iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Devang Mehta🌱🧬 @mehta-lab.com · 14/09/2026

Excited to listen to Aaron Panofsky speaking about scientific racism in Leuven following all the ill-informed public commentary around the Cofnas affair in Belgium of late.

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Devang Mehta🌱🧬 @mehta-lab.com · 26/06/2026

The whole page is so cringe, “The 1% is what exceptional science looks like when nothing else gets in the way.”

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Devang Mehta🌱🧬 @mehta-lab.com · 20/05/2026

lol well Gemini (apparently sourcing the Cambridge dictionary) says this:

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Devang Mehta🌱🧬 @mehta-lab.com · 21/04/2026

Someone in the Arabidopsis/clock community seems to deeply dislike my work on research culture. Just want to say: whoever you are, please write & debate me directly instead of cowering behind anonymous grant reviews that threaten my students’ work. (2nd year in a row)

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Devang Mehta🌱🧬 @mehta-lab.com · 06/03/2026

I’ll just leave this here so you can draw your own conclusions. I have papers in there coz collaborators chose to publish there but I don’t choose to review or publish there myself.

A graph showing the number of “special issues” published by different publishers (Frontiers, MDPI, SpringerNature, Wiley) showing that Frontiers and MDPI publish a majority of articles in special issues.

Source: https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.04820

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Devang Mehta🌱🧬 @mehta-lab.com · 25/02/2026

The more I read the more horrific it gets

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Devang Mehta🌱🧬 @mehta-lab.com · 25/02/2026

Reading one of the first publications documenting circadian rhythms in humans and it’s essentially two professors torturing an assistant prof. so i guess not much has changed in academia in 130 years 🙃

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Devang Mehta🌱🧬 @mehta-lab.com · 09/02/2026

Any fun suggestions for a name for our newest lab member?

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Devang Mehta🌱🧬 @mehta-lab.com · 20/01/2026

Working in the uni where Mercator did his work, I wonder how much of Trump’s obsession with Greenland is due to people constantly showing him this distorted view of the world?

An image showing the Mercator projection map of the world with inlays showing the real size of countries to highlight how the Mercator map enlarges countries in the Northern hemisphere.

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Devang Mehta🌱🧬 @mehta-lab.com · 23/11/2025

Lees mijn eerste opiniestuk met collega’s van @kuleuvenuniversity.bsky.social in @standaard.be! “Door het Engels te omarmen als lingua franca in onderzoek wissen we onze wortels niet uit. We zetten de deur open voor samenwerking, investeringen en talent.“ www.standaard.be/opinies/vlaa...

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Devang Mehta🌱🧬 @mehta-lab.com · 29/10/2025

If you don’t like what this represents, join me in boycotting for-profit publishers of scientific research. There are still high quality, highly selective non-profit run journals around. They need our business to survive and thrive.

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Devang Mehta🌱🧬 @mehta-lab.com · 17/09/2025

Delighted to be in Edinburgh for the @jxbotany.bsky.social 75th Anniversary meeting! Looking forward to an exciting 4 days of great plant science!

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Devang Mehta🌱🧬 @mehta-lab.com · 16/09/2025

thanks! these are the options my IT folks are offering.. what would you suggest? I find the naming sooo confusing 😅

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Devang Mehta🌱🧬 @mehta-lab.com · 14/08/2025

The reasoning is even funnier 😂 en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johanne...

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Devang Mehta🌱🧬 @mehta-lab.com · 12/08/2025

We show that numerous studies in many different crops in different parts of the world have all found that breeders have serendipitously selected for specific types of modifications to the plant circadian system, which we should engineer for more rapid and directed adaptation to new geographies!

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Devang Mehta🌱🧬 @mehta-lab.com · 12/08/2025

Delighted to share the lab’s first independent publication, a Tansley Insight in @newphyt.bsky.social where we analyse new crop genomics studies to show how we can engineer plants that can grow at different latitudes (key for climate-smart Ag) nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

A screenshot of the first page of the scientific paper linked in the post.

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Devang Mehta🌱🧬 @mehta-lab.com · 11/06/2025

A while back @nature.com profiled my opinion writing, suggesting that this can boost your career. Sadly, I now have proof to the contrary: that people will target you behind the anonymity of peer review 'cause of your writing about science culture, racism, etc., and even succeed. Grant rejected🍾

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Devang Mehta🌱🧬 @mehta-lab.com · 04/06/2025

🌱⏱️Less than 10 days to go before 90 plant circadian biologists from over 18 countries arrive in Leuven for the first ever Plant Chronobiology symposium!! Super excited for all the fantastic science on show! Abstract book now out: plantclock.wixsite.com/2025

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Devang Mehta🌱🧬 @mehta-lab.com · 19/05/2025

Heading back to 🇧🇪 full of new ideas to explore. #inppo2025 was a fantastic experience: great proteomics, amazing people, and an inspiring location! 🇨🇦 Now onto the frantic last preparations for the 1st ever plant chronobiology meeting that we’re hosting in Leuven next month!

