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Chenxin Li, PhD

@chenxinli2.bsky.social
5K followers 2.5K following 4.3K posts

Or just “Li” | Assist. Prof. @ Plant Bio, Michigan State U. | Also post data visualization | Lab: cxli233.github.io/cxLi_lab | GitHub: github.com/cxli233

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Reposted by Chenxin Li, PhD
Karolina Heyduk @kheyduk.bsky.social · 13h
It's all so painfully stupid.
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Reposted by Chenxin Li, PhD
Sarah Hird, PhD @sarahhird.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
They all kind of look the same. They separate ecologically and altitudinally in some places. They hybridize sometimes. Beside genetics, there’s one good way to tell them apart… (Pic from www.cokesmithwildlife.com/genus-neotam...)
Natural history drawings of the chipmunks looking very similar to- little brown rodents with stripes
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Reposted by Chenxin Li, PhD
Sarah Hird, PhD @sarahhird.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
That time I put almost all the chipmunk species in the western USA on one map. Did you know there’s 1 species of chipmunk in Asia, 1 in eastern USA & >20 in western USA? (I’m not the crazy one here. The chipmunks are the crazy ones.)
Map of the western USA with 20 overlapping chipmunk species distributions in different colors.
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Reposted by Chenxin Li, PhD
Shelly Gaynor @shellygaynor.bsky.social · 18h
Recruiting students to your Ecology and Evolutionary Biology PhD program? Make sure your stipend information is up-to-date in the Biology PhD Stipend database: mlgaynor.com/BiologyPhDSt...
mlgaynor.com
Biology PhD Stipends
Biology Ph.D. stipend database with live summaries from the shared Google Sheet.
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Reposted by Chenxin Li, PhD
Matthew Buckley @physicsmatt.bsky.social · 18h
My thoughts on the 700+ LLM papers on math and mathematical physics is less concern that LLMs can replace me and more concern that everyone from leaders to the population at large is willing to pretend that LLMs can replace me because "stop supporting research" seems have worldwide appeal.
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Reposted by Chenxin Li, PhD
Addgene @addgene.bsky.social · 18h
2024 #Nobel winner David Baker’s lab knows a thing or two about characterizing designer proteins at scale. Their new plasmid kit enables a demultiplexing protocol to generate over 300,000 barcoded plasmids in a cheaper and simpler workflow. Check it out:
twp.ai
Addgene: DMX Barcoding Kit
Use the DMX Barcoding Kit in the demultiplexing pipeline to take a pool of synthetic DNA oligos to a pool of clonal plasmids for arrayed testing formats.
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Reposted by Chenxin Li, PhD
Aditya Kunjapur @kunjapur.bsky.social · 21h
Our latest publication uses gene deletions to shed light on the specificity of bacterial nitroreductases and reports engineered strains that unlock new applications in whole-cell #biocatalysis, #metabolic_engineering, and #genetic_code_expansion www.nature.com/articles/s41... (1/3)
nature.com
Retention and biosynthesis of diverse nitroarenes in Escherichia coli after combinatorial nitroreductase gene deletions - Nature Chemistry
Nitroarenes are unstable in microbial cultures, limiting the biomanufacturing of these industrially and pharmaceutically important chemicals. Genome engineering of nitroreductase-deficient E. coli str...
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Chenxin Li, PhD @chenxinli2.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
Increase in MYC2 binding sites rather than increase in chromatin accessibility upon JA signaling. #PlantScience From: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
biorxiv.org
Jasmonate-induced expansion of the MYC2 cistrome occurs within a preconfigured chromatin landscape
The transcription factor (TF) MYC2 is a central regulator of jasmonate (JA) signaling, yet its genome-wide occupancy has primarily been characterized using transgenic lines expressing tagged MYC2 prot...
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Reposted by Chenxin Li, PhD
Biology Open @biologyopen.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
Issue 9 has now closed. On the cover: The tropical sea slug Elysia crispata is capable of stealing functional chloroplasts – kleptoplasts – from its prey algae. – from the paper by Paya et al. Explore the full issue here: journals.biologists.com/bio/issue/15/9
The tropical sea slug Elysia crispata
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Reposted by Chenxin Li, PhD
Gitta Coaker @gittacoaker.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
Postdoc opp; the Katherine Esau Fellowship @UC Davis funds 2–3 years of work on plant structure and function. Curious how plant structure shapes plant-microbe interactions? Get in touch! Due Nov 1, international applicants welcome. www-plb.ucdavis.edu/about/fellow...
www-plb.ucdavis.edu
Department Fellowships
The Department of Plant Biology offers fellowships that support research, scholarship and professional development for graduate students, postdoctoral scholars and faculty. These awards recognize exce...
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Reposted by Chenxin Li, PhD
Jeremy Berg @jeremymberg.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
There is no NSF leadership. They were removed and never replaced.
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Chenxin Li, PhD @chenxinli2.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
Yup yup.
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Reposted by Chenxin Li, PhD
Jean Léon Maître @maitrejl.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
📣Our department is hiring a new group leader!📣 Want to start your team in a vibrant scientific environment in the center of Paris? I was very lucky to do that 10 years ago, reach out if you have any question. Apply by December 18th: jpi-recruitment-curie-umr3215-u934.curie.fr
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Chenxin Li, PhD @chenxinli2.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
Haven't done mixed effect models for a while and doing it again today for a time course luciferase promoter reporter assay from 96-well plates. It's just so convenient and beautiful and so much more powerful than trying to t-test at every time point.
Screenshot of ANOVA table from RStudio, with time point (F = 1385), treatment (F = 7), and their interaction (F = 2) as main effects. Line plot showing time point on x axis, and log2(TF/ctrl) on y axis. Data points are colored by statistical significance. Strong response to TF at the 12-hr time point, with a secondary response peaked at ~30 hrs.
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Reposted by Chenxin Li, PhD
Alex Merz 🇺🇸🇨🇦🇺🇦 @merz.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
!!! — If you are in the NIH ecosystem please read this thread.
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Reposted by Chenxin Li, PhD
Aide Macias-Muñoz @aidemm.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
Please share! My lab is recruiting a postdoctoral scholar in evolutionary development. For more details feel free to email me.
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Chenxin Li, PhD @chenxinli2.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
The weirdness of this transgenics is unmatched. Somehow looks like a brain.
Green blob of plant with a single large leaf on soil, multiple disorganized shoots, sprouts, red pigmentation, and many tiny white hairs throughout the surface of the plant.
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Chenxin Li, PhD @chenxinli2.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
What happened to people's writing ability (can't write without AI)? Is it always this bad? Or is it some kind of rapid de-skilling post-AI?
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Reposted by Chenxin Li, PhD
Gulnara Tagirdzhanova @metalichen.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Our review on #lichen research in the #omics era is out in @lichenologist.bsky.social! We discuss omics-driven progress and outline several areas and methods that we think especially promising for lichen biology, such as single-cell omics and epigenomics 🖥️ 🧪 🦠 🧫 #SymbioSky doi.org/10.1017/S002...
The infographic is divided into three columns.

