Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Ian Henderson @hendersi.bsky.social · 17h

Crazy red flesh apple - tastes good too! 🍎

Reposted by Ian Henderson

Maddy Seale @maddyseale.bsky.social · 2d

Out in @science.org this week:

A new FRET sensor for salicylic acid gives insight into spatial dynamics of pathogen infection www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

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#PlantScience

SALICYLIC ACID SENSOR1 reveals the propagation of an SA hormone surge during plant pathogen advance

Salicylic acid (SA) is a key phytohormone that orchestrates immune responses against pathogens, including Pseudomonas syringae bacteria. The timing and extent of SA accumulation are tightly controlled...

www.science.org

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Reposted by Ian Henderson

PlantEvolution 🌱🌾 @plantevolution.bsky.social · 2d

Congrats, Joe Ecker @salkinstitute.bsky.social, to receiving the McClintock Prize! Joe has been a visionary leader of the field of genetics and genomics – not only for plants – for decades
www.salk.edu/news-release...

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Reposted by Ian Henderson

Guillaume Bourque @guilbourque.bsky.social · 4d

🚨 New paper alert on telomeres! 🚨
Something different from the group! Thanks to Yuxin, a talented student in the lab, we used long-reads in 75 human trios to study telomeres and their inheritance.

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Reposted by Ian Henderson

Carolyn Bertozzi @carolynbertozzi.bskyverified.social · 3d

My HPLC was definitely overlooked

www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Prizes must recognize machine contributions to discovery

The future of science will be written by humans and machines together. Awards should reflect that reality.

www.nature.com

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Reposted by Ian Henderson

Jstheater @jstheater.bsky.social · 3d

Heading in the correct direction: After success of pilot, Ireland expands basic support payments for artists, making them permanent: www.irishtimes.com/politics/202...

Basic income support scheme for artists to be made permanent and opened to new entrants in budget

Negotiations down to the wire, with five big-spending departments yet to agree their budget allocations

www.irishtimes.com

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Reposted by Ian Henderson

bioRxiv Evolutionary Biology @biorxiv-evobio.bsky.social · 8d

Genomic Islands in Wolbachia Prophages Drive Amplification andDiversification of Cytoplasmic Incompatibility Genes in Culex pipiens https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.10.03.680192v1

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Reposted by Ian Henderson

Ana Ignatieva @anaignatieva.bsky.social · 9d

Delighted that our paper about the distribution of genomic spans of clades/edges in genealogies (ARGs), and using this for detecting inversions and other SVs (and other phenomena that cause local disruption of recombination) is out in MBE academic.oup.com/mbe/article/... (1/n)

The Length of Haplotype Blocks and Signals of Structural Variation in Reconstructed Genealogies

Abstract. Recent breakthroughs have enabled the accurate inference of large-scale genealogies. Through modelling the impact of recombination on the correla

academic.oup.com

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Ian Henderson @hendersi.bsky.social · 11d

Russell R. Geiger Professorship of Crop Science www.cam.ac.uk/jobs/russell... @cam.ac.uk @camplantsci.bsky.social

Russell R. Geiger Professorship of Crop Science

The Board of Electors to the Russell R. Geiger Professorship of Crop Science invite applications for this Professorship from persons whose work falls within the general field of the Professorship to

www.cam.ac.uk

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Ian Henderson @hendersi.bsky.social · 13d

CDCA7 facilitates MET1-mediated CG DNA methylation maintenance in centromeric heterochromatin via histone H1 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

www.biorxiv.org

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Reposted by Ian Henderson

Adam Phillippy @aphillippy.bsky.social · 18d

🚂 The T2T train keeps rolling: "The formation and propagation of human Robertsonian chromosomes" with Gerton and Garrison labs is out! What's a Robertsonian chromosome? Let Jen tell you herself in this great video, or read our paper: [1/3]
📺 youtu.be/JmlY5omxQVc
📄 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

How Stowers Scientists Found the DNA Site Where Robertsonian Chromosomes Fuse

YouTube video by Stowers Institute for Medical Research

youtu.be

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Reposted by Ian Henderson

Maddy Seale @maddyseale.bsky.social · 20d

Out First Release in @science.org this week:

A large scale analysis of the epigenetics of transposable elements in Arabidopsis shows transgenerational stability

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

#PlantScience

Transposable elements are vectors of recurrent transgenerational epigenetic inheritance

DNA methylation loss at transposable elements (TEs) can affect neighboring genes and be epigenetically inherited in plants, yet the determinants and significance of this additional system of inheritan...

www.science.org

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Ian Henderson @hendersi.bsky.social · 22d

Excellent work from @piotraz.bsky.social group demonstrating juxtaposition of heterozygous & homozygous regions in maize attracts meiotic recombination to het regions rdcu.be/eHmn9 @natplants.nature.com builds from work we did together in Cambridge on Arabidopsis way back in 2015. Great stuff Piotr!

