闵娅(Min Ya; Minya) PhD
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minyaaa.bsky.social
闵娅(Min Ya; Minya) PhD
@minyaaa.bsky.social
2.4K followers 1.3K following 550 posts
Assist Prof at UIUC Plant Bio #NewPI. NSF Postdoc UConn EEB. PhD Harvard OEB. Erasmus MEME evobio alumna. She/Her. Lover of ALL plants.
🧪🔬🌱🌾
Development; Evolution; Evo-Devo; Microscopy; Meristems.
Lived in 🇨🇳🇯🇵🇸🇪🇫🇷🇩🇪🇺🇸
www.minyaaa.com
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minyaaa.bsky.social
Wait New Phy @newphyt.bsky.social supports authors to show their real name (if non English) now?!?!? Omg I love it!!!!!! 🤩🤩🤩🤩
A new Phy paper with Chinese authors listing their Chinese names by the English spellings
November 13, 2025 at 11:42 PM
minyaaa.bsky.social
My baby lab is now starting our own first transgenic garden party and as you can see, our cocktail swords are getting fancier. 🍸💅🧪🌱 #newPI
a field of trays with soil and a lot of colorful flamingo cocktail swords in each tray to mark the position of transgenic seedlings.
October 20, 2025 at 4:44 PM
minyaaa.bsky.social
Ran into these AMAZING Stapelia grandiflora in our conservatory today. The patterns, colors, hairs, and the smell - carrion mimic to perfection. #Stapelia #plantjoy #iamabotanist
A close up of one flower showing red hairs and petal with yellow strips Another close up from a slightly diff angle How the plant looked like
October 13, 2025 at 7:44 PM
minyaaa.bsky.social
Here you go dear sir 😎
October 9, 2025 at 11:48 PM
minyaaa.bsky.social
Showed my students the perfectly balanced chaos I had before and I think they are both inspired and scared lol. #newpi 🧪
a pic of tube arrangement of 11 tubes in the centrifuge but it did not look balanced at all (although it is). the 11 tubes were broken down into 3+2+6 groups and within each group it's perfectly balanced on its own.
October 9, 2025 at 9:34 PM
minyaaa.bsky.social
Always so lovely to see Hoya flowers 🤍
#iamabotanist #plantjoy
a close up of hoya infloresence with a ball of pink little five-petaled flowers that's crimson in the middle.
October 8, 2025 at 10:14 PM
minyaaa.bsky.social
And look at this graphic abstract….. 😱🤯
October 5, 2025 at 2:00 AM
minyaaa.bsky.social
My 5th time seeing @russiancircles.bsky.social.
Flawless performance as always. Truly one of my all time favorite bands!
September 27, 2025 at 4:04 AM
minyaaa.bsky.social
Look at that! 🤩 It reminds me of Lantana camara, one of many plants that change color upon pollination: bc it’s easier for bees to see yellows than reds, yellow are young unpollinated flowers, red ones are older and pollination triggered production of more anthocyanin. #plantjoy #iamabotanist 🧪🌿🌸
Yellow-pink Lantana camara showing inner yellow outer pink gradient along the infloresence Orange-magenta Lantana camara showing inner orange outer magenta gradient along the infloresence
September 22, 2025 at 5:17 PM
minyaaa.bsky.social
Bundles of a bundle of chives.
Chives bundled by a rubber band being cut through showing the vascular bundles
September 21, 2025 at 4:43 PM
minyaaa.bsky.social
Annnnd first lab meeting + first lab photo done! Here’s my baby lab with 1 undergrad, 1 masters student, 1 PhD student, 1 postdoc, and 1 PI! 😁👩🏻‍🔬👨🏻‍🔬 #newPI
Group photo in the conservatory, we are all setting on a wooden bench with plants in the background. Left to right is Emma, Sam, Minya, Yudi, Angelique
September 16, 2025 at 10:27 PM
minyaaa.bsky.social
Whenever I see cactus blooms, I tickle them. 💅🏻🌸
Thigmonastic stamens - rapid, touch induced movement for pollination.
