Alex Webb Lab

This was a fun project. We show that dim green light is a useful alternative to infrared for night time imaging of plants. Allows colour imaging at night! doi.org/10.1111/tpj.... Funded by @ukspaceagency.bsky.social 🧪 #plants

( to the tune of the England song) "They are rowing home, they are rowing. Norway's going home.... ". Very exciting

#PlantSciJob #PlantSciJobs #PlantScienceJobs

Photosynthesis as a therapeutic tool. Perhaps plant biology can now have medical level funding? www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... 🧪 #plants #plantscience

Sitting in an olive garden in Cambridge UK. How things have changed

More exciting #chronoculture. Rice EMF3 Alleles Adjust Flower Opening Time to Enhance the Seed Setting Rate Under High Temperature Stress - Ishizaki - Plant Biotechnology Journal share.google/NijSc8kuiVA0.... This is real world impact of #circadian #plant #science 🧪

Excellent. Circadian resonance increases lettuce yield academic.oup.com/jxb/advance-... #PlantScience #Plants #Circadian #Chronoculture

We have been cooking up this story for a while and we are excited to finally be able to share! Read on if you're interested in whole plant regeneration WITHOUT the application of hormones!

A break from science and teaching. The wonderful Raye. I haven't been this excited for an album release since I was about 15. open.spotify.com/album/3ZN01x...

How does wheat tell time?🌾🕰️ New model by @abhibiotech.bsky.social with @alexwebblab.bsky.social & James Locke reveals the flexibility of plant circadian clocks. Unlike Arabidopsis, wheat ELF3 peaks at dawn, model suggests TOC1 repression drives this shift doi.org/10.1098/rsif... @royalsociety.org

#Monogram2026 Session 6 - From Meristem to Harvest: Building the Plant Big session seeing us through to lunch, featuring not one but two Keynotes! 🕐 Alex Webb @alexwebblab.bsky.social @camplantsci.bsky.social 🌾 Sarah McKim @intbarleyhub.bsky.social @hutton.ac.uk

That moment in an online grant application form where you discover there is another page of questions that you have not noticed in the 209 previous times that you have accessed the form 🧪

I think this is a very interesting paper that adds significant understanding in plant water relations.

Out in @science.org this week: A decline in epigenetic silencing of TEs in older plant organs but not in the shoot meristem. TCX5 and TCX6 help regulate DNA methylation in this context. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... #plantscience

Out in @science.org this week. Soils drive convergence in the regulation of vascular tension in land plants. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... #plantscience #ecophysiology

Job opportunity! Research Assistant / Research Associate in Molecular Physiology Fixed term Closes on Wednesday 28 January 2026 www.cam.ac.uk/jobs/researc... #PlantSci #PlantSciJobs

This is a very special paper for me. I had the idea of combining transcription factor binding with chromatin in 2016/8. It took some time, but thanks to Fred and Vikas, we can finally share the story in @plos.org Genetics looking at chromatin states in Arabidopsis and Marchantia. #PlantScience

📢 Save the date! 49th New Phytologist Symposium: Biological timing in photosynthetic organisms 📅 24–27 May 2027 📍 @johninnescentre.bsky.social, Norwich, UK www.newphytologist.org/events/49-nps #PlantScience #photoperiodism #chronobiology

In hydrozoan #jellyfish, the timing of gamete release is often coordinated by light. Ezio Rosato explores a @plosbiology.org study that elucidates a novel, endogenous clock-based mechanism that governs #egg release in a new species of jellyfish 🧪 Paper: plos.io/4btAwpY Primer: plos.io/49eTOya

Look who is adorning the shopping centre in Cambridge. @camplantsci.bsky.social very own Nicola Patron #plants

New Year. New Office 365. The horrible Co-pilot icon that was present in the bottom right all office documents in December has disappeared from the Office app on my PC in 2026. Things are looking up, perhaps I was not alone in finding it an annoying distraction? Or temporary respite? @microsoft.com

