Jonas Blomme

Golden Gate 🧬 builds complex T-DNAs for plant transformation & gene editing — but what if we used it to make binary vector backbones?

Glad to contribute to Jonas De Saeger's (Jacobs lab @psb-vib.bsky.social ) preprint on BackBone Builder 🔧🌱
tinyurl.com/4ycydjhe

Bar graph showing global ocean heat content change in the upper 2000 m from the late 1950s through 2025. There is a long-term warming in the time series, which is using IAP/CAS data.

2025 was the hottest year on record for ocean heat content. Unfortunately, we now say this every year. 🥹

"In addition to setting a new record in 2025, the global
ocean continues to show sustained and intensified warming."

+ #OpenAccess Study: doi.org/10.1007/s003...
+ Data: www.ocean.iap.ac.cn

Post-Doctoral Researcher in Plant Genome Editing - VIB Application deadline January 30, 2026 or until position is filled About the lab The VIB-UGent Center for Plant Systems Biology (PSB) is a world-leading plant sc

jobs.vib.be/j/129762/pos...

Please spread! @viblifesciences.bsky.social

Climate visuals: Here are all the figures you need for showing the changes in climate in your presentations! by @edhawkins.org
ed-hawkins.github.io/climate-visu...
An additional one here: nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
🧪🌍🌐 #ClimateChange

Interested to learn more about Plant Biotechnology? Enroll in our one-year Subsequent Master program and enjoy a training at Europe's largest Agro-biotech campus: masterplantbiotechnology.ugent.be

Algal pyrenoids—condensates that mediate ~1/3 of Earth’s CO2 fixation—change size and number as cells divide. Our data suggest a simple control mechanism: a kinase that continuously ejects material from the condensate! ☀️🌍🔬💧 #Biophysics #Photosynthesis
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Our article about Sea lettuce #seaweed biodiversity is now published in TAXON: "Incorporating historic specimens to reassess Ulva diversity in the Netherlands and Belgium"
We found Ulva shanxiensis, a freshwater species, for the first time outside China!
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

Ending the summer with two great meetings: #ccm11 in York and #seawheat in Bremerhaven. Excellent science, nice places to visit. A nice time with colleagues.
Now time to get back to the lab 👨‍🔬

Flyer for the Annals of Botany Special Issue titled 'Macroalgae and Ecosystem Services'. It features the names of editors Mick Hanley, Kira Krumhansl, and guest editor Louise Firth. The submission deadline is July 31, 2025. The background is teal on the left, with a close-up image of golden-brown macroalgae on the right.

🌿🌊Annals of Botany invites submissions to a new Special Issue on "Macroalgae and ecosystem services", edited by AoB editors Mick Hanley and Kira Krumhansl and guest editor Louise Firth. (1/3)

@louisefirth.bsky.social

A very extreme and unusual presentation of pink-spot disease on a kelp spool

For this #PhycologyFriday I'm happy to share my ✨new paper✨ about #kelp disease -> rdcu.be/ets28

Pink-spot disease occurs in kelp nurseries across North America and Europe according to our survey and we identified a bacteria (Algicola sp.) as the likely causative agent.

🦑 #aquaculture

A small cunner (Tautogolabrus adspersus) peers through strands of sugar kelp (Saccharina latissima) in a lush kelp forest ecosystem on Cashes Ledge in the Gulf of Maine.

Kelp forests on the coast of Maine are in decline owing to rapid ocean warming and are being replaced by turf algae, which alter the ecosystem’s chemistry, hindering the recovery of kelp forests.

Learn more in this week's issue of Science: scim.ag/4dwzl8j

I will forever be haunted by this footage.

Trawling has only been filmed underwater a few times in documentary history, and never with such clarity.

What’s so heart-rending about these shots is watching how the animals don’t just get swept up — they swim for their lives.
🌎🦑🧪

Positive selection and relaxed purifying selection contribute to rapid evolution of sex-biased genes in green seaweed Ulva - BMC Ecology and Evolution Background The evolution of differences in gamete size and number between sexes is a cornerstone of sexual selection theories. The green macroalga Ulva, with incipient anisogamy and parthenogenetic ga...

Online now: Positive selection and relaxed purifying selection contribute to rapid evolution of sex-biased genes in green seaweed Ulva

link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Summary of genetic events discussed in the article

Giving up on #photosynthesis: How a borrowed bacterial gene allows marine #diatoms to live on a #seaweed diet phys.org/news/2025-04...

