Enrique Gonzalez Duran

Paternal Mitochondria Rescuing Plant Fertility A groundbreaking study reveals paternal mitochondria can restore fertility in plants, reshaping our understanding of mitochondrial inheritance.

Plants with faulty mitochondria are male-sterile (left) and their defect is passed down maternally. Our latest discovery lets the father pass down its healthy mitochondria, restoring fertility of the offspring (right) #plantscience
www.mpimp-golm.mpg.de/2889956/news... www.nature.com/articles/s41...

An unconventional Rubisco small subunit underpins the CO2-concentrating organelle in land plants In many algae, photosynthesis is boosted by biophysical CO2-concentrating mechanisms, which pack the CO2-fixing enzyme Rubisco into liquid-like organelles called pyrenoids. Engineering C3 crops with a...

Our work on #hornwort #pyrenoids is finally out in @science.org! 🎉 We uncovered how hornworts pack their Rubisco into pyrenoids and successfully recreated them in Arabidopsis. A key step toward engineering more efficient photosynthesis in crops @btiscience.bsky.social www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

I was so blown away when I heard your talk about this, truly amazing work. Congrats!! To you and everyone involved

This paper was a collab between members of the Bock department at the MPI of Molecular Plant Physiology @mpi-mp-potsdam.bsky.social, the Jiang group at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and the brilliant Prof. Kin Pan Chung @kinpanchung.bsky.social at Wageningen Uni @w-u-r.bsky.social

High-frequency biparental inheritance of plant mitochondria upon chilling stress and loss of a genome-degrading nuclease - Nature Plants Maternal inheritance of mitochondria breaks down in the cold when a mitochondrial DNA degrading nuclease is defective, resulting in biparental inheritance that can rescue mitochondrial mutations and g...

🌿🧬Our new story is out in @natplants.nature.com! Tobacco plants usually pass down their mitochondria maternally, but we show we can trigger paternal transmission of mitochondria at high levels & restore plant health in the offspring of mothers harboring defective mtDNA www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Glad to see that our Viewpoint article is now online! doi.org/10.1093/jxb/...

We highlight recent exciting advances in plastid-to-nucleus gene transfer and share our perspectives in this evolving field.

💪🙏Many thanks to Yuyang and Femke for their contributions to this work. @jxbotany.bsky.social

A small polymerase ribozyme that can synthesize itself and its complementary strand The emergence of a chemical system capable of self-replication and evolution is a critical event in the origin of life. RNA polymerase ribozymes can replicate RNA, but their large size and structural ...

How could a simple self-replicating system emerge at the origins of life? RNA polymerase ribozymes can replicate RNA, but existing ones are so large that their self-replication seems impossible. Could they be smaller?

Excited to share our latest work in @science.org on a new small polymerase.
1/n

Very excited to finally share my PhD paper, about advancing #chloroplast #synbio through high-throughput plastome engineering of #Chlamydomonas.
Huge thanks to the whole team!
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Fig. 1.Effects of drought on plant metabolism and coping strategies. Drought is suggested to be first sensed in the roots and communicated to the rest of the plant via Ca2+, ROS, ABA, and small peptide signalling. Drought responses are manifold (left half); for example, plants can escape drought by increasing developmental speed in combination with early flowering, invest in their root system to maintain soil water uptake, synthesize compatible solutes to maintain the osmotic potential, and decrease their leaf transpiration by reducing stomatal conductance (reviewed in Farooq et al., 2009; Kuromori et al., 2022; Yang et al., 2021). Stomatal closure in turn starts a cascade of effects on metabolism (right half), causing reduced CO2 influx and ROS stress in the chloroplast, negatively affecting photosynthesis. Processes stimulated by drought are indicated with upwards arrows, and processes negatively affected by drought are indicated by downwards arrows. Figure created in BioRender

💡 INSIGHT 💡

Vittoria Clapero comments on Liu et al.’s recent JXB paper - showing how ¹³C tracing reveals intra-leaf photosynthetic dynamics during drought & rewatering ☀️💧

Insight 🔗 doi.org/10.1093/jxb/...
Research 🔗 doi.org/10.1093/jxb/...

#PlantScience 🧪 @mpi-mp-potsdam.bsky.social

Waiting for the mime with beret alter for Solemn Simulacrum <3

Last week I was awarded the Jeff Schell Prize 2025 for outstanding research by our MPl, in recognition of our most recent Nature Plants paper: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

I am deeply honored, and thankful to my co-authors + the many, many helpful colleagues who made this research possible.