At the end of 2024 I did a chronological round up of all the #plantscience in @science.org that year. So how did 2025 pan out? This year, I’m grouping papers thematically instead of chronologically so read on to find out what exciting plant science came out over the last 12 months. (1/22)

Happy Solstice

co-pilot = clippy. I really do not want a brightly coloured icon right in my line of sight whilst trying to read and write a Word document. There menu bar is where to put icons. #Microsoft #Office365 @microsoft.com

Junior Professorship Plastid Homöostasis. Kaiserslautern, Germany. #plantscijob #PlantSciJobs www.academics.de/jobs/w1-juni...

Professorship Plant Physiology. Kaiserslautern, Germany. #PlantSciJobs #plantscijob www.academics.de/jobs/w2-prof...

Professorship for Functional and 3D Modeling of Plants. Bonn, Germany. #PlantSciJobs #plantscijob www.academics.de/jobs/w3-prof...

Professorship Stress resilience of plants. Aachen, Germany. #PlantSciJobs #plantscijob www.academics.de/jobs/w3-univ...

Nice interdisciplinary #plantscience -related paper in Science handled by our neuroscience editor, @mattiamaroso.bsky.social Infrared heat from cycads as a pollination signal before flowers evolved. Paper here www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... Perspective here www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

This week in @science.org Structural insight into the incorporation of far-red chlorophyll f in cyanobacterial photosystem I www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... #cyanobacteria #plantscience

Out in @science.org this week: PME5 is sequestered in the nucleus and released during cytokinesis allowing its activity to be timed with cell division. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... #PlantScience #PlantSci

as anyone found anything useful that the Co-pilot built into Windows can do? I have tried it a couple of times to do simple things, like find an email I know exists, and it can't. Standard search works. All this hard push for something broken.

Junior Professorship Plastid Homeostasis. Kaiserslautern, Germany. #plantscijobs #plantscijob www.academics.de/jobs/w1-juni...

Professorship Plant Physiology. Kaiserslautern, Germany #plantscijobs #plantscijob www.academics.de/jobs/w2-prof...

Brilliant from Joey "The time Al agents are poised to save is raw currency we can splurge on... In our dystopian hellfest to doom-scroll Al slop, marry LLMs and remain limbically in-hoc to algorithms that concentrate value upwards. And, no doubt, type more prompts." share.google/tzGez66dhzmq...

Annie Shelton, PhD student @alexwebblab.bsky.social, was one of 5 Gates Cambridge Scholars to present at the Future of Humanity symposium last week. She talked about issues to do with eating in space – from eating in zero gravity to growing edible plants in space. Read more: tinyurl.com/mpkm8ytr

Choosing which models best explain photoperiodic time measurement mechanisms in plants by Takato Imaizumi doi.org/10.1038/s443... via npj Biol Timing Sleep #PlantScience

My annual reminder that "diurnal" means day active. As in "humans are diurnal organisms, whereas mice are nocturnal". The correct term for the 24 h light/dark cycle is "diel".

#UCD is hiring an assistant prof for #plantpathology! #jobs #plantjobs jobs.plantae.org/jobs/ja/2179...

A new preprint from the lab by @cbuckley.bsky.social in collab with @adaevo.bsky.social #plantsci #circadian 🌱 ⏰

If you want to read about a strong tuneable promoter in a diatom, see our publication: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... It was a team effort! So thank you, Patrick Hickland, Alison Smith, and the rest of the Plant Met lab at the Department of Plant Sciences, University of Cambridge.

Great to see this blog from @johninnescentre.bsky.social on work involving @camplantsci.bsky.social's Epidemiology & Modelling group - building global defences against wheat rust. @camplantepidem.bsky.social

Plants @ Cambridge brings together partners in the University of Cambridge and our partners at NIAB to form one the largest groupings of plant scientists in Europe. From molecules to ecosystems. We have a new video youtu.be/4kl0XNYOA4Q?... . 🧪 #plantresearch