#plantjoy #iamabotanist
September 16, 2025 at 5:53 PM
minyaaa.bsky.social
Love this Friday Flower series, but you're telling me Snapdragon flowers don't look like this?!? 🤪🐲🌸🧪
a beer called snapdragon with dragon heads came out of flowers
September 5, 2025 at 5:42 PM
minyaaa.bsky.social
This elaborated feathery structure (crest) of Polygala myrtifolia is a pollinator attractant, but also a landing platform & a lever. Only strong bees 🐝🏋️ can press it down enough to enter the flower for nectar, during which the pollens also get attached onto the bee’s head. #iamabotanist #plantjoy
Close up of two magenta colored flowers with feathered crest Close up of another two flowers with feathered crests A young flower before fully open but the crest is already sticking out very feather like
September 4, 2025 at 6:08 PM
minyaaa.bsky.social
Dang I love my office! Makes me so happy to come in to work everyday!!
August 20, 2025 at 2:12 PM
minyaaa.bsky.social
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 2:44 PM
minyaaa.bsky.social
Not to brag but we did the best workshop #botany2025 💅🏻🎨🧪☘️🥳
A group photo is Kasey and I with most of our workshop participants. The first slide of the workshop is showing on the screen, with three beautifully drawn irises by Kasey, titled “design principles for finger-making”
July 27, 2025 at 11:54 PM
minyaaa.bsky.social
In our Design Principle for Figures workshop at #Botany2025, we go hard on our art obsessions!
Kasey showing the concept of negative space Kasey showing the concept of Dow and rhythm
July 27, 2025 at 9:31 PM
minyaaa.bsky.social
Although Kasey is not on bluesky yet, I'd like to share some killer covers they did for @botsocamerica.bsky.social (bsapubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1...) and @genomeresearch.bsky.social (genome.cshlp.org/content/34/4...). Co-hosting this workshop also allowed me to learn a ton from them!!
Cover for an issue of Genome Research illustrated by Kasey: A koalas chewing on Eucalyptus viminalis (manna gum) A cover of AJB illustrated by Kasey as a poster format about their research
July 25, 2025 at 2:42 PM
minyaaa.bsky.social
Got the perfect print for my office door 💅🏻
Pic of my office door with a bit window and there’s a black and white print of a wood cross section with meticulous details of every possible element
July 21, 2025 at 2:38 PM
minyaaa.bsky.social
Not #Caturday yet but I just went through (almost) infinite numbers of photos of my cats sleeping and concluded that my cats do not have a preference between left and right 👀🐱🧪
(No duh I didn’t waste time, I’m testing results from peer reviewed publication and this is data for science)
Sugar sleeping righty Nickel sleeping lefty Both sleeping righty Both sleeping lefty
July 11, 2025 at 6:52 PM
minyaaa.bsky.social
Saw a video introducing those flowers and I thought "surely these are AI generated fake plants". Then I pleasantly discovered that I was very wrong, these jewelry looking cute flowers that are being perfectly held on top of the leaves are from Euonymus verrucosus. 🤩🧪🌱🌾 #plantjoy
Pic of some Euonymus verrucosus leaves and flowers. Flowers have four round petals that the pedicel aligns so perfectly with the mid-vein of the leaves so that it looked like the flowers were held at the center by the leaves. Really looked like some jewelries being put on the leaves manually a close up of one leaf holding two flowers. The petals are round and smooth and look like jewelry. pic taken from https://www.flickr.com/photos/botalex/49869831297 Another leaf holding two flowers. Pic taken from https://www.flickr.com/photos/botalex/5954430245/in/photostream/
June 22, 2025 at 2:59 PM
minyaaa.bsky.social
Two month delayed, but full lab renovation almost done oh my gwad I’m so excited! Min Lab will be open very soon! #newPI 🧪🌺🧬🔬👩🏻‍🔬
June 17, 2025 at 5:37 PM
minyaaa.bsky.social
Rare serious shoots of my two goofballs. 😘
Nickel, black and white, and Sugar, orange and while, both standing on a floating shelf. Lots of arts are hanging on the wall Another angle of the two cats with three art hanging on the wall. One is a Metallica poster, one is a hanging dried protea, one is a drawing of two crows saying “that’s fucked up”
June 8, 2025 at 1:40 PM
minyaaa.bsky.social
Legend has it that the big pollinia of this orchid shoot out so fast they often kill small bees 🧪🐝💀
June 7, 2025 at 1:31 PM