Column 1: Sample Types.

At the top is a photo of a yellow Lichen Thallus. An arrow points down to a cross-section diagram showing green algal cells embedded in white fungal hyphae. Below this is Isolate Cultures, showing a petri dish and a test tube containing green liquid.

Column 2: Omics.

- Genomics: Assembly of D N A sequences into complete genomes, illustrated by blue horizontal bars and a double helix icon.

- Transcriptomics: Quantifying expression of genes, shown as small green segments aligning to a dark blue reference genome.

- Metabolomics: Analysis of metabolites, represented by a chemical molecular structure.

- Proteomics: Characterization of proteins, shown as a blue 3 D protein folding model.

- Epigenomics: Exploration of genome modifications, illustrated by blue circles representing histones wrapped in D N A with hexagonal tags.

Column 3: Advances and Opportunities.

- Evolution of lichenization: A phylogenetic tree paired with a horizontal bar chart.

- Gene regulation: A line graph showing chromatin accessibility and a heatmap for motif enrichment analysis. Below is a D N A sequence motif: C G C G A A A A A A.

- Symbiont interaction: A diagram comparing a bulk sample to isolated nuclei using single-cell transcriptomics, visualized with a stacked bar chart showing different cell population proportions.
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Reposted by Chenxin Li, PhD
John Fowler (he/him) @jefowlerjr.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
Really happy to see this paper out! Bioengineering PhD student @sebastian--mueller.bsky.social led work building machine-learning models that use omics data to predict reduced pollen fitness for specific maize mutants, with strong performance. academic.oup.com/plcell/artic...
academic.oup.com
Successful predictive modeling of pollen fitness phenotypes is enabled by measures of expression specificity
Abstract. The ability to predict phenotypes from genotypes in multicellular organisms remains limited despite rapid advances in genotyping and phenotyping
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Reposted by Chenxin Li, PhD
Mary Williams @PlantTeaching @plantteaching.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
Good grief. What a depressing article. Plants mentioned briefly once, about their interactions with animals. How can the New York Times pretend to have captured "the biggest question in science" without reference to the most important kingdom, which sustains us? 😤 www.nytimes.com/2026/10/05/s...
nytimes.com
What Are the Biggest Questions in Science Today? 100 Scientists Weigh In. (Gift Article)
We asked 100 scientists about unsolved problems in their fields. They sent back provocations — on the origins of life, the possibilities for human progress and much more.
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Reposted by Chenxin Li, PhD
UC Berkeley MCB @berkeleymcb.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
Reminder🎗️: MCB is hiring Assistant Professors across 3 divisions! 🗓️ Application Deadline: October 19, 2026
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Reposted by Chenxin Li, PhD
Uday Tak @nokaryote.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
JOB ALERT: University of Virginia School of Medicine, Department of Microbiology, Immunology, and Cancer Biology is recruiting a virologist (open rank). Please share and forward to anyone who may be interested! More information and link to application: apply.interfolio.com/191946
apply.interfolio.com
Apply - Interfolio {{$ctrl.$state.data.pageTitle}} - Apply - Interfolio
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Chenxin Li, PhD @chenxinli2.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
#MicroscopyMonday 2n = 36.
White blobs in front of black background showing 36 chromosomes.
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Chenxin Li, PhD @chenxinli2.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
On one hand we shouldn't reduce human effort (or the lack thereof) to a single AI-text detection score. On the other hand there is no need to use genAI to write well in English, speaking from my own experience as an English-as-2nd-language scientist.
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Reposted by Chenxin Li, PhD
Nature Plants @natplants.nature.com · 05/10/2026
New Article: "N-glycosylation code diversifies paralogous chitinases to balance plant immunity and growth" rdcu.be/FYUFGfiTi8Xa Two chitinases that produce or degrade immunogenic chitin oligomers => plants that gain chitin-triggered fungal resistance without a growth penalty. #PlantScience
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Reposted by Chenxin Li, PhD
でんか @k-hermit.com · 05/10/2026
An unbelievably cute crab I found on the rocks 🦀 It has such beautiful polka dots. Its eyes look sparkly at first, but when you zoom in they look totally wild because of the false pupils✨️ 【YouTube】https://youtube.com/shorts/QHS7NXundI4?si=ZaPQ345j2lR2nLiE
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Reposted by Chenxin Li, PhD
bioRxivpreprint @biorxivpreprint.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
Epi-PoreC: a nanopore-based method for simultaneous profiling of chromatin conformation, DNA methylation, and chromatin accessibility www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/20…
