Did you try to speak to the Central Ombudsperson at KU Leuven? If an internal office has sent your proposal out twice to the same hateful person, this is clearly an infringement of your rights and interests... or the reviewer is an internal person involved with the process. Either way...
Today, the European Council has adopted new rules on new genomic techniques (NGTs). In a final step, the rules needs to be formally adopted by the Parliament. NGTs have emerged over the past decade as a result of advances in biotechnology.
Read more: tinyurl.com/489p83n9
Someone in the Arabidopsis/clock community seems to deeply dislike my work on research culture. Just want to say: whoever you are, please write & debate me directly instead of cowering behind anonymous grant reviews that threaten my students’ work. (2nd year in a row)
Here are two examples:
bsky.app/profile/soms...
bsky.app/profile/soms...
Of course, had she been alive, the Nobel Prize committee would have undoubtedly found another reason not to award the prize to her. They wouldn't have needed Watson, Crick, or anyone else to arrive at this decision. The Nobel Prize has its very own history of misogyny that can easily rival Watson's.
Obviously there is a whole lot more to the Franklin/Watson/Crick story, but since you're (rhethorically) asking specifically about the Nobel Prize:
The price is not given posthumously, and Franklin had unfortunately already passed away when the prize was awarded in 1962.
Another really good article published by @asimovpress.bsky.social (in 2024):
@matthewcobb.bsky.social's
"Francis Crick Was Misunderstood"
'The Central Dogma is not a "dogma," and it has never been broken.'
It's really a shame that Asimov Press is going on hiatus. I really liked their longform. 🧪
In case you want to see the different views on the same question.
From the host's perspective
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
From the pathogen's perspective
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
From the interactive perspective
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
Three Botrytis/Eudicot papers accepted.
A reevaluation point on a question about generalism started with @katherinedenby.bsky.social 's sabbatical 24 years ago. Continued by a broad team of undergrads to post-docs including @annajomu.bsky.social @ccaseys.bsky.social and more not on bsky.
Excited to share our new findings in @science.org on how the DRT3 bacterial defense system uses a reverse transcriptase that builds DNA repeats without a nucleic acid template. Microbes never cease to amaze!
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
Postdoctoral Scholar position in the Coaker group University of California, Davis We are seeking a Postdoctoral Scholar to join our research program focused on immune receptor engineering and spatial analyses of plant pathogens interactions using computational and imaging approaches. The position will involve integration of molecular, imaging, and computational approaches. Relevant publications from the laboratory include Nature Plants (2025, PMID: 40721669), Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2024, PMID: 38814867), and Cell Reports (2023, PMID: 37342910). https://www.coakerlab.org/ Qualifications: • Ph.D. in plant biology, molecular biology, genetics, computational biology, or a related field • Strong background in genomics and/or computational biology • First author publications in peer-reviewed journals • Ability to work both independently and collaboratively in a multidisciplinary environment • Experience in plant innate immunity is preferred Application Instructions: The position is initially available for two years, with the possibility of extension based on performance and funding. Salary is based on the University of California postdoctoral salary scale (https://www.ucop.edu/academic-personnel-programs/_files/2025-26/represented-oct-2025-scales/t23.pdf). The salary range for this position is $69,073-$82,836 US Dollars/year. Review of applications will begin June 1, 2026 and will continue until the position is filled. Please submit a CV, a brief statement of research interests (~1 page), and contact information for three references to glcoaker@ucdavis.edu. The research statement should describe your previous work, how your expertise aligns with ongoing research in the lab, and potential future research directions.
We are hiring! We’re excited to recruit a postdoc to our lab at UC Davis to work on plant immune engineering and single-cell analyses of plant pathogen interactions. Apply by June 1. Please repost. www.coakerlab.org/postdoctoral...
Out now in Pest Management Science:
We screened a diverse oilseed rape (Brassica napus) population against cabbage stem flea beetle larvae and found...
🥁🥁🥁🥁
...no evidence for reduced larval survival or development across B. napus genotypes.
doi.org/10.1002/ps.7...
🍌 New @plants4thefuture.bsky.social series starts with banana: From wild ancestor to modern crop - how human selection shaped our food, and why continued breeding supports climate resilience and disease resistance 🌍
🔗 www.linkedin.com/posts/plants...
30 Years of Trends in Plant Science.
www.cell.com/trends/plant...
This editorial also introduces their new series "𝗪𝗼𝗺𝗲𝗻 𝗶𝗻 𝗽𝗹𝗮𝗻𝘁 𝘀𝗰𝗶𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲 𝗮𝗿𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗱 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗹𝗱". Definitely something to follow. 👍
#PlantScience #WomenInSTEM
Pathogen-inducible expression of autoactive NLRs confers multi-pathogen resistance in tomato
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Overview of GM crops in Australia over the past 30 years www.csiro.au/-/media/Scie... #plantscience 🧪
Very happy to announce that our paper on larval antibiosis in Brassica napus is now available!!! Unfortunately, a screen of diverse lines did not find reproducible resistance but this may change the way we look at larval studies in the field.
scijournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1...
