Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Reposted by Andrew Willoughby

PlantEvolution 🌱🌾 @plantevolution.bsky.social · 5h

Congrats, Joe Ecker @salkinstitute.bsky.social, to receiving the McClintock Prize! Joe has been a visionary leader of the field of genetics and genomics – not only for plants – for decades
www.salk.edu/news-release...

25 71

Andrew Willoughby @andrewilloughb.bsky.social · 12h

I love the eldritch horror of balancing odd numbers of tubes

1 1

Andrew Willoughby @andrewilloughb.bsky.social · 1d

Putting googly eyes on my thermomixer immediately

2

Reposted by Andrew Willoughby

Gitta Coaker @gittacoaker.bsky.social · 4d

UNC Chapel Hill is hiring an Assistant Professor in Plant Molecular Biology. Per Jeff
Dangl MPMI candidates are also highly desired in the search. unc.peopleadmin.com/postings/307...

Assistant Professor

The Department of Biology at UNC Chapel Hill (https://bio.unc.edu/) is searching to hire a tenure track Assistant Professor to study critical questions in Plant Molecular Biology.We seek candidates wh...

unc.peopleadmin.com

30 21

Reposted by Andrew Willoughby

Mark Peifer (He, him) @peiferlabunc.bsky.social · 15d

Love to see one of my favorite colleagues, Pat Gensel, profiled on the UNC website: " Indiana Jones — but for plants"
www.unc.edu/posts/2025/0...

Paleobotanist searches for ancient plants | UNC-Chapel Hill

Emeritus professor Patricia Gensel studies 400-million-year-old plants across the globe.

www.unc.edu

7 45

Reposted by Andrew Willoughby

PM Delaux @pierremarcdelaux.bsky.social · 18d

A milestone for plant genomics just out @natgenet.nature.com

130 bryophyte genomes!

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Bryophytes hold a larger gene family space than vascular plants - Nature Genetics

A super-pangenome analysis incorporating 123 newly sequenced bryophyte genomes reveals that bryophytes exhibit a larger number of unique and lineage-specific gene families than vascular plants.

www.nature.com

1 38 110

Andrew Willoughby @andrewilloughb.bsky.social · 21d

Domino's tracker is always there for you

1

Andrew Willoughby @andrewilloughb.bsky.social · Sep 9

The flu that triggered a lot of cases of narcolepsy?

Andrew Willoughby @andrewilloughb.bsky.social · Sep 9

These continue to grow like this, with the leaves eventually greening

1

Andrew Willoughby @andrewilloughb.bsky.social · Sep 8

There are a bunch of African cultivars variegated in this way

A rosette of bright green leaves. The middle 3 smallest leaves are cream/pink colored, almost like they faded from the sun. The next largest two leaves are green at the tips fading into yellow fading into cream

1 1

Andrew Willoughby @andrewilloughb.bsky.social · Sep 4

There's a bunch of fun techniques under investigation to combat citrus greening

1 6

Andrew Willoughby @andrewilloughb.bsky.social · Sep 4

Some more fun Streptocarpus floral symmetry issues. First photo is typical S. michelmorei, 2nd and 3rd have patterning issues, and the 4th is wonderfully/horrifically fasciated.

A purple flower with 5 petals, the 3 bottom petals have a darker purple throat that transitions to yellow as dark purple spots get smaller. 2 stamens attached to these bottom petals are fused at their tips. There are two barely visible infertile stamenodes attached to the top two petals.

Four petal flower, all with dark purple/yellow markings and 4 stamens attached at their tips in two pairs

8 petal flower, no petals have the dark purple spots or yellow marks, and there are 6 stamenodes. The top 2 and bottom 2 petals closely resemble each other. The 4 remaining petals look shoved together in groups of two, inserted in the lateral position. They have a dark purple center but nothing like the intensely pigmented throat of the typical flower.

A severely fasciated flower that nevertheless has normal dorsoventral patterning. 8/9 dark bottom petals, ~5 light petals. Stamens protrude from the bottom petals. There are 4 visible separate stigmas, although the most central one appears to be two fused together, which would make 5.

5

Andrew Willoughby @andrewilloughb.bsky.social · Sep 2

Oh it's 3quels. The Final Carlflict

Andrew Willoughby @andrewilloughb.bsky.social · Sep 2

The Omen? The Carlsomen?

My second guess is jaws

2

Andrew Willoughby @andrewilloughb.bsky.social · Aug 30

Why did you curse me with this info

2

Andrew Willoughby @andrewilloughb.bsky.social · Aug 29

What the words "root pollen" did to me

Andrew Willoughby @andrewilloughb.bsky.social · Aug 28

Love the gesneriad society's seed fund!

1

Reposted by Andrew Willoughby

Lucia Strader @luciastrader.bsky.social · Aug 25

The lab is moving to the Salk Institute! We are thrilled to join an inspiring community where we will continue to explore plant growth and development.

