Franz Boideau
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Franz Boideau
@franz-boideau.bsky.social
27 followers 52 following 0 posts
Post-doc fellow working on meiotic recombination in maize and Arabidopsis 🇨🇵🇵🇱
Genetics, cytogenetics & genomics.
Botany & cytology as a hobby 🌱🔬
Views are my own, he/him
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Reposted by Franz Boideau
piotraz.bsky.social
🚀 We’re hiring a Postdoc!

Join our group in Poznan, Poland to study meiotic crossover recombination in plants 🌱 Highly motivated & enthusiastic candidates are welcome!
📅 Deadline: Nov 1, 2025

🔗 ibmib.web.amu.edu.pl/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Postdoc_position-2025-Ziolkowskis-Lab.pdf
September 27, 2025 at 5:03 AM
Reposted by Franz Boideau
chloegirard.bsky.social
🚨 First pre-print from my team !!

TL;DR: presence of polymorphism (sequence differences between the homologous chromosomes) can *increase* the local rate of recombination in Arabidopsis thaliana, turning cold regions of the genome hot (purple v. grey) !
The recombination frequency (cM/Mb) along chromosome 4 of A. thaliana (female meiosis). In full hybrids (grey), where polymorphism is distributed all along chromosomes, most crossovers occur in the regions surrounding the Centromere (Cen), and very few at chromosome ends (Tel: telomeres). In lines where polymorphism is restricted to chromosome ends (purple), the local recombination rate increases drastically, at the expense of the non-polymorphic regions (yellow).
October 1, 2025 at 8:31 AM
Reposted by Franz Boideau
schnittger-lab.bsky.social
Six more years—plus a lot of blood, sweat, and tears—later, we are thrilled to finally share it: a cytological framework of female meiosis in Arabidopsis!

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
A cytological framework of female meiosis in Arabidopsis
Female and male meiosis often differ in many aspects, such as their duration and the frequency as well as the positioning of crossovers. However, studying female meiosis is often very challenging and ...
www.biorxiv.org
August 25, 2025 at 4:30 PM
Reposted by Franz Boideau
piotraz.bsky.social
Breaking genetics news‼️🌱🌽 A natural DNA trick triples recombination in maize. What we first saw in Arabidopsis (@hendersi lab) a decade ago is now confirmed in crops—opening new doors for plant breeding. Published today in Nature Plants! More details 👉 www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Enhancing local meiotic crossovers in Arabidopsis and maize through juxtaposition of heterozygous and homozygous regions - Nature Plants
This study discovered that locally confined DNA differences boost crossover rates in both Arabidopsis and maize, revealing a conserved mechanism that can accelerate plant breeding and trait introgress...
www.nature.com
September 2, 2025 at 10:19 AM
Reposted by Franz Boideau
jfcudennec.bsky.social
Plants phylogeny is a mess anyway

Credit : @xkcd.com
"Did you know the mighty redwood is actually the same species as brocoli and kale ? it's just a different cultivar" "Every year or two, botanists add another plant to Brassica oleracea and see if anyone calls them on it"
August 27, 2025 at 7:34 AM
Reposted by Franz Boideau
raphmercier.bsky.social
Preprint Alert! 🚨🧬
Not one, but two preprints!

Meiotic orientation of kinetochore at meiosis is inforced by...[see below]
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

and

Unlocking meiotic crossovers next to plant centromere
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

#meiosis4ever
#everythingisconnected

a thread👇
Monopolar orientation of kinetochores at meiosis is enforced by COHESINS and their regulators, CENP-C, and the deSUMOylase SPF2
The first division of meiosis is unique in its capacity to halve the ploidy of the future gametes. To this end, one key innovation compared to mitosis is the monopolar orientation of the pairs of sist...
www.biorxiv.org
August 25, 2025 at 7:54 AM
Reposted by Franz Boideau
jrossibarra.bsky.social
Related but cool combo of cytogenetics and phenotype. Know when the first QTL was mapped?

Sax, K. 1923. The association of size differences with seed coat pattern and pigmentation in Phaseolus vulgaris. Genetics 8:552-560.
August 27, 2025 at 3:12 AM