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Jonathan Wendel

@jonathanfwendel.bsky.social
847 followers 442 following 67 posts

Husband, father, friend, runner, plant evolution and genomics, Iowa State University

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Reposted by Jonathan Wendel
Annals of Botany @annbot.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
🪰🌿🧪 Join us to learn about the newly published article “Deceptive Aristolochia trap-flowers pollinated by male phorid flies mimic volatiles specific to female phorids” in @annbot.bsky.social by Thomas Rupp and co-authors.🧵(1/6) 👉 doi.org/rq8k #AoBpapers #PlantScience
Deceptive Aristolochia trap-flowers pollinated by male phorid flies mimic volatiles specific to female phorids
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Reposted by Jonathan Wendel
PlantEvolution 🌱🌾 @plantevolution.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Cool new work from @thanvisrikant.bsky.social & @kbomblies.bsky.social: Chromosomes in #Arabidopsis thaliana neo-polyploids break preferentially at fragile sites that correspond to ancient genome rearrangements #plantscience www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
Detection and analyses of aneuploidies in neo-tetraploid A. thaliana. (A) Schematic
representation of how neo-tetraploid F1 were generated through reciprocal crossing of Col-0 and
Ler neo-tetraploid inbreds. See Figure S1A for more details. (B-D) Examples of aneuploidy
detection using sequencing coverage data from three F1 individuals, “Cross_3_Plant_32”,
“Cross_3_Plant_25” and “Cross_38_Plant_01”, respectively (Figure S2, S3). The upper panels
show aneuploidy detection using a read-coverage approach and the lower panels show a
variant-calling based approach. The Ler chromosomes are indicated as L1-L5 (orange) and Col-
0 chromosomes are indicated as C1-C5 (blue). In both panels, every data point represents a
mean value (normalised read coverage / allele frequency) in a 100kb window of the genome.
For the upper panels, sequencing data are mapped to an in-silico hybrid genome that combines
TAIR10.1 (Col-0) and Ler. For the lower panels, the sequencing data are mapped to a Ler
reference genome. (B) Data from a euploid individual with normalised coverage consistent with
two copies of each maternally and paternally inherited chromosome (upper panel), and allele
frequencies clustering around 0.5 when mapped to a Ler reference genome (lower panel). (C)
Data from an individual affected by a full-length aneuploidy – a loss of one Chromosome 2 copy
from Col-0, resulting in a drop in coverage (upper panel) and sharp changes in allele frequency
(lower chromosome) for Chr2. (D) Data from an individual affected by a segmental loss of part
of Chromosome 4 from the Ler parent.
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Reposted by Jonathan Wendel
Schneeberger Lab @labschneeberger.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Thrilled to share our new @nature.com paper from Xiao Dong on the mutational dynamics of centromeres in Arabidopsis thaliana! 🌱 A quick thread on what we found... 🔗 doi.org/10.1038/s415...
doi.org
The mutational dynamics of the Arabidopsis centromeres - Nature
Centromeres in Arabidopsis thaliana evolve through frequent insertions and deletions of repeat units and increased rates of point mutations driven by homology-directed repair, a mutation spectrum that...
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Reposted by Jonathan Wendel
Stuart McDaniel @stuartmcdaniel.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
It’s almost like the term ‘early diverging lineage’ doesn’t mean anything at all. Having done this exercise myself I’ve realized that tree-thinking is counterintuitive enough that viewpoints like this have to come out routinely to remind people not to fall into higher-lower essentialist thinking
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Reposted by Jonathan Wendel
Jae Young Choi @jychoi.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
New preprint with grad student @linhngk.bsky.social. Big mystery in plants is why do their telomere length vary? We answered by analyzing 10Tb or 1.4 billion reads from 257 species of algae to land plants. We propose ecological adaptation shapes telomere length in plants. shorturl.at/0ox4x
biorxiv.org
Biogeographic cline is associated with the global plant telomere length variation
Telomeres have the crucial role of protecting chromosome ends and its length varies significantly between organisms. What evolutionary factor shapes this natural variation has been a long standing que...
