Max Stassen
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maxstassen.bsky.social
Max Stassen
@maxstassen.bsky.social
PhD candidate Plant Microbe Interactions at Utrecht University | Exploring the role of coumarins in the plant's microbiome-root-shoot communication | He/him
Reposted by Max Stassen
We are beyond excited to reveal the full line-up for our Environmental Signaling in Plants summer school 2026!

Registration is now open here eps.sites.uu.nl - we look forward to seeing you in Utrecht on 24th-26th August!
November 11, 2025 at 3:59 PM
Reposted by Max Stassen
Plant miRNAs influence soil bacterial growth and amino acid uptake, restructuring community composition

-in #ISMEComms

academic.oup.com/ismecommun/a...
Plant miRNAs influence soil bacterial growth and amino acid uptake, restructuring community composition
Abstract. Plants and microbes use many strategies to acquire soil amino acids. Recent findings suggest that genes related to amino acid metabolism and tran
academic.oup.com
November 9, 2025 at 11:33 AM
Reposted by Max Stassen
Do you teach #rstats? Do your students complain about how lame and old-fashioned dplyr is? Don't worry: I have the solution for you: github.com/hadley/genzp....

genzplyr is dplyr, but bussin fr fr no cap.
GitHub - hadley/genzplyr: dplyr but make it bussin fr fr no cap
dplyr but make it bussin fr fr no cap. Contribute to hadley/genzplyr development by creating an account on GitHub.
github.com
November 6, 2025 at 11:25 PM
Reposted by Max Stassen
Ioannis Stringlis (Agricultural University of Athens) on Root Defense Barriers Modulate Beneficial Microbe Interactions and Microbiome Assembly in Arabidopsis
#PMS2025
November 4, 2025 at 10:26 AM
Reposted by Max Stassen
#PMS2025 is a great occasion for many members of the MicroSOS consortium to meet and discuss about the project’s current and future activities!
November 5, 2025 at 4:35 PM
Reposted by Max Stassen
We are back at #PMS2025 with Giannis Stringlis who continues the earlier theme on how root biology interacts with the microbiome
November 4, 2025 at 10:29 AM
Reposted by Max Stassen
Getting a bit technical with some bioinformatics to discover the undiscovered in microbiomes by @jhcepas.bsky.social #PMS2025
November 6, 2025 at 3:02 PM
Reposted by Max Stassen
Probably my favorite publication ever: @hueihsuantsai.bsky.social of @nikogeldner.bsky.social lab explains microbial hotspots along the root via Casparian strip integrity #PMS2025
November 4, 2025 at 9:23 AM
Reposted by Max Stassen
The first talk of #PMS2025 by Julia Vorholt concentrates on SynCom for plant microbiomes research, a phyllosphere perspective 🌱
November 3, 2025 at 5:25 PM
Reposted by Max Stassen
@cornepieterse.bsky.social Plant Microbiome: The Extended Host Immune System

#PMS2025
November 7, 2025 at 9:48 AM
Reposted by Max Stassen
Who did this?!
November 1, 2025 at 8:38 PM
Reposted by Max Stassen
Still using 16S/ITS profiling? You might want to reconsider👀

Our new paper presents pangenome-informed amplicons that provide up to 10× higher phylogenetic resolution than full-length ribosomal markers- while remaining cost effective and scalable!
microbiomejournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10....
High-resolution profiling of bacterial and fungal communities using pangenome-informed taxon-specific long-read amplicons - Microbiome
Background High-throughput sequencing technologies have greatly advanced our understanding of microbiomes, but resolving microbial communities at species and strain levels remains challenging. Results...
microbiomejournal.biomedcentral.com
October 30, 2025 at 1:32 PM
Reposted by Max Stassen
Print edition @theonion.com ads don’t miss
October 30, 2025 at 7:19 PM
Reposted by Max Stassen
Don't make me tap the sign.
October 29, 2025 at 4:07 PM
Reposted by Max Stassen
When people learn with ChatGPT instead of following their own searches, they end up knowing less, caring less, and producing worse advice, even when the facts are the same.

