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Darius Kosmützky

@dariuskos.bsky.social
342 followers 426 following 104 posts

Postdoc @slcuplants.bsky.social | Plant Microbe Interactions, Marchantia, Photosynthesis, Sustainability | Gates Cambridge Alumnus | ☀️🌱🦠🧑‍🔬🏳️‍🌈🔬🧬

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Reposted by Darius Kosmützky
Katharina Melkonian @katharinamel1.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Our story on DELLA in Marchantia paleacea is now published (including few updates): doi.org/10.1111/nph.... Thanks again to all co-authors!! #PlantScience
doi.org
Stepwise evolution of the developmental and symbiotic functions of <fc>DELLA</fc> in land plants
Proposed model for the stepwise evolution of DELLA functions in the green lineage.
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Reposted by Darius Kosmützky
Mariana Schuster @marischuster.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
I'm excited to share that my newly funded #ERCStG FRONTERA is recruiting two postdoctoral researchers at @ipbhalle.bsky.social 🌱🔬 If you are passionate about plant immunity, proteolysis, membrane proteins, or proteomics, I'd love to hear from you. 🧵 Please RT/share!
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John Stott @jpsastro.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Had a UKRI funded grant proposal rejected at the "AI triage stage". "This AI-based triage was used only to identify approximately 50% of the strongest proposals to take forward to full human review." 🧪 #academicsky
I am writing to let you know that, unfortunately, your application was not successful.

Review process

As part of the initial triage of the 179 proposals submitted to this call, each was assessed using an AI-based review. Every proposal was read independently by several different AI models against the same seven criteria used to shape this call (including cyber security relevance, research quality and novelty, importance of the problem addressed, feasibility of the project plan, likely outputs and impact, value for money, and responsible research practice), with each model asked to give a score and a written justification with supporting quotations from the text. To guard against any one model's idiosyncrasies, we also ran a second, independent process in which different AI models debated the merits and weaknesses of each proposal before reaching a judgement, again against the same criteria. Scores from both processes were combined to produce an overall ranking. 

This AI-based triage was used only to identify approximately 50% of the strongest proposals to take forward to full human review.  Projects selected for funding were drawn from those that progressed to the full human review stage. We recognise that AI-assisted assessment is a new and evolving part of the review process, and we are continuing to evaluate how well it aligns with the judgements of human reviewers on this call. We will soon produce a document detailing our method, so that others can build upon it and improve it.

Feedback on your application

Your application was not selected to progress beyond the AI triage stage.  To provide transparency on the outcome of this assessment, we are sharing below the scores (out of 5) from each of the two AI review processes described above, together with the mean score across the two processes.
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Reposted by Darius Kosmützky
Department of Plant Sciences Cambridge @camplantsci.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
With provisional data from @metoffice.gov.uk showing this summer to be the UK’s hottest on record & a drought having been declared across much of England, @beverleycubg.bsky.social analyses the impacts of drought on plants & pollinators. 📽️ tinyurl.com/3f32xt6d @cambridgebiosci.bsky.social 🧪
tinyurl.com
How drought is affecting plants and pollinators: expert analysis
With provisional data from the Met Office showing this summer to be the UK’s hottest on record, and a drought having been declared across much of England, Professor Beverley Glover, Head of Evolution ...
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Reposted by Darius Kosmützky
David Hoey @davidjhoey.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
Introducing PhyloDig: a small command-line tool I am developing to make comparative phylogenetic analyses easier. github.com/davidjhoey/P...
github.com
GitHub - davidjhoey/PhyloDig: PhyloDig is a command line pipeline for automated homology mining across collections of protein and coding sequence databases. It combines HMMER searches, optional Pfam d...
PhyloDig is a command line pipeline for automated homology mining across collections of protein and coding sequence databases. It combines HMMER searches, optional Pfam domain filtering, and sequen...
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Department of Plant Sciences Cambridge @camplantsci.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
Job opportunity! Research Associate An opportunity to investigate how plant roots respond to infection by the emerging root-knot nematode Meloidogyne enterolobii. Apply by 31 August 2026: www.cam.ac.uk/jobs/researc...
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PM Delaux @pierremarcdelaux.bsky.social · 18/08/2026
Finally online! It took ut 9 yars from formulating the hypothesis to actually finalizing the last experiments... but there it is!