Cover of the June issue of Nature Plants. The description is the following: "Accelerando for the DNA shuffle - Whereas flowers of wild-type tobacco plants have five petals, defects in DNA repair, caused by the endosymbiotic integration of a plastid DNA fragment into the plant’s nuclear genome, produce flowers with variable petal numbers (three, four or five). Such gene transfer from plastids to the nucleus occurs more frequently when double-strand break repair pathways are inactive.".

The June issue is now fully online:
www.nature.com/nplants/volu...

Thanks a lot for sharing! Somehow your paper was not in my radar, I will definetely read it

RecA protein stimulates homologous recombination in plants. | PNAS A number of RecA-like proteins have been found in eukaryotic organisms. We demonstrate that the prokaryotic recombination protein RecA itself is ca...

That being said, at least RecA from E.coli has been OEd in tobacco but no flower phenotypes were mentioned. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Interesting observations! My impression is that in an allopolyploid there is enough seq similarity in the subgenomes to allow ocassional recombination between them, but because of the differences in synteny, this may lead to information loss. OE of active recombinases may just accelerate collapse

Very excited to see one of our EGT plants in the cover of @natplants.nature.com!

While tobacco flowers have 5 petals, this beauty produces 3-petal and 4-petal flowers, likely as consequence of mutation/genome instability.

Article: www.nature.com/articles/s41...
📷: E.G-D., MPI-MP
Cover: Erin Dewalt

SEB Annual Conference in Antwerp🌻

We encourage New Generation Researchers to take the stage and share their new ideas on cytoplasmic genetics. Don't miss the talks by Femke van den Berg and Schewach Bodenheimer.

Registration Deadline: 13 June
Link: www.sebiology.org/events/seb-a...

#SEBconference

Join us at SEB Annual Conference in Antwerp🌻 #SEBconference
Early Career Researchers, @egonzalezduran.bsky.social and Tom Theeuwen, will share their excellent research with us in the Plant Session P4!

Conference Registration Deadline: 13th June
Link: www.sebiology.org/events/seb-a...

Same here, dear cephalopod reader, same here...🐙

Image: The star-shaped algae Zygnema circumcarinatum shows similar stress reactions to the moss (microscope image). Credit: Tatyana Darienko

Research team uncovered a stress response network in algae and #plants, spanning 600 million years of #evolution. Using bioinformatics, identified genetic 'hubs' that shape responses to stressors, offers insights into early adaptations of land plants.

buff.ly/02DjhYH v @unigoettingen.bsky.social

Why Plants Patch Broken DNA So Fast Researchers uncover how rapid DNA repair protects genomes from internal threats, with implications for cancer biology

There's a press release for our new @natplants.nature.com article!

Plants use fast DNA repair to guard against risky gene transfers from their own organelles—the lessons might go beyond plant biology

Release tinyurl.com/prnpegrb by @mpi-mp-potsdam.bsky.social
Paper: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Suppression of plastid-to-nucleus gene transfer by DNA double-strand break repair - Nature Plants Inactivation of double-strand break repair pathways greatly increases the integration of plastid DNA into the nuclear genome of tobacco plants, highlighting the mutagenic potential of organellar DNA a...

Our new Nature Plants paper is out!

Defects in nuclear DSB repair can boost gene transfer from plastids up to 20X— suggesting 1) organellar DNA has strong mutagenic potential and 2) fast repair is key for genome stability in plants & possibly other species nature.com/articles/s41477-025-02005-w

A gatekeeper for gene transfers - Nature Plants Large-scale genetic screening for plastid-to-nucleus gene transfers identifies that fast double-strand break repair functions as a key barrier for nuclear integration of organellar DNA and provides in...

With their clever setup to visualize ongoing endosymbiotic gene transfers (EGTs), Enrique Gonzalez-Duran, Ralph Bock and team reveal how double-strand break repair limits excessive EGT. Check out their new Nature Plants paper and my News and Views summary! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Thank you for the News and Views commenting our Article. It is such a great and yet accessible summary — I want everyone to see it! I look forward to meet you one day, if luck has it. Have a good weekend!

Suppression of plastid-to-nucleus gene transfer by DNA double-strand break repair - Nature Plants Inactivation of double-strand break repair pathways greatly increases the integration of plastid DNA into the nuclear genome of tobacco plants, highlighting the mutagenic potential of organellar DNA a...

New research by @egonzalezduran.bsky.social shows that DSB repair suppresses gene transfer from chloroplasts to nucleus. With DSB repair impaired, transfer rates jump 20× — revealing how plants protect genome stability, with lessons beyond plant biology. Read: nature.com/articles/s41477-025-02005-w