Super stimulating talk by Olivier Hamant from @rdplab.bsky.social on the tradeoff between efficiency and systemic robustness in biology and beyond. And on how we define societal progress.

The 4th congress on strigolactone research will take place 5-8 October this year in beautiful Paris! Early bird registration extended until April 30. So, just go for it!
ics2026.sciencesconf.org

After years of preparation, Artemis II has launched from NASA's Kennedy Space Center, sending NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and CSA astronaut Jeremy Hansen on humanity’s first crewed mission beyond low Earth orbit in over 50 years.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ti2C...

Our Review "Development, Anatomy and Integrated Function of Grass Leaf Veins and Graminoid Stomata" is out doi.org/10.1146/annu...

Alec Baird and I discuss the development and function of the anatomical structures that regulate water supply (leaf veins) and water demand (stomata) in the grass leaf.

Universität Heidelberg verteidigt Status als Exzellenzuniversität – Rektorin Frauke Melchior: „Großartige Gemeinschaftsleistung hat zum Erfolg geführt“ www.uni-heidelberg.de/de/newsroom/...
#universität #heidelberg #uniheidelberg #Exzellenzstrategie #ExStra

Exciting!

Anni Zhang (from @thomasgreb.bsky.social lab) takes us to the green side of development by investigating how "Transcriptional repression of auxin signaling by SMXL5 ensures robust phloem cell fate specification" in arabidopsis #GfE2026

Kick-off meeting of our GreenRobust cluster of excellence last week. Exciting times ahead for plant sciences by bringing together an extraordinary bunch of enthusiastic scientists and human beings!

Join us at the #SEBconference Florence 2026 to discuss #Plant Robustness! 🌱🔥

@kaspervangelderen.bsky.social and I are organising the P12 session "Plant robustness from molecules to ecosystems" with the support of @greenrobust.de

Check the program and submit your abstract by March 6th! 👇

Job vacancies: University of Hohenheim Current job opportunities at the University of Hohenheim

our cluster is searching for a technical assistant for supporting joint plant phenotyping experiments to be carried out at the University of Hohenheim
www.uni-hohenheim.de/en/job-openi...

Postdoctoral position in Forest Genetics at @uni-freiburg.de with a focus on local adaptation and/or stress reaction of trees. The position combines research and teaching (4 SWS), and offers the opportunity to develop an independent research profile (4+ years).

Our preprint on the first genome-scale resource for the tuber crop T. tuberosum is now online. Thanks to my co-authors and everyone involved. @cosheidelberg.bsky.social | @greenrobust.de | @klaus-tschira-stiftung.de | @gso-forresearchers.bsky.social

Sainsbury Laboratory Symposium 2026 logo - Shaping Life-Mechanisms of Morphogenesis. Timelapse of a developing Arabidopsis leaf imaged at 9-12 days old under a confocal microscope, with cells segmented and coloured using MorphographX software. Images by Sarah Attrill.

Registrations now open for #SLS26 Sainsbury Laboratory Symposium 2026 in Cambridge, UK — Shaping Life: Mechanisms of Morphogenesis!
Join us explore how cellular, genetic & mechanical forces sculpt plant form
📅 22–24 Sept 2026
In-person + livestream
Limited fee waivers
www.slcu.cam.ac.uk/sls
#plantsi

Cool story from @meristemania.bsky.social lab on growth-defense tradeoff at the shoot apical meristem www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Two days of stimulating discussions with colleagues from @rdplab.bsky.social and @igflyon.bsky.social about science and life. Thanks for all the hospitality and engagement!

Today is the kick start of our @igflyon.bsky.social @cosheidelberg.bsky.social @rdplab.bsky.social common 2-day retreat in Lyon, @ensdelyon.bsky.social ! Very diverse and exciting talks going from plants, algae to animals!

Scientific coordinator at the GreenRobust location Heidelberg (f/m/d) - Universität Heidelberg Universität Heidelberg looks for Scientific coordinator at the GreenRobust location Heidelberg (f/m/d) in Heidelberg - apply now!

Our cluster of Excellence GreenRobust is looking for a scientific coordinator located at Heidelberg University. Please spread the word!
www.academics.com/jobs/scienti...

December in preprints - the Node Welcome to our monthly trawl for developmental and stem cell biology (and related) preprints. The preprints this month are hosted on bioRxiv.

It's that time of the month again for our featured #preprint list for December ⬇️

Welcome to our monthly trawl for developmental and stem cell biology (and related) preprints.

thenode.biologists.com/december-in-...

Full Professor and Chair Laboratory of Biophysics We are looking for a Full Professor in the Biophysics chair group, part of Wageningen University & Research (WUR)

www.wur.nl/en/vacancy/f...

Become our new colleague (and next door neighbor) and lead a chair/group/department of Biophysics at Wageningen University. Reach out to me for info and please spread!!!

Happy to present our latest: Evolutionary adaptations to the hormonal regulation of vascular tissue development | PNAS www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/.... Work by Wei Xiao and funded by @erc.europa.eu

Hilarious!

Stimulating visit of students from Seoul National University (SNU) at COS, IMSEAM and central research facilities this week in the context of their Global Leadership Program. Exciting case of international student exchange @uniheidelberg.bsky.social

Imputation integrates single-cell and spatial gene expression data to resolve transcriptional networks in barley shoot meristem development - Nature Plants Spatially resolved gene expression during barley development was done by integrating an scRNA-seq dataset from cells with unknown position with spatial transcriptomics. This dataset is publicly availa...

It's finally out!...
Using single-cell and spatial transcriptome data, and data imputation, we created BARVISTA, a website able to perform almost genome-wide information on gene expression profiles at single-cell resolution in barley spikes!
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Not that this passes without being noticed: The GreenRobust cluster of excellence is officially alive since Jan 1, 2026! Looking forward to at least seven years of exciting science in the field of plant ecology, molecular biology, agriculture and the combination of all these fields. Stay tuned!

Thanks, AP! No, they are vascular cambium cells. This is based on their immediate vicinity to vessel elements. Xiomin also tried finding dividing cork cambium cells but this is even harder to do due to their more fuzzy position.

Did you ever wonder how a dividing cambium cell looks like and what determines its striking regular division? Xiomin Liu, PhD student in the lab, found out in a heroic histological approach. Fruitful collaboration with the group of Sabine Müller (@phragmoplast.bsky.social) doi.org/10.64898/202...

📣 Save the date!
The GfE Meeting 2026 is coming to Potsdam 🇩🇪🌱

✨ Four outstanding keynote speakers
(Hans Clevers, Isabel Fariñas, Thomas Bosch, Frank Bradke) ✨

🏅 Celebration of the Klaus Sander, Hilde Mangold, and José Campos-Ortega Awards 🏅

👉 www.uni-potsdam.de/en/gfe-meeti...

Self-organization of vascular strands drives their patterning in the Arabidopsis shoot apex In plants, the development of the shoot vascular system is closely coordinated with lateral organ formation at the shoot apical meristem. Despite exte…

A very nice and skillful work by Agata Burian and colleagues characterizing the development of vascular strands around the Arabidopsis shoot apex: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

BioRevolution IV - Evolutionary Cell Biology meets Neurosciences. YouTube video by Faculty of Biosciences Heidelberg University

youtube.com/watch?v=KO3Q...

Today’s @cosheidelberg.bsky.social seminar is on 🍃 given by @hildenelissen.bsky.social from @psb-vib.bsky.social Really cool work all the way from mechanistic science to translation!!!