Pierre Bourguet

The recombination frequency (cM/Mb) along chromosome 4 of A. thaliana (female meiosis). In full hybrids (grey), where polymorphism is distributed all along chromosomes, most crossovers occur in the regions surrounding the Centromere (Cen), and very few at chromosome ends (Tel: telomeres). In lines where polymorphism is restricted to chromosome ends (purple), the local recombination rate increases drastically, at the expense of the non-polymorphic regions (yellow).

🚨 First pre-print from my team !!

TL;DR: presence of polymorphism (sequence differences between the homologous chromosomes) can *increase* the local rate of recombination in Arabidopsis thaliana, turning cold regions of the genome hot (purple v. grey) !

Transposable elements are vectors of recurrent transgenerational epigenetic inheritance DNA methylation loss at transposable elements (TEs) can affect neighboring genes and be epigenetically inherited in plants, yet the determinants and significance of this additional system of inheritan...

Happy to share the results of a long-haul post-doc project, now online @science.org, aiming at understanding the rules of transgeneration epigenetic inheritance over TEs in plants and its extent and impact in nature. More below!
doi.org/10.1126/scie...

My first first-author paper is out!🎉
Here we propose a model where a silencing complex, PIWI*, assembles on target RNAs to recruit effectors and shut down transposon activity.
Huge thanks to the Brennecke and Plaschka labs, especially Julius and Clemens, and all co-authors!

🚀 Checkout our new #nextflow MNase-pipeline nucDetective

Features:
✅ MNase QC analysis
✅ high resolution nucleosome maps
✅ detect nucleosome dynamics
✅ multi-condition comparison
✅ nucleosme-repeat-length

Try it here: github.com/uschwartz...
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BOKU University in Vienna is recruiting a full professor for Biochemistry! Check out the description below, apply and join us in beautiful Vienna.
@bokuvienna.bsky.social
🧪🧪🧪

short.boku.ac.at/53e6g6

A multisensor high-temperature signaling framework for triggering daytime thermomorphogenesis in Arabidopsis - Nature Communications Plants encounter high temperatures concomitantly with intense sunlight during the daytime. Here, the authors reveal a concerted chloroplast and nucleus high-temperature signaling framework that gates ...

Further evidence that sugar in the plates changes the plant biology you study. Best to avoid putting sugar in the agar, unless you want to study what sugar in the agar does to plants. This paper uses sugar in the agar to study what sugar does. www.nature.com/articles/s41... #plantresearch

Head of Service Unit Proteomics

Attention plant proteomics specialists: We are looking for a Head of our new Proteomics Unit at our international and dynamic Max Planck Institute of Molecular Plant Physiology. @mpi-mp-potsdam.bsky.social Applications are welcome until 30. Sept 2025: jobs.mpimp-golm.mpg.de/jobposting/8...

Thanks for sharing! All activities were spearheaded by Roberto Torres @lcatmon.bsky.social in collaboration with the "44 Perills" association and with the support of @sesbe-org.bsky.social @eseb2025.bsky.social and @ajuntamentbcn.bsky.social. Big shout out to #eseb2025 scientists that participated!

August’s Nature Plants cover story shows how we integrated large-scale multiDAP and snRNA data to reveal drivers of cell type identity and evolution in flowering plants. www.nature.com/nplants/volu... We packed a lot into this paper! Here’s a single-cell spin on what we found:

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...

Thrilled to have our spatial single-cell atlas of the Arabidopsis lifecycle in @NaturePlants. Turns out that its easy to make nice images when spatial expression of 1,000 genes is available! 1/n
@natanellae.bsky.social @tatsuyanobori.bsky.social @joeecker.bsky.social

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

🌱 come join our lab 😀
🔬 PhD: small RNAs & plant stress (36 mo)
🧬CDD researcher: plant molecular biology (24 mo)
Apply 👇
PhD: emploi.cnrs.fr/Offres/Docto...
CDD: emploi.cnrs.fr/Offres/CDD/U...

#PlantScience #PhD #ResearchJobs#ERC#CNRS

MORC2 directs transcription-dependent CpG methylation of human LINE-1 transposons in early neurodevelopment Methylation of CpG dinucleotides is essential for silencing genomic repeats such as LINE-1 retrotransposons (L1s) in the germline and soma. Evolutionarily-young L1s are transcribed in human pluripoten...

Very proud of this work where we define how the MORC2 ATPase directs CpG methylation of active human L1 transposons in early development.

Thanks to co-authors, funders & wonderful environment @lundstem.bsky.social

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

Brief thread below (do people still do that?) 1/X

I can only recommend working with Heïdi at the GReD, she is a terrific scientist and human being! Clermont-Ferrand has high quality of life, is affordable and the surrounding nature is a beauty.

Bimodal centromeres in pentaploid dogroses shed light on their unique meiosis - Nature Insights into the dogrose genome and centromeres explain their ability to achieve stable sexual reproduction.

