Great to have Mike Axtell at Sheffield for a fantastic PPS cluster seminar on Cuscuta trans-species microRNAs- looking forward to seeing more exciting research from Mike’s group! #parasitic_plants

I’m missing out on the amazing science at #Botany2025, but super happy that my student Megan Adler is giving her first talk!

July 29, TUE, 9 AM (PDT):
“Dynamic DNA (de)methylation underpins parasitic #Cuscuta-host plant communication”

If you are attending, don’t miss Megan’s talk!

I rarely have the energy to paint or draw now, but I still had fun making these figures for a paper using biorender. Although icons are made by biorender, it’s was quite a lot of work by @benebachelot.bsky.social and myself to come up with the final version- I am pleased with the look!

Class-agnostic annotation of small RNAs balances sensitivity and specificity in diverse organisms
doi.org/10.1101/2025...

Experimental warming alters microbial community and N-fixing plant growth rate in a tropical forest - happy to be part of this collaborative work led by talented OSU grad student Parker Bartz in @benebachelot.bsky.social lab doi.org/10.1101/2024...

I am excited to see #miRScore, a new tool for rapid and precise validation of plant/animal #miRNAs -led by the talented Allison Vanek & @MikeAxtell Lab. This tool is super useful for robust validation of novel miRNAs in non-model species like #Striga: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

I recently learnt the inspiration behind naming the Arabidopsis CLASSY protein from @plantylisasmith.bsky.social who identified & named it based on amino acid segment in CLSY1! It made reading CLSY papers more fun - OsCLSY3 recognises a DNA motif to induce 24nt siRNAs & RdDM doi.org/10.1101/2024...

A big congratulations to Dr @adamahp.bsky.social who passed his PhD viva! It was a pleasure to see Adam's excellent research accomplishments in plant epigenetic memory with @jurriaanton.bsky.social group, looking forward to reading papers from his super impressive thesis!
@sheffieldpps.bsky.social

Fascinating talk on Striga resistance mechanisms by
Steven Runo at JIC today, super excited to see new molecular pathways identified for rice/sorghum! #ParasiticPlants

Applications for the 2024 @sheffielduni.bsky.social Biosciences #MRes are now open -I am looking to recruit students! Happy to chat with anyone interested in a potential Masters project in #mobileRNAs & chromatin dynamics in plant parasitism! sheffield.ac.uk/postgraduate...

Exciting to see improved methods for Agrobacterium-mediated Cuscuta campestris transformation: doi.org/10.1101/2024...