Friction is an essential ingredient for learning! Convenience makes us shallow.

academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/ar...
Experimental evidence of the effects of large language models versus web search on depth of learning
Abstract. The effects of using large language models (LLMs) versus traditional web search on depth of learning are explored. A theory is proposed that when
academic.oup.com
October 28, 2025 at 3:14 PM
Reposted by Max Stassen
You don't have to move here but I would not recommend staying there.

#ScienceSky journals, seriously, get rid of the "X" button, that place isn't safe to direct ANYONE. #MedSky journals and #AcademiaSky do the same.

Ain't worth keeping a toe in poison waters. 🧪🩺
Brace for another wave of x refuges
October 26, 2025 at 4:18 PM
Reposted by Max Stassen
👏 Congratulations to Dr. Lara Van Dijck from Jane Parker’s lab @mpipz.bsky.social on successfully completing her PhD! Wishing you continued success ahead! 🎓🌱
#PhDSuccess #PlantScience #PhDone #ScientificAchievement
October 27, 2025 at 9:21 AM
Reposted by Max Stassen
Distilling my thoughts on AI into one simplified sentence. "A mind so accustomed to the constraints of its environment that its first impulse is not to imagine a different world, but to seek a more efficient way of navigating its own prison."
PSA: Many of you may have noticed a website floating around called formatmypaper(dot)com. People rightly noted something was fishy. I dig into what happened here:
open.substack.com/pub/ubadah/p...
Beware giving this site your unpublished data
Users noticed the website had fake testimonials and a domain name registered seemingly overnight.
open.substack.com
October 26, 2025 at 10:10 PM
Reposted by Max Stassen
if you see this post, your actions are:
- if you have a spare buck, give it to Wikipedia, then repost this
- if you don't have a spare buck, just repost

your action is mandatory for the world's best source of information to survive
I’ve never donated to Wikipedia before but I set up a small monthly donation as a fuck you to the world’s richest psychopath.
Elon Musk takes aim at Wikipedia
Musk has denounced Wikipedia as "Wokepedia" on X and urged people not to donate to the platform.
www.newsweek.com
December 26, 2024 at 12:03 PM
Reposted by Max Stassen
"Waar blijft het Ministerie voor Digitale Zaken om de regie over tech in de samenleving terug te pakken?" vragen @marleenstikker.bsky.social en ik in NRC. #AI raakt zo ongeveer alle facetten van de samenleving. Uitermate slecht idee dus om het aan Big Tech over te laten.

www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2025/...
Opinie | AI zou een politieke topprioriteit moeten zijn
Digitalisering en AI veranderen de samenleving ingrijpend. Nederland heeft dringend een strategisch AI-beleid nodig voor autonomie en veiligheid.
www.nrc.nl
October 24, 2025 at 6:35 AM
Reposted by Max Stassen
It’s been 14 years since I uploaded a video on YouTube showing that Striga does not infect other members of the Orobanchaceae family.JSPS Fellow Simon came to Japan and carried out mutant screening to find mechanism and it was 10 years ago that the mutant was finally obtained. A long journey.
October 24, 2025 at 12:46 AM
Reposted by Max Stassen
As seen in the release notes of ChatGPT Atlas. Cool cool cool
October 22, 2025 at 10:07 AM
Reposted by Max Stassen
Always take sentences using “the Cloud” or “the Internet” and try replacing those phrases with “A shed in Virginia” to see how they hold up. “Our service is fully based in a shed in Virginia”; “All my files are in a shed in Virginia”; “A shed in Virginia was designed to survive a nuclear war”, etc.
October 20, 2025 at 5:39 PM
Reposted by Max Stassen
Stoked to share our review advocating a whole plant perspective on resource balancing strategies with Joe Earle, Lucila Salvatore, Bas van den Herik and Kirsten ten Tusscher

How coupling resources and development ensures whole plant homeostasis url: academic.oup.com/jxb/article/...
Validate User
academic.oup.com
October 17, 2025 at 2:36 PM
Reposted by Max Stassen
I've received an 'exclusive' invite to try Nature's new 'research assistant', which will burn down a forest to provide a 'summary of the paper' I'm reading and I have SUCH exciting news for them, that's called an 'abstract' and the actual authors already wrote it for me, no forest-burning required.
October 17, 2025 at 2:10 PM