Fig. 1 Schematic diagram of stomatal and associated leaf traits hypothesized to influence leaf microbiome assembly.
#Viewpoint: Do stomatal traits modulate leaf microbiome assembly?
Busby et al.
👇
📖 nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
#LatestIssue #PlantScience
A new preprint with Matthew Schmitt, @kiseokmicro.bsky.social and Vincenzo Vitelli makes a huge step forward in learning functional groups of components in complex biological systems. It's dimension reduction that speaks to biological function. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
Composite traits? Emergent properties?
Just a few days left to submit the ASN student research award (due March 13th)!!!! This is an AWESOME opportunity for students to get some grant writing experience!!! We LOVE reading your grants and giving feedback!!!!!!!!!!! Apply, Apply, Apply!!!!!!
www.amnat.org/announcement...
Terrific essay on unavoidable complexity by @philipcball.bsky.social
"It is not yet clear what a curriculum—not to mention both a public and a professional narrative—that begins [w/pleiotropy + polygenicity] would look like. But it would surely look more like real biology.
doi.org/10.1016/j.ce...
Yes, they can hallucinate papers that don't exist, discuss results that seem to be imaginary, and can be confusing and inconsistent. But talking to tenured professors may still be helpful
5th Annual KU Center for Genomics Research Symposium The symposium is open to anyone interested in genomics and genetics, with a particular focus on students, postdoctoral researchers, and research staff. The event is free to attend, but registration is required. Participants are welcome to present their research as a talk, flash talk, or poster. Breakfast, lunch, and refreshments will be provided. Keynote speaker: Dr. Bárbara Sousa da Mota EMBO Postdoctoral Fellow, Harvard University “Investigating the ecological suicide (“ecocide”) theory in Rapa Nui with ancient DNA data"
Join the University of Kansas - Center for Genomics on May 8th for the 5th Annual🧬KUCG Research Symposium🧬
📍Lawrence, KS
📅Friday, May 8th, 2026
🕘8am - 6pm CT
🧪Abstracts due March 15th
We’re hiring!
Postdoctoral Researcher / Research Assistant @KamounLab
“Biology and Applications of Plant Immune Receptors” www.tsl.ac.uk/working-at-t...
Wow - that is pretty egregious!
Thanks for the heads up. Have you had positive experiences with any other brand(s) you would recommend instead?
Host genetic architecture of microbial recruitment; Predicting metatranscriptomic responses to environmental change; Comparing molecular behavior of free-living vs. root-associated bacteria. Just to name a few ideas we are well positioned to address. Get in touch if any of these sound interesting!
New PRFB solicitation calls for research & cross-training at the intersection of AI & biology for making discoveries from existing data.
Rolling my eyes at the laser focus on AI, but also curious about/open to where this may lead. Reach out if you want to collaborate!
www.nsf.gov/funding/oppo...
Responsible publication of your research!
To help you do this @nicolasgaltier.bsky.social and coauthors have put together a handy database of academia-friendly journals, DAFNEE. You can read about it in their article recently published in @jevbio.bsky.social:
doi.org/10.1093/jeb/...
Published today in PNAS:
www-pnas-org.ezproxy.lib.uconn.edu/doi/10.1073/...
Mark Urban, Chris Elphick, and I argue that conservation programs should pay more attention to heritable within population variation, enabling rapid evolutionary response to environmental changes.
Evolution isn’t always forward-looking. Experiments show that an early, beneficial mutation can trap E. coli on a local fitness peak, preventing ecotype diversification in structured environments and highlighting the role of G×E interactions.
academic.oup.com/evlett/advan...
Can microbial partners reduce agrochemical harm? In clover–rhizobia mutualisms, herbicide effects depend strongly on rhizobial strain, highlighting symbionts as potential buffers against stress. Image Matt Lavin @wikimedia
academic.oup.com/evlett/advan...
OPPORTUNITY: McGill Plant Science is looking for an expert in plant pathology, plant breeding, or horticulture in the context of the Canada Impact+ Research Chairs Program (senior established researcher).
Contact: www.mcgill.ca/plant/contact
Program: lnkd.in/eavfNu7e
Please re-post.
The microbial keystone concept is a very cool topic in microbiome ecology. This review summarises mechanisms, prediction methods and implications, with "keystoneness" being highly context/time dependent + new methods approaches suggested. Very nice read!
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
The most precious thing you have is your time.
This paper's somewhat generic title doesn't do it justice. Chromosome segments introgressed from teosinte altered root exudate chemistry of maize to suppress microbial nitrification & denitrification in the rhizosphere. This reduced N loss without any yield hit. Such a cool & exciting development!
course schedule as a table. Available at the link in the post.
I'm teaching Statistical Rethinking again starting Jan 2026. This time with live lectures, divided into Beginner and Experienced sections. Will be a lot more work for me, but I hope much better for students.
I will record lectures & all will be found at this link: github.com/rmcelreath/s...
Growth and water use under constant or fluctuating light.
Faster #stomata evolved to increase photosynthetic capacity rather than water use efficiency
Robert A. Brench, et al.
