Catharina Merchante / Karen

Join us in Málaga! @pgrp2026.bsky.social will be great!

PELOTA at the Crossroads of Ribosome-associated quality control and Silencing: Coordinating Development, Stress, and Immunity in Plants Abstract. Ribosome-associated quality control (RaQC) pathways, including no-go decay (NGD) and non-stop decay (NSD), are essential for maintaining translat

❗️Excited to share our new review in J Exp Bot on PELOTA and ribosome-associated quality control in plants 🌱

We explore how translation surveillance connects with RNA silencing, development, and plant immunity.

Great work by PhD student Gemma Sans-Coll 👏

academic.oup.com/jxb/advance-...

Termination of the integrated stress response Stress responses enable cells to detect, adapt to, and survive challenges. The benefit of these signaling pathways depends on their reversibility. The integrated stress response (ISR) is elicited by p...

Answer to a key and longstanding question;
How does the integrated stress response terminate?

| Science www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Giant DNA viruses encode a hallmark translation initiation complex of eukaryotic life Giant DNA viruses encode a cap-binding complex homologous to eIF4F, the defining translation-initiation complex of eukaryotes. The viral cap-binding complex is required for viral protein synthesis and...

"Here, we discover that giant DNA viruses encode a distinct and functional IF4F translation-initiation complex to drive protein synthesis, thereby blurring the line between cellular and acellular biology"

www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...

RNA splicing generates a functionally specialized Rep protein isoform in geminiviruses — enabling timely control of the viral cycle. Strikingly, similar strategies might have evolved in DNA viruses infecting different kingdoms: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... Spearheaded by @delphinem-p.bsky.social!

🔊III Andalucía AGRO-HUB PhD students Meeting

📍IBVF, Seville
🗓️12-13 march 2026
Deadline for registration: 7 Feb

@csicdivulga.bsky.social @iascsic.bsky.social @eezcsic.bsky.social @ibvf-sevilla.bsky.social @institutograsa.bsky.social @irnase.bsky.social @ihsmumacsic.bsky.social

Postdoctoral position in biology (m/f/d) (2/2026) Leibniz Institute of Plant Biochemistry (Halle) offers a Postdoctoral position in Biology

Please share! We are looking for a postdoctoral scientist (2 years, extension possible) starting from 01/05/2026 at
@ipbhalle.bsky.social! The project focuses on plant immune receptor biochemistry and structural biology.
Deadline 09/03/2026.

Apply at: ipb-halle.mhm.jobs/11-postdocto...

“La cura para todo es siempre agua salada: el sudor, las lágrimas o el mar.”
Karen Blixen (Isak Dinesen)

🔬 Ribosomes are hands down one of the most intricate molecular machines we know. Huge (for a cellular scale at least) complexes made of long RNAs (rRNAs) and proteins … a lot of different proteins.

1/6

(❗️Sound on!)

@narjournal.bsky.social

🐮🪥🩷

It was great to collaborate with you @alonsostepanovalab.bsky.social , as always 🤩 Congrats, Jade, for an amazing job!
🌱🧬🩷

Just in time for Christmas a new paper in @plantspeopleplanet.bsky.social by @joannakacprzyk.bsky.social and myself.
We asked 421 plant scientists why they study plants!
Check it out and also check @plantmemories.bsky.social where we post lovely survey responses.

Ya está aquí la 5ª convocatoria del Concurso «Dibuja una persona que se dedique a la ciencia y ponle un nombre». ¡Anima a tus estudiantes a participar! 

Bases y plantilla aquí:
https://f.mtr.cool/tpngzjqedi

🗣️ Today, Rosa Lozano-Durán from the Center for Molecular Plant Biology (ZMBP), @unituebingen.bsky.social (Germany) came to visit us in Málaga to share her research with a great talk entitled “The Cell Snatchers -- viral strategies to hijack a plant” as part of our #IHSMLaMayoraSeminars

Avisa si está en su puesto! ☺️

How lucky are we?! 🤩 Rosa Lozano-Durán @geminiteamlab.bsky.social will be here!
So looking forward to hearing you, my friend!
🌱🦠

Congrats, Silvia!!!

“Science is the beautifu pursuit of building knowledge. It thrives when you are happy”
This is so true 🥹

All Alone in the Night - Time-lapse footage of the Earth as seen from the ISS YouTube video by David Peterson

🔭 Flying Over the Earth at Night

Video Credit: Gateway to Astronaut Photography, NASA ; Compilation: David Peterson (YouTube); Music: Freedom Fighters (Two Steps from Hell)

apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap25120...

Timing of transcription controls the selective translation of newly synthesized mRNAs during acute environmental stress Under stress, cells adapt their gene expression programs through changes in transcription and translation. It is unclear how cells determine which mRNAs are translated or repressed. Zedan et al. show that the timing of mRNA production alone determines the selectivity of translation, thereby coupling the processes of transcription and translation.

Timing of transcription controls the selective translation of newly synthesized mRNAs during acute environmental stress

Metamorphosis is nature at its weirdest and historian Oren Harman has just written a beautiful book about it.
Also check out this link for free access to the review I wrote about the book for this week's Nature: nature.com/articles/d41...

“A program with a 0.5% success rate is not elite. It’s wasteful. Thousands of highly trained scientists will sink dozens of hours into writing proposals with vanishing odds of success. This is not just inefficient — it’s disrespectful of scientific labour.” Very well said @kamounlab.bsky.social!👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼

“Shared wonder”, the gorilla and the butterfly, is, simply, beautiful 🩷

In Nature’s The month’s best science images 👉
www.nature.com/immersive/d4...

So looking forward to it!! 🤩

Location of the selected factors in the different endomembrane system pathways.

Defender or accomplice? Dual roles of plant #vesicle #trafficking in restricting and enabling #geminiviral systemic infection

📖 nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
by Cana-Quijada et al.

@WileyPlantSci #PlantScience

So glad I got to be a part of this! It was a beautiful meeting. Thank you to the organizers @ewjwallace.bsky.social, Matthew Brook, for inviting me. I truly appreciated and enjoyed it.

www.biochemistry.org/about-us/new...

Congratulations, Amy!!!! 🩷🩷🩷

This is not a screen from a video game. Nestled below the tree-line, the small mountain church does look like it might be hiding from Moon though. In the well-composed telephoto snapshot, taken on November 23, the church walls are partly reflecting light from terrestrial flood lights. Of course, the Moon is reflecting light from the Sun. At any given time the Sun illuminates fully half of the Moon's surface, also known as the lunar dayside, but on that night only a sliver of its sunlit surface was visible. About three days after New Moon, the Moon was in a waxing crescent phase. The single exposure was captured shortly after sunset in skies near Danta di Cadore, northern Italy, planet Earth.

🔭 Moon Games

Image Credit & Copyright: Giorgia Hofer

apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap25112...

You are an inspiration to us all! Happy anniversary, GT! Here’s to another 10 years of success! 🥂