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Reposted by Thomas Spallek

Plant & Cell Physiology @plantcellphysiol.bsky.social · 29/05/2026

A potpourri of sorts🎊 🧬Kim et al. highlight features of plastid, mitochondrial & nuclear #genomes (incl. architecture, reduction & HGT) that characterise & have shaped the diversity & evolution of #parasiticplants across angiosperm lineages 🔗 doi.org/10.1093/pcp/... 📓Also featured on issue cover!

Photographs showing representative parasitic plant lineages: (a) Apodanthes caseariae (Apodanthaceae), holoparasite on Casearia (Costa Rica); (b) Arceuthobium vaginatum ssp. cryptopodum (Viscaceae), hemiparasite on Pinus ponderosa (New Mexico, USA); (c) Bdallophytum americanum (Cytinaceae), holoparasite (Nicaragua); (d) Cassytha filiformis (Lauraceae), hemiparasite (South Africa); (e) Krameria ixine (Krameriaceae), hemiparasite (flowers and fruits); (f) Malania oleifera (Ximeniaceae), hemiparasitic tree (China); (g) Prosopanche americana (Hydnoraceae), holoparasite (Argentina); (h) Rhizanthes deceptor (Rafflesiaceae), holoparasite (Sumatra, Indonesia); (i) Sarcophyte sanguinea (Balanophoraceae), holoparasite (South Africa); (j) Diphelypaea tournefortii (Orobanchaceae), holoparasite on Tanacetum (Türkiye); (k) Cuscuta gronovii (Convolvulaceae), hemiparasite on Impatiens capensis (Illinois, USA); (l) Cynomorium coccineum (Cynomoriaceae), holoparasite (Saudi Arabia). Photographs courtesy of (a, h) W. Meijer, (b, d, e, i, k) D. L. Nickrent, (c) J. Kuijt, (f) Aizhong Liu, (g) L. J. Musselman, (j) G. Schneeweiss, and (l) F. I. Al-Dossary.
Taken from Figure 1 of article: Woorin Kim, Matthias Jost, Daniel Nickrent, Renchao Zhou, Pelin Acar, Felix Langschied, Ingo Ebersberger, Susann Wicke, Stefan Wanke, Progress and prospects of parasitic plant biodiversity genomics, Plant and Cell Physiology, Volume 67, Issue 4, April 2026, Pages 438–459, https://doi.org/10.1093/pcp/pcag009

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Reposted by Thomas Spallek

Plant & Cell Physiology @plantcellphysiol.bsky.social · 26/05/2026

Dawn of a new era...🌇 Special Issue Organising Editors: Satoko Yoshida, Atsushi Okazawa, Thomas Spallek & Kaori Yoneyama introduce a comprehensive collection of 23 original articles & reviews at the forefront of #parasiticplants research Read editorial🆓 doi.org/10.1093/pcp/... #PlantScience

doi.org

Dawn of a new era for parasitic plant biology

Parasitic plants represent one of the most remarkable evolutionary innovations in the plant kingdom. By partially or completely abandoning an autotrophic l

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KWS Group @kwsgroup.bsky.social · 13/05/2026

Italy launches a national push on New Genomic Techniques (NGTs/TEA), putting field validation at the heart of innovation. The €9M TEA4IT project, led by CREA, aims to boost crop traits while preserving tradition - positioning Italy as a potential EU pioneer. 🍅🍆 tomatonews.com/ngt-1-solana...

tomatonews.com

NGT-1 solanaceae plants are blooming in the Italian spring

A groundbreaking season for NGT-1 crops in Italy Concetta Licciardello (CREA) Italy has initiated a coordinated national initiative on New Genomic Techniques (NGTs), aimed at positioning field validat...

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Thomas Spallek @thomas-spallek.bsky.social · 22/05/2026

The latest issue of the @parasiticplants.bsky.social newsletter is now online — and for those of us with a long weekend ahead, why not start with Haustorium 1, published back in 1978? If you know of other scientific societies with openly accessible archives, please share them in the comments.

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New Phytologist @newphyt.bsky.social · 22/03/2026

#TansleyInsight: CLE peptides in plant-biotic interactions Nicolas Frei dit Frey & Thomas Spallek 👇 📖 nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... #LatestIssue #PlantScience

Fig. 1 CLAVATA3/EMBRYO SURROUNDING REGION (CLE) in biotic plant interactions.

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Thomas Spallek @thomas-spallek.bsky.social · 12/02/2026

Big news from our lab: we can now stably edit the genome of a parasitic plant! Transgene-free, genome-edited P. japonicum in one generation! This will transform how we study #parasiticplants and other hard-to-transform plants. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

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Thomas Spallek @thomas-spallek.bsky.social · 06/02/2026

Nikolas and I just published our insights on CLEs in plant–bio interactions. Too short to cover everything, but we hope it gets you also excited about these peptides. Thanks to @newphyt.bsky.social for the opportunity

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Thomas Spallek @thomas-spallek.bsky.social · 22/01/2026

New #preprint from the lab: When one plant parasitizes another, the impact goes beyond nutrient loss. We show that parasitism weakens the host plant’s immunity, leaving it highly susceptible to microbial infections. Find out why: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... #PlantImmunity #ParasiticPlants

biorxiv.org

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Thomas Spallek @thomas-spallek.bsky.social · 16/01/2026

Hawi & Durga celebrate their well-deserved PhDs by climbing the city fountain and kissing the Gänseliesel goodbye.