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...

rdcu.be

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Reposted by Ian Henderson

Oxford Biology @biology.ox.ac.uk · 27d

Oxford Biology is growing 📢

We’re appointing 3 Associate Professors in:
🌱 Plant Sciences
🦉 Animal Behaviour
🔬 Molecular Cell Biology

3 fields. 3 opportunities. One new home for Oxford Biology.

Learn more 👉 bit.ly/41S2Tc7
Apply now 👉 bit.ly/488CNW3

Photo showing the inside atrium of the new Life and Mind Building

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Reposted by Ian Henderson

dfachinetti.bsky.social @dfachinetti.bsky.social · Sep 4

#1 Centromeres are epigenetic loci defined by CENP-A, positioned in unmethylated DNA flanked by highly methylated regions. Our work, published in @natgenet.nature.com in collaboration with @naltemose.bsky.social investigates the role of DNAme at human centromeres www.nature.com/articles/s41...

DNA methylation influences human centromere positioning and function - Nature Genetics

Genome-wide and targeted perturbation of DNA methylation at centromeres affects CENP-A positioning and centromere structure, resulting in aneuploidy and reduced cell viability.

www.nature.com

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Reposted by Ian Henderson

EPIGENETIC HULK @epigenetichulk.bsky.social · Aug 27

IT BEST HEALTH! FOR SKIN! MAYBE ELAINE FUCHS INVOLVED! NEED CELLULAR EPIGENETICS FOR EVERYTHING PLEASE!

Carmelo Ferrai @carmeloferrai.bsky.social · Aug 27

@magnanilab.bsky.social

What a hell is that? 🤪

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Ian Henderson @hendersi.bsky.social · Aug 27

It’s such an amazing location!

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Ian Henderson @hendersi.bsky.social · Aug 27

Some nice pyrite-ammonites we found on Charmouth beach #fossilhunting

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Reposted by Ian Henderson

Schnittger Lab @schnittger-lab.bsky.social · Aug 25

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

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Reposted by Ian Henderson

Kumud Saini @sainikumud.bsky.social · Aug 25

What beauty!

Schnittger Lab @schnittger-lab.bsky.social · Aug 25

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

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Reposted by Ian Henderson

Justin Blumenstiel @bdelloid.bsky.social · Aug 16

The original circos plot? From the 1947-1948 Carnegie Yearbook, the page prior to McClintock's Mutable Loci in Maize paper.

An old image of a salivary gland chromosome from Drosophila melanogaster, with lines across different segments indicating contact points.

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Reposted by Ian Henderson

PlantEvolution 🌱🌾 @plantevolution.bsky.social · Aug 14

Out after peer review now, follow up from our 2019 pna-NLRome paper (which was based on enrichment and long-read sequencing). It is remarkable how much more can be learned with complete genome sequences. Next. pan-NLRome from hundreds of A. thaliana long-read genomes! Big thanks to the entire team!

K.D. Murray @kdm9.bsky.social · Aug 14

Happy to be able to finally share our NLR pangenome paper, out now in CHM.

"Pangenomic context reveals the extent of intraspecific plant NLR evolution"

www.cell.com/cell-host-mi...

#plantscience #plantimmunity #pangenomes #science #nlr

Pangenomic context reveals the extent of intraspecific plant NLR evolution

Individual- and population-level diversity is required for pathogen defense by nucleotide-binding site leucine-rich repeat (NLR) proteins. Teasdale et al. leverage annotated, divergent A. thaliana gen...

www.cell.com

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Reposted by Ian Henderson

Nick Desnoyer @nickdesnoyer.bsky.social · Aug 11

Introducing the 1,000 Flower Collection 🧬🌹

I’m creating 1,000 genetically designed flowers each crafted with new colors, patterns, and shapes.

Here’s how I’m making it happen… and how you can join me on this journey 🧵(1/7)

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Ian Henderson @hendersi.bsky.social · Aug 7

Oatk: a de novo assembly tool for complex plant organelle genomes link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Oatk: a de novo assembly tool for complex plant organelle genomes - Genome Biology

Plant organelle genomes, particularly large mitochondrial genomes with complex repeats, present significant challenges for assembly. The advent of long-read sequencing enables the assembly of complete...

link.springer.com

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Reposted by Ian Henderson

Javier Santoyo @jsantoyo.bsky.social · Aug 7

Hi-reComb: constructing recombination maps from bulk gamete Hi-C sequencing. #HiC #RecombinationMaps #GameteSequencing #Genomics #Genetics
academic.oup.com/genetics/adv...

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