Alessio Mengoni

Do you like blueberries? I do, but what's going on in declining wild populations of blueberry of Italian Apennines? Of course from the microbiota perspective! If you are curious see here:
journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Another nice paper from @francescavaccaro.bsky.social and Camilla Fagorzi

So glad and happy to be at the Biotechnology Summer School "The Green Side of One Health: From Basics to Industrial Applications” in wonderful #Kaszuby, Poland bss.ug.edu.pl
One week of science, fun and inspiration from young scientists. With @francescavaccaro.bsky.social and Camilla Fagorzi

Glad to participate to the 🌞 school in #Padua on "Why do we study plants". Tnx to @lorellanavazio.bsky.social and Barbara Baldan for inviting me. @unipd.bsky.social

Fantastic lectures by
@christhorogood.bsky.social @oxforduni.bsky.social on the #Rafflesia flowers

Happy to repost on my new Bluesky profile 🌱
In our study published on May 8,we successfully adapted the #PhenotypeMicroarray approach to plant #protoplasts, opening new possibilities for high-throughput metabolic phenotyping at cell level!
🔗 📖 rdcu.be/ek5iH
@springernature.com @alessiome.bsky.social

Soil bacteria and symbiotic rhizobia synergistically promote nitrogen fixation and biomass production of alfalfa (Medicago sativa L.) plants even under water shortage conditions without altering the n... In modern and sustainable agriculture, the exploitation of biological nitrogen fixation (BNF) is an alternative to synthetic nitrogen fertilizers whic…

New paper from the lab. Take-away message: redundancy of functions in consortia led to more effective lab-to-the-field translation. Great collaboration with IBBR-CNR and Univ. Palermo. With contribution by L. Cangioli, @francescavaccaro.bsky.social , C. Fagorzi

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

In other words Trichoderma can recognize different strains of S. meliloti, giving rise to synergistic interaction for nitrogen fixing symbiosis. Quite exciting news for molecular dialogue in the rhizomicrobiota and formulations of consortia of bioinoculants

Here, we identified molecular evidence for genotype-by-genotype interaction in the transcriptome of Trichoderma in presence of the rhizobium Sinorhizobium meliloti spent medium

Toward deciphering the molecular dialogue in the rhizomicrobiota: Transcriptomic profiling of Trichoderma in rhizobia interaction Microbial interactions are of key importance for the emergent properties of microbiota and ecosystems, playing a pivotal role in plant health, growth,…

New from the lab 📰 Toward deciphering the molecular dialogue in the rhizomicrobiota: Transcriptomic profiling of Trichoderma in rhizobia interaction. Work led by @francescavaccaro.bsky.social just few weeks before defending her PhD and Camilla Fagorzi! www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

A geological timescale for bacterial evolution and oxygen adaptation Microbial life has dominated Earth’s history but left a sparse fossil record, greatly hindering our understanding of evolution in deep time. However, bacterial metabolism has left signatures in the ge...

"We infer that the earliest aerobic bacteria emerged in the Archaean, predating the GOE by 900 million years."

Oxygen tolerance may have been a prerequisite for, rather than a consequence of, the evolution of oxygenic photosynthesis

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

Mutations in HEADING DATE 1 affect transcription and cell wall composition in rice A zinc finger transcription factor that is central to photoperiodic flowering also plays a role in determining cell wall composition and abiotic stress res

academic.oup.com/plphys/advan...
Flowering time and cell wall

We also offer travel grants for Early Career Researchers thanks to the support of @amiposts.bsky.social & @jxbotany.bsky.social. Applications open until 15/04.

Check all the info in our website and stay tuned for all the upcoming news and a very exciting programme! ➡️ web.cvent.com/event/aa2ad9...

We are looking forward to hosting the next European Nitrogen Fixation Conference in Oxford the 26th-29th August. We have already announced our invited speakers and are now excited to receive your abstracts!
Keep an eye on our key dates:
🗓️ 30/04 Early bird registration
📝 01/05 Abstract submission

Sinorhizobium meliloti FcrX coordinates cell cycle and division during free-living growth and symbiosis by a ClpXP-dependent mechanism

-in PNAS from Emanuele Biondi

www.pnas.org/doi/full/10....

We are very happy to share our latest preprint! 📣

H-NS is a xenogeneic silencer that prevents the costly expression of horizontally acquired genes. In Salmonella, H-NS silences several Pathogenicity Islands (SPIs), including SPI-1, which is essential for host invasion.
🧵⬇️

Probabilmente no, perché hanno agito di notte col passamontagna. E perché sia i media che la politica hanno speso ben poche parole quando questi episodi sono accaduti, nel giugno 2024 ai danni dell’Università di Milano e nel febbraio del 2025 ai danni dell’ateneo di Verona 2/3

A controlled study on the sociology of science:

We published last year two papers on bacterial toxins in the same journal ("Molecular Systems Biology"), edited by the same editor, both describe discovery of toxins associated with secretion systems that were predicted computationally and validated

📣Just 1 week left to apply for 2x 5-year researcher posts in experimental evolution #mevosky #microsky in @mermanchester.bsky.social @official-uom.bsky.social

+ 3-year research tech post www.jobs.manchester.ac.uk/Job/JobDetai...