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Devang Mehta🌱🧬 @mehta-lab.com · 15/05/2025

Looking forward to speak in and chair the first session at #inppo2025 today! A great job by the organizers to get together the plant proteomics community here at the amazing Banff Springs resort!

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Devang Mehta🌱🧬 @mehta-lab.com · 10/03/2025

Nice to see the #plantscience community in Belgium come together, overriding the historic linguistic/political lines that divide this small country that has nevertheless played a historic role in plant science.

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Devang Mehta🌱🧬 @mehta-lab.com · 21/02/2025

Please share: We're hiring up to FIVE Postdocs or PhD students for a number of #plantsci #proteomics #genomics projects between my lab and that of Hervé Vanderschuren at @kuleuvenuniversity.bsky.social and @universitedeliege.bsky.social! Come join us in the land of 🍫 & 🍻 for some exciting science!

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Devang Mehta🌱🧬 @mehta-lab.com · 14/12/2024

Us plant folk use brachy for brachypodium 🤷‍♂️

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Devang Mehta🌱🧬 @mehta-lab.com · 11/12/2024

Everyone’s acting as if scientists don’t have any agency over where they publish and whether they choose to play the for-profit publishing game. If I, as a pre-tenure PI, can implement an #EthicalPublishing policy without fearing for my career, you can too.

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Devang Mehta🌱🧬 @mehta-lab.com · 05/12/2024

Please consider registering & submitting an abstract for the first ever Plant Chronobiology meeting happening in Leuven next summer! Thanks to support from the FWO, we can offer accommodation coverage for international early career presenters! #plantscience plantclock.wixsite.com/2025

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Devang Mehta🌱🧬 @mehta-lab.com · 04/12/2024

a perfectly light roast ☕️🙃 blueskyroast.com

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Devang Mehta🌱🧬 @mehta-lab.com · 04/12/2024

guess he’s gonna capture Switzerland on behalf of Canada? 😂

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Devang Mehta🌱🧬 @mehta-lab.com · 01/12/2024

Delighted to announce the registration is now open for Plant Chronobiology 2025, the first-ever dedicated conference for plant circadian biology! Please share #plantscience plantclock.wixsite.com/2025

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Devang Mehta🌱🧬 @mehta-lab.com · 14/11/2024

My new lab at KU Leuven is working on exactly this. Right now, our FWO PhD fellow AishaGerhardt, is simulating twilight & seasonal photoperiod in our custom-built latitude simulation chambers and engineering new genes to create plants adapted to new latitudes!

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Devang Mehta🌱🧬 @mehta-lab.com · 14/11/2024

With climate change, crop productivity is moving North as crops try and fail to beat the. To maintain yields in the North, we will need to adopt crops that currently grow well in tropical/sub-tropical temperatures. This means breeding them for longer twilights and seasons.

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Devang Mehta🌱🧬 @mehta-lab.com · 14/11/2024

We also performed proteome+transcriptome workups of our plants, finding some interesting processes potentially involved in the phenotypes we see. Weirdly, we found more proteins changing than transcripts, suggesting a lot of translational/post-translational regulation.

Fig. 4. Proteome and transcriptome dynamics under different periods of twilight.
(A) Number of proteins that change significantly in abundance at each of the different twilight durations in lhy cca1 compared to WT plants. (B) Number of differentially expressed genes between lhy cca1 and WT plants at each twilight length. (C) Upset plot showing the overlaps in proteins significantly changing in abundance and (D) differentially expressed genes under different twilight durations (compared to no twilight) in both lhy cca1 and WT plants. (E) Shape-based clustering of protein abundance (z-score standardized) with clusters annotated with enriched Gene Ontology terms and selected member proteins and pathways. Blue lines show cluster centroids. Pie charts show the proportion of proteins in each cluster found in lhy cca1 (yellow) and WT (blue) samples. ROS, reactive oxygen species.

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Devang Mehta🌱🧬 @mehta-lab.com · 14/11/2024

Thanks to the valuable feedback of reviewers and a collaboration with Enrico Scarpella, we also looked upstream at the genes that control light sensing and downstream at the genes that control flowering, describing a potential twilight perception pathway (black arrows).

Fig. 5. Proposed genetic pathway connecting twilight length to flowering time starting with the photoreceptors PhyE, Phy B, PhyD and Cry2, to the clock genes LHY and CCA1, and down to the flowering pathway from GI to CO to FT genes.