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Reposted by Darius Kosmützky
vincentholst.bsky.social @vincentholst.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
In 2023, @nature.com published 'Papers and patents are becoming less disruptive over time', receiving world-wide media attention. Our Matters Arising, published after a 32 month delay (more on that soon), shows that the reported decline can largely be attributed to dataset artefacts. 🧵
The average CD_5 index per year for Web of Science. The original Park et al. decline (top curve) becomes essentially flat (bottom curve) when removing papers with CD_5=1. Those papers largely correspond to dataset artefacts.
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Darius Kosmützky @dariuskos.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
Great fun to kick off the all-ECR NoCaSS conference connecting young plant scientists from Norwich and Cambridge! I’m grateful for the organisation team for putting together an exciting 2-day program, completely free of charge for all participants! A great achievement. @nocassofficial.bsky.social
Darius giving a talk at NoCaSS 2026, the background shows part of the acknowledgment slide.
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Reposted by Darius Kosmützky
Caroline Lucas @carolinelucas.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
Really? Is that it? If this is all that’s come from COBR, it’s pitifully inadequate. As crisis deepens, it beggars belief that there aren’t eg plans to increase resources for the fire service, support for farmers, max workplace temperature, funded community cool spaces & obvs ban on new fossil fuels
independent.co.uk
Andy Burnham warns of summer ban on disposable barbecues
Andy Burnham said he would consider if a restriction on purchasing the products during the summer months could be justified
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Reposted by Darius Kosmützky
PlantEvolution 🌱🌾 @plantevolution.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
Remember the spectacular claims from three years ago, that science is supposedly becoming less disruptive? Seems this was at least in part due to data artifacts. To be fair, the authors of the original study push back, that the new study is flawed as well. www.nature.com/articles/s41...
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Reposted by Darius Kosmützky
PlantEvolution 🌱🌾 @plantevolution.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
Our science & scientists also becoming victims of climate change. A/C systems not designed to deal with consecutive heatwaves & continuing to fail. Nearly 50°C in the room with our plant growth cabinets (which couldn't cope) today. 3 rounds of failed experiments. #plantscience #climatecatastrophe
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Reposted by Darius Kosmützky
Caroline Lucas @carolinelucas.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
What a damning reflection of the pitifully low priority currently given to climate adaptation - yet building local & national resilience to increasingly damaging impacts is vital to keeping people safe & building support for more ambitious emission cuts
theguardian.com
Just 20 of 6,600 Defra staff working on climate adaptation amid drought and wildfires
Exclusive: England ‘desperately unprepared’ for effects of crisis including water shortages and heatwaves
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Gulnara Tagirdzhanova @metalichen.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
Our study on giant transposons Starship 🚀🧬 in the genome of the lichen fungus Xanthoria is now out in @pnas.org! What did we find out about Starships in #lichen fungi? 👇Updated thread below 🖥️ 🧪 🦠 🧫 #SymbioSky 1/6 www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
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Phil Carella @philcarella.bsky.social · 04/08/2026
RA position working on Marchantia reproductive development in the Penfield group at JIC. Deadline is August 18th!
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Darius Kosmützky @dariuskos.bsky.social · 31/07/2026
Ever had issues with contamination in #Marchantia or #liverwort tissue culture? We've developed a protocol that is simple and low-effort (albeit slow) to get rid of fungi and bacteria: dx.doi.org/10.17504/pro.... Work led by Isaac Coven and supported by Chetan Pandey, myself & @dromius.bsky.social.
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Team Thomma @teamthomma.bsky.social · 28/07/2026
📣 New preprint! 🧵 Fantastic work led by @antonkraege.bsky.social Fact: Cerato-platanins are everywhere in fungi. Found across the fungal kingdom, implicated in everything from development to virulence to immune activation. But what do they *actually* do? We finally found the answer 👇
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Darius Kosmützky @dariuskos.bsky.social · 18/07/2026
I've signed @zero-hour.bsky.social's petition calling on Andy Burnham to Secure Our Future—to meet the UK's climate and nature commitments, pass the Nature + National Security Bill, and reject all new oil and gas. Please join me. www.zerohour.uk/andy
zerohour.uk
Secure Our Future For Us
Andy Burnham has a chance to Secure Our Future. Will you tell him not to waste it? Sign below.
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Darius Kosmützky @dariuskos.bsky.social · 18/07/2026
This is really bad. I had a glimpse of hope for Labour, but that’s gone if they will actually announce such a foolish plan.