ERC project: how MGEs and defence systems control genome evoluton

Eco-vandals target gene-edited Chardonnay in Italy. Antiscience stupidity strikes again: two experimental fields have been launched in the country, and both have been attacked #CRISPR #agriculture #vandalism (link below)

Viti TEA vandalizzate. E adesso? Nella notte tra il 12 e il 13 febbraio ignoti vandali hanno fatto irruzione nel campo sperimentale dell’Università di Verona danneggiando le viti Chardonnay editate per combattere un’in…

Due campi sperimentali avviati, due campi vandalizzati da ignoti. C'è la volontà politica di contrastare questi reati? #CRISPR #agricoltura #TEA #ecovandali crispr.blog/2025/02/16/v...

microGWAS: a computational pipeline to perform large-scale bacterial genome-wide association studies Identifying genetic variants associated with bacterial phenotypes, such as virulence, host preference and antimicrobial resistance, has great potential for a better understanding of the mechanisms inv...

Our paper describing the microGWAS pipeline was published yesterday in Microbial Genomics. Lots of fixes and additions to the code/documentation since the preprint, including a hard to reproduce bug that only showed up in a specific HPC 🥵

www.microbiologyresearch.org/content/jour...

OsMAINTENANCE OF MERISTEM LIKE 1 controls style number at high temperatures in rice - Plant Molecular Biology OsMAIL1 encodes for a rice protein of the Plant Mobile Domain (PMD) family and is strongly upregulated during floral induction in response to the presence of the florigens Heading date 3a (Hd3a) and R...

We found this gene that is important for correct carpel development in rice. It encodes for a plant mobile protein. link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Il mio intervento a Effetto Giorno sugli incendi in California.
Minuto 35:14

www.radio24.ilsole24ore.com/programmi/ef...

Atomic spaghetti and mutagenesis B.C. (before CRISPR) Before the advent of genome editing and GMOs, mutagenesis was achieved through radiation. This technique was also used to modify varieties of durum wheat, which, through crossbreeding, contributed …

Atomic spaghetti, an Italian story #mutationbreeding mycrispr.blog/2025/01/09/a...

The Complex Epigenetic Panorama in the Multipartite Genome of the Nitrogen-Fixing Bacterium Sinorhizobium meliloti Abstract. In prokaryotes, DNA methylation plays roles in DNA repair, gene expression, cell cycle progression, and immune recognition of foreign DNA. Genome

"The Complex Epigenetic Panorama in the Multipartite Genome of the Nitrogen-Fixing Bacterium Sinorhizobium meliloti" After many rounds of revision and re-analysis I'm very happy to share the paper on genome-wide methylation analysis of S. meliloti.
academic.oup.com/gbe/article/...

Scientists need more time to think

Good piece by @natureportfolio.bsky.social. The erosion of thinking time—driven by admin, bureaucracy, industry agendas, and unrealistic output targets—stifles curiosity-led science. These pressures undermine innovation and the intellectual freedom vital for real progress. 🧪🌱🌍 #ScienceIsNotBusiness

The rhizosphere has been called “one of the most complex ecosystems on earth”

But how do host plants control benefits derived from their microbial partners?

Read our paper in Nature Microbiology on how legumes mediate conflict & cooperation with N2-fixing symbionts.

Here: tinyurl.com/4y4tjx6k

Per chi volesse il 12 dicembre alle ore 21.00, presso la biblioteca delle Oblate, a Firenze, parlerò di Meteorologia nell'Arte. Organizzatore: Caffè Scienza.
Entrata: rigorosamente gratuita

Postdoctoral Position in Molecular Systems Biology

I have an open Postdoc position in Molecular Systems Biology at ETH Zürich!

The project is about the conservation of transcription factors functions between strains of Pseudomonas aeruginosa 🧬🦠

More details and application at:
jobs.ethz.ch/job/view/JOP...

Please share!

A conserved bacterial genetic basis for commensal-host specificity Animals selectively acquire specific symbiotic gut bacteria from their environments that aid host fitness. To colonize, a symbiont must locate its niche and sustain growth within the gut. Adhesins are...

Keeping your symbiosis genes on a plasmid is a smart move if you have multiple potential hosts. Here a gut bacterial symbiont, but same is true for N-fixing Rhizobia.
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

The history of GM crops in Italy: After two decades of a de facto ban, the engagement of farmers and scientists has prompted the Italian government to allow field-testing of NGT/TEA plants again: EMBO reports: Vol 0, No 0 EMBO Press is an editorially independent publishing platform for the development of EMBO scientific publications.

With Roberto Defez we tried to describe what's going on in Italy with GMOs and NGTs. And how we see it in the European scenario. Out today in EMBO Reports www.embopress.org/doi/full/10....