a poster for indiana jones and the last crusade with a man in a hat ALT: a poster for indiana jones and the last crusade with a man in a hat

New paper out from the Synoxys lab!
We asked an important question: what if plants sensed oxygen like animals do? what if we swapped the O2 sensing across? We built the system to find out. 🧵
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
#plantscience
@syno2xis.bsky.social @beagiuntoli.bsky.social @biology.ox.ac.uk

Synthetic hypoxia sensing in Arabidopsis from @syno2xis.bsky.social & @vinayshukla.bsky.social

Prolyl hydroxylase-dependent proteolysis enables the orthogonal hypoxia responses in plants

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

ICYMI, our ECPro group member Dr Charlene Kunaka-Dambire shared this fantastic blog post last month for #IDWGS about the importance of community support, mentorship & visibility in her scientific journey 🧪

Check it out 👉️ aab.org.uk/idwgs2026/

@charlene-kunaka.bsky.social #IWD2026 #WomeninScience

PhD opportunity in the newly minted RO2T Respiration Group! Please share!
Interested in root biology, oxygen dynamics, imaging & modelling? We’re recruiting a PhD student at the University of Nottingham.
Deadline 15th February.
jobs.nottingham.ac.uk/Vacancy.aspx...
#plantscijobs #plantscience

Are you, or do you know someone that is excited to do a PhD in plant biology. We are happy to offer a position to explore physiology, gene regulatory networks and wild species. Come join our team in a stimulating scientific environment at the University of Groningen!
werkenbij.rug.nl/vacature/phd...

The first PhD student in the group to graduate since I moved to Oxford! So proud for all the excellent work she did, and grateful for her contribution to a warm and friendly atmosphere in the team (and the taralli!)

Group 7 (again!) histone demethyalses (KDM7s) use oxygen as a substrate and are hypoxia sensitive. Under hypoxia, H3K4me3 increases globally in the plant and in root tips this causes activation of a number of genes that enhance tolerance

Our study led by the extraordinary multitasking Daai Zhang shows here (tinyurl.com/3uhbkh54) that an additional O2 sensing mechanism based on histone methylation helps roots to prepare for potentially lethal hypoxic stress (such as in waterlogging)

🏔️🌧️ 🧬 We wrote this Expert View on oxygen sensing, you can read it here! 👇🏼

Hydrogen sulfide modulates plant hypoxic responses through the persulfidation of Plant Cysteine Oxidases Hydrogen sulfide (H₂S) is a gaseous molecule historically regarded as toxic. Nevertheless, increasing evidence has brought to light important physiological roles in both animals and plants. In plants,...

Happy to share the key part of my PhD! In our latest preprint with Salma Akter, @emilyflashman.bsky.social & @beagiuntoli.bsky.social, we show that H₂S is involved in oxygen sensing in plants!
How? Check it out!🌱✨

Many thanks to all the authors involved!

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

13th Utrecht PhD Summer School​ Environmental Signaling in Plants Aug 24-26 2026 Speakers: Laura Ragni, Roeland Berendsen, Mariana Silva Artur, Matthew Paul, Ari Sadanandom, Beatrice Giuntoli, Bruno Guillotin, Priya Ramakrishna, Caroline Gutjahr, Niko Geldner, Laura Bacete and Marcel Beukeboom.

We are beyond excited to reveal the full line-up for our Environmental Signaling in Plants summer school 2026!

Registration is now open here eps.sites.uu.nl - we look forward to seeing you in Utrecht on 24th-26th August!

Great to see this out (as a preprint, for the moment)! And thank you for the opportunity to contribute to this new exploration of the connection between oxygen sensing and shoot development 🍃

Thank you Thomas! @ximenachirinos.bsky.social studied what happened to the O2 sensing machinery in flowering plants that are constantly or near-never.submerged. Spoiler: she discovered new PCOs and weird ERFVIIs...

Congratulations Vinay!!! Hard to describe how happy I am about this, except for the fact you'll leave Oxford soon 🥲.

Introducing the 1,000 Flower Collection 🧬🌹

I’m creating 1,000 genetically designed flowers each crafted with new colors, patterns, and shapes.

Here’s how I’m making it happen… and how you can join me on this journey 🧵(1/7)

ISPLORE 2025, Nagoya, JAPAN - PROGRAMME Confirmed Speakers

How exciting! The program for our ISPLORE #plantscience conference is now available and covers a wide range of speakers and topics 🌱🌊 Check it out! sites.google.com/view/isplore...

Engineering reduced activity in the oxygen-sensing Arabidopsis thaliana plant cysteine oxidase 4 enzyme results in improved flood resilience Plant cysteine oxidases (PCOs) are oxygen-sensing enzymes that play an important role in plant responses to low oxygen (hypoxia). PCO-catalysed dioxygenation of the N-terminal Cys of substrates, inclu...