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Reposted by Darius Kosmützky
Karen Uchida @karenuchida.bsky.social · 15/07/2026
It's back live! Check out my week at TSL 🌱
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Sebastian Schornack @dromius.bsky.social · 13/07/2026
Preprint! How do "friendly" rhizobia build a legume nodule? @albinteulet.bsky.social found that some may carry hidden transcription factors - proteins that mimic DNA-binding folds to enter the plant nucleus and rewrite its developmental program. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... (1/6)
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Ralf Reski @reskilab.bsky.social · 09/07/2026
Professorship Plant Biochemistry. Bielefeld, Germany. #plantscijobs #plantscijob #plantsciencejob www.uni-bielefeld.de/uni/karriere...
uni-bielefeld.de
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Darius Kosmützky @dariuskos.bsky.social · 03/07/2026
What a fun day at #BOTANICON where we celebrate all things plant science and connect with other plant researchers in #Cambridge. All organised and run by us ECRs! @slcuplants.bsky.social @niab-uk.bsky.social @cropscicentre.bsky.social @camplantsci.bsky.social @cubotanicgarden.bsky.social
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Reposted by Darius Kosmützky
Ignacy Bonter @ignacybo.bsky.social · 03/07/2026
Happy to share some of the auxin Marchantia research we've been working on for a while with @fromani.bsky.social and @jimhaseloff.bsky.social. We confirm long standing suspicions that stem cells in Marchantia exist in an auxin concentration/signalling minimum, and potentially a cytokinin maximum.
biorxiv.org
Marchantia stem cell maintenance and re-establishment are controlled by MpPIN1-mediated auxin transport and ARF signalling
Meristem organization in land plants depends on coordinated auxin distribution, transport and response, yet how these processes are integrated during vegetative growth of the gametophyte of non-seed p...
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Darius Kosmützky @dariuskos.bsky.social · 02/07/2026
Paying for #peer-review increases speed and quality: www.nature.com/articles/d41... Great to have data supporting what most academics already know. I hope other journals take this up. So far reviewing remains largely unpaid labor layered onto already undercompensated #academic work.
nature.com
Why paying peer reviewers works, according to a journal’s editor-in-chief
A biology journal that paid peer reviewers found that the approach cut the time to a first editorial decision by 85% and maintained high-quality reviews.
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Reposted by Darius Kosmützky
Leo Hickman @leohickman.carbonbrief.org · 24/06/2026
++BREAKING++ Leading climate scientists in the UK have written to senior editors in broadcast media - and OFCOM and IPSO: "To express our concern about recent media coverage of extreme weather, climate change and net-zero and to urge you…to inform public audiences of the scientific links"
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Darius Kosmützky @dariuskos.bsky.social · 24/06/2026
Since October I’m doing a #botany course @cubotanicgarden.bsky.social. It‘s massively changed how I interact with the greenery. I look closer and am more fascinated by the magical diversity. E.g.: Tillandsia usneoides (Spanish moss) doesn’t have roots and relies on its scales to capture water 🤓
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Sebastián Moreno-Ramírez @sebamorenor.bsky.social · 22/06/2026
Excited to share that our work on single-nucleus RNA-seq of the shoot apical meristem — the shoot stem cell niche — has found a home. #Plantascience #scRNAseq #stemcells www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
science.org
Single-nucleus transcriptomics resolves multiple fate dynamics between inflorescence meristem and primary stem
snRNA-seq reveals shoot stem cell heterogeneity and traces their differentiation into primary stem cell types.
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Reposted by Darius Kosmützky
London & Southeast🔅 @thesnowdreamer.bsky.social · 21/06/2026
I’ve never seen such high overnight temperatures modelled. It looks like we’ll be transported to Jarkata in SE Asia, incredibly oppressive. The warmest minimum temperature of all-time at #London Heathrow is 22.6C set on 20 July 2016 the Euro has 27C on Thursday morning. Out of this world. (1/2)
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Reposted by Darius Kosmützky
Team Thomma @teamthomma.bsky.social · 19/06/2026
📣 We are hiring! In the collaborative research center 'Plant Ecological Genetics' @teamthomma.bsky.social searches a PhD candidate to study the role of plant-associated microbiota in plant density responses and inter-plant competition. See project A07: sl1nk.com/b7z0doc Deadline July 10!
sl1nk.com
Encurtador de Link
Encurtador de Link | O melhor encurtador de links e urls gratuito da internet.