Genes depicted in color are genetically linked to twilight length sensing (via chronometric or morphometric flowering time changes, or both) according to this study, while grayed-out genes are not.

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Devang Mehta🌱🧬 @mehta-lab.com · 14/11/2024

Next we hunted for possible genetic regulators of twilight sensing. Our first target? The circadian clock. Here, we found that double-knockouts of the morning regulators LHY/CCA1 were almost completely twilight insensitive! (unlike some other clock mutants, see supp figs.)

Fig. 3. lhy cca1 plants exhibit a muted phenotypic response to different twilight lengths.
(A) Leaf area of lhy cca1 plants at 25 days after imbibition measured using PlantCV (n > 12). (B) Fresh weight measurements of lhy cca1 plants at 25 days after imbibition (n > 39). (C and D) Flowering time measured in terms of (C) the number of leaves at bolting and (D) days to bolting (n > 22). Letters depict significantly different data points based on a one-way ANOVA and Tukey’s post hoc test with adjusted P < 0.05.

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Devang Mehta🌱🧬 @mehta-lab.com · 14/11/2024

How do 🌱 measure the length of a day? Understanding this is important to tweak seasonal flowering & fruiting. We think our data show that plants measure daylength by perceiving the *slope of light intensity over time*, rather than counting how many hours of light they receive.

Fig. 2. Dissecting the differences between plant responses to twilight and photoperiod.
(A) Depiction of the light treatments in this experiment from a 12-hour light:12-hour dark photoperiod (0sq) to 2- (2sq), 5- (5sq), 15- (15sq), and 30-min (30sq) reductions in photoperiod in the morning and evening (only morning shown). A 30-min twilight condition (30tw) is included as control. Dotted lines depict light intensity at different points along the twilight ramp. Flowering time measurements plotted as box plots in terms of (B) days to bolting and (C) number of leaves at bolting of WT plants grown under the conditions depicted in (A). A minimum of 12 plants per treatment were measured. Letters depict significantly different data points based on a one-way ANOVA and Tukey’s post hoc test with adjusted P < 0.05.

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Devang Mehta🌱🧬 @mehta-lab.com · 14/11/2024

In conventional #plantsci research, plants are often grown in controlled conditions where the lights are just switched on-off at the start and end of day. This is not how day-night transitions work in nature! Do plants care? Turns out, they really do!

Figure 1: The impact of twilight length on plant growth and development. (A) Twilight length experimental schemes plotted out. (B) Box plot of leaf area of wild-type plants as measured using PlantCV from rosette images at 25 days post-imbibition (n>12). © Box plot of fresh weight of plants grown under different lengths of twilight (n>38 plants) measured at 25 days post-imbibition. (D & E) Box plots of flowering time measured by counting the number of days to bolting and number of leaves at bolting respectively (n>10 plants). (F) Representative images of plants at 36 days post imbibition. Letters above all graphs depict significantly different datapoints based on a one-way ANOVA and Tukey’s post-hoc test with adjusted p-value <0.05.

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Devang Mehta🌱🧬 @mehta-lab.com · 13/11/2024

I give lectures about it, but haven’t written on it (yet), dunno if I qualify but thanks for making this! www.chemie.tu-darmstadt.de/gleichstellu...

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Devang Mehta🌱🧬 @mehta-lab.com · 07/10/2024

Thanks to whoever runs the Nobel Prize’s Twitter account for highlighting exactly why the prizes are stupid.

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Devang Mehta🌱🧬 @mehta-lab.com · 05/11/2023

Quote with a picture of water you took (Feels very Twitter ca. 2010)

Photo of a frozen waterfall in Jasper National Park, Alberta, Canada

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Devang Mehta🌱🧬 @mehta-lab.com · 25/10/2023

Obliquely touched upon this on my thread on the other site.

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Devang Mehta🌱🧬 @mehta-lab.com · 23/10/2023

Meanwhile on X, the death of @eLife and academic freedom.

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Devang Mehta🌱🧬 @mehta-lab.com · 11/10/2023

Basically they define regulatory elements as nucleosome depleted regions and say that these elements can have varying degrees of enhancer and promoter function (non-exclusively). Makes sense to me.

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Devang Mehta🌱🧬 @mehta-lab.com · 09/10/2023

AT is funded by Templeton which is infamous in evolutionary biology for funding creationism/ID-like work...and one of the reviewers also received a $1m+ award from the same foundation…makes the peer review process seem really suspect🤷‍♂️

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Devang Mehta🌱🧬 @mehta-lab.com · 05/10/2023

I see the US House of Representatives has now stooped down to academic levels of pettiness 😅

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