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I am very excited to announce our🌹NEW PAPER OUT IN 𝑁𝐴𝑇𝑈𝑅𝐸!🌹
𝐃𝐑𝐈𝐕𝐄 𝐓𝐎 𝐒𝐔𝐑𝐕𝐈𝐕𝐄: Bimodal centromeres in pentaploid dogroses shed light on their unique meiosis
With the Ritz and Kovařík labs we show a potential role for centromeres on 𝘙𝘰𝘴𝘢 𝘤𝘢𝘯𝘪𝘯𝘢 bizarre reproduction!
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

1/ How many hours do bioinformaticians lose matching sample IDs across assays?
Too many.
And it’s avoidable.
Let’s talk about why this happens—and how to stop it.

Boromir Meme: One does not simply select the longest ORF

I am super excited to announce the first (brief) pre-print purely from my group:

Start right to end right: authentic open reading frame selection matters

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

This marks a return to NMD research for me. NMD detects early stop codons but we need to find the true stop!

Genomic and genetic insights into Mendel’s pea genes - Nature Characterization of the genetic architecture underlying the 7 pairs of contrasting traits studied by Mendel and the over 70 additional agronomic traits in pea (Pisum sativum) reveals their m...

The rest of Mendel's alleles characterized! So, out of 7 traits, 3 caused by TE insertions!!! (though apparently there are two different green alleles, one cause by a TE insertion, but another a promoter deletion allele)

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

Maternal control of RNA decay safeguards embryo development As in mammals, the plant embryo is surrounded by maternal tissues that provide protection from the external environment. In angiosperms, a double fertilization process results in the formation of a di...

🚨 Preprint alert!!
Thrilled to share our new story where we report the discovery of a new sporophytic maternal-effect mutant in Arabidopsis. 🧵
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

The (molecular) shape of you New methods allow scientists to use a powerful technique known as cryo-EM to examine proteins that have been difficult to study so far.

🧪 A new method called MagIC-Cryo-EM allows scientists to use powerful #CryoEM techniques to examine proteins that have been difficult to study so far.

The pitfalls of class prediction in omics 🧵
1/ You think you’ve built the perfect omics predictor.
The accuracy is high. The p-value is low.
But is it real—or just a story your data whispered back?

A three year postdoctoral position is available in my group, investigating plant centromere structure, function and evolution @camplantsci.bsky.social
www.jobs.cam.ac.uk/job/51488/

Super cool work on the function of intrinsically disordered regions in regulating transcription factor DNA binding.

‘Landmark’ evolution study shows how rice inherits tolerance to cold without DNA changes The study adds to evidence challenging the dominance of ‘natural selection’ as the sole adaptive force in evolution.

[Daily Watch] Rice plants inherit cold tolerance through epigenetic changes. Landmark study challenges traditional evolution views. #Evolution #Epigenetics #PlantScience www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Horizontal transmission of functionally diverse transposons is a major source of new introns | PNAS Since the discovery of spliceosomal introns in eukaryotic genomes, the proximate molecular and evolutionary processes that generate new introns hav...

Transposable elements are a major driver of intron gain in eukaryotes, and are capable of transmission between diverse species #HGT #evolution - www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Cryptic infection of a giant virus in a unicellular green alga Latency is a common strategy in a wide range of viral lineages, but its prevalence in giant viruses remains unknown. In this work, we describe a 617–kilo–base pairs integrated giant viral element in t...

A giant virus in the genome of Chlamydomonas - this week in @science.org
#plantscience

Cryptic infection of a giant virus in a unicellular green alga | Science www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Distribution of haploid chromosomes into separate nuclei in two pathogenic fungi Nuclei define eukaryotes, enabling macromolecular compartmentalization and cellular regulation. Each nucleus is believed to contain one or more haploid sets of chromosomes (1N). However, we discovered...

This is wild. Chromosome distributions into different nuclei!

Distribution of haploid chromosomes into separate nuclei in two pathogenic fungi
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

At the GMI, we value collaboration that bridges diverse research areas. Our institute is looking for a Senior Group Leader to contribute to our mission of making fundamental discoveries that enhance our understanding of how plants and other autotrophic organisms function. 👇 Links below.

Delighted to see our work now published in @currentbiology.bsky.social. A great place for Bostrychia to stake its claim as an emerging red algal model system. Check it out here: www.cell.com/current-biol...

Massively parallel jumping assay decodes Alu retrotransposition activity - Nature Communications Here, the authors develop a high-throughput assay to measure the jumping potential of thousands of transposons in parallel.

Massively parallel jumping assay (MPJA) enables to test the jumping potential of thousands of transposons. Analysis of >160,000 Alu haplotypes identified transposition-asssociated domains. Amazing work by Navneet Matharu, Jingjing Zhao, Martin Kircher and many others.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...