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Botany One @botany.one · 12/01/2026

The weed threat to mustard, and the need to counter it with innovative solutions indianexpress.com/article/expl... India’s largest oilseed crop is facing a serious menace from Orobanche, a parasitic weed that has inflicted damage in major mustard-growing areas of Rajasthan and Haryana.

indianexpress.com

The weed threat to mustard, and the need to counter it with innovative solutions

India’s largest oilseed crop is facing a serious menace from Orobanche, a parasitic weed that has inflicted damage in major mustard-growing areas of Rajasthan and Haryana.

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Thomas Spallek @thomas-spallek.bsky.social · 04/12/2025

Well done, Durga @durgaprasadn.bsky.social - great presentation and disputation!

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Reposted by Thomas Spallek

Journal of Experimental Botany @jxbotany.bsky.social · 21/11/2025

🌱 EXPERT VIEW 🌱 In all land plants, small secreted peptides belonging to the CLE family move from cell to cell and activate their cognate receptors to control a plethora of developmental processes - Cornelis & Hazak 🔗 doi.org/10.1093/jxb/... #PlantScience 🧪 @hazaklab.bsky.social

Box 1. (shortened, full legend in paper):
Key developments in understanding the role of CLE signalling in plant development.
This scheme represents a summary on the selected latest advances in CLE signalling. (A) In a series of publications, Yuki Hirakawa and his team (Takahashi et al., 2021, 2023) characterized the CLE pathway in the liverwort Marchantia polymorpha that positively controls cell divisions via repressing the transcription factor JINGASA. (B) In Arabidopsis, CLV3/CLV1 signalling in the shoot was found to be buffering auxin-dependent development under different thermal conditions (John et al., 2023). (C) Research from several teams showed that the BAM3/CLE pathway is crucial for root protophloem development (Hu et al., 2018, 2022; Qian et al., 2022; Carbonnel et al., 2023). Moreover, the study by Carbonnel et al. (2023) identified an uncharacterized Arabidopsis CLE33 gene that acted in concert with CLE45 via BAM3 in root protophloem development.

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Chris Thorogood @christhorogood.bsky.social · 20/11/2025

Earlier on the expedition we found the most beautiful flower, and here, my friends, is the biggest: Rafflesia arnoldi seen in full bloom today in the Sumatran jungle. This is the largest flower on earth and one of the greatest wonders of the natural world.

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International Parasitic Plant Society - IPPS @parasiticplants.bsky.social · 06/11/2025

New Post: Haustorium 88 is now available for download on the IPPS website. www.parasiticplants.org/2025/11/haus...

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Reposted by Thomas Spallek

Ken Shirasu @shirasulab.bsky.social · 24/10/2025

Simon's mutant finally published! Well done, Satoko' lab with Harro, Tobimatsu, Tohge collaborations. Glucosylation of endogenous haustorium-inducing factors underpins kin avoidance in parasitic plants | Science www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

science.org

Glucosylation of endogenous haustorium-inducing factors underpins kin avoidance in parasitic plants

Parasitic plants rarely attack themselves, suggesting the existence of a kin-avoidance mechanism. In the root parasitic plant Phtheirospermum japonicum, prehaustorium formation is triggered by host-se...

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International Parasitic Plant Society - IPPS @parasiticplants.bsky.social · 21/08/2025

Announcement of a chromosome-level assembly and annotation of #parasiticplant Cuscuta campestris

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International Parasitic Plant Society - IPPS @parasiticplants.bsky.social · 21/08/2025

A close-up of the development of a parasitic endophyte by @l-teixeiracosta.bsky.social and colleagues. #parasiticplants

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Reposted by Thomas Spallek

Schaller lab @as-in-hohenheim.bsky.social · 21/08/2025

Check out this new story from the Felix lab, with some contribution from us: Receptor antagonist prevents hyperactivation of the plant immune system www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

sciencedirect.com

A receptor antagonist counterbalances multiple systemin phytocytokines in tomato

Tight regulation of immune activation is crucial for plant health. How plants control the actions of their immunostimulatory phytocytokines is largely…

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Thomas Spallek @thomas-spallek.bsky.social · 18/06/2025

Fantastic news! I hope Amal will return to parasitic plants one day.

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Thomas Spallek @thomas-spallek.bsky.social · 28/05/2025

Drawing your attention to this wonderful resource from the IPPS – the Haustorium Newsletter edited by Chris Parker – now in its 87th edition. Chris, who is a few years older than the number of this issue, reviewed recent publications on parasitic plants and commented briefly on most of them (>200).

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Maddy Seale @maddyseale.bsky.social · 16/05/2025

What's going on in fungi?? Chromosomes are distributed across several different nuclei in Sclerotinia sclerotiorum and Botrytis cinerea Article in @science.org here: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... And Perspective here: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

science.org

Distribution of haploid chromosomes into separate nuclei in two pathogenic fungi

Nuclei define eukaryotes, enabling macromolecular compartmentalization and cellular regulation. Each nucleus is believed to contain one or more haploid sets of chromosomes (1N). However, we discovered...

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Plant & Cell Physiology @plantcellphysiol.bsky.social · 28/03/2025

Now receiving submissions for our special issue: 'The Biology of Parasitic Plants - Mechanisms, Diversity & Evolution' Organising Editors: A. Okazawa @okazawaa.bsky.social T. Spallek @thomas-spallek.bsky.social K. Yoneyama S. Yoshida Interested? Contact Us 💻 academic.oup.com/pcp/pages/sp...