Andrew Willoughby
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andrewilloughb.bsky.social
Andrew Willoughby
@andrewilloughb.bsky.social
200 followers 260 following 140 posts
Streptocarpus and regeneration.

NSF PRFB Fellow - Plant Genome Research Program

Duke University

Opinions are my own and do not reflect my funders or institution
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Reposted by Andrew Willoughby
iansociologo.bsky.social
This is horrible news.

www.oudaily.com/news/ou-prof...
OU College of International Studies professor reportedly arrested by ICE
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement reportedly arrested an OU professor at Will Rogers International Airport Saturday.
www.oudaily.com
November 24, 2025 at 10:20 PM
andrewilloughb.bsky.social
Getting to be involved in this project was the first time I had heard of the Calyceraceae. Really great plants, and really neat story about the evolution of the Asteraceae!
A picture of a cluster of Acicarpha flowers, in a capitulum-like head but elongated peduncles. The flowers are small and white, while the peduncles are bright green coming from a paler green base. High contrast with black background. A picture of a series of Acicarpha inflorescences developing, in . Pale green balls emerge over bracts, and then grow in a tiered structure with a central flower at the top. Halfway through the series of 12 inflorescences as they start to turn white instead of green before opening the tiered structure goes away and they are mostly flat except for the prominent central flower the final, open, flowers have regained their tiered placements from elongation of the petioles. High contrast with black background.
November 14, 2025 at 5:22 PM
Reposted by Andrew Willoughby
bjking.bsky.social
"The project that was terminated was on this hummingbird, the white-necked jacobin....I suspect that it has something to do with studying a species that doesn’t fit the binary." Researcher @jjinsing.bsky.social interviewed by @carlzimmer.com #birds #nature #science #fundscience #nonbinary 🧪
He Studied Why Some Female Birds Look Like Males
www.nytimes.com
October 31, 2025 at 2:03 PM
Reposted by Andrew Willoughby
dev-journal.bsky.social
More extraordinary model systems for regeneration

In their #LifelongDevSI Perspective, José Garcıa-Arraras, Chunyi Li, Tania Rozario, Mansi Srivastava & @andrewilloughb.bsky.social introduce five research organisms with remarkable regenerative potential

doi.org/10.1242/dev....
A screenshot of the article PDF showing the title, authors and author photos. Read the article for more information.
October 30, 2025 at 3:40 PM
andrewilloughb.bsky.social
Streptocarpus plants rapidly make shoots from the leaf epidermis without exogenous hormones.

The coolest plants in the world, many species have one cotyledon that never stops growing, and no SAM until they flower.

Do you have Streptocarpus at home already? African violets are also Streptocarpus!
A piece of a regenerating Streptocarpus leaf covered in new bright green leaves emerging from its surface. The new leaves are a little cupped and have many little hairs A selfie of Andrew in a plant growth room with plant shelves holding a large single leaf covered in dozens and dozens of purple flowers. Two purple flowers overtop several bright green leaves.
October 29, 2025 at 11:20 AM
Reposted by Andrew Willoughby
sureshd.bsky.social
Love the concept of new research organism in development and regeneration. Enjoyed reading it!!
October 28, 2025 at 4:22 PM
andrewilloughb.bsky.social
Excited to share this perspective article out now! Come read about Streptocarpus and other great model systems!

More extraordinary model systems for regeneration journals.biologists.com/dev/article/...
More extraordinary model systems for regeneration
ABSTRACT. The ability of organisms to replace and regenerate anatomical structures following their loss or damage has piqued the curiosity of biologists for centuries. In addition to Development's ‘Mo...
journals.biologists.com
October 28, 2025 at 1:23 PM
Reposted by Andrew Willoughby
minyaaa.bsky.social
Looking forward to it! Now #MorphographX is an important part of my work.
I'm grateful for @kierzkowskilab.bsky.social and @mingyuanzhu.bsky.social teaching me how to use it during grad school, and for @richardsmithlab.bsky.social and @soestrauss.bsky.social always patiently answering questions!
mingyuanzhu.bsky.social Mingyuan Zhu @mingyuanzhu.bsky.social · Oct 20
Coming this week! @minyaaa.bsky.social @roederlab.bsky.social @naascarabidopsis.bsky.social 🌱 Join us for our upcoming workshop Quantifying Plant Morphogenesis: 4D Insights with MorphoGraphX!
Learn how to quantitatively analyze plant confocal imaging data using MorphoGraphX.
October 20, 2025 at 6:26 PM
Reposted by Andrew Willoughby
plantevolution.bsky.social
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...
October 10, 2025 at 5:34 PM
Reposted by Andrew Willoughby
gittacoaker.bsky.social
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
October 6, 2025 at 10:27 PM
Reposted by Andrew Willoughby
peiferlabunc.bsky.social
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
September 25, 2025 at 12:18 AM
Reposted by Andrew Willoughby
pierremarcdelaux.bsky.social
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
September 22, 2025 at 8:42 PM
andrewilloughb.bsky.social
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.
September 4, 2025 at 12:02 PM
Reposted by Andrew Willoughby
luciastrader.bsky.social
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
August 25, 2025 at 6:44 PM
Reposted by Andrew Willoughby
peiferlabunc.bsky.social
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
August 23, 2025 at 12:18 PM
andrewilloughb.bsky.social
A very pretty peloric Streptocarpus flower opened up today
A normal Streptocarpus flower, 5 pale lavender petals. The bottom 3 with deep purple highly contrasting streaks running into the center A peloric Streptocarpus flower, 5 lavender petals all with 3 deep purple and contrasting streaks running into the circle.
August 22, 2025 at 6:56 PM
Reposted by Andrew Willoughby
burnsajohn.bsky.social
New #symbiosky paper from Cory Bishop and collaborators (including me 😊) on the remarkable specificity of the symbiosis between spotted salamanders and the alga in their eggs. Cory organized colleagues to get egg fluid from NC USA to NS Canada. He found extremely low...

