA proteins during root xerobranching:

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

#PlantScience

Itaconate, the poster-child for metabolic reprogramming in animal immunity, now comes out to play in plants!
www.science.org/doi/pdf/10.1...

Sadly, human scientists have been writing generic concluding sentences long before AI was around to help them do so! Good editors and writing mentors remain super important

In Other Journals Editors’ selections from the current scientific literature

My pick for In Other Journals this week:
Sugar signaling boosts wheat yields - field trials of a trehalose-6-phosphate spray that boosts yield, probably via upregulation of starch synthesis and CO2 fixation.
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Paper here:
rdcu.be/enUzK

#PlantScience

Is there anything this enzyme doesn't do?!

Special Issue: Plant Engineering — Advances, Bottlenecks, and Promise: The Plant Journal Click on the title to browse this issue

𝐍𝐞𝐰 𝐒𝐩𝐞𝐜𝐢𝐚𝐥 𝐈𝐬𝐬𝐮𝐞!
🌱Plant engineering: advances, bottlenecks, and promise
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/toc/10.1...
Focused Reviews & Technical Advances
🌿Plant transformation tech
🧬Gene editing & synthetic biology
🔧Emerging engineering strategies
breakthroughs & challenges
🧵⬇️

A diagrame of the molecular parts used to make a synthetic biomolecular condensate and confocal microscopy images of the condensates

Outstanding work by @anyalb.bsky.social in my lab - she targeted enzymes to synthetic biomolecular condensates in plants and showed increases in metabolic pathway activity, likely due to protection of the introduced enzymes from proteolysis
#PlantScience
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

The metabolic signal that regulates TOR is the Calvin-Benson cycle-derived metabolite DHAP. Activation of TOR by DHAP is also true in animals....

The ever fascinating phenomenon of plant thermogenesis...

Great Review on TOR signalling: A Master Regulator in Plant Growth, Development, and Stress Responses #PPStasis #proteostasis #autophagy #Stressbio #Plantsci
www.annualreviews.org/content/jour...

Hornworts reveal a spatial model for pyrenoid-based CO2-concentrating mechanisms in land plants - Nature Plants Hornworts are the only land plants with a pyrenoid-based CO2-concentrating mechanism. This study presents evidence that some of the key components in algal pyrenoid-based CO2-concentrating mechanisms ...

Hornworts reveal a spatial model for pyrenoid-based CO2-concentrating mechanisms in land plants www.nature.com/articles/s41... @natureplants.bsky.social

An open letter to graduate students and other procrastinators: it’s time to write - Nature Biotechnology Nature Biotechnology - An open letter to graduate students and other procrastinators: it’s time to write

Lots of excellent advice in this piece. The core message - only through writing do you really think and order your thoughts into logical sense. Makes a case for not using AI for 1st draft because you bypass the thinking step
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
@naturebiotech.bsky.social
#PlantScience

Non-canonical plant metabolism Nature Plants - This Review discusses the occurrence of non-canonical pathways in plant metabolic networks identified by modelling predictions and recent experimental evidence. It highlights how...

rdcu.be/efM8R

😀 CAM will undoubtedly push central metabolism into non-canonical spaces. I look forward to hearing / reading about what you find out! If you need any help, let me know...

If you want to find out why metabolism may look different to what you were taught, and why this matters, dip into to our review 'Non-canonical plant metabolism' www.nature.com/articles/s41...
@natureplants.bsky.social
#PlantScience

Alternatives to photorespiration: A system-level analysis reveals mechanisms of enhanced plant productivity Computational modeling reveals how engineering plants with alternative pathways to photorespiration could boost crop yields.

As well as CO2 Rubisco reacts with O2: plants evolved photorespiration to deal with the consequences. It works, but synthetic biology can do better! 🔄 We used metabolic modeling to compare alternative pathways to boost crop yields 🌱 🧵 #ScienceAdvancesResearch
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Yes, that's a proteasome! Guess where it is....in the apoplast! Nice to see Richard Vierstra's work out! #PPStasis #proteostasis #proteasomes #PlantSci
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Katherine Denby on stage at MBP2025. Her slide has the headline "How do I choose a journal to publish in?" The points are: Scope - look at journal content, read author guidelines Ownership - at least part society owned Integrity Author experience - timelines, editorial board culture Diversity of editorial board Promotion of papers Contribution to the scientific community

Very informative talk by @katherinedenby.bsky.social, EiC of @theplantjournal.bsky.social, on scientific publishing in the #PlantSciences. #MBP2025

Her points on how to choose a journal to publish in are below.

Happy to see that my favorite journals fit the bill. 👌

Reposting because I forgot to tag the #PlantScience feed. Please spread the news about this postdoc opportunity *in the UK*

A map of the rubisco biochemical landscape - Nature A massively parallel assay developed to map the essential photosynthetic enzyme rubisco showed that non-trivial biochemical changes and improvements in CO2 affinity are possible, signposting further e...

www.nature.com/articles/s41...
They "identified many highly conserved positions that tolerate mutation and rare mutations that improve CO2 affinity. These data indicate that non-trivial biochemical changes are readily accessible"
#PlantScience

Super-resolution expansion microscopy in plant roots The development of expansion microscopy in the Arabidopsis root enabled the imaging of molecular targets in tissues at diffraction-unlimited resolution.

📜 Super-resolution expansion microscopy in plant roots

🧑‍🔬 Michelle Gallei, Sven Truckenbrodt, Johann G. Danzl, et al.

📔 @theplantcell.bsky.social

🔗 academic.oup.com/plcell/advan...

#️⃣ #PlantScience #PlantMicroscopy #PlantImaging #PlantSuperRes

Three-panel image highlighting parasitic plants. First panel is striga infestation in a sorghum field, second is a image showing the huge size of a Raffia flower, and final image is of a root section showing the structures from the parasite that break into the root tissue to extract nutrients.

#PlantScience Research Weekly, Jan 7, 2025 plantae.org/plant-scienc... Focus Issue: Hypoxia and Plants; Special Issue: Parasitic Plants; Unlocking photosynthetic efficiency through BOOSTER; A “GAME” changer in specialized metabolism; A fresh starch: Granule morphologies in potato tuber (1/2)

this is a really great conference for early career scientists. Recommended...

Running Fermi calculations as a superpower to gauge reality Making Fermi calculations is a way to estimate rough but reliable numbers that enable right reasoning in science and engineering—and a skill that all scien

it sounds good, but the scale of aviation fuel use doesn't seem to be compatible with what could be produced by agriculture. @adhansonlab.bsky.social has a very nice 'Fermi calculation' paper illustrating this.... doi.org/10.1093/plph...

1/10 We are thrilled to share our preprint on spatial transcriptomics in wheat spikes led by the amazing @katielong.bsky.social and Ashleigh Lister. We resolved expression of 200 genes to cellular resolution. Pre-print👉 tinyurl.com/c7t3kncf., @johninnescentre.bsky.social @earlhaminst.bsky.social