Looking forward to giving a seminar at the @barcelonacollaboratorium.com seminar series, many thanks @n-martin.bsky.social for hosting!

Giant cells: from random initiation to nonrandom pattern

Our recent paper is explained here in a more accessible way!

"We often think of the emergence of order as arising from self-organization or cell–cell interactions, but here, order emerges from random cell fate decisions amplified by the geometry of tissue growth."
www.mpipz.mpg.de/pr-formosa-2...

A Postdoctoral Associate position is available in the Roeder Laboratory at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY with a focus on researching Polyploidy. Apply by March 1. Please spread the word. apps.hr.cornell.edu/recruiting/f...

Job alert🚨I am advertising a 2-year postdoctoral position to work on the mathematics of plant morphogenesis @mpipz.bsky.social. Candidates with interests in mathematical modelling, mechanics, or biophysics are strongly encouraged to apply. 🌱Reposts are appreciated!

jobs.mpipz.mpg.de/jobposting/4...

New preprint on ancestral cellular patterning in fossil and extant liverworts! A story led by @josepmercadal.bsky.social together with Susan Tremblay, @leoniekraska.bsky.social, Martin Hutten. Check the thread below! @mpipz.bsky.social Link: doi.org/10.64898/202...

Cell-type specification at criticality underlies rhizoid patterning in the liverwort Marchantia polymorpha Rhizoid specification in Marchantia polymorpha gemmae involves lateral inhibition mediated by the microRNA FRH1, which represses the rhizoid-specific …

Happy to see this out! We describe a patterning mechanism underlying rhizoid specification in Marchantia. Contrary to classic patterning mechanisms (e.g., Turing), rhizoid specification depends on both randomness and lateral inhibition, involves subcritical bifurcations, and occurs at criticality!

Poster announcing the 3rd Early Career Plant Researchers Network Meeting, held 20–21 April 2026 in Halle (Saale), Germany. The event targets experienced PhD students and postdoctoral researchers in plant science and features scientific talks, career development and grant-writing workshops, and networking. Travel and accommodation are covered, and participants are registered for the 11th Leibniz Plant Biochemistry Symposium (22–24 April 2026). Application deadline: 23 January 2026. Website: plant-ecr-networking.eu.

Are you an experienced PhD student or postdoc in plant science looking to connect, present your work, and discuss career paths?
Join us at the 3rd Early Career Plant Researchers Network Meeting, Halle (Saale), 20–21 April 2026
Deadline: 23 January 2026
plant-ecr-networking.eu

Interested in doing a PhD on Plant Sciences? Check the program run by @ceplas.bsky.social !

Wondering about the dynamics during a developmental transition? Check out our preprint “Time-dependent bistability leads to critical slowing down during floral transition in Arabidopsis”, a very exciting collaboration with the Coupland lab @mpipz.bsky.social doi.org/10.64898/202...

thanks @sebamorenor.bsky.social ! Hoping that the plant community uses this resource to better understand the role of spatial ploidy patterns in plant development/morphogenesis!

Shining a Spotlight on Polyploid Cells – a tool to uncover spatial patterns of DNA content across tissues Several research teams have collaborated to develop a new computing pipeline that enables high-throughput quantification of ploidy, i.e., the number of copies of chromosomes, in different tissues base...

Press release on our new work about inferring Spatial Ploidy (iSPy), a collaboration with the @roederlab.bsky.social and the Fox Lab, with @nickrussell31.bsky.social being the first author @mpipz.bsky.social @cp-cellrepmethods.bsky.social www.mpipz.mpg.de/5771290/pr-f...

A common pathway controls cell size in the sepal and leaf epidermis leading to a nonrandom pattern of giant cells Arabidopsis leaf epidermal cells have a wide range of sizes and ploidies, but the mechanisms patterning their size and spatial distribution remain unclear. This study shows that the pathway controllin...

Check out our story in @plosbiology.org about how a nonrandom, clustered giant cell pattern forms in the sepal and leaf epidermis! It has been a great journey with @gweissbart.bsky.social, Frances Clark, Xihang Wang, @roederlab.bsky.social and co-authors.
journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...

Only a few days left to apply!

