Sebastian Eves-van den Akker

Paper @PNASNews We think nematodes break open plant cells, sense small molecules (termed effectostimulins), which switch on a master regulator SUGR1, which switches on effectors, which break cells. Looks like a feed-forward loop driving infection. pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pn…

⏰ Less than 2 weeks left to nominate a colleague for the inaugural AAB President's Medals!! ⏰ Nominations close 31st May! 👉 aab.org.uk/aab-presidents… 🌱 Plant Science 🌎 Sustainable Futures 👥 Accessibility in Applied Biology #plantscience #sustainableag #farming #forestry

If you are a mathematician, then you may want to make sure you are sitting down before reading further.

🌱 Soybean cyst nematode (SCN) causes up to 100% yield loss. A new gene just cracked its resistance code. New Phytologist: GmSNAP14 is a susceptibility gene — when it works normally, nematodes hijack vesicle transport to feed. When it's broken, they can't. ✅ QTL on chr14: explains 62.4% of resistance variation ✅ Two natural resistance alleles: deletion (del) & insertion (ins) ✅ CRISPR knockout directly boosts resistance to virulent HG type 1.2.5.7 ✅ TaqMan marker developed for breeding Gamage et al. | New Phytologist doi.org/10.1111/nph.71… #Soybean #SCN #CRISPR #CropBreeding #PlantImmunity

Excited to share our latest paper, out today @CellCellPress. We found that large pieces of the human genome can transfer between cells upon direct contact, endowing recipient cells with heritable phenotypic changes. (1/7) cell.com/cell/fulltext/…

A major milestone for UK gene editing 🧬🌱 We have drilled the first UK crop to receive a PBO Release Notice under the new regulatory framework. Scientists are exploring ways to increase seed size, yield and oil content in camelina👇 rothamsted.ac.uk/news/rothamste…

How will populations across the world change in the 21st century? 🔧 Explore for yourself with our new interactive tool! Demographers publish projections using assumptions about key demographic changes, most notably fertility rates, life expectancy, and migration rates. But no one knows for sure how many children people will have decades from now, or how migration will shift. So it’s worth asking what the population would look like if things turn out differently from what the UN or other demographers assume. Our colleagues Daniel Bachler and Sophia Mersmann built a population simulation tool that lets you do just that — for every country in the world. Pick a country, adjust the assumptions, and see how the projections change, for both total population and age structure. For instance, what would happen if fertility rates recovered to replacement level, or migration was cut in half?

@ISMPMI We passed the half-way point of our ambitious goal of raising $40,000 for the Mishkind Travel fund for early career researchers to attend our 2027 Congress. Please consider donating today! ismpmi.org

You can’t lift a fridge with just your hands. Your whole body needs to conform to its shape, and bear the load between your arms and torso. Here, @BostonDynamics' Atlas uses proprioception to manage the whole-body interaction and adapt to a shifting 100+ lb load. Enabling this type of high performance manipulation is exactly why we walked away from what was arguably the world’s best implementation of MPC for humanoids, and shifted entirely to RL without looking back. This level of whole-body controls is a fundamental building block of physical intelligence and key to the value proposition of humanoids. More technical details in: Blog: bostondynamics.com/blog/training-… Behind the scenes video: youtu.be/xKK5ze3FukQ

#TansleyInsight: Cross-kingdom communication between plants and parasitic nematodes 📖 nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/np… by @Chris_Bell6 @lderevnina @Seb_EvdA @WileyPlantSci #PlantScience

Precision breeding release notice—Tomelo! 🍅 🌱 gov.uk/government/pub…

Deep-Plant: a supervised foundation model for plant regulatory genomics biorxiv.org/content/10.648…

Counting down the days until #ESN2026! Don’t miss out on our YNN workshop where we will explore unexpected and negative results to extract meaningful messages! 🪱

A UK startup has just raised one of the largest rounds in Biotech history. $2.1bn raised to use AI to create new drugs and cure diseases. Spun out of @GoogleDeepMind, headed up by @demishassabis, and now backed by the UK's @UKSovereignAI fund. And of course headquartered in LONDON. Amazing news - congrats @IsomorphicLabs

If creating conditions for breakthroughs is a better use of your technical expertise than running one more experiment, then @RenPhilanthropy's Big if True Science (BiTS) Accelerator, in partnership with @SPRIND, may be for you. We have now opened our second cohort. Read more here: renaissancephilanthropy.org/insights/appli…

How do plants defend themselves at the microenvironment level? Find out when you join us on May 12 to learn how metal accumulation, bacterial effectors, and environmental conditions influence infection outcomes. Save your spot: bit.ly/4dAfXJM #apswebinar #planthealth

Join the 2026 Symposium: Innovative Paths to Nematode Control on July 27 at PAA 2026. Hear from leading researchers across plant pathology, genomics, and breeding tackling real-world challenges in crop protection. bit.ly/4d4Xq6k #PAA2026 #Nematology #PlantScience

Gap year role: temporary technician plantsci.cam.ac.uk/technician An opportunity for a student to gain experience in laboratory techniques and working in a scientific environment. Please note this is for a local Cambridge based sixth former who's gap year will start this September.

Built an interactive global plant disease monitor in an afternoon with the new Claude Design @claudeai 🚀! Real occurrence data, 5 pathogen types, host plant filters, interactive globe. 🌍🌱

Balancing commercial goals and robotics research can be tricky, but with Atlas we're making it work.

Protein structure prediction changed biology. Protein assembly discovery is next. We present SNI (Structural Novelty Index), a scalable framework for finding new protein complexes. We used it to uncover an unexpected resistosome assembly: 11-mer. 🧵👇🏻 biorxiv.org/content/10.648…