Sebastian Schornack

How do "friendly" rhizobia build a legume nodule? @albinteulet.bsky.social found that Type III effectors of symbiotic Rhizobia include diverse predicted transcriptional and post-transcriptional modulators. journals.plos.org/plosbiology/... Now @plosbiology.org More information below.

🎉 Two fern evo-devo PhD opportunities available at the University of Birmingham: warwick.ac.uk/fac/cross_fa... warwick.ac.uk/fac/cross_fa... Application deadline 23rd November. Please spread the word to anyone who might be interested 🙂 #Plantsci_jobs #Plantscience

New OA Brief Comm: "Metabolically robust ratiometric autoluminescent reporters" rdcu.be/MdNALGQ53dGa In glowing plants, monitoring colour shifts instead of changes in luminescence intensity enables quantitative measurements of physiology despite changes in metabolic activity. #PlantScience

Sunday afternoon game: find all the mistakes in this AI generated figure.🙄

New research. Conveniently, Marchantia has relatively few transcription factors. Yet, we need to leverage on that at the family scale to have a more comprehensive picture. In this paper, we focused on ERFs, the second largest TF family. #PlantScience www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

We engineer both plants and bacteria to establish non-standard amino acids as a new molecular language for programming plant-microbe interactions. This work contributes to the growing toolkit for precision agriculture and we hope it accelerates the path to a sustainable future!

Save the date: the 8th International Molecular Mycorrhizal Meeting (IMMM2027), organised by @immm2027.bsky.social will be held in Toulouse, France, on 26 and 27 August 2027. It is coupled to ENFC17 (22 to 25 August). immm2027.sciencesconf.org Shared for information by IMS.

I just published: Rhizobial Treasure Hunts From the Swiss Alps to the Sahara, new twists in an old symbiosis - and new opportunities to discover them. kamounlab.medium.com/rhizobial-tr...

Symbiotic #rhizobia form nitrogen-fixing partnerships with #plant roots. This study by @albinteulet.bsky.social & @dromius.bsky.social uses structural modelling to predict how secreted proteins may mimic plant factors in a strategy shared with pathogens. 🧪 #AcademicSky #symbiosis plos.io/4j6bWj0

Symbiotic #rhizobia form nitrogen-fixing partnerships with #plant roots. This study by @albinteulet.bsky.social & @dromius.bsky.social uses structural modelling to predict how secreted proteins may mimic plant factors in a strategy shared with pathogens. 🧪 #AcademicSky #symbiosis plos.io/4j6bWj0

Symbiotic #rhizobia form nitrogen-fixing partnerships with #plant roots. This study by @albinteulet.bsky.social & @dromius.bsky.social uses structural modelling to predict how secreted proteins may mimic plant factors in a strategy shared with pathogens. 🧪 #AcademicSky #symbiosis plos.io/4j6bWj0

🍄 Get ready for Fungi Field Day! Explore the fascinating world of fungi with guided walks, games, crafts, face painting & hands-on activities. There’s plenty to discover for curious minds of all ages! 📅 Saturday 10 October from 10am and make a day of it. 👉 Find out more: https://bit.ly/4rNOQ2O

I’d like to add: how do plants adapt to new environmental challenges from diseases and droughts brought on by the climate crisis? how can we make sure there is enough food for future generations? What would you like to add? www.nytimes.com/2026/10/05/s...

Toulouse - Summer 2027 European Nitrogen Fixation Conference (ENFC17) 22 - 25 August 2027 International Molecular Mycorrhizal Meeting (IMMM8) 26-27 August 2027

Here a W3 professorship at Julius Maximilians University of Würzburg. The university had the first Nobel Prize winner and since today also one of the most recent ones.

Professorship for Plant Metabolism: www.biologie.uni-wuerzburg.de/en/about-the...

Huge congratulations to all three Nobel Laureates, and especially Peter Hegemann! 👏 His seminal work on the green alga Chlamydomonas 🦠 laid the foundation for optogenetics. Thank you for putting Chlamy in the spotlight! ✨ Proof that groundbreaking discoveries don't always come from animal models! 🔬

Nominations are open for IS-MPMI’s 2027 Early Career Achievement Award​​ and the Outstanding Achievement Award. These awards recognize the outstanding science, teaching, mentoring, outreach, and service to the community of our members​. Nominate by 1 Dec, 2026. ismpmi.org/events/congr....

For actually constructing phylogenetic trees, I have compiled this separate repository which I have written over several years with advice and best practices for constructing phylogenetic trees. Any feedback on this is also welcome! github.com/davidjhoey/p...

Introducing PhyloDig: a small command-line tool I am developing to make comparative phylogenetic analyses easier. github.com/davidjhoey/P...