Diatom heterotrophy on brown algal polysaccharides emerged through HGT, gene duplication, & neofunctionalization journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...

#algae #protists

Postdoctoral Researcher - VIB OverviewThe group of Specialized Metabolism, led by Prof. Alain Goossens at the VIB-UGent Center for Plant Systems Biology, and the metabolic engineering researc

POSTDOC POSITION in the group of @alaingoossenspsb.bsky.social @viblifesciences.bsky.social
More info here: jobs.vib.be/j/108923/pos...

Expanding the toolkit for ploidy manipulation in Chlamydomonas reinhardtii Whole-genome duplications, widely observed in plant lineages, have significant evolutionary and ecological impacts. Yet, our current understanding of the direct implications of ploidy shifts on shor.....

Expanding the toolkit for ploidy manipulation in Chlamydomonas reinhardtii nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... @newphyt.bsky.social

In a new Science study, cryo–electron tomography captures the in-cell architecture of the mitochondrial respiratory chain, illuminating how the coordinated action of molecular machines drives life’s fundamental energy conversion.

Learn more in this week's issue: scim.ag/3FA3Ygq

Root hair lifespan is antagonistically controlled by autophagy and programmed cell death Root hairs are tubular tip-growing extensions of root epidermal cells that enhance root surface area for water and nutrient uptake. While mechanisms governing root hair fate, polarity, and tip growth ...

Qiangnan Feng (Nowack lab @moritznowack.bsky.social @psb-vib.bsky.social ) shows that cell-type specific elevated autophagy in root hairs extends their lifespan by suppressing premature senescence and age-induced programmed cell death www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Join the GMI as a Junior Group Leader! The GMI is seeking a talented scientist to lead an independent research group, addressing fundamental questions in molecular plant biology. More information is below.

Access our latest paper on Ulva CRISPR without restrictions via the following link: nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/share/5WWAMD...

Thank you Jose!
For brown seaweeds, see work of Yacine Badis (Ectocarpus) nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.... and Yuan Shen (Saccharina) link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Very happy to announce our article is accepted in @newphyt.bsky.social, learn how to make mutant seaweed online: nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

The people who produce this Mauna Loa atmospheric CO₂ record have a lab in Hilo, Hawaiʻi, about 50 miles (80 km) from the observatory. By closing the lab, it'll be really difficult to maintain the CO₂ observations.

We are searching for a postdoc in Marine Phytoplankton Metabolism and Carbon Storage! You'll get the chance to work in Belgium to combine high-throughput metabolomics and enzymes to study how microbes naturally sequester atmospheric carbon in organic marine molecules!

t.co/orCCyZhzeh

Carbon burial in sediments below seaweed farms matches that of Blue Carbon habitats - Nature Climate Change To understand the potential for seaweed as a Blue Carbon strategy, the authors quantify carbon burial under 20 globally distributed seaweed farms. They attribute an average of 1.06 ± 0.74 tCO2e ha−1 y...

Check our new paper reporting that Carbon burial in sediments below seaweed farms matches that of Blue Carbon habitats

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

🌱 When a root cell undergoes symmetric division, are the daughter cells actually identical? By combining live-cell imaging and scRNAseq we discovered a new cell state with uneven BR activity. Read our full paper in Cell: doi.org/10.1016/j.ce... @nvukas.bsky.social @trevormnolan.bsky.social

Anthropogenic nutrient inputs cause excessive algal growth for nearly half the world’s population - Nature Communications Human impact has increased total nitrogen and phosphorus concentrations over reference conditions and doubled the areas affected by potentially harmful algal growth, impacting around 40% of the global...

An (unfortunate) title that says it all. Time to get nutrient inputs under control across all systems and regions. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

This year’s edition of our internal PSB @psb-vib.bsky.social symposium #PSBmeets25 in full swing. Off to 2 days of seminars, poster sessions, discussions, and party!

John Raven, FRS, FRSE: a truly great innovator in plant physiology, photosynthesis and much more - Photosynthesis Research This is a tribute to a truly inspirational plant biologist, Prof. John A. Raven, FRS, FRSE (25th June 1941– 23rd May 2024), who died at the age of 82. He was a leader in the field of evolution and phy...

"John Raven, FRS, FRSE: a truly great innovator in plant physiology, photosynthesis and much more" link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Excited to see our work on the cover of Current Biology this month!

Read about it in the thread below. 🧪🦑🌊