My group is looking for a postdoc to engineer and deploy new tools to precisely manipulate and decode how auxin coordinates plant morphogenesis.

@starmorph-syg.bsky.social

Research Associate - Reprogramming Development (closes 7 October 2025)

Please share & RSVP to join the November 25th webinar!
Hear from the 2025 Philip N. Benfey Arabidopsis Community Lifetime Achievement Awardees! bit.ly/naascawards
@plantevolution.bsky.social

The BM^2 Lab is hiring a Ph.D. student to work on a variety of problems connected to modeling of morphogenesis in plants (i.e. ovule curvature formation, fixed handedness establishment in certain plant organs and its link to cell wall mechanics).

Please share!

Associated Python code is also provided, have a play with it!

Adapted from Fig. 1 from Kadiyala et al 2025.

Introducing five concepts from dynamical systems to decode developmental regulatory mechanisms, have a read! @perez-carrasco.bsky.social‬ @roederlab.bsky.social @mpipz.bsky.social This effort started in a morphogenesis meeting @kitp-ucsb.bsky.social‬ in 2023. journals.biologists.com/dev/article/...

Looking forward to visit @cragenomica.bsky.social tomorrow Wednesday and present our work!

So glad that the new suberin work from @tonnigrubeandersen.bsky.social 's lab is out now 🙂 Thanks Tonni for giving us the chance to work on it too! Congrats to all co-authors and especially @leoniekraska.bsky.social and Tonni. See below Tonni's post!

Very excited to participate tomorrow Friday the 23rd May at the @plantaeofficial.bsky.social webinar on 'AI in Plant Biological Sciences Research', looking forward to it!

Senior Group Leader Position

Two fantastic positions in #plantscience: A junior AND a senior group leader position at the Gregor Mendel Institute (GMI), part of @viennabiocenter.bsky.social. Generous core funding, fantastic plant and non-plant colleagues, all in a very livable and beautiful city.
www.oeaw.ac.at/gmi/join-us/...

Apoplastic barriers are essential for nodule formation and nitrogen fixation in Lotus japonicus Establishment of the apoplastic root barrier known as the Casparian strip occurs early in root development. In legumes, this area overlaps with nitrogen-fixing nodule formation, which raises the possi...

Finally!
Im so excited to present to culmination of many years of work from the fantastic Defeng Shen and some great collaborators. For details, I have made a digested thread below, but if you are more interested feel free to reach out (and read the paper of course).
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

⭐️ Please Fwd. Are you in Paris on 16th May? See👇 poster of symposium on « Information processing in biological systems » @collegedefrance.bsky.social Fantastic line of speakers 🤩.
It is free, w/o registration, and it will be exciting.m!
Follows from my series of lectures at CdF last fall.

Congrats to all authors, and very especially to
@nickrussell31.bsky.social @mpipz.bsky.social

Spatial ploidy inference using quantitative imaging, our new collaborative work in the Polyploidy Integration & Innovative Institute, with the @roederlab.bsky.social and the Fox lab. Try our pipeline with your images!
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

I am recruiting an #ERC funded PostDoc to work on the evolution of vertebral counts in cichlids. This is an experimental project & will be looking for candidates with experience generating reporter lines, live-imaging and experimental embryology.
Application deadline: 25th Feb.
tinyurl.com/33jbu8fa

Nice to see the MPIPZ Community here on Bluesky growing, but we still need a lot more people from the Institute to join. More importantly, it's time the actual MPIPZ moves its account here.

go.bsky.app/TZbbhVn

@maxplanck.de #PlantScience

Call for papers: New Phytologist Special Collection on Stomata Call for paper: New Phytologist Special Collection on Stomata

📢 Deadline approaching

Doing research on #stomata? Submit your abstract to our call for papers by 14 February!

👉 https://www.newphytologist.org/news/view/353

#PlantScience

A couple of weeks left to apply to join Development's *Pathway to Independence* programme

Support & mentoring for post-docs on the academic job market

Deadline: January 31

journals.biologists.com/dev/pages/pi...

Interested in doing a PhD on modelling the dynamics of a differentiation wavefront in the Arabidopsis root, in collaboration with @tonnigrubeandersen.bsky.social, at the MPIPZ in Cologne? Just a few weeks left to apply!