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George R. L. Greiff @ilichenmoss2.bsky.social · 19/06/2026
Happy to announce our study that has just been published from work done during my PhD at the University of Bristol working in Prof. Jill Harrison's lab. It's about WOX genes and sporophyte development in the model moss, Physcomitrium patens. Take a look 🧵👇
A wild-type shoot with a single apical sporophyte (left) beside a Ppwox13lc mutant with three sporophytes on the same shoot (right).
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Sainsbury Laboratory Cambridge University (SLCU) @slcuplants.bsky.social · 18/06/2026
🌺 How does a hibiscus flower pattern its petals? A new computational model reveals hidden "boundary" cells can spontaneously emerge during flower development, helping to create stable petal patterns. Prediction confirmed experimentally! 🔗 www.slcu.cam.ac.uk/news/how-hib... #PlantsInTheSpotlight
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Adam Bonica @adambonica.bsky.social · 18/06/2026
For years I've tracked billionaire excess. Each year I show students a chart that blows their minds. This year I had to redraw it for a trillionaire: Elon Musk, $1.32T. Depressing that we're here. Silver lining: couldn't have happened to a less deserving person, proof that wealth ≠ merit.
stanford.edu
Elon Musk's $1.32 Trillion, to Scale
The first trillionaire's fortune, one pixel per $1,000 — scroll past every dollar, and see what a fraction of it could do instead.
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John Innes Centre @johninnescentre.bsky.social · 18/06/2026
VACANCY - Group Leader in Fundamental Biology of Legumes Closing date: 1 September 2026 Salary: competitive Contract: six-year tenure track or direct appointment, depending on experience Apply now: www.jic.ac.uk/vacancies/gr...
We're hiring for a Group Leader in Fundamental Biology of Legumes
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Reposted by Darius Kosmützky
European Commission @ec.europa.eu · 09/04/2026
Big opportunities for researchers 🌍 We are investing nearly €400 million to help researchers share their work and collaborate with the best scientific teams across the EU. The 2026 Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Postdoctoral Fellowships are now open. More: link.europa.eu/PNxpxw
Graphic announcing the MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships 2026 call. It shows the opening date (9 April 2026), closing date (9 September 2026), and a budget of €399.05 million. The design features scientific visuals such as cells, a leaf, and lab elements on a dark background, with the European Commission logo at the bottom.
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Josep Mercadal @josepmercadal.bsky.social · 10/06/2026
When did liverwort oil body cells originate? Here, Susan and I provide quantitative evidence that they emerged by at least the Middle Devonian (~390 Ma!), shedding light on a key anti-herbivory defense mechanism of early land plants!
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Darius Kosmützky @dariuskos.bsky.social · 04/06/2026
April and May were very dry in #Cambridge (UK): 2.1 & 14.9 mm total, resp. So, @esiragher.bsky.social and I wanted to check if there is a trend towards drought. We used over a century of local weather data and vibecoded a dashboard with Claude.ai to check: dariuskos.github.io/Cambridge_Cl...
dariuskos.github.io
Cambridge Climate Dashboard
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Sainsbury Laboratory Cambridge University (SLCU) @slcuplants.bsky.social · 01/06/2026
#PlantSciJobs 🌱 Postdoctoral Research Associate (x2) and Research Assistant (x2) Dr Edwige Moyroud is seeking 2 Postdocs and 2 Research Assistants to join her team investigating petal patterning Applications close: 5 June: Research Assistant bit.ly/4a32ffK 17 June: Postdoc bit.ly/4dT2LOC
Microscopy images of a petal showing petal patterning developing in the young petals. Around the image is 6-stages of hibiscus development from closed bud to open flower. The flower is plit in two to show one flower with a dark purple bullseye and one flower fully white with no pigment petal patterns.
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Botanical University Challenge @bucbotany.bsky.social · 31/05/2026
🌱🌾🌍🌺🌳🌲🌿🐡🌴🖌️Not often moss & fungus feature on BBC News. Heath-star moss, Campylopus introflexus & fungus Bryoscyphus granulosus that causes moss to die back. Work by group including George Greiff, who competed in the earliest Botanical University Challenges! #BUC2026 www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
bbc.co.uk
Killer fungus discovered that destroys UK invasive plant
A newly discovered species raises hope that some native British habitats could be restored.