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Reposted by Jonathan Wendel
National Academy of Sciences @nasonline.org · 23/09/2026
What do elephants, manatees, flamingos, and carnivorous plants have in common? In @labx.org's new “Tree of Life" series, #NASmember Doug Soltis explores the unexpected connections among species across 14 short episodes. 🌳 Watch here: labx.org/our-programs... #TreeofLife #Evolution
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Reposted by Jonathan Wendel
Tanja Slotte @tanjaslotte.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
Interested in testing hypotheses on pollen evolution using genomic data? Apply for our open 4-year PhD student position at Stockholm University! Application via the SU website, deadline Oct 24, 2026. #evolution #pollen #pollinationmode #plants #genomics #RNAseq su.varbi.com/what:job/job...
su.varbi.com
Doktorand i ekologi och evolution
Institutionen för ekologi, miljö och botanik (DEEP) bedriver forskning och utbildning vid Arrheniuslaboratorierna på campus Frescati. Vi är cirka 100 medarbetare, inklusive doktorander och postdok
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Jonathan Wendel @jonathanfwendel.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
At 145 Degrees, This Amoeba Manages to Keep Its Cool www.nytimes.com/2026/09/22/s...
nytimes.com
At 145 Degrees, This Amoeba Manages to Keep Its Cool
Found in volcanic streams in California, the newfound organism has the highest heat tolerance of any complex life on Earth.
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Jonathan Wendel @jonathanfwendel.bsky.social · 20/05/2026
Genomic diversity and the domestication history of cotton (Gossypium hirsutum) | PNAS www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.... It took many years for us to get to this point, enabled by persistence and a fabulous team of collaborators
pnas.org
Genomic diversity and the domestication history of cotton (Gossypium hirsutum) | PNAS
Gossypium hirsutum is the leading fiber crop globally, but its origin as a domesticated plant and patterns of diversity in the wild remain to be el...
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Jonathan Wendel @jonathanfwendel.bsky.social · 02/01/2026
My department (EEOB at Iowa State) is hiring! See isu.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/IowaStateJob...
isu.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com
Assistant Professor in Integrative Environmental and Organismal Health
Position Title: Assistant Professor in Integrative Environmental and Organismal Health Appointment Type: Faculty Job Description: Summary of Duties and Responsibilities: The Department of Ecology, Evo...
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Reposted by Jonathan Wendel
Lucia Campos @luciacamdom.bsky.social · 31/10/2025
Very happy that our research on TE dynamics accross cotton evolution at @cragenomica.bsky.social and in collaboration with @jonathanfwendel.bsky.social et al. is now published in Genome Biology!: genomebiology.biomedcentral.com/articles/10....
genomebiology.biomedcentral.com
Differential LTR-retrotransposon dynamics across polyploidization, speciation, domestication, and improvement of cotton (Gossypium) - Genome Biology
Background Transposable elements are major components of plant genomes and major drivers of plant genome evolution. The cotton genus (Gossypium) is an excellent evolutionary model for polyploidization...
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Jonathan Wendel @jonathanfwendel.bsky.social · 16/07/2025
youtu.be/Vkv0vI6jCnM?...
youtu.be
Letter from NAS Members to the Honorable Senators and Representatives of the United States
YouTube video by Biochemistry Channel
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Jonathan Wendel @jonathanfwendel.bsky.social · 13/07/2025
This Jungle Plant Is a Good Landlord to Its Tenant Ants www.nytimes.com/2025/07/10/s...
nytimes.com
This Jungle Plant Is a Good Landlord to Its Tenant Ants
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Sam Price @evovert.bsky.social · 10/07/2025
Call your senator TONIGHT or tomorrow morning if they are on the appropriations committee and encourage them to support the subcommittee recommendation - i just did!
