Stefan A. Rensing

Sun setting over forest at horizon, orange grey sky

Sunset with saharadust

He had had a nasty feeling that that might be an idiotic thing to do, but he did it anyway, and sure enough it had turned out to be an idiotic thing to do. You live and learn. At any rate, you live. You also panic.

Hier zwei Grafiken dazu (Update mit Daten für 2025). Links ein stückweise linearer Fit an die Temperaturdaten (jeweils 10 Jahre), rechts die Erwärmungsrate (also die Steigung der rot gezeigten Trends). In den letzten zehn Jahren ist die Erwärmung am schnellsten.
tamino.wordpress.com/2026/03/07/g...

Congrats @ottlab.bsky.social and @pengbo10.bsky.social for leading this work!

"From industrial Past to Green Future" written around an ancient industry tower typical for the region together with a plant changing colours from blue to green is the motto of the German Society for Plant Sciences international Conference, the Botanik-Tagung, 2026 in Bochum Germany, that brings together plant scientists from several scientific disciplines. The logo highlights the structural change of the Ruhr area, from coal mining + heavy industries to the increasingly important issues of climate protection, sustainability + preservation of biodiversity, with plant sciences at the forefront of this transformation.

#PlantSciConfi

Registration open for
International Conference of our German Society for Plant Sciences
Botanik-Tagung #BT2026
in #Bochum, Germany
6 – 10 September 2026
www.deutsche-botanische-gesellschaft.de/u/82bsBT2026

So I pleased to announce the conceptual spawn of FigTree: PearTree (acronym still to be finalised). If you want to dive right in it is hosted as a web app here: artic-network.github.io/peartree (click the “Example...” button for immediate candy and then click every button you can find).

Once something actually happens somewhere in something as wildly complicated as the Universe, Kevin knows where it will all end up — where "Kevin" is any random entity that doesn't know nothin' about nothin'.

In this review we map the journey to animal multicellularity and define three extinct ancestral stages:
🔹 LUAA: Last Unicellular Animal Ancestor.
🔹 FACA: First Animal Common Ancestor.
🔹 LACA: Last Animal Common Ancestor.
Check it out: bit.ly/4azuLVY @embojournal.org

Hey everyone joining us @ #MBP2026 in mid March, we just released the conference program. Please check it out here: syncandshare.lrz.de/dl/fiPnsPinb... we are super excited to see you all soon and to talk 🌱🔬🥼 over 🍻all night long!

Delighted to share our new preprint: "Evolution of moss leaf-like organs through variations in deeply conserved developmental principles."
Led by Ph.D. student Wenye Lin from my lab @irbv.bsky.social ,
in collab. with Yoan Coudert (ENS Lyon) and Richard Smith (JIC).
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Many men of course became extremely rich, but this was perfectly natural and nothing to be ashamed of because no one was really poor — at least no one worth speaking of.

Inducing novel endosymbioses by implanting bacteria in fungi - Nature A study presents an approach to establish and track a new endosymbiotic partnership by implanting bacteria in a non-host fungus and shows that stable inheritance of the implanted bacteria is possible ...

Vorholt Lab re-created endosymbiosis in the lab: injected bacteria into a fungus and evolved a heritable partnership.

Evolution, fast-forwarded.

doi.org/10.1038/s415...

Please enjoy our research paper on how Bluesky is the preferred home of academics of all stripes, including professors of rare moths. (Yes, we actually have lots of entomologists here).

academic.oup.com/icb/article-... 🧪

Know a brilliant early-career plant scientist? 🌱
Nominate them for one of DBG’s three prestigious science awards! #ecr #plantsci
👉Strasburger Prize
👉Pfeffer Prize
👉Wiehe Prize
www.deutsche-botanische-gesellschaft.de/en/actualia/...

Not surprisingly, my bubble is plant scientists and biologists; nice map

Here's how you can visualize gene expression during P. patens reproduction, from egg/sperm to spore, in the new web tool peatmoss.plantcode.cup.uni-freiburg.de
Info on paper in post below.
@watertoland.bsky.social

Good morning

#MAdLand Expression: adding sexual reproduction stages to the #Physcomitrium patens web tool. Great collaboration with @noefpbio.bsky.social @jandevries.bsky.social
@watertoland.bsky.social
Paper online in @theplantjournal.bsky.social
doi.org/10.1111/tpj....

Plant Breeding Innovation Clears Next Hurdle for EU NGT Framework - EUROPE SAYS The European Parliament’s Committee on the Environment (ENVI) has approved, by a strong majority, the compromise text on the NGT Regulation agreed in trilogue

Plant Breeding Innovation Clears Next Hurdle for EU NGT Framework

https://www.europesays.com/2737143/

The European Parliament’s Committee on the Environment (ENVI) has approved, by a strong majority, the compromise text on…

Good morning

In remembrance of Peer Bork  | EMBL EMBL and its community are deeply saddened by the death of Peer Bork, the organisation’s Interim Director General. 

We mourn the passing of Peer Bork, EMBO Member since 2000: https://www.embl.org/news/embl-announcements/in-remembrance-of-peer-bork/

"Perhaps I'm old and tired," he continued, "but I always think that the chances of finding out what really is going on are so absurdly remote that the only thing to do is to say hang the sense of it and just keep yourself occupied. Look at me: I design coastlines. I got an award for Norway."

Thanks for your inspiring talk on evolution of plastid polymerase!

Thanks @philcarella.bsky.social and @moodytomato.bsky.social for the invite and for everybody having me, it was a great meeting! @watertoland.bsky.social

European plant scientists welcome the EU Trilogue Provisional Agreement on New Genomic Techniques (#NGT), as EU-SAGE reports, the network representing plants scientists at 134 European plant science institutes and societies www.eu-sage.eu/news/Europea...

Registration to close for the
@molplantsci.bsky.social annual meeting in Hennef #MBP2026 organized by @kunzlab.bsky.social

Congrats indeed @petrollromy.bsky.social and also @dvarshney.bsky.social - well done!

Good morning. Here you can see a windmill growing next to its siblings.

Autumn. Has its advantages.

Structure of the far-red photosystem I from cyanobacteria that indicates the position of the chlorophyll f molecules that enable the cells to use far-red light for photosynthesis.

Plant Science Research Weekly Oct 31, 2025. plantae.org/plant-scienc... What makes a tree a tree? Secret strategy of far-red photosynthesis; Unwinding the Spirogyra genome; H2O2 role in P starvation response; Viral evasion of cap-independent translation defense (1/2)