Bob Schmitz

Come and join our department!! We are hiring for a tenure track Assistant Professor studying Plant Responses to Environmental Changes. Please share!! aprecruit.berkeley.edu/JPF05382

NAASC member Tomo Kawashima announces ICAR2027-Madison and the Keynote Speakers: Adrienne Roeder, Keith Slotkin, Cyril Zipfel, and Doris Wagner. 🌱🌱🌱🌱 Sign up for updates here arabidopsiscommunity.org/icar2027 @RoederLab @Doris_Wagner_ @Slotkin_Lab

1/ Excited to share our new bioRxiv preprint! "4D spatial transcriptomics reveals nodule identity emerges through stacked parallel developmental programs" 📄 doi.org/10.64898/2026.… Using Xenium, we generated a 4D (3D space + time) atlas of nodule development in Medicago.

A new study in @PNASNews, co-led by @PurdueAgronomy's Jianxin Ma, reports an innovation in soybean plants that could help improve crop yields through approaches like gene editing. With soybeans playing a critical role in global food security, this discovery could help farmers feed the world while unlocking new opportunities to enhance farm profitability. Learn about this new research, in collaboration with @ucdavisCAES' Blake Meyers: ag.purdue.edu/news/2026/06/n…

Hiring postdocs! We're recruiting for projects related to gene regulation, pollen development, and cell fate reprogramming in maize. Supported by NSF & NIH. Email nelms@uga.edu to apply. @uga_plantbio @plantcenterUGA @MaizeGDB @iasprr #PlantReproJobs #PlantBiology #PlantGenomics

Interested in chromatin and transcription in plants? 🌱🧬 looking for a lab to do a postdoc? 🤓our lab invites applicants for the MSCA postdoc fellowships 2026 call!! Interested, please PM!! Check conditions and eligibility here: …sklodowska-curie-actions.ec.europa.eu/actions/postdo…

We're introducing fresh perspectives to advance plant #biology through our first Simons Postdoctoral Fellows in Plant Biology cohort! Read more about the nine selected researchers: bit.ly/4uWXdt5 #science

In our new preprint, we report how clubmoss plants use an ancient biosynthetic pathway (>300 million years old!) to make huperzine A, an alkaloid with potential as a treatment for Alzheimer's disease. Great work by Eric Fields and @cyhkim! biorxiv.org/content/10.648…

Including a short podcast on our new PNAS paper (Ning et al., PNAS, 2026; doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2…

Targeted DNA insertion remains a major bottleneck in plant engineering. We developed the R2 retrotransposon as an efficient plant genome editor to precisely insert large DNA payloads at targeted sites: nature.com/articles/s4158… Congratulations to @kimuchenje03 and the team! 🧵👇

A team led by the @LeibnizIPK and @fz_juelich has developed an AI-model that predicts where regulatory proteins bind to plant DNA in order to switch genes on and off. The study has been published in @NatureComm. ➡️Paper: tinyurl.com/mryxendn ➡️PR: tinyurl.com/37kpbpzh

Plants experience DNA damage every day from environmental stresses such as sunlight, radiation, drought, and poor soil conditions. But how do plants survive this constant DNA damage? 🌱 Salk scientists discovered that a protein called YAF9B is activated when DNA damage occurs, helping plants more accurately repair dangerous DNA breaks in stem-cell-containing tissues. The findings reveal an additional layer of defense protecting plant genomes and could help advance precision genome editing and crop resilience. salk.edu/news-release/h… #CropResilience #PlantBiology #PlantBio #SalkInstitute

New preprint out 🌱 We present a new T-DNA vector system for Arabidopsis that supports clean, genomically mapped, single-copy T-DNA insertion with predictable cell-type/conditional gene expression. @MoKhalilLab + Gehring labs biorxiv.org/content/10.648… 🧵1/16

Our stream for Single Cell Genomics Day goes live tomorrow morning at satijalab.org/scgd , look forward to seeing you there for our 10th year!

PCA Members are excited to share our new paper, which outlines a roadmap for tracing the origins and diversification of cell types across green plants using single-cell technologies. Read the Paper Here: bit.ly/4eAip2Q

The Virginia Tech Board of Visitors approved promotions, tenure, and continued appointments at its June 2nd meeting. Congratulations to TPSC affiliates Dr. Bas Bargmann, Dr. Courtney Leisner, and Dr. Yun Yin on their promotions to associate professor with tenure!

Excited to see our review online in @CurrentBiology, led by our amazing leader @Luke_Nikolov, as part of the @CellAtlas Comparative Biology and Evolution Committee to help envision the future of evolutionary and comparative single-cell omics in plants cell.com/current-biolog…

Excited to share our new preprint "Genetic code expansion enables plant-directed control of bacterial activity", a fantastic collaboration with @kunjapur lab! biorxiv.org/content/10.648…

🐸🌱Position OPEN in the Torii Lab @ut_mbs @TexasScience @hhmi_science ! We are looking for an enthusiastic, plant propagation, tissue Culture, transformation and genome editing expert to develop emerging Amphibious model system🐸🌱 Apply↓ utaustin.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/UTstaff/…

Check out our paper in the @PNASNews Special Feature: bit.ly/PNASpoly. We explore how stress induces polyploidy across fungi, plants, and animals, reshaping genomes, cells, and tissues through cell cycle alterations. Great collaboration with @FoxLabNC and @AnnaSelmecki