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Jeremy Berg @jeremymberg.bsky.social · 10/07/2025
Alexandria Declaration coming out from courageous NSF staff. www.importantcontext.news/p/national-s... I knew this was it in the works, but did not know the timing. Stay tuned...
importantcontext.news
National Science Foundation Workers to Issue “Alexandria Declaration” Decrying “Catastrophic Changes” Under Trump Administration
The new declaration echoes similar efforts from NIH and EPA.
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Jonathan Wendel @jonathanfwendel.bsky.social · 21/06/2025
Such an amazing story about meiosis in pentaploid roses... rdcu.be/esxPd
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Jonathan Wendel @jonathanfwendel.bsky.social · 06/06/2025
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
biorxiv.org
Comparative population genomics of relictual Caribbean island Gossypium hirsutum
Gossypium hirsutum is the world's most important source of cotton fiber, yet the diversity and population structure of its wild forms remain largely unexplored. The complex domestication history of G....
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Jonathan Wendel @jonathanfwendel.bsky.social · 05/06/2025
doi.org/10.1038/s414...
doi.org
Pangenome analysis reveals yield- and fiber-related diversity and interspecific gene flow in Gossypium barbadense L. - Nature Communications
Comparing to Gossypium hirsutum, G. barbadense cotton lines have superior fiber quality but lower fiber yield. Here, the authors construct pangenome using 12 newly assembled G. barbadense genomes and ...
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Reposted by Jonathan Wendel
Fay-Wei Li @fernway.bsky.social · 09/04/2025
Jacob Suissa and I wrote a #book about #ferns! It's beautifully illustrated by the amazing artist Laura Silburn. Will be released in May and you can preorder from Amazon. We hope this book could help you forget all the bad things happening on Earth right now. More here: mailchi.mp/btiscience/f...
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Jonathan Wendel @jonathanfwendel.bsky.social · 26/05/2025
Done; thanks for the link, Kelly
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Reposted by Jonathan Wendel
Kai Ryssdal @kairyssdal.bsky.social · 23/05/2025
Your regular reminder that the entire global economy is subject to the whipsaw whims of a person who doesn’t understand how the global economy works
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The Sainsbury Laboratory @thesainsburylab.bsky.social · 22/05/2025
Check out Tatsuya Nobori’s amazing Tansley Review in New Phytologist on exploring the untapped potential of single-cell and spatial omics in plant biology www.tsl.ac.uk/news/emergin...
tsl.ac.uk
Emerging technologies to define the status of each cell in a plant
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Jonathan Wendel @jonathanfwendel.bsky.social · 19/05/2025
Harvard Paid $27 for a Copy of Magna Carta. Surprise! It’s an Original. www.nytimes.com/2025/05/15/w...
nytimes.com
Harvard Paid $27 for a Copy of Magna Carta. Surprise! It’s an Original.
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Reposted by Jonathan Wendel
Irene Villa-Machío @irvilma.bsky.social · 08/05/2025
Explore how hybridisation drives biodiversity! New research shows recurrent hybridisation and HHS shape genetic diversity & create incipient hybrids in Iberian Phalacrocarpum 🌱⛰️ D. Criado, R. Piñeiro, @jonathanfwendel.bsky.social, and G. Nieto. @annbot.bsky.social academic.oup.com/aob/advance-...
academic.oup.com
Homoploid hybrid speciation and recurrent hybridization along the northwestern Iberian mountain chain
AbstractBackground and Aims. Natural hybridisation can lead to diversification and adaptive introgression, among other outcomes. However, the mechanistic u
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Jonathan Wendel @jonathanfwendel.bsky.social · 07/05/2025
Polyploidy Conference: www.insb.cnrs.fr/fr/evolution... Registration deadline is fast approaching! (May 19th)
insb.cnrs.fr
Evolutionary and ecological genomics of polyploidy in plants: temporal dynamics across scales of biological organization from molecules to ecosystems
Roscoff (Bretagne), France, September 15-19, 2025Deadline for application: May 5, 2025
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Jonathan Wendel @jonathanfwendel.bsky.social · 18/04/2025
Ugh…. Sigh…. Slump…. Cry a bit…
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Jonathan Wendel @jonathanfwendel.bsky.social · 18/04/2025
Thanks for this series!
