Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Reposted by PlantEvolution 🌱🌾

Jeremy Berg @jeremymberg.bsky.social · 4h

Great piece by Joachim Frank, a Nobel laureate at Columbia from Germany who has been standing up for science and democracy throughout this year.

www.usnews.com/opinion/arti...

1/2

www.usnews.com

3 12 20

Reposted by PlantEvolution 🌱🌾

Nick Talbot @talbotlabtsl.bsky.social · 3h

New PhD opportunity in my group @thesainsburylab.bsky.social through the BBSRC NRP DTP Programme - see details of host to apply below

biodtp.norwichresearchpark.ac.uk/projects/van...

Vanishing Virulence: Investigating pathogenicity loss in a plant pathogenic fungus (TALBOT_T26DTP) | Doctoral Training Partnership

What makes a plant killer lose its edge? This project will investigate why fungal pathogens lose virulence when they are grown in laboratory culture away from their host plant. Use cutting-edge…

biodtp.norwichresearchpark.ac.uk

17 19

Reposted by PlantEvolution 🌱🌾

Indivisible ❌👑 @indivisible.org · 20h

“No, Speaker Johnson — the No Kings rally on October 18 is not a hate America rally. In fact, it’s quite the contrary: It’s a love America rally.” #NoKings

600 9.4K 28K

Reposted by PlantEvolution 🌱🌾

Swapnil Hiremath 🍁🇨🇦 @hswapnil.medsky.social · 1d

What is likely to happen is more insidious

Which journals are included in PubMed? You should expect to see the NIH director’s bloggy pseudo journal pop up there soon based on these criteria

In that post, I also discussed my concern about PubMed’s vulnerability to a political misinformation agenda. A key point of influence was the National Library of Medicine committee that advised on what journals should be approved for inclusion in MEDLINE. MEDLINE journals provide the main stream of articles in PubMed.
Since then, that committee has been terminated. In September, the NLM announced that they are reviewing their new MEDLINE journal selection system. That process is a couple of consultants advising on whether a journal meets the MEDLINE scientific and editorial standards.
This is the same process that’s been used for years for the second set of journals that feed articles into PubMed: Open access journals in PMC. (There are over 2,700 non-MEDLINE journals in PMC at the moment. MEDLINE has nearly double that many journals.) I heard that moving to the PMC process had been planned before the regime change, but I haven’t seen that reported publicly.
I think this change in system would make it much simpler to politicize journal inclusion in PubMed. The NLM Director can make their own decisions and reject the advice of the consultants, without having to bother with overhauling a committee’s membership and the unpredictability of members. We don’t know who the person with that power will ultimately be – there’s still only an Acting Director. But at least for now, it’s so far so good for PubMed users.

1 3

Reposted by PlantEvolution 🌱🌾

plantgenomics.bsky.social @plantgenomics.bsky.social · 1d

Uncertainty in joint Ancestral State Reconstruction: Improving accuracy and biological interpretability of ancestral state prediction
doi.org/10.1101/2025...

Uncertainty in joint Ancestral State Reconstruction: Improving accuracy and biological interpretability of ancestral state prediction

Ancestral state reconstruction (ASR) is a foundational tool in comparative biology, offering insights into the evolutionary history of lineages. With each new evolutionary model, our ability to estima...

doi.org

2 3

Reposted by PlantEvolution 🌱🌾

Mark Peifer (He, him) @peiferlabunc.bsky.social · 1d

Thank you Sally Kornbluth for standing up to the dictatorship!!!!

Kyle Griffin @kylegriffin1.bsky.social · 2d

Breaking: MIT just became the first university to reject an agreement that would trade support for the Trump admin's higher education agenda in exchange for favorable treatment.

"Fundamentally, the premise of the document is inconsistent with our core belief." www.nytimes.com/2025/10/10/u...

M.I.T. Rejects a White House Offer for Special Funding Treatment

www.nytimes.com

2 15

Reposted by PlantEvolution 🌱🌾

Tatsuya Nobori @tatsuyanobori.bsky.social · 2d

Wonderful news and a truly well-deserved recognition. Congratulations, Joe!

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...

3 27

PlantEvolution 🌱🌾 @plantevolution.bsky.social · 1d

Oops — you are right!

1

Reposted by PlantEvolution 🌱🌾

Pam Ronald @pcronald.bsky.social · 1d

Well- deserved! I remember Joe’s talks at the Carnegie when I was just starting graduate school. His talks were energetic and well-explained and exciting. AND he always made other scientists feel welcome. He is one of a kind

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...

3 12

PlantEvolution 🌱🌾 @plantevolution.bsky.social · 1d

Still impressive, though, compared to bio ethanol

1

PlantEvolution 🌱🌾 @plantevolution.bsky.social · 1d

I think you’re off by an order of magnitude. 4,046 m^2/acre * 250 kWh/m^2 / 3 mi / kWh = 337,166 mi

2 1

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...

37 120

Reposted by PlantEvolution 🌱🌾

Prasad Jallepalli, MD, PhD @prasad.bsky.social · 2d

what's so upsetting to me is that the people pushing these 'supplements' neither know nor care about the serious (and in some cases, irreversible or even fatal) harm they caused by preying on others's suffering and quest for relief

www.nytimes.com/2025/10/07/w...

A Plea From Doctors: Cool It on the Supplements

www.nytimes.com

1 8 23

Reposted by PlantEvolution 🌱🌾

Our World in Data @ourworldindata.org · 3d

How over- and underrepresented are different causes of death in the media?