tinyurl.com/2jmwce2s
Frontiers | High partner specificity in an algal-salamander mutualism at continental scale
The mutualism between the green alga Oophila amblystomatis (“Oophila”) and egg masses of the spotted salamander Ambystoma maculatum involves acquisition of a...
www.frontiersin.org
August 17, 2025 at 10:05 PM
andrewilloughb.bsky.social
A fantastic and thorough paper, and the imaging is breathtaking
minyaaa.bsky.social 闵娅(Min Ya; Minya) PhD @minyaaa.bsky.social · Aug 7
I’m proud to present the main work from my postdoc, 3+ years in making from scratch, my ultimate #MimulusPropaganda up till now:

The Moment
That
Symmetry
Breaks.

#plantscience #development #imaging #microscopy 🧪🌸🔬
w. Captain Yaowu & @biancatash.bsky.social

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
August 7, 2025 at 3:10 PM
Reposted by Andrew Willoughby
penlindsay.bsky.social
delighted to share work from my postdoc @cshlnews.bsky.social - here, we use TurboID in maize meristems to be able to resolve CLV receptor interactions, unlocking its potential to resolve in vivo receptor interactions important for meristem signaling.
biorxiv-plants.bsky.social bioRxiv Plant Bio @biorxiv-plants.bsky.social · Aug 6
Antagonistic interactions between CLAVATA receptors shape maize ear development https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.08.04.667500v1
August 6, 2025 at 8:45 PM
andrewilloughb.bsky.social
This is a heart breaker, attending this meeting last year for my PGRP postdoc fellowship was a great opportunity
milesroberts.bsky.social Dr. Miles Roberts @milesroberts.bsky.social · Jul 21
Got this email today that NSF is canceling the annual meeting for plant genome research (PGRP) awardees. I’m really sad that I’ll miss out on this amazing networking opportunity :(
Screenshot of an email saying that NSF’s PGRP awardee meeting is canceled
July 21, 2025 at 10:56 PM
Reposted by Andrew Willoughby
couchmicroscopy.bsky.social
I’m thrilled to announce that next summer I’ll be joining the University of Maryland Department of Biology as an assistant professor! The Van Etten lab will study how horizontal processes (DNA and gene transfer + organelle acquisition) drive and are driven by ecology and evolution. vanettenlab.org
July 16, 2025 at 3:59 PM
Reposted by Andrew Willoughby
colincarlson.bsky.social
Newest software stuff from team @viralemergence.org and maybe the most widely-useful thing we've developed? Huge congrats to Alexander and Steph, this is such an amazing bioinformatics tool. (Just wait until you see what they're doing with it!)
July 14, 2025 at 7:06 PM
Reposted by Andrew Willoughby
paulaelomaa.bsky.social
Happy to see this out and for the opportunity to contribute!! The puzzle of Asteraceae inflorescence development jumps one step forward (a big step 😅) 🌻
thecapitulab.bsky.social The CapituLab @thecapitulab.bsky.social · Jul 2
We are absolutely thrilled to share this work on CLV signaling in the sunflower family! This project was only possible through the efforts and contributions of our incredible collaborators! It also represents the CapituLab’s first preprint! (more to come soon though…)
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Floral innovation through modifications in stem cell peptide signaling.
Understanding how evolution shapes genetic networks to create new developmental forms is a central question in biology. Flowering shoot (inflorescence) architecture varies significantly across plant f...
www.biorxiv.org
July 2, 2025 at 5:31 PM
Reposted by Andrew Willoughby
thecapitulab.bsky.social
We are absolutely thrilled to share this work on CLV signaling in the sunflower family! This project was only possible through the efforts and contributions of our incredible collaborators! It also represents the CapituLab’s first preprint! (more to come soon though…)
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Floral innovation through modifications in stem cell peptide signaling.
Understanding how evolution shapes genetic networks to create new developmental forms is a central question in biology. Flowering shoot (inflorescence) architecture varies significantly across plant f...
www.biorxiv.org
July 2, 2025 at 12:35 AM
andrewilloughb.bsky.social
A new really exciting preprint from @thecapitulab.bsky.social, my PhD lab, and many others
One of the many interesting findings - The sequence evolution of CLV3 and changes to CLV signaling is required for capitulum development. CLEs make sunflowers!
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Floral innovation through modifications in stem cell peptide signaling.
Understanding how evolution shapes genetic networks to create new developmental forms is a central question in biology. Flowering shoot (inflorescence) architecture varies significantly across plant f...
www.biorxiv.org
July 1, 2025 at 4:50 PM