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Reposted by Jonathan Wendel
Larry Glickman @larryglickman.bsky.social · 16/04/2025
Steve Kerr: "I believe in academic freedom. I think it's crucial for all of our institutions to be able to handle their own business the way they want to. And they should not be shaken down and told what to teach, what to say, by our government. That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard."
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Jonathan Wendel @jonathanfwendel.bsky.social · 14/04/2025
Meh too!
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Lena Struwe @drgentian.bsky.social · 07/04/2025
Possibly the largest dandelion in the world? I love it!
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Nature Plants @natplants.nature.com · 07/04/2025
New Article: "Phenotypic and genomic signatures across wild Rosa species open new horizons for modern rose breeding" rdcu.be/egIj3 With News & Views: "An evolutionary bouquet for roses" rdcu.be/egIkd
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Rebekah Rogers @evolscientist.bsky.social · 05/04/2025
Current US Economic Policy.
media.tenor.com
a man wearing sunglasses is sitting on a tree branch overlooking a river
ALT: a man wearing sunglasses is sitting on a tree branch overlooking a river
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Jonathan Wendel @jonathanfwendel.bsky.social · 02/04/2025
Why we keep going open.substack.com/pub/yourloca...
open.substack.com
Why we keep going
Today thousands of health workers at the CDC and FDA lost their jobs—effective immediately.
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Jonathan Wendel @jonathanfwendel.bsky.social · 01/04/2025
@scottzona.bsky.social
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Jonathan Wendel @jonathanfwendel.bsky.social · 01/04/2025
Alligator pepper? But I'm confused too, because I thought this was only West African in distribution.... Anyway, I love plant quizzes, so thanks!
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Carl Zimmer @carlzimmer.com · 01/04/2025
"This will go down as one of the darkest days in modern scientific history." Story on the decimation of NIH by @maxkozlov.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/d41...?
nature.com
‘One of the darkest days’: NIH purges agency leadership amid mass layoffs
In shock move, four institute directors at the US biomedical agency are removed from their posts.
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Jonathan Wendel @jonathanfwendel.bsky.social · 31/03/2025
Interested in the autopolyploid - allopolyploid "continuum"? If so, you might like this: rdcu.be/efNSq
rdcu.be
Rapid formation of stable autotetraploid rice from genome-doubled F1 hybrids of japonica–indica subspecies
Nature Plants - This study details a process of duplicated (homoeologous) chromosome ‘scrambling’ in newly formed rice polyploids, indicating the possibility of natural...
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Jonathan Wendel @jonathanfwendel.bsky.social · 24/03/2025
Polyploidy Conference! Registration deadline is May 5th cjm.sb-roscoff.fr/en/conferenc...
cjm.sb-roscoff.fr
Evolutionary and ecological genomics of polyploidy in plants: temporal dynamics across scales of biological organization from molecules to ecosystems | CNRS - Conférences Jacques Monod (CJM)
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Eric Topol @erictopol.bsky.social · 23/03/2025
A pie graph worth keeping in mind as the NIH budget plummets jamanetwork.com/journals/jam... for 356 new FDA drugs approved
graph of NIH basisfor new drugs
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Jonathan Eisen @phylogenomics.bsky.social · 23/03/2025
Wow www.espn.com/olympics/ski...
espn.com
Vonn closes season with first podium since '18
Lindsey Vonn concluded her comeback season at age 40 with a second-place finish in a World Cup super-G race that was won by Swiss standout Lara Gut-Behrami.
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Jonathan Wendel @jonathanfwendel.bsky.social · 21/03/2025
This Octopus’s Other Car Is a Shark www.nytimes.com/2025/03/20/s...
nytimes.com
Video Shows an Octopus Riding a Mako Shark Near New Zealand
Researchers in New Zealand saw a colorful blob on top of a shark’s head. When they looked closer, they realized it had eight arms.
