Alexander Ciattoni
aciattoni.bsky.social
Alexander Ciattoni
@aciattoni.bsky.social
Plant Scientist @ipbhalle.bsky.social. Currently doing a PhD with @marischuster.bsky.social
Undergrads from Canada, Ireland, UK, & US: Don't miss the DAAD-RISE #plantscience funded internship at @ipbhalle.bsky.social with @snp2prot.bsky.social. Apply by Nov 30th: daad.de/rise/en/rise-germany/find-an-internship 🌱
November 6, 2025 at 9:43 AM
Reposted by Alexander Ciattoni
Thrilled to share our latest review on receptor kinase processing in plants! 🌱

Huge congratulations to @adithya1972.bsky.social and Anna for leading this work, and a big thank you to our fantastic collaborator Martina-Ried Lasi for making this a truly rewarding team effort!
Shedding light on receptor kinase processing
journals.plos.org
November 4, 2025 at 8:25 AM
Reposted by Alexander Ciattoni
Periodic PSA: "western" should be lowercase in western blot – unlike the "Southern" blot, which was named for a person, the western blot was named for a laugh
October 26, 2025 at 2:38 PM
Reposted by Alexander Ciattoni
A few years ago I made a slide showing the top 10 results if you search Google Image for "cartoon scientist".
In my slide, 10/10 are white men.
Someone asked if this is still true, so I tried again.
Here below you have 24 images.
20 are men, 4 are women (progress!).
23 are white, 1 is blue 🤔
October 16, 2025 at 11:45 AM
Reposted by Alexander Ciattoni
Rewriting the code of plant immunity go.nature.com/475WgV7
October 14, 2025 at 8:25 PM
Reposted by Alexander Ciattoni
1/13 Thankfully, both you and your plants have a lot of sophisticated ways to fight off invading pathogens.
In our new preprint, we describe a new way in which animals and plants share a common strategy to ward off harmful bacteria.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
A secreted citrus protease cleaves an outer membrane protein of the Huanglongbing pathogen
Plants secrete a variety of proteases as a defense response during infection by microbial pathogens. However, the relationship between their catalytic activities and antimicrobial functions remains la...
www.biorxiv.org
October 10, 2025 at 2:15 PM
Reposted by Alexander Ciattoni
Have you ever wondered why pumpkins are never purple or blue like other plants? 🎃🌈

While most plants can produce pink, blue, and purple pigments (thanks to anthocyanins), the Cucurbitaceae family 🍈 🍉 🥒have lost all the pathway genes to produce these pigments.
🔗 doi.org/10.1101/2025...
October 10, 2025 at 11:35 AM
Reposted by Alexander Ciattoni
💡 SPECIAL ISSUE VIEWPOINT 💡

Immune proteases are promising targets for protein engineering 🛠️ to boost disease resistance in plants 🌾 - Schuster et al.

🔗 doi.org/10.1093/jxb/...

#PlantScience 🧪 @marischuster.bsky.social @aciattoni.bsky.social
October 6, 2025 at 10:32 AM
My flatmate asked if I’ve ever made a GMO. This sparked a discussion making me realize how challenging science communication is and how scientists often lack training in it. I’m catching up with a podcast by @orlandodl.bsky.social that explains GMOs to a broader audience... while working with GMOs😅
September 23, 2025 at 6:59 PM
Reposted by Alexander Ciattoni
Hot off the heels of our what is a preprint video is our what is preprint peer review video!

Featuring @prelights.bsky.social @prereview.bsky.social @reviewcommons.org, @elife.bsky.social & @peercommunityin.bsky.social

#peerreview #preprint #scipub
September 14, 2025 at 7:24 PM
Reposted by Alexander Ciattoni
I’m so proud to be a part of this OER that aims to lower the barrier for professors to incorporate molecular modeling & visualization into their courses (i.e. teaching students to interact w/3D models of proteins & other macromolecular structures &/or making custom figures)! doi.org/10.15781/m4z...
Seeing the Invisible: Learning to Teach with Biomolecular Visualization – Simple Book Publishing
Seeing the Invisible: Learning to Teach with Biomolecular Visualization – Simple Book Publishing
doi.org
August 27, 2025 at 1:34 AM
Reposted by Alexander Ciattoni
Stop citing journal names in your presentations - but PMIDs are too long (I will never get all of those numbers in the correct order!)
Check out this awesome tool that takes your DOI from 10.1371/journal.pbio.3002882 to pw75.
Much more accessible and easy for the audience!
I really hope to see this change! Yet I would recommend to use the shortdoi service ( www.shortdoi.org ) to generate a shorter ID, compared to PMID. It allows IDs for anything that has a DOI, ie preprints included
www.shortdoi.org
July 22, 2025 at 7:24 AM
Reposted by Alexander Ciattoni
Students at @leibnizipk.bsky.social have organised a well-crafted conference #PSSC-2025 in the previous few days. SNP2Prot members were able to join in this event and meet the Leibniz plant community🍀

@leibniz-gemeinschaft.de @unihalle.bsky.social @ipbhalle.bsky.social @unileipzig.bsky.social
July 2, 2025 at 2:30 PM
Reposted by Alexander Ciattoni
Really happy to be at the 20th Plant Science Student Conference #PSSC2025 @leibnizipk.bsky.social
I am looking forward to exciting talks and discussions in the next few days.
June 30, 2025 at 12:45 PM
Really happy to be at the 20th Plant Science Student Conference #PSSC2025 @leibnizipk.bsky.social
I am looking forward to exciting talks and discussions in the next few days.
June 30, 2025 at 12:38 PM
Reposted by Alexander Ciattoni
I am happy to share our viewpoint on immune protease engineering!

academic.oup.com/jxb/advance-...
Hacking the immune system: plant immune protease engineering for crop protection
Immune proteases are promising targets for protein engineering to boost disease resistance in plants.
academic.oup.com
May 26, 2025 at 8:43 AM
Reposted by Alexander Ciattoni
Our authors can freely speculate the meaning and implications of their data in our new section:

💡 Ideas and Speculation 💡
buff.ly/0I8lpwz
May 11, 2025 at 10:01 AM