Today in Nature we report a systematic strategy to activate & identify gene sets in plants. We identify 8 new genes from the yew tree's Taxol biosynthetic pathway, enabling us to engineer tobacco with 17- & 20-gene pathways to Taxol precursors baccatin III & deBz-deoxy-Taxol #SingleCell #secmet 🧬🧪🌾

Recombinases your thing? In the latest from my lab, Veronica Greco shows how @nanopore sequencing + automated liquid handling provides the perfect platform for characterising these systems at scale! Awesome collaboration with @jennbrophy.bsky.social @sarah-guiziou.bsky.social doi.org/10.1101/2025...

Open faculty position in computational plant synthetic biology at @universityofga.bsky.social Dept. of Crop & Soil Sciences. Join us in Athens and be a part of UGA's emerging Institute of Synthetic Biology!
👉 Apply: www.ugajobsearch.com/postings/429...
#SynBio #PlantScience #FacultyJobs

Today’s the final day to submit your abstracts for the SIMB Annual Meeting in San Francisco! Don’t miss your chance to showcase your microbiome research.

Present your microbiome research at the SIMB Annual Meeting in San Francisco! Abstracts due May 13: sim.confex.com/sim/2025/cfp...

Angela Chen (MSU ChEMS) and I are convening the Genetically Modified Microbes in Complex Environmental & Human Microbiomes session—submit your work!

It seems there are no free-living organisms known to rely exclusively on one other organism for their survival

Until perhaps now

Check out our latest publication in @natmicrobiol.nature.com to see how we designed an exclusive microbial reliance using GCE

rdcu.be/ekepI
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Finally!
Im so excited to present to culmination of many years of work from the fantastic Defeng Shen and some great collaborators. For details, I have made a digested thread below, but if you are more interested feel free to reach out (and read the paper of course).
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Thanks for the opportunity to speak @taeseokmoon.bsky.social ! Was fun to speak about my lab’s work, much of it from my postdoc in @josedinneny.bsky.social ‘s lab!

Our new review in @theplantjournal.bsky.social on synthetic gene circuits is out! I am super proud of this. I hope that it acts as a useful resource for people new to gene circuits.

The switch-liker's guide to plant synthetic gene circuits

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

#SynBYSS Thur 10am USA CT
155th, Mar 6: Dr Tammy Collins @bwfund.bsky.social & Elena Musteata @riceuniversity.bsky.social

156th, Mar 13: Dr Axel Visel @axelvisel.bsky.social @jgi.doe.gov & Prof Christopher Dundas at U. Georgia

Zoom link for the general audience
us02web.zoom.us/j/88380504839

🙏 NSF for supporting @uf-ifas.bsky.social / UF Horticultural Sciences' trailblazing workshop 'How SynBio can *realistically* impact crop improvement & agriculture'! We brought🌱 SynBio ECRs together w/ top ag biotech & crop breeding experts to identify disconnects btwn their worlds & how to fix them⬇️

Pretty excited to try this!

Excited to share our overview on SynCom construction published in @cp-trendsmicrobiol.bsky.social

@xinmingxu.bsky.social & @neftalyl.bsky.social together with Caja Dinesen & Adele Pioppi summerize 86 publications on SynComs for plant promotion

free download: authors.elsevier.com/a/1kdNr_,2Ci...

Proud to share our latest published work on moisture responsive root development-a process we call hydropatterning! We find that this process has been under differential selection during maize breeding and the gaseous hormone ethylene prevents branching in air.
www.science.org/doi/epdf/10....

Seed tuber microbiome can predict growth potential of potato varieties www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Proud to share our new @plantphys.bsky.social review exploring the anatomical and molecular basis for root adaptations to the environment. Prashanth Ramachandran and Andrea Ramirez detail cell types and pathways that help plants stay resilient in a changing world. academic.oup.com/plphys/advan...

Nice preprint! Rhizobium rhizogenes A4-derived strains enable better transient expression in solanaceous plants.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

First bluesky post - some beautiful microbial isolates collected from kudzu by Dundas Lab undergrad John Samuel Anderson!

Could you add me, please? Thanks! 🧬