Deep gratitude for the years of support and collaboration at Duke/NCSU/UNC.

www.salk.edu/news-release...

Plant biologist Lucia Strader joins Salk faculty to study plant growth signaling - Salk Institute for Biological Studies

LA JOLLA—The Salk Institute will welcome plant biologist Lucia Strader as a new professor and holder of the Howard H. and Maryam R. Newman Chair in Plant Biology in October 2025. Strader is an interna...

www.salk.edu

4 19 120

Andrew Willoughby @andrewilloughb.bsky.social · Aug 23

And the anther pair is usually lightly fused and the pollen doesn't shed easily, but none of these were fused

1

Andrew Willoughby @andrewilloughb.bsky.social · Aug 23

Yeah! Normally, the top 2 anthers are reduced to stamenodes, but it had four large ones. The stamens are fused to to the corolla tube in Streptocarpus. I didn't look at carpels, but the stigma definitely looked like it would have more to me too!

1 1

Andrew Willoughby @andrewilloughb.bsky.social · Aug 23

The best foot long cotyledons around!

Reposted by Andrew Willoughby

Mark Peifer (He, him) @peiferlabunc.bsky.social · Aug 23

The community of Drosophila researchers is amazing, mutually supportive and collaborative. Right now a key resource for our community, @flybase.bsky.social , is threatened by the cancellation of its NIH grant and is seeking community help in raising short term funds 1/n 🧪 please share

Dear Fly Community,

In May 2025, the NIH terminated all grant funding to Harvard University, including the NHGRI grant that supported FlyBase. This grant also funded FlyBase teams at Indiana University (IU) and the University of Cambridge (UK), and as a result, their subawards were also canceled.

The Cambridge team has secured support for one to two years through generous donations from the European fly community, emergency funding from the Wellcome Trust, and support from the University of Cambridge. At IU, funding has been secured for one year thanks to reserve funds from Thom Kaufman and a supplement from ORIP/NIH to the Bloomington Drosophila Stock Center (BDSC).

Unfortunately, the situation at Harvard is far more critical. Harvard University had supported FlyBase staff since May but recently denied a request for extended bridge funding. As a result, all eight employees (four full-time and four part-time) were abruptly laid off, with termination dates ranging from August to mid-October depending on their positions. In addition, our curator at the University of New Mexico will leave her position at the end of August. This decision came as a shock, and we are urgently pursuing all possible funding options.

To put the need into perspective: although FlyBase is free to use, it is not free to make. It takes large teams of people and millions of dollars a year to create FlyBase to support fly research (the last NHGRI grant supported us with more than 2 million USD per annum).

To help sustain FlyBase operations, we have been reaching out to you to ask for your support. We have set up a donation site in Cambridge, UK, to which European labs have and can continue to contribute, and a new donation site at IU to which labs in the US and the rest of the world can contribute. We urge researchers to work with their grant administrators to contribute to FlyBase via these sites if at all possible, as more of the money will go to FlyBase. However, we appreciate that some fu…

https://wiki.flybase.org/wiki/FlyBase:Contribute_to_FlyBase

Our immediate goals are:

1. To maintain core curation activities and keep the FlyBase website online

2. To complete integration with the Alliance of Genome Resources (The Alliance).

Integration with the Alliance is essential for FlyBase’s long-term sustainability. For nearly a decade, NHGRI/NIH has supported the unification of Model Organism Databases (MODs) into the Alliance, which we aim to achieve by 2028. Therefore, securing bridge funding to sustain FlyBase over the next three years is crucial for successful integration and the long-term access to FlyBase data.

At present, our remaining funds will allow us to keep the FlyBase website online for approximately one more year. Beyond that, its future is uncertain unless new funding is secured. We will, of course, continue pursuing additional grant opportunities as they arise.

Given the uncertainty of future NIH or alternative funding sources, we are relying on the Fly community for support. Your contributions will directly help us retain the staff needed to complete this transition and to secure ongoing fly data curation into the Alliance beyond 2028.

We at FlyBase are incredibly grateful for the outpouring of support from the community during this challenging time. Your encouragement has strengthened our resolve and underscores how vital this resource remains to Drosophila research worldwide.

Sincerely,
The FlyBase Team

1 130 150

Andrew Willoughby @andrewilloughb.bsky.social · Aug 23

"her brain is squishy like a hackysack" I think about this a lot

Andrew Willoughby @andrewilloughb.bsky.social · Aug 23

"These terms come from animal biology and not sure how useful in plant development." This is where I end up also

3

Andrew Willoughby @andrewilloughb.bsky.social · Aug 23

In the Gesneriaceae, sometimes these leaves are really hitting it out of the park though

A pink and yellow flower over a neon green and dark green mottled leaf covered in fuzzy red almost iridescent trichomes

1 2 13