Francesco Licausi

Great to see this out (as a preprint, for the moment)! And thank you for the opportunity to contribute to this new exploration of the connection between oxygen sensing and shoot development 🍃

Thank you Thomas! @ximenachirinos.bsky.social studied what happened to the O2 sensing machinery in flowering plants that are constantly or near-never.submerged. Spoiler: she discovered new PCOs and weird ERFVIIs...

Congratulations Vinay!!! Hard to describe how happy I am about this, except for the fact you'll leave Oxford soon 🥲.

Introducing the 1,000 Flower Collection 🧬🌹

I’m creating 1,000 genetically designed flowers each crafted with new colors, patterns, and shapes.

Here’s how I’m making it happen… and how you can join me on this journey 🧵(1/7)

ISPLORE 2025, Nagoya, JAPAN - PROGRAMME Confirmed Speakers

How exciting! The program for our ISPLORE #plantscience conference is now available and covers a wide range of speakers and topics 🌱🌊 Check it out! sites.google.com/view/isplore...

Engineering reduced activity in the oxygen-sensing Arabidopsis thaliana plant cysteine oxidase 4 enzyme results in improved flood resilience Plant cysteine oxidases (PCOs) are oxygen-sensing enzymes that play an important role in plant responses to low oxygen (hypoxia). PCO-catalysed dioxygenation of the N-terminal Cys of substrates, inclu...

Engineered mutations in the AtPCO4 active site reduce its activity and improve plant submergence resilience! Our new preprint: tinyurl.com/2ydj7qx5, 1 of 2 preprints out this week from the @emilyflashman.bsky.social and @syno2xis.bsky.social labs to link PCO function in plants with flood tolerance!

Manipulating plant oxygen sensing through NCO substitution reveals trade-offs between growth and flooding tolerance The oxygen-dependent degradation of Ethylene Response Factors VII (ERFVIIs) through the N-degron pathway is central to regulating the transcriptional responses to hypoxia in vascular plants. Plant Cys...

Can we modulate plant oxygen sensing to enhance flood resilience?🌿🔧

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

This is one of two preprints out this week from the @syno2xis.bsky.social and @emilyflashman.bsky.social labs, two angles on how PCOs shape plant flood resilience. Don’t miss the full story!

Got papped yesterday at the @biology.ox.ac.uk research showcase spreading the good word about mitochondrial dynamics! So fun being in the new LaMB building and interacting with psych/bio colleagues 🌱🧠

(You can check out the paper I was soapboxing about here: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...)

Research Associate in Programmable Plant Immunity at Imperial College London Apply for the Research Associate in Programmable Plant Immunity role on jobs.ac.uk, the top job board for academic positions in higher education. View details and apply now.

Plz RT. We are looking for a postdoc to join our collborative project on AI-guided bioengineering of plant immune receptors @tolgaboz.bsky.social and @jiorgoskourelis.bsky.social labs: www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DNV032/r...

Gas leakage triggers wound healing in plants

A plant's protective outer barrier is nearly impermeable to gases, making ethylene build up inside while oxygen depletes. But when wounded, the dynamics shift 🌱

New research shows this movement of gases through a wound triggers the plant's healing process 👇
bit.ly/3ZWnZVO

@vinayshukla.bsky.social

Plants "bleed" too, but through gases!
When wounded, ethylene leaks out and oxygen seeps in. This gas shift acts as an alarm, triggering self-repair to seal the breach. Excited to share our new collaborative work uncovering this clever plant mechanism! Excellent summary here, indulge!
#plantscience

An exciting collaboration that has reignited @vinayshukla.bsky.social's interest for hypoxia and roots! Really happy that we could contribute! @isplore.bsky.social

Only our joint forces, @lauradc.bsky.social 's perseverance and the contribution of Hans van Veen, @vinayshukla.bsky.social, Monica Perri and Liem T. Bui could tackle this challenge with many plant species and several transgenic lines! It's really satisfying to see it published!

ERFVIIs as transducers of oxygen-sensing in the evolution of land plant response to hypoxia Short summary:This study investigates the evolution of the low-oxygen response in land plants mediated by group VII Ethylene Response Factors (ERFVIIs). We identified conserved transcriptional signatu...

How did oxygen-sensing evolve in plants?
In collaboration with @syno2xis.bsky.social Great work from @lauradc.bsky.social et. al. #plantscience @leverhulme.ac.uk
“ERFVIIs as transducers of oxygen-sensing in the evolution of land plant response to hypoxia”
www.cell.com/molecular-pl...

C-terminal amides mark proteins for degradation via SCF–FBXO31 - Nature SCF–FBXO31 scans proteins for C-terminal amidation and marks them for subsequent proteasomal degradation.

🎉Super excited to share our story on how the substrate receptor FBXO31 functions as a quality control factor by recognizing amides. This has been an amazing collaboration between Bode lab and @jcornlab.bsky.social. Special shutout goes to @matthiasmuhar.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/s41...

The diverse aspects of hypoxia. The size of the oxygen bubble correlates with concentration. This collection highlights the importance of hypoxia for plant development and environmental adaptation such as during flooding, in compacted or poorly aerated soils, high altitudes, and within meristematic tissues. Image credit: Moe Abbas.

The January 2025 issue of Plant Physiology is now online! Read this Focus Issue on Hypoxia and Plants here: https://academic.oup.com/plphys/issue @ASPB @OxUniPress #PlantSci

Thanks to @fromani.bsky.social for organising #nonseedUK24 in Cambridge. What a fantastic meeting. Thanks for the generous sponsorship @gensocuk.bsky.social and @biologists.bsky.social 😃 🌱 🧬

It took ages but eventually out as a preprint... Thanks for the summary @vinayshukla.bsky.social

Preprint alert, please share!!
With our new study, we engineered an orthogonal hypoxia-responsive system in plants inspired by mammalian HIF protein degradation. We demonstrated that this system could control protein stability and activity, enabling modulation of Oxygen sensing outputs. Here's how:

Designed to breathe: synthetic biology applications in plant hypoxia Novel biosensors and concepts from engineering biology expand the toolbox for plant low oxygen biology research

First Bluesky post to share our review with the world! Is there anything, beyond oxygen biosensors, that SynBio can provide to the world of plant hypoxia? Check it out here! @plantphys.bsky.social academic.oup.com/plphys/advan...

Yasin Dagdas portait

We are very happy to welcome Yasin Dagas soon starting as a Heisenberg professor at COS. Yasin's topic is evolutionary cell biology focusing on autophagy in plants and beyond. www.oeaw.ac.at/gmi/research... @dfgpublic.bsky.social

Tools to understand hypoxia responses in plant tissues Abstract. Our understanding of how low oxygen (O2) conditions arise in plant tissues and how they shape specific responses has seen major advancement in re

Check out our update on Tools to understand hypoxia responses in plant tissues in @plantphys.bsky.social Really enjoyed putting this together with Ole Pedersen, @schwarzlanderlab.bsky.social We hope you will find it a useful starting point on your low oxygen journey🌱
academic.oup.com/plphys/advan...

Freaky Flowers Volume 3!🌸🧬

Did you know that just a few mutations can transform the Arabidopsis flower into all kinds of forms? 🤯
Here’s a tour of 6 mutants that orchestrate floral development and architecture 🧵