Another way to visualize this data is to measure how over- or underrepresented each cause is.

To do this, we calculate the ratio between a cause’s share of deaths and its share of news articles.

7 89 240

Reposted by PlantEvolution 🌱🌾

James Murray @james-bg.bsky.social · 3d

That England has had its three worst harvests on record inside the past five years really should be being treated as a much bigger cause for concern than is currently the case. www.businessgreen.com/news/4520171...

'This is what farming with climate change looks like': England endures second worst harvest on record

New analysis confirms three of the five worst harvests on record have occurred in the past five years on the back of extreme heat, drought, and rainfall

www.businessgreen.com

6 170 270

Reposted by PlantEvolution 🌱🌾

Julia Frunzke @frunzkelab.bsky.social · 8d

Just returning from a fantastic symposium celebrating my former postdoc mentor, Julia Vorholt, on receiving the Novonesis Biotechnology Prize! Huge congratulations to Julia — and to the Novo Nordisk Foundation on an outstanding choice!

3 18

Reposted by PlantEvolution 🌱🌾

Ben de Bivort @debivort.bsky.social · 4d

Our new study modeling selection for (behavioral) variability has been covered in a lovely @genetics-gsa.bsky.social podcast featuring first author Shraddha Lall and @ecoevogal.bsky.social

academic.oup.com/g3journal/ad...

Family-based selection: an efficient method for increasing phenotypic variability

This article introduces a model comparing various selection regimes for increasing phenotypic variability. Individuals with the same genotype, reared in id

academic.oup.com

5 14 33

Reposted by PlantEvolution 🌱🌾

Prasad Jallepalli, MD, PhD @prasad.bsky.social · 3d

it is so important for the public to know about this terrible waste of talent, curiosity, wonder, and progress

too much of science -- how it's made, who makes it, and how and why -- is hidden from public view

these stories need to be told

Carl Zimmer @carlzimmer.com · 3d

Today my @nytimes.com colleagues and I are launching a new series called Lost Science. We interview US scientists who can no longer discover something new about our world, thanks to this year‘s cuts. Here is my first interview with a scientist who studied bees and fires. Gift link: nyti.ms/3IWXbiE

nyti.ms

1 14 39

Reposted by PlantEvolution 🌱🌾

eLife @elife.bsky.social · 4d

Inside a thylakoid membrane

The molecular architecture of the thylakoid membrane in a vascular plant has been determined with single-molecule precision.
buff.ly/U9TzrOh

7 17

Reposted by PlantEvolution 🌱🌾

Jens Südekum @suedekum.bsky.social · 4d

Betriebserben ist dank eines Steuerprivilegs (aka Verschonungsbedarfsprüfung) seit 2021 #Erbschaftsteuer in Höhe von 7,6 Milliarden Euro erlassen worden. Vermögen in Höhe von rund 24 Milliarden Euro wurden so nahezu steuerfrei auf die Erben übertragen.

hbapp.handelsblatt.com/cmsid/100160...

Handelsblatt

hbapp.handelsblatt.com

2 20 46

Reposted by PlantEvolution 🌱🌾

Greg Copenhaver @copenhaverlab.bsky.social · 6d

The @uncchapelhill.bsky.social Department of Biology is searching for tenure-track Assistant Professor in Plant Molecular Biology. Chapel Hill is a wonderful place and Biology is an amazing group of people. To apply, see:
unc.peopleadmin.com/postings/307...

53 33

Reposted by PlantEvolution 🌱🌾

Alt National Park Service @altnps.bsky.social · 5d

This.

280 4.4K 14K

Reposted by PlantEvolution 🌱🌾

Akrotelm 🌾 @akrotelm.bsky.social · 5d

So überrascht war ich lange nicht mehr von einem Politiker der #CDU. 😲

Der Einfall für dieses Produkt hing mit Adenauers politischer Tätigkeit während des Ersten Weltkriegs zusammen. Als Erster Beigeordneter war er seit 1914 für die Lebensmittelversorgung der Kölner Bevölkerung zuständig. Fleisch war damals Mangelware. Genau da setzte die Erfindung an: „Der Zweck, der verfolgt wird, ist, dem viel billigeren Pflanzeneiweiß in größerem Maße wie bisher im Verzehr Eingang zu verschaffen, nicht neben, sondern an Stelle des tierischen Eiweißes. Der Zweck soll dadurch erreicht werden, dass dem Konsumenten das Pflanzeneiweiß gewissermaßen unter der Maske der Fleischnahrung gegeben wird, weil das Volk die Fleischnahrung kennt und liebt. Dies lässt sich erreichen durch eine beliebte Form der Fleischnahrung, durch die Wurst“, schrieb Adenauer seinem Patentanwalt Dr. Julius Ephraim am 10. Mai 1915.

9 39 130

Reposted by PlantEvolution 🌱🌾

Antony Dodd @antdodd.bsky.social · 5d

www.theguardian.com/politics/202... 🤣🤣

Tories set a low bar after misspelling Britain on conference chocolate

Misprinted wrappers pulled from Manchester goodie bags after derision on social media

www.theguardian.com

1 2

PlantEvolution 🌱🌾 @plantevolution.bsky.social · 5d

Game changer for cell-based plant genetics: the labs of Caixia Gao & Jin-Long Qiu have developed very efficient self-replicating vectors and they just published a very nice proof-of-concept paper.
#plantscience
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

1 27 60