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Reposted by Alexander Ciattoni

Alex McClelland @alexjmcclelland.bsky.social · 4d

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

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Reposted by Alexander Ciattoni

Nancy Choudhary @nancy-choudhary.bsky.social · 4d

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...

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Reposted by Alexander Ciattoni

Journal of Experimental Botany @jxbotany.bsky.social · 8d

💡 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

Fig. 1.Four classes of roles of immune proteases illustrated via examples. (i) Pathogen perception: Required for Cladosporium Resistance-3 (Rcr3) protease is inhibited by the fungal avirulence effector Avr2. The Rcr3-Avr2 complex is recognized by the immune receptor Cf-2, triggering a defence response (Kruger et al, 2002). (ii) Regulation of the immune response: METACASPASE 4 (MC4) is activated by calcium upon wounding or pathogen attack. MC4 cleaves tonoplast-located ProPEP1 releasing PEP1 to the apoplast where it is perceived by PEP RECEPTORS (PEPRs) thereby initiating defence responses (Hander et al, 2019). (iii) Counteracting pathogen effectors: soybean aspartic protease GmAP5, degrades the Phytophthora sojae virulence factor glycoside hydrolase family 12 (GH12) protein, XEG1 (Xia et al., 2020). (iv) Direct pathogen attack: secreted aspartic proteases (SAPs) cleave Pseudomonas syringae MucD protein thereby suppressing bacterial growth (Wang et al., 2019).

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Alexander Ciattoni @aciattoni.bsky.social · 21d

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😅

Laboratory setup with a laptop playing a podcast close to markers and a syringe with a plant in the left foreground and more of this plant in a tray a bit more behind

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Reposted by Alexander Ciattoni

Jonny Coates @jacoates.bsky.social · Sep 14

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

Rippling Ideas @ripplingideas.bsky.social · Sep 14

Are you unsure what preprint peer review is? Or how to get started reviewing preprints?

Wonder no more! Our latest 5 min video explains all 📽️

youtu.be/bd8QRNm69P4

Subscribe to our newsletter for more: bit.ly/RIsub

#scicomm #preprints

What is preprint peer review?

You know what a preprint is but what is preprint peer review and how does it work? How is that different from journal organised peer review? We’ll answer these questions and explore the variety of preprint review services, highlighting the ones we most recommend. To learn more, visit https://rippl

youtu.be

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Alexander Ciattoni @aciattoni.bsky.social · Aug 27

I love the Bluesky community, but I regret Mastodon didn't become the path scientists followed, as it was the logical choice. We didn't learn from Twitter's mistakes and Bluesky risks becoming Twitter 2.0 in a few years. @fabmusacchio.bsky.social nicely summarised my concerns here: s.42l.fr/lJRVqxGY

Reflections on joining Bluesky: Opportunities and risks for the scientific community

Over the past two weeks, I have taken a closer look at Bluesky, exploring its features and dynamics through the lens of my own experience within the neuroscience community. So far, my impressions have...

s.42l.fr

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Reposted by Alexander Ciattoni

The bumbling biochemist (Bri Bibel) @bumblingbiochemist.bsky.social · Aug 27

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

doi.org

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Alexander Ciattoni @aciattoni.bsky.social · Aug 5

I can highly recommend the flowering inoculation protocol (doi.org/fmcxgb) as alternative to the dipping method. The easy version of it is: spin a 2mL o/n Agro culture and resuspend in 2mL 5%Sucrose + 0.02%Silwet L-77. Pipette ~5µL per bud cluster. For highest transformation rates repeat after 1week

The floral inoculating protocol: a simplified Arabidopsis thaliana transformation method modified from floral dipping

The floral dip protocol mediated by Agrobacterium tumefaciens is the most widely used transformation method for Arabidopsis thaliana. The “floral dip” …

doi.org

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Alexander Ciattoni @aciattoni.bsky.social · Jul 22

If presenters would use shortdoi.org this issue would be solved

shortDOI Service

shortdoi.org

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Reposted by Alexander Ciattoni

Courtney Herms @courtneyherms.bsky.social · Jul 22

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!

Alexander Ciattoni @aciattoni.bsky.social · Jul 21

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

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Alexander Ciattoni @aciattoni.bsky.social · Jul 21

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

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Reposted by Alexander Ciattoni

SNP2Prot @snp2prot.bsky.social · Jul 2

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

Plant Science Student Conference 2025,
June 30 – July 2

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Reposted by Alexander Ciattoni

Mariana Schuster @marischuster.bsky.social · Jun 30

@aciattoni.bsky.social representing the #ReceptorBiochemistry group @ipbhalle.bsky.social at #PSSC2025.
Enjoy!

Alexander Ciattoni @aciattoni.bsky.social · Jun 30

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.

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Alexander Ciattoni @aciattoni.bsky.social · Jun 30

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.

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Reposted by Alexander Ciattoni

Mariana Schuster @marischuster.bsky.social · May 26

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

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Reposted by Alexander Ciattoni

eLife @elife.bsky.social · May 11

Our authors can freely speculate the meaning and implications of their data in our new section:

💡 Ideas and Speculation 💡
buff.ly/0I8lpwz

Illustration featuring green/orange dots and dashes, with the heading: "Ideas and Speculation. A new article section for your next publication".

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