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Sjon Hartman @hartman-plantlab.com · 30/05/2026
Dear #plantscience friends, we're looking to recruit a new colleague at @uni-freiburg.de @biologyunifreiburg.bsky.social: a Professor in Plant Biotechnology. 🌱🧪 The @dompsfr.bsky.social community is truly fantastic. Interested? Please share far and wide and join us! uni-freiburg.de/en/job/00005...
uni-freiburg.de
University of Freiburg
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Sebastian S. Cocioba @atinygreencell.bsky.social · 29/05/2026
SPLICECRAFT v1.0 IS LIVE!!!!!!!!!!!! Open your terminal and type in "pipx install splicecraft" if you want to try it out, then spam "splicecraft update" often as I push updates frequently. A labor of love for the community I adore. Enjoy! 💚
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Department of Plant Sciences Cambridge @camplantsci.bsky.social · 27/05/2026
Huge congratulations to Beverley Glover & Uta Paszkowski on being elected Fellows of the @royalsociety.org - a wonderful recognition of their significant contributions to plant sciences! 🎉 Read more: tinyurl.com/3vetucr4 @beverleycubg.bsky.social @paszkowskilab.bsky.social 🧪
Professor Beverley Glover (left) and Professor Uta Paszkowski (right) – new Fellows of the Royal Society 2026. Photos © University of Cambridge.
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KhongSam Chia @khongsamchia.bsky.social · 22/05/2026
Preprint Alert 🚨 @philcarella.bsky.social lab stepping into TIR-ritory!! Project started by me but finished by talented PhD student @ebkennedy.bsky.social (Please follow her), with contribution from Zhao He and @jonathandgjones.bsky.social We investigated EDS1-dependency of TIR domain. See thread👇
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Elenor Kennedy @ebkennedy.bsky.social · 22/05/2026
@khongsamchia.bsky.social Extremely excited to share the first pre-print from my PhD project in the Carella lab, co-first authored with @khongsamchia.bsky.social 🎉 (Thread below ⬇️) www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... Huge thanks to all co-authors and the #CarellaCapybaras for all the support 😊
biorxiv.org
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Daniel Padfield @padpadpadpad.bsky.social · 14/05/2026
And it also feels a bit of a middle finger to all the ECRs who put all that work in to their Outline applications. Feels like such a brutal time to be a postdoc, ECR, and aspiring fellow. Find it hard to know how we can help and fix it.
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Daniel Padfield @padpadpadpad.bsky.social · 14/05/2026
BBSRC Early Independence Fellowships had an Outline stage this year to try help with amount of peer review. Turns out they received 586 applications, a 110% increase on 2025, and only typically fund 15 a year. They are cancelling this stage and going straight to full app with an institutional sift.
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Science Magazine @science.org · 09/05/2026
Breaking news: Indiana University plant microbiologist Roger Innes has been locked out of his laboratory by the school in response to a request by one of his federal funders. The move comes after Innes complained about the government’s prosecution of Chinese postdocs. scim.ag/4tsDqRr
scim.ag
After USDA request, Indiana plant biologist locked out of lab by school
Move comes after Roger Innes complained about the government’s prosecution of Chinese postdocs
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Sebastian Schornack @dromius.bsky.social · 02/04/2026
New Preprint! Engineering quantitative root disease resistance in barley by targeting conserved SCAR susceptibility genes without compromising seed yield or mycorrhizal symbiosis. This work has been led by @binebrumm.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
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Sabine Brumm @binebrumm.bsky.social · 01/04/2026
🧵1/X 🚨New Preprint🚨 Root pathogens are hard to manage, and we know little about plant genes enabling infection (susceptibility genes). Here, we show that SCARs are susceptibility factors in barley roots - and their loss affects pathogens/symbionts in distinct ways www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
biorxiv.org
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Darius Kosmützky @dariuskos.bsky.social · 31/03/2026
🚨 New Preprint! 🚨 For my PhD, I investigated an over 20-year-old mystery in photosynthesis: What does the highly conserved but enigmatic protein cytochrome c6A actually do? We found: c6A helps algae stayin' alive in the "DISCO". 🪩 See the thread below & read the preprint: doi.org/10.64898/202...
Algae in the DISCO! (AI generated image before it was cringy to do that)
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