Engineered mutations in the AtPCO4 active site reduce its activity and improve plant submergence resilience! Our new preprint: tinyurl.com/2ydj7qx5, 1 of 2 preprints out this week from the @emilyflashman.bsky.social and @syno2xis.bsky.social labs to link PCO function in plants with flood tolerance!

Manipulating plant oxygen sensing through NCO substitution reveals trade-offs between growth and flooding tolerance The oxygen-dependent degradation of Ethylene Response Factors VII (ERFVIIs) through the N-degron pathway is central to regulating the transcriptional responses to hypoxia in vascular plants. Plant Cys...

Can we modulate plant oxygen sensing to enhance flood resilience?🌿🔧

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

This is one of two preprints out this week from the @syno2xis.bsky.social and @emilyflashman.bsky.social labs, two angles on how PCOs shape plant flood resilience. Don’t miss the full story!

Got papped yesterday at the @biology.ox.ac.uk research showcase spreading the good word about mitochondrial dynamics! So fun being in the new LaMB building and interacting with psych/bio colleagues 🌱🧠

(You can check out the paper I was soapboxing about here: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...)

Research Associate in Programmable Plant Immunity at Imperial College London Apply for the Research Associate in Programmable Plant Immunity role on jobs.ac.uk, the top job board for academic positions in higher education. View details and apply now.

Plz RT. We are looking for a postdoc to join our collborative project on AI-guided bioengineering of plant immune receptors @tolgaboz.bsky.social and @jiorgoskourelis.bsky.social labs: www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DNV032/r...

Gas leakage triggers wound healing in plants

A plant's protective outer barrier is nearly impermeable to gases, making ethylene build up inside while oxygen depletes. But when wounded, the dynamics shift 🌱

New research shows this movement of gases through a wound triggers the plant's healing process 👇
bit.ly/3ZWnZVO

@vinayshukla.bsky.social

Plants "bleed" too, but through gases!
When wounded, ethylene leaks out and oxygen seeps in. This gas shift acts as an alarm, triggering self-repair to seal the breach. Excited to share our new collaborative work uncovering this clever plant mechanism! Excellent summary here, indulge!
#plantscience

An exciting collaboration that has reignited @vinayshukla.bsky.social's interest for hypoxia and roots! Really happy that we could contribute! @isplore.bsky.social

Only our joint forces, @lauradc.bsky.social 's perseverance and the contribution of Hans van Veen, @vinayshukla.bsky.social, Monica Perri and Liem T. Bui could tackle this challenge with many plant species and several transgenic lines! It's really satisfying to see it published!

ERFVIIs as transducers of oxygen-sensing in the evolution of land plant response to hypoxia Short summary:This study investigates the evolution of the low-oxygen response in land plants mediated by group VII Ethylene Response Factors (ERFVIIs). We identified conserved transcriptional signatu...

How did oxygen-sensing evolve in plants?
In collaboration with @syno2xis.bsky.social Great work from @lauradc.bsky.social et. al. #plantscience @leverhulme.ac.uk
“ERFVIIs as transducers of oxygen-sensing in the evolution of land plant response to hypoxia”
www.cell.com/molecular-pl...

C-terminal amides mark proteins for degradation via SCF–FBXO31 - Nature SCF–FBXO31 scans proteins for C-terminal amidation and marks them for subsequent proteasomal degradation.

🎉Super excited to share our story on how the substrate receptor FBXO31 functions as a quality control factor by recognizing amides. This has been an amazing collaboration between Bode lab and @jcornlab.bsky.social. Special shutout goes to @matthiasmuhar.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/s41...

The diverse aspects of hypoxia. The size of the oxygen bubble correlates with concentration. This collection highlights the importance of hypoxia for plant development and environmental adaptation such as during flooding, in compacted or poorly aerated soils, high altitudes, and within meristematic tissues. Image credit: Moe Abbas.

The January 2025 issue of Plant Physiology is now online! Read this Focus Issue on Hypoxia and Plants here: https://academic.oup.com/plphys/issue @ASPB @OxUniPress #PlantSci

Thanks to @fromani.bsky.social for organising #nonseedUK24 in Cambridge. What a fantastic meeting. Thanks for the generous sponsorship @gensocuk.bsky.social and @biologists.bsky.social 😃 🌱 🧬

It took ages but eventually out as a preprint... Thanks for the summary @vinayshukla.bsky.social

Preprint alert, please share!!
With our new study, we engineered an orthogonal hypoxia-responsive system in plants inspired by mammalian HIF protein degradation. We demonstrated that this system could control protein stability and activity, enabling modulation of Oxygen sensing outputs. Here's how: