Happy to see this in biorxiv 🎉. Really proud of how it started and ended. Very first report of new peptide class “ PSK” encoded by parasitic nematodes. Nematodes getting smarter 🎉 Congrats to all authors
@nemaplant.bsky.social lab and @lmueller.bsky.social lab.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
I know the feeling, I'm leaving Padova after many years.. Best of luck!
New OA Brief Comm: "Cross-kingdom RNA interference promotes arbuscular mycorrhiza development" rdcu.be/e72nc
Symbiotic fungi forming widespread arbuscular mycorrhiza symbioses use cross-kingdom RNAi to silence plant genes and promote their colonization of host roots.
Happy MSCA Rejection Day for those who celebrate! I hope your comments were at least kind and supportive.
Happy and proud to share the first first-author paper from @arianna-kr8.bsky.social! Lettuce phenotypes strongly influence leaf-associated microbiota. link.springer.com/article/10.1...
So, throw the trainees under the bus and keep the PIs unscathed?!? What if the PI created a toxic environment leading to this behaviour? What if the institute creates a toxic environment glorifying CNS papers??? Will you mention these at the retraction note?
🌸 Coding the carpel: evolutionary roots of NGATHA genes in seed plants 🌸
by @gwenkirschner.bsky.social
👉 doi.org/10.1111/tpj....
Research Highlight about Cota et al. NGATHA carpel development genes evolved in the common ancestor of seed plants 👉 doi.org/10.1111/tpj....
What is the most profitable industry in the world, this side of the law? Not oil, not IT, not pharma.
It's *scientific publishing*.
We call this the Drain of Scientific Publishing.
Paper: arxiv.org/abs/2511.04820
Background: doi.org/10.1162/qss_...
Thread @markhanson.fediscience.org.ap.brid.gy 👇
📣 New issue online with a beautiful cover by B. Angi & F. Caicci! ➡️ www.embopress.org/toc/17574684...
It highlights the study by I. Szabo & colleagues at U. of Padova "Selective inhibition of mitochondrial Kv1.3 prevents and alleviates multiple sclerosis in vivo"
🗞️ www.embopress.org/doi/full/10....
When do phosphorus cycling microbes help the plant? Depends on the plant genotype! #PMS2025
Check out our last preprint in the Plant development section!
1/ It is my pleasure to share the latest preprint of the team: "Symbiotic diversification relies on an ancestral gene network in plants"
doi.org/10.1101/2025...
Here, we identified and functionally validated a novel master regulator of intracellular symbioses!
A thread ...
#PlantScience
Spatiotemporal regulation of arbuscular mycorrhizal symbiosis at cellular resolution www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.10....
Plan U, for universal, is the necessary standard. Post everything as a preprint at or before point of submission. Then publish in any journal you want but never pay exorbitant APCs.
Dear @dfg.de & @erc.europa.eu Why don't you do the same? What's stopping us from adopting this model to all tax-payer funded research in Europe? journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...
6/6) Overall, LjMLO4 is a key molecular hub between peptide signalling, Ca2+ transport and root system architecture, highlighting MLO integration of developmental, nutrition and symbiotic cues.
Thanks to my supervisors, collaborators and MSc students!
Feel free to get in touch for comments!
5/6) Then, we tested mlo4 responsiveness to exogenous treatments with Lj RALF peptides. We found that mutants are less sensitive to LjRALF34 than WT in terms of root growth inhibition and Ca2+ signalling, supporting recent evidence of MLO as signal amplifiers of the RALF/CrRLK1L signalling
4/6) Given the recently proposed role of MLO functioning as Ca2+ channel downstream of RALFs, first we tested that LjMLO4 can mobilize Ca2+ across biological membranes by heterologous expression in E. coli.
3/6) Surprisingly, no major AM-related phenotypes were visible in mlo4 mutants, but we uncovered clear root developmental phenotypes irrespective of root colonization by AM fungi. mlo4 mutants have shorter and fewer lateral roots, and this is dependent on exogenous Ca2+ levels.
2/6) We found that the promoter of LjMLO4 has a dual expression pattern in roots: strongly activated in arbusculated cells and a basal expression at lateral root primordia and root tips
1/6) Third effort from my PhD with @magiovan.bsky.social and @lorellanavazio.bsky.social, happy to see it online!
We show that a symbiotic clade IV MLO (LjMLO4) regulates root development and responses to endogenous RALF34 via calcium signalling in Lotus japonicus
www.biorxiv.org.
In the MSCA global fellowship there is a mandatory "outgoing phase", for mobility from the chosen european host to an "outgoing country" out of Europe and back.. EU bureaucratic language can be misleading :)
I think both graphs gather applications for the chosen destination (in Europe or abroad). No data here about the country of origin of applicants, but only where they would like to go
record 17,058 Marie Curie proposals in 2025 vs. 10,360 in 2024!!! the reason is pretty obvious, but wow that is a huge jump marie-sklodowska-curie-actions.ec.europa.eu/news/msca-po...
The image shows one straight magenta line and, close to it, another wavy green line.
This might be one of the simplest images I captured, but very fascinating nonetheless, as it shows how tight the cytoplasm in a plant cell is. The cytosol and all other organelles are squished between the plasma membrane (magenta) and the central vacuole (its membrane is green)
#MicroscopyMonday
Attention plant proteomics specialists: We are looking for a Head of our new Proteomics Unit at our international and dynamic Max Planck Institute of Molecular Plant Physiology. @mpi-mp-potsdam.bsky.social Applications are welcome until 30. Sept 2025: jobs.mpimp-golm.mpg.de/jobposting/8...
"If you’re a scientist, you’re in the business of producing and communicating knowledge.
It’s worth reminding ourselves: the goal isn’t simply to publish papers. The goal is to produce knowledge that yields predictable outcomes — science that stands the test of time"
I’m very happy that my main PhD work, under the supervision of @malick-mbengue.bsky.social, found a home in @pnas.org
Two days before my PhD defence! 🎉 (1/6)
The latest publication from our lab!
The famous "glomalin" from arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi is not a protein but a polysaccharide from AM fungi, so we renamed it "glomalose". Glomalin-related proteins are bacterial proteins stuck in this glomalose.
nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
Excited to share that our preprint has found a home in Science Advances. We show that intrinsically disordered regions determine the functional diversification of actin-regulatory SCAR proteins in Medicago. 🧵 1/3
www.science.org/doi/full/10....
#ScienceAdvances #PlantScience #IDRs