In the middle of all the ugliness, plants keep doing their thing: quietly proving that beauty is still possible.

Lately all I do is talk about my @plasmidsaurus.bsky.social sponsorship... 🦖🧬✨

Free limited edition Plasmidsaurus x OpenFlower postcards extended to 3/16. Last chance!!!

Petunia hybrida has been bred into an incredible diversity of colors and patterns.

Most arise from mutations in the anthocyanin pathway or post-transcriptional gene silencing that turns pigment genes on and off 🧬🎨

Probably the most unique and aesthetic lab website I’ve seen!

I hope other labs find inspiration in this to make their own cool site ✨

I made this green fluorescent flower with sequencing support from plasmidsaurus! 🦖🧬🌸✨

Limited edition postcards of the flowers below:

OpenCloning is legit

Another example of a wizard making great free tools for everyone 👏

Nice! Petunia is pretty tricky

Either you are an injection pro or Catharanthus is easily infiltrated. Beautiful 👏👏

Beautiful! Is this Catharanthus infiltrated with GFP?

Friday 20 Feb 2026 (15:00 UvA Science Park) “From Fertilization to Flower Design” by @nickdesnoyer.bsky.social
From live imaging of pollen tube–synergid interactions in Arabidopsis and Petunia @petuniaplatform.bsky.social to flower genetic design. Host: Francesca Quattrocchio
🌺#PlantScience

Potato virus X (PVX) is a positive-sense RNA virus widely used as a model system for studying plant virus replication and movement.

It also forms a pretty cool helical structure (much larger than shown here)

This honestly will be more informative and something our field needs 🙌

One of my favorite images I have taken is now a journal cover 🙌

A pollinated flower ovary, dissected to show the journey of the pollen tubes (magenta) to the egg apparatus (white).

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

Thanks! I think the 35S promoter is more active in vasculature. Makes sense given it’s a viral promoter.

Thanks! Excited to join the petunia community :)

Yeah these patterns aren’t stable… yet

These are just the first parts and flowers of OpenFlower, a nonprofit aimed at creating designer flowers for art & education as a community 🧬✨

Stay tuned for exciting announcements!

With these genes, one can encode blends of pigments reaching a spectrum of colors.. Just look at this overlap of RUBY & GOLD .

DM or email me for the DNA parts, which have been whole plasmid sequenced thanks to @plasmidsaurus.bsky.social !

Inspired by the story, I created a petunia with 5 differently colored petals using new genes I made, AMBER & GOLD that I just published here: doi.org/10.64898/202...

Similar to RUBY, these polycistronic genes encode yellow, fluorescent betaxanthins 💛🧡

Along the way, a friend reminded me of a famous Soviet-era children’s story from his childhood: The Rainbow Flower.

In it, a young girl receives a flower whose every petal grants a wish. By the end, she learns that the flower’s true power is using it to help others.

That’s because the gene I use, RUBY, only encodes pink betacyanin pigments.

With the support of @kamounlab.bsky.social @thesainsburylab.bsky.social I’ve been making a genetic toolkit to encode all floral colors of the rainbow 🌈

Over the last two years I’ve been creating bespoke flowers with new forms and colors using genetic engineering.

Buutttt I have a problem: …they’re all pink 🥲

Why I’m genetically engineering a rainbow flower…

And how a Russian fairy tale inspired the idea 🧵

Experimental Design

Moldy plate ✨

Weekend well spent learning Blender and Molecular Nodes by the great @bradyajohnston.bsky.social

My first animation: "Interpretation of NRC2 resistosome assembly on the plasma membrane"

Thanks Liz!!

I hope not all the time!

This means a lot, thank you 🙏

Pleased to share this thoughtful essay by Jess on my flower design project🌹🧬

As a small thank-you for spreading the work, I'm randomly giving away 5 of these new morphogenesis hoodies to whoever reposts this!