Akansha Ganguly

PLETHORA-autophagy fine tunes ROS to enable de novo root regeneration | Plantae Autophagy (or “self-eating”) is a conserved quality-check pathway that degrades and recycles damaged components of the cell to restore cellular homeostasis. In plants, autophagy has been studied…

Plant Science Research Weekly --  PLETHORA-autophagy fine tunes ROS to enable de novo root regeneration (PNAS) @kalikaprasad.bsky.social @akanshaganguly.bsky.social @violawillemsen.bsky.social (Summary by Priyanka Babuta) buff.ly/Vl6Ial9

#PlantaePSRW

The mechanical properties of Arabidopsis thaliana roots adapt dynamically during development and to stress Brillouin microscopy reveals in vivo dynamics of mechanical properties during plant development and response to stress.

Our work now on its final version. We mapped the mechanical properties of roots at tissue and single cell levels using Brillouin microscopy and molecular rotors. Additional mutants and stress measurements from what we previously showed in the preprint are included.
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

@violawillemsen.bsky.social

More than a blueprint: Developmental regulators secure the cellular environment for regeneration | PNAS More than a blueprint: Developmental regulators secure the cellular environment for regeneration

Highlights @pnas.org , Thank you, Jian Xu (@tuliproot in X)
Your excellent text makes the ideas far more accessible than we managed in the paper.
@akanshaganguly.bsky.social , @plantophagy.bsky.social @IISERPune, @ANRFIndia, @DBTIndia
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

De novo emergence of metabolically active protocells A continuous route from a disordered soup of simple chemical feedstocks to a functional protocell -- a compartment that metabolizes, grows, and propagates -- remains elusive. Here, we show that a homo...

Protocells from three inorganic salts, some formaldehyde and water?

They grow? They synthesise organic molecules of core biomolecular classes: amino acids, sugars, lipid-like motifs?

And, there are similar structures in today's oceans?

Yes! Read on.

arxiv.org/abs/2601.11013

Featured image with Jan Martinek - FocalPlane Featured image with Jan Martinek - News

Happy #FluorescenceFriday! This week we are highlighting an awesome image of an Arabidopsis root from @janmartinek.bsky.social.

Check out our post to learn more about the image and about Jan’s research: focalplane.biologists.com/2026/02/13/f...
#sciart #plants #microscopy

This is an absolute beauty 🤩🤩🤩Congrats again @akanshaganguly.bsky.social & @kalikaprasad.bsky.social lab!!!

Delighted and grateful that our work was chosen to feature on the Cover at @pnas.org! Many thanks to the amazing microscopy facility at #IISERPune that allowed us to capture this fascinating phenomenon live
#microscopy #FluorescenceFriday @indiabioimaging.bsky.social

Pictured is a regenerating root from an Arabidopsis thaliana leaf. Akansha Ganguly et al. detached plant leaves to study the mechanisms of stress mitigation associated with wound repair.

In this issue: Multiwinged gliding in Microraptor, toddlers’ expectations of group loyalty versus personal preference, and asymmetrical encounters between wolves and cougars. In PNAS: https://ow.ly/vbB650YcW9s

Quantitative measurement of synthetic repression curves reveals design challenges for genetic circuit engineering under growth arrest https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.02.01.703179v1

@pnas.org

My thesis story is out! 4 years of adventurous experiments+ endless patience and efforts by @kalikaprasad.bsky.social to shape it correctly....thank you for all the advice, encouragement, mentorship🙏🏼. Amazing help from Aabha, Komal, collaborators, and reviewers sealed the story nicely.

The thesis is a newspaper that only talks of the important events of the day...doesn't tell you of the countless tiny actions that made it all happen

Clay letters from ancient Mesopotamia are alive with idiom, sayings, and everyday language that I love.

Here are just a few random ones so you can enjoy them too.

Investigate regeneration and repair using whole animals or organ/tissue systems at EMBO Workshop "The molecular and cellular basis of #regeneration and #TissueRepair" in #Krems, AT, 21–25 Sep 2026.

Deadline: 20 May

https://meetings.embo.org/event/26-tissue-repair
#EMBORegeneration #EMBOevents 🧪

Cell wall patterning regulates plant stem cell dynamics The plant cell wall regulates development through spatiotemporal modulation of its chemical and mechanical properties. Pectin methylesterification is recognized as a rheological switch controlling wal...