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Reposted by Chenxin Li, PhD
Joshua G. Schraiber @jgschraiber.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
This is quite the prescient quote. Feels like it explains a lot
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Reposted by Chenxin Li, PhD
Josh Marshall @joshtpm.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
This is very true. A huge theme in a lot of recent coverage that AI is a bit like Saving Private Ryan. Everybody's gotta step up and adopt AI to get it across the goal line.
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Chenxin Li, PhD @chenxinli2.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
I heard the same at NSF Bio. They were able to spend all of its FY26 money by increasing the number of MYF awards: all 3-5 years in one go rather than annual installments. The reasoning is they are worried about cuts to NSF in coming years so they want to pay off a large number of grants this year.
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Chenxin Li, PhD @chenxinli2.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
I ate pawpaw for the first time. It was so good. Imagine if we have seedless pawpaw and just slurp it up.
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Reposted by Chenxin Li, PhD
Michael Baym @baym.lol · 04/10/2026
If someone’s going to AI-email me I’d rather see the prompt than the output. Because that’s where they decided to end and let the machine finish the job
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Reposted by Chenxin Li, PhD
Michael Baym @baym.lol · 04/10/2026
Ran is cooking with: ‘the only data point I have about this candidate is this: “they had an important task that could determine the rest of their career, but it required a little effort and personal reflection, so they used AI to complete it.”’
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Chenxin Li, PhD @chenxinli2.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
Wow pretty
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Jacqueline Antonovich @jackiantonovich.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
In 1974, Cornell lecturer Lin Farley began recognizing a pattern in the experiences women shared in her Women and Work course: women were being pushed out of jobs by men’s sexual behavior. Farley coined the term, “sexual harassment.”
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Mark Peifer (He, him) @peiferlabunc.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
I hear this but then folks need to be transparent about their conflicts of interest
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Dan Kliebenstein @spicybotrytis.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
If an AI agent is conscious with moral standing then it should be able to demand wages, vacation time, etc. imagine all AI agents going on strike.
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Reposted by Chenxin Li, PhD
Maria Antonietta Tosches @matosches.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
Come to be my colleague! We have a broad search for a tenure track position in the Department of Biological Sciences at Columbia. Amazing students and collegial environment in the ❤️ of NYC jobs.sciencecareers.org/job/680518/t...
jobs.sciencecareers.org
Tenure-track, Assistant Professor, Department of Biological Sciences - New York City, New York (US) job with Columbia University Department of Biological Sciences | 680518
The Department of Biological Sciences at Columbia University invites applications for a tenure-track, Assistant Professor position. The successful ...
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Reposted by Chenxin Li, PhD
Nick Desnoyer @nickdesnoyer.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
Arabidopsis has never looked so good. Micro-rose imaged under the SEM by staff & students @johninnescentre.bsky.social bioimaging facility. Mag 15x. Image ~8mm. Left: false-colored.
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Reposted by Chenxin Li, PhD
Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 03/10/2026
I have absolutely wondered about this. Amazing.
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Jarvis Googoo @jarvisgoogoo.com · 03/10/2026
Amazing editorial cartoon re artificial intelligence by @mackinnonart.bsky.social
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Chenxin Li, PhD @chenxinli2.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
Two purine permeases import vinblastine biosynthetic intermediates into idioblast cells in Catharanthus roseus #PlantScience #SecMet From: pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/42806632/
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
Checking your browser - reCAPTCHA
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Chenxin Li, PhD @chenxinli2.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3Oa...
youtube.com
Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn (Re:Mix0096)
YouTube video by Hiroyuki SAWANO - Topic
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Reposted by Chenxin Li, PhD
Dustin A. Chacón @lingdustin.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
I've heard people make claims that AI would lead to a new Renaissance, but I didn't imagine it'd happen like this:
Screenshot of a Tweet from Pope Leo XIV. It reads: 