📖 nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
#PlantScience
@julie-gray.bsky.social @sheffieldpps.bsky.social
Nice review! Mutants with altered root development produce distinct exudate profiles, ultimately reshaping their microbial communities. These observations collectively indicate that genetic variation or the genotype of the plant ultimately constrains the metabolic capacity.
Giving the gift of negative data 🥰
Since I joined @lsajournal.org I have handled several stellar manuscripts that report null results. These papers do very well and reviewers almost always appreciate them!
Thanks @rockefeller.edu news team for the article!
www.rockefeller.edu/news/38829-t...
And an aside related to my fave topic: this study only used 1 host genotype but it nicely illustrates why we could expect microbiome heritability to vary among root types as well.
A really nicely done study showing how phenotypic differences among root types affect bacterial colonization. "The root microbiome" is definitely not a monolith. Bacterial responses to N availability also differed across the root system.
This is an extremely cool story - how balancing selection has ensured that male and female flowers can find each other in heterodichogamous plants.
Evolution is pretty incredible
A table showing profit margins of major publishers. A snippet of text related to this table is below. 1. The four-fold drain 1.1 Money Currently, academic publishing is dominated by profit-oriented, multinational companies for whom scientific knowledge is a commodity to be sold back to the academic community who created it. The dominant four are Elsevier, Springer Nature, Wiley and Taylor & Francis, which collectively generated over US$7.1 billion in revenue from journal publishing in 2024 alone, and over US$12 billion in profits between 2019 and 2024 (Table 1A). Their profit margins have always been over 30% in the last five years, and for the largest publisher (Elsevier) always over 37%. Against many comparators, across many sectors, scientific publishing is one of the most consistently profitable industries (Table S1). These financial arrangements make a substantial difference to science budgets. In 2024, 46% of Elsevier revenues and 53% of Taylor & Francis revenues were generated in North America, meaning that North American researchers were charged over US$2.27 billion by just two for-profit publishers. The Canadian research councils and the US National Science Foundation were allocated US$9.3 billion in that year.
A figure detailing the drain on researcher time. 1. The four-fold drain 1.2 Time The number of papers published each year is growing faster than the scientific workforce, with the number of papers per researcher almost doubling between 1996 and 2022 (Figure 1A). This reflects the fact that publishers’ commercial desire to publish (sell) more material has aligned well with the competitive prestige culture in which publications help secure jobs, grants, promotions, and awards. To the extent that this growth is driven by a pressure for profit, rather than scholarly imperatives, it distorts the way researchers spend their time. The publishing system depends on unpaid reviewer labour, estimated to be over 130 million unpaid hours annually in 2020 alone (9). Researchers have complained about the demands of peer-review for decades, but the scale of the problem is now worse, with editors reporting widespread difficulties recruiting reviewers. The growth in publications involves not only the authors’ time, but that of academic editors and reviewers who are dealing with so many review demands. Even more seriously, the imperative to produce ever more articles reshapes the nature of scientific inquiry. Evidence across multiple fields shows that more papers result in ‘ossification’, not new ideas (10). It may seem paradoxical that more papers can slow progress until one considers how it affects researchers’ time. While rewards remain tied to volume, prestige, and impact of publications, researchers will be nudged away from riskier, local, interdisciplinary, and long-term work. The result is a treadmill of constant activity with limited progress whereas core scholarly practices – such as reading, reflecting and engaging with others’ contributions – is de-prioritized. What looks like productivity often masks intellectual exhaustion built on a demoralizing, narrowing scientific vision.
A table of profit margins across industries. The section of text related to this table is below: 1. The four-fold drain 1.1 Money Currently, academic publishing is dominated by profit-oriented, multinational companies for whom scientific knowledge is a commodity to be sold back to the academic community who created it. The dominant four are Elsevier, Springer Nature, Wiley and Taylor & Francis, which collectively generated over US$7.1 billion in revenue from journal publishing in 2024 alone, and over US$12 billion in profits between 2019 and 2024 (Table 1A). Their profit margins have always been over 30% in the last five years, and for the largest publisher (Elsevier) always over 37%. Against many comparators, across many sectors, scientific publishing is one of the most consistently profitable industries (Table S1). These financial arrangements make a substantial difference to science budgets. In 2024, 46% of Elsevier revenues and 53% of Taylor & Francis revenues were generated in North America, meaning that North American researchers were charged over US$2.27 billion by just two for-profit publishers. The Canadian research councils and the US National Science Foundation were allocated US$9.3 billion in that year.
The costs of inaction are plain: wasted public funds, lost researcher time, compromised scientific integrity and eroded public trust. Today, the system rewards commercial publishers first, and science second. Without bold action from the funders we risk continuing to pour resources into a system that prioritizes profit over the advancement of scientific knowledge.
We wrote the Strain on scientific publishing to highlight the problems of time & trust. With a fantastic group of co-authors, we present The Drain of Scientific Publishing:
a 🧵 1/n
Drain: arxiv.org/abs/2511.04820
Strain: direct.mit.edu/qss/article/...
Oligopoly: direct.mit.edu/qss/article/...