Evaluating cacao pod resistance to black pod disease caused by three Phytophthora species https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.09.17.752234v1

Palette—a system for visualizing the expression levels of target genes in orchids (Zhenyu Yang , Su Ni , Qiyu Zhang , et al) doi.org/10.1093/plph... #PlantScience @aspbofficial

Plant-Microbe enthusiasts! The next Road to Jeju Legends of ISMPMI series speaker is Jonathan Jones. The webinar is free to attend, but you must register: uchicago.zoom.us/webinar/regi... Attend live on September 30, 2026 3pm UTC or watch it later on the ismpmi.org.

There's still time to join us for the 2026 Sainsbury Laboratory Symposium on 22-24 September (#SLS26)! This year's Symposium theme is Shaping Life: Mechanisms of Morphogenesis and is coordinated by Sarah Robinson and Neha Bhatia. www.slcu.cam.ac.uk/sainsbury-la...

The aphid effector CathB6 suppresses EDS1-dependentimmunity and rewires MORF2-GUN1-GLK signalling tosustain host cellular homeostasis in Arabidopsis https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.08.10.743731v1

Concurrent session submissions for the 2027 IS-MPMI Congress in Jeju (July 18-22) are now open! Contribute to the dynamic scientific program and engage the international plant–microbe interactions community in Jeju, South Korea. Apply by 25 Sept. ismpmi.org/announcement...

Super useful! Keep your Marchantia clean everybody!

Ever had issues with contamination in #Marchantia or #liverwort tissue culture? We've developed a protocol that is simple and low-effort (albeit slow) to get rid of fungi and bacteria: dx.doi.org/10.17504/pro.... Work led by Isaac Coven and supported by Chetan Pandey, myself & @dromius.bsky.social.

Avocados come in 2 varieties - A-types start each day female and switch to male midday. B-types do the reverse. In work just published from the last chapter of my PhD, we show this system evolved 40+million yrs ago and is regulated by alleles of 1 transcription factor www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

A tomato MIK2‐clade receptor is involved in the perception of a Fusarium‐derived elicitor - Maroschek - New Phytologist - Wiley Online Library nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

There is some research into growing edible liverworts (Marchantia polymorpha). phys.org/news/2026-01... That would work in a Mars greenhouse context.

Growing love - when a root meets a symbiotic #Mycorrhiza #fungus See what happens with MycorRhize3D. schornacklabslcu.github.io/MycorRhize3D/ Simulate a tap root in soil with spores. Roots turn red when colonised, just like in this paper journals.plos.org/plosbiology/... Reply for suggestions!

The 'heart' of the #Mycorrhiza #fungi #symbiosis is the arbuscule where plant and fungus exchange nutrients and carbon. Try the arbuscule growth simulator. Let me know how you adjust parameters to get the most beautiful arbuscules. schornacklabslcu.github.io/Arbuscule-Sim/

Happy to share some of the auxin Marchantia research we've been working on for a while with @fromani.bsky.social and @jimhaseloff.bsky.social. We confirm long standing suspicions that stem cells in Marchantia exist in an auxin concentration/signalling minimum, and potentially a cytokinin maximum.

Anthropic’s AI for Science Program Apply by 15 July www.anthropic.com/news/claude-... Application form: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

Important news! The new ISMPMI website is live! Visit the site to get society news, watch posted videos, listen to our podcasts, become or manage your membership and more. ismpmi.org

Registration is now open for our next Road to Jeju Webinar featuring Rising Stars of IS-MPMI. lnkd.in/gMeN7F94 Join us on July 29. Speakers will be announced soon. Thanks to our sponsors GetGenome, Shanghai Tanon Life Sciences, and the British Society for Plant Pathology.

‼️Job altert🚨📢 please spread the word: We're looking for a postdoctoral researcher to join our new department "Phytopathology and Plant Protection" at @unihalle.bsky.social. www.verwaltung.uni-halle.de/DEZERN3/AUSS...

Attention ECRs: Deadline for self nominations to present in the next Rising Stars of IS-MPMI @ismpmi.bsky.social webinar is TODAY! PhD students and postdocs — don't miss your chance to share your research with the global MPMI community! Apply now: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

How plants form their stomata – and are thereby able to save water, was described in May by a team of plant scientists around Christopher Grefen and Khushbu Kumari , from @ruhr-uni-bochum.de DOI: 10.1093/plcell/koag150 news.rub.de/english/pres...

Very happy this is now published in full! Symbiotic phosphate transporter dynamics in rice expose functional plasticity of the arbuscules www.nature.com/articles/s41... A thread of some of our findings (and timelapses) below 🧵🔬🎥

Defining the Xanthomonas euvesicatoria type II-secreted effector arsenal: core nutritional functions and effector diversity @ericksonlab.bsky.social @biorxivpreprint.bsky.social doi.org/10.64898/202...

This Wednesday: Roger Innes opens the Road to Jeju webinar series! "Leaf surface RNA: How does it get there and what does it do?" Decades of foundational work on plant immunity. Road to Jeju is supported by @getgenome.bsky.social, with this seminar sponsored by @newphyt.bsky.social 🌱 Register 👇

Conserved symbiosis-associated genes in the cycad Encephalartos natalensis suggest co-option for cyanobacterial symbiosis nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...