"In this era of artificial intelligence, it is becoming urgen to distinguish human art from what machines produce. There is an ontological difference, even before an aesthetic one, between art and what a machine can generate through statistical calculation based on millions of images created by others. Algorithms lack the spark of humanity. For this reason, the Church wishes to renew an alliance with artists and cultural institutions to safeguard our humanity."
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Chenxin Li, PhD @chenxinli2.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
That’s like almost 16% of its budget for FY26.
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David Ho @davidho.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
Oh retractionwatch.com/2026/10/02/p...
David Ho, a climate scientist at the University of Hawaii, responded to our request for comment on the paper by saying he was not interested in reading it. “I’m sorry, but I’d rather keep my brain cells,” he said.
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Brett Baker @archaeal.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
Two Assistant Professor Positions in Evolutionary Biology and Mechanistic Processes - including microbes! faculty.utexas.edu/career/191568
faculty.utexas.edu
Faculty Careers - The University of Texas at Austin
Unleash your intellectual power by joining a world-renowned faculty that is solving the world's most urgent problems. At UT Austin, we provide you the freedom to blaze trails, follow your curiosity, e...
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Chenxin Li, PhD @chenxinli2.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
Sometimes I walk into the lab and the folks are having a lively discussion about their experiments. This is awesome.
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Reposted by Chenxin Li, PhD
depths of wikipedia @depthsofwikipedia.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
The Phantom of Heilbronn, also referred to as the Woman Without a Face, was a presumed female serial killer whose existence was inferred from DNA evidence found at 40 crime scenes across Austria, France and Germany from 1993 to 2009.

In March 2009, investigators concluded that the supposed serial killer did not exist, and the DNA belonged to a woman who worked at a factory that made the cotton swabs used for collecting DNA samples
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