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Will Ratcliff @wcratcliff.bsky.social · 19/03/2025
Awwww yeah, check this out: snowflake yeast making their cover debut! www.nature.com/nature/volum... We have two papers in this issue: 1) A paper examining whole genome duplication in the MuLTEE 2) A review of long-term experiments in evolutionary biology led by @jameststroud.bsky.social 🧪
A microscopy image of snowflake yeast on the cover of Nature, with the extended cells of two clusters barely touching in a manner reminiscent of Michelangelo's depiction of Adam touching God in the Sistine chapel.
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Maike Morrison @maikemorrison.bsky.social · 14/03/2025
1/ Hey y'all, I'm excited to share my latest paper, which is out now in PNAS! We introduce FAVA, a statistical framework to measure compositional variability across microbiome samples. If you want to measure variability across a stacked bar plot, FAVA is for you! Paper: doi.org/10.1073/pnas...
5 relative abundance plots arranged to have increasing compositional variability (variability across relative abundance samples, here vertical bars)
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Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution @official-smbe.bsky.social · 15/03/2025
academic.oup.com/mbe/article/...
academic.oup.com
A Message From the Editors-in-Chief
We have been Co-Editor-in-Chiefs of Molecular Biology and Evolution (MBE) for 2 years now. In that time, we have learned a great deal about the science of
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☮️AG-Tessa☮️ @tessadk.bsky.social · 04/03/2025
Incredible and important.
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Nature Plants @natplants.nature.com · 29/01/2025
New Resource: "Transposon proliferation drives genome architecture and regulatory evolution in wild and domesticated peppers" rdcu.be/d7YSt 11 genomes of wild and domesticated pepper: transposable elements have shaped the evolution of genome structure.
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Ian Henderson @hendersi.bsky.social · 18/02/2025
Centrophilic Retrotransposons of Plant Genomes www.annualreviews.org/content/jour... new review @annualreviews.bsky.social from @abousios.bsky.social, Tetsuji Kakutani, and myself on my favourite type of mobile genetic element
annualreviews.org
Centrophilic Retrotransposons of Plant Genomes | Annual Reviews
The centromeres of eukaryotic chromosomes are required to load CENH3/CENP-A variant nucleosomes and the kinetochore complex, which connects to spindle microtubules during cell division. Despite their ...
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Jonathan Wendel @jonathanfwendel.bsky.social · 04/03/2025
Where to publish? Thoughtful essay in the new Mol. Biol. Evol. by Gaut and Russo. academic.oup.com/mbe/article/...
academic.oup.com
A Message From the Editors-in-Chief
We have been Co-Editor-in-Chiefs of Molecular Biology and Evolution (MBE) for 2 years now. In that time, we have learned a great deal about the science of
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David Shiffman, Ph.D. 🦈 @whysharksmatter.bsky.social · 03/03/2025
Today, a broad coalition of scientific professional societies who represent over 92,000 scientists are speaking out against the politicization and demonization of Federally funded science and government scientist jobs. It was an honor to help the Union of Concerned Scientists with this! 🧪🌎
ucsusa.org
48 Scientific Societies Representing Almost 100,000 Scientists Ask Congress to Protect the Future of Science
48 scientific societies representing almost 100,000 scientists signed on to a letter asking Congress to protect the future of science
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The Women In Science Archive @wisarchive.bsky.social · 23/02/2025
Botanist Agnes Arber was born 146 years ago today! Her 1950 book The Natural Philosophy of Plant Form was the culmination of a half century of research into plant morphology and the continuity of processes driving plant development. Here is her story. tinyurl.com/46c9m778 #WomenInSTEM #botany 🧪🌱
tinyurl.com
Knowing When to Flower: The Classical Botany of Agnes Arber
Evolution is great. As an explanatory idea, as a process governing biology, from just about any aspect you care to consider it, evolution is a magnificent thing. So magnificent, however, that it’s h...
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