Had a great time treasure-hunting for galls with the British Plant Gall Society this weekend! Also proud to introduce my son to the amazing world of cecidology. 😍

Please share with anyone who cares about NSF support for graduate students and take 30 seconds to sign and leave a comment.

The deadline for the 2025 Graduate Research Fellowship Program is about one month away and literally no one can apply. #NSFGRFP

jasonjwilliamsny.github.io/grfp2025/

Amazing new method in single-cell gene editing from @gek0s.bsky.social et al, out today on biorxiv! Make sure to scroll down to see the video of him electroporating RNA into individual neurons 🤯

Assistant/ Associate Professor of Mycology at UGA - Go be part of a Legendary Fungal Group fungi.franklinresearch.uga.edu and dept of plant pathology plantpath.caes.uga.edu www.ugajobsearch.com/postings/445...

1st western blot vs. 128th western blot 🧪
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#science #westernblot #predoc #labscientist

We tackle this question using the bacterial parasite Pasteuria ramosa and its crustacean host, Daphnia magna, which coevolve under Red Queen dynamics and follow a matching-allele model. Theory predicts such a system should show a modular network structure. Our findings reveal a more complex picture.

💡Can we use network structure 🏁 to infer underlying genetics 🧬 of host – parasite coevolution?

🔎Find out in our new paper 🥳, published in the latest issue of @journal-evo.bsky.social 👇
academic.oup.com/evolut/artic...
#Parasite #EvolutionaryBiology #MicrobialEvolution

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What's impressed me the most is how collaborative and supportive the lab seems. Being a newcomer can be overwhelming, but I'm thrilled to be part of the enthusiastic and brilliant "Saplings" 🌱 team (those of us characterizing SAP proteins), and looking forward to doing some awesome science in 2025!

and I managed to have some fun with my labmates :)

I also co-created and presented a poster for an internal conference...

Learning the basics of agro-infiltration (like many of the techniques I'm learning, this one feels like magic 🪄 )...

Handling plants: Transplanting tiny seedlings and watching them grow...

Cloning genes into plasmid vectors...

First 2 months as a postdoc in the Hogenhout lab = whirlwind! Big goal: characterize bacterial effectors that turn plants 🪴 into zombies 🧟‍♀️. Really cool system that I've admired for years; also my first time working with plants and doing molecular work, so I'm learning A LOT! Some highlights:
Y2H...🧵

Why do insect galls have such varied shapes even among closely related species?? The Enemy Hypothesis, posits that pressure from parasitoids drives the dynamic evolution of external gall traits. We have a new paper in @rsocpublishing.bsky.social on this hypothesis see more in this 🧵! 🧪 #galls

I nominate @damiepak.bsky.social

We’re delighted to share our latest preprint from the Hogenhout lab (@saskiahogenhout.bsky.social) on the molecular mechanisms on plant-aphid interactions. Here we show how the aphid Mp10 effector protein acts as a local anaesthetic to suppress the plant perception of aphid attack

Thanks for putting this together! I'd be happy to join