Out in @science.org this week:
PME5 is sequestered in the nucleus and released during cytokinesis allowing its activity to be timed with cell division.

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

#PlantScience
#PlantSci

Photo of a map of the ancient city of Assur with a section in the middle zoomed in on in a separate box in the bottom right corner. The zoomed in part shows the plan of the house for a goldsmith archive

Well this 2,600-year-old clay letter was a journey.

It comes from the archive of a goldsmith named Nabû-zeru-iddin in the heart of ancient Assyria. We’ve got someone left on read, a lawsuit, a mean step-mom, and people who get drunk and steal silver.

Finally, Ondrej developed a very cool genetic cell-ablation tool based on tissue-specific induction of the murine pro-apoptotic factor mBax. It’s extremely useful when your confocal laser can’t reach internal tissues for laser ablation. 5/6

Very nice work from @apmahonen.bsky.social
lab.. when vascular cambial stem cells are lost, neighbouring xylem cells, divide to replace them Auxin transport drive this remarkable positioning of stem cells in vascular cambium during development and regeneration.

www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1...

Induction of menstruation in mice reveals the regulation of menstrual shedding During menstruation, an inner layer of the endometrium is selectively shed, while an outer, progenitor-containing layer is preserved to support repeated regeneration. Progress in understanding this co...

I’m thrilled to share my postdoc work and the first paper from the McKinley Lab! 🎉
@karalmckinley.bsky.social
We built the first transgenic model of menstruation in mice.
We used it to uncover how the endometrium organizes and sheds during menstruation. 🧪
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
🧵

Latest from ours: www.cell.com/cell-reports...

This is two stories in one: a case study/cautionary tale on developing genetic tools in new organisms, and the first hint at a gene regulatory network for choanoflagellate multicellular development (which turn out to involve a Hippo/YAP/ECM loop!) A 🧵

I found these immune cells just finished mitosis but their midbody is still yet to be resolved. How cool? If you zoom in to the midbody, you can see its classical shape just like in the textbooks. I love these little details.

New preprint from the lab! We discovered a transient fluidization in the basal region of human forebrains by tracking microdroplets in cerebral organoids.This “basal fluidization”, absent in gorilla and mouse, may contribute to greater surface expansion in human forebrains
1/
doi.org/10.1101/2025...

I’m happy to share some plugins I’ve been developping this summer: "Channels and Contrast" and LUTs Manager!
I can’t find new bugs and ideas by now so I need your help to please test them in your machines and report bugs, feedbacks and ideas! forum.image.sc/t/looking-fo...

Localized glutamine leakage drives the spatial structure of root microbial colonization Plant roots release exudates to encourage microbiome assembly, which influences the function and stress resilience of plants. How specific exudates drive spatial colonization patterns remains largely ...

A long road to the Cover of Science!
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Humbled to be a part of Indian Science Academies, @ IAScBng, @nasi_academy, and Now @insa_academy
Such moments remind me how fortunate I am to work with talented lab members (past and present), collaborators, colleagues and mentors all along. Thank you for this opportunity 🙏

My entry for today’s #FluorescenceFriday: a pupal #Drosophila testis with muscles expressing
🔵 lifeact &
🔴 RFP-nls

Honored & grateful to receive an honorable mention at @healthcare.nikon.com Nikon Small World 🌍🔬✨

🔗 www.nikonsmallworld.com/galleries/20...

#NikonSmallWorld #Microscopy #ScienceArt

Bioelectricity in Morphogenesis Bioelectricity is likely as old as life itself. From the moment the first proto-cell was enclosed in a lipid bilayer, a membrane potential arose. Thus, one can expect that bioelectrical activities inf...

New Review! #devbiol #bioelectricity #CellBiology #tissueregeneration

In our new @annualreviews.bsky.social piece, we explore how bioelectricity is generated, sensed & translated into responses that sculpt tissues, guide growth & enable tissue regeneration.

www.annualreviews.org/content/jour...

Wonderful to see our paper on the #organelle signatures of #neurons and #astrocytes out in final form - congratulations, Shannon Rhoads and team!🎉 t.co/BPxKlbU6Ou

Microtubules (orange; α-tubulin) and nuclei (blue; DAPI) are shown in two adipocytes, imaged by confocal microscopy.

For #FluorescenceFriday, microtubule networks are shown in two adipocytes 🔬 #CellBiology #Microscopy