I'm a data scientist @ourworldindata.org and I need help from a botanist or someone local to Kyoto, Japan! 🌸
We present one of the world’s longest climate records: 1,200 years of peak cherry blossom dates in Kyoto.
The researcher who maintained it, Prof. Yasuyuki Aono, sadly passed away last year.
I’m excited to share that one week ago our review has been published on in Current Opinion in Plant Biology 🎉
Grateful to my co-authors and collaborators!
#PlantScience #DevelopmentalBiology #Meristem #FloralTransition #Stemcells
#21: MS medium
bsky.app/profile/soms...
Hiring at IPB Halle! Department Head & Director – Chemistry of Natural Products and Bioactives.
Exceptional position with outstanding support & research environment.
Apply now by April 24, 2026!-> berufungsportal.uni-halle.de
#NaturalProductChemistry #AcademicJobs #IPB #PlantScience
How important do you feel discovery research and ‘basic’ science is for understanding disease? Well, I have a little bit of a biased view on the topic, since I'm a basic scientist myself. The lab has made more and more discoveries with very strong therapeutic implications, and often people ask me why we are not pursuing these further ourselves. Part of it is that I think about this very much as an ecosystem. People have different skills – I have colleagues who are very good at the application side of things and I have other colleagues, including people in my lab, who are very good at the basic science. There are a lot of very smart people at every stage in the ecosystem and, sometimes, we have to acknowledge that we can't all be experts in every step. A lot of basic science discoveries will end up having profound implications in the clinic – if you don't have the full imagination about how to get it there, that's okay, because you're still a very important piece of the jigsaw puzzle and other people can help. If the basic science discoveries didn't exist, then it's quite possible that the well would run dry. We cannot simply rely on the idea that the therapies currently in clinical trials are going to be enough because we already know that – for diseases, such as cancer, and with rapidly evolving viruses – there needs to be a constant influx of new ideas to stay ahead of the arms race. I'd also make a plug for the fact that, ultimately, we are all interested in human disease, but disease research in humans is not ethical or possible. This is why creating and studying model organisms in a high-throughput, low-investment context is incredibly important. We cannot just say ‘okay, we're going to stop work on anything that is not related to human research’, because – actually – it's all relevant to humans.
Do you think basic science is particularly threatened by cuts to funding? Science itself is quite uncertain. We do experiments wondering if they will even work. It's discovery, and you don't know where it's going to lead. It could lead to a billion-dollar company, something like mRNA vaccines or CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing, or it could simply be something that interests you. Sometimes it might appear esoteric from the outside, but there are very smart people dedicated to this work. We shouldn't lose sight of the fact that most of this work is paid for by taxpayers, but funding uncertainty creates a very unstable foundation. If the foundations are weak, people are going to get much more conservative about the science that they're doing and worry that ‘blue-skies research’ is not worth pursuing because it won't get funded. And that would be a mistake because all innovation in science really originates from blue-skies, basic research. The second thing that uncertainty does is send a message to our young trainees – who are our future – that this is not a career option that will provide professional and personal stability. I worry that this kind of uncertainty will mean we lose an entire generation of people, and that would be a loss we might not be able to overcome.
I was interviewed by @katiepickup.bsky.social recently for @dmmjournal.bsky.social. This has a little bit of my background, a little bit on science and mentoring, and a little bit (ok, more than a little bit) on funding in science.
Check it out at: journals.biologists.com/dmm/article/...
Euroseeds joined the 40+ organisations urging an ambitious EU Biotech Act II. Europe needs a strong biomanufacturing strategy to turn scientific excellence into real innovation for seeds and plant breeding. 🌱🧬
🔗Full statement: euroseeds.eu/news/joint-c...
We are looking for a Tomato Breeder to join our Team @kwsgroup.bsky.social in Antalya, Türkiye.
jobs.kws.com/job/Eski%C5%...
Our Vegetable Division is expanding at the moment, and this is a good timepoint to get on board.
#PlantScience #PlantSciJobs #PlantScienceJobs #PlantSciJob
They are credited in the thread I have linked in my first post above 👍
bsky.app/profile/soms...
The more I work with different crop plants, the more it baffles me that this works. 👇
Thank you very much. I'm happy to read this.
Coevolution of plant–microbe interactions, friend–foe continuum, and microbiome engineering for a sustainable future
Molecular Plant (@mplantpcom.bsky.social) review
www.cell.com/molecular-pl...
Professor Philippa Borrill
We are devastated to announce that our colleague and friend Professor Philippa Borrill died over the Easter weekend following a rare immune system disorder (HLH). She was a fantastic scientist, collaborator and mentor, and a close friend to many: www.jic.ac.uk/news/profess...
