Stanford geneticist Dr. Virginia Walbot has been selected as the 2023 recipient of The Barbara McClintock Prize for Plant Genetics and Genome Studies by MaizeGeneticsCoop for her lifetime contributions in the fields of plant genetics and genomics. documents.maizegdb.org/mgc/McClintock…

We are excited to share new work from our group at .UC Berkeley. We characterized hundreds of plant transcription factors, that modulate gene expression to enrich gene regulatory networks. See thread for a summary. #transcription #plantsynbio #systemsbio tinyurl.com/z3nfm8x5

After more than 20 years of effort perennial rice (PR) has become a reality. PR produced yields in each of four consecutive years comparable to yields from the current leading annual cultivars. PR cropping resulted in increased #soil organic #carbon. #ag nature.com/articles/s4189…

Meghan Brady

Our successful effort to create synthetic maize centromeres is now published! We hope to use this method to alter karyotypes in maize and other plants. And one day engineer entire chromosomes. nature.com/articles/s4147…

A nice summary of our work on maize synthetic centromeres by Ian Henderson

Including two of my favorite colleagues and scientists, Luca Comai (Luca Comai) and Sundar. Richly deserved!

Great coverage of apomixis research in this headline news article this week Science Magazine science.org/content/articl…

Teosinte Pollen Drive guides maize domestication and evolution by RNAi biorxiv.org/content/10.110… very beautiful work from Martienssen lab and colleagues

Out now The Plant Journal 717 genome-not one but two T2T assemblies for P. tremula & P. alba Phytozome! Creative work by Ran The Man (Ran Zhou) uncovered aspen-specific megabase satellite repeats that form chromosome knobs! Kelly Dawe Bob Schmitz Joint Genome Institute HudsonAlpha doi.org/10.1111/tpj.16…

We’re hiring! We’re searching for an Assistant Professor in Plant Synthetic Biology to start Aug 1, 2024. The position will be a joint appointment b/t UGA Plant Biology and UGA Bioinformatics. For full consideration, apply by Nov 10, 2023. Please spread the word!

New! Methylation-controlled gene regulation in maize pollen, led by Jonathan Gent (Kelly Dawe group). Tldr: Two maize DNA glycosylases (DNGs, which demethylate DNA) redundantly enable high transcript levels of a small set (~50) of pollen-specific genes, biorxiv.org/content/10.110…

Very pleased to see our cenh3 haploid inducer being used to improve commercial maize lines! nature.com/articles/s4147…

Ben Black's lab describes a superior method for preparing human artificial chromosomes. The chromosomes are small enough to be engineered in yeast, but large enough to carry multiple genes and segregate like normal human chromosomes in cultured cells science.org/doi/10.1126/sc…

And here is my perspective on the new human artificial chromosome work. The methods deployed by Gambogi et al should be directly applicable to plants. science.org/doi/10.1126/sc…

Jonathan Gent Jonathan Isaiah Gent

Thank you André for hosting me. It was great to visit Max Planck and meet all the great scientists and see the wonderful facilities. Also nice to see the sights of Cologne.

The CI66 inbred. What a beauty!