Michael Borg

Our group is moving from @mpi-bio-fml.bsky.social to the maritime city of Kiel! ⛵️🩵 I will lead the Department of Marine Plant Development and Physiology @uni-kiel.de 🌱🪸🌊 Look out for opportunities to join us in this exciting & growing hub for Plant, Marine & Evolutionary Biology in North Germany 🇩🇪

The Max Planck Society and Max Planck Institute for Biology Tübingen in collaboration with the Department of Plant Production Sciences and Technologies at the University of Zimbabwe will be offering a FREE #ARTEMIS #BridgingMinds workshop on *Plant Genome Analysis*.

Out today in Nature: sex without crossovers. Rhynchospora tenuis makes pollen, fertilises and sets seed, yet 0 crossovers in 10,997 pollen nuclei. Chromosome drive and ~87% seed abortion rebuild the mother's genotype, so the offspring are clones. doi.org/10.1038/s415...

Happy to finally see this out in a peer-reviewed form 🧬🌱 Congrats to everyone who contributed! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

It took some time, but we are thrilled to present the first major outcome of our @erc.europa.eu ERC DIRNDL AdG project: Evgeniya Pukhovaya @epukh.bsky.social and others in our team describe the discovery of a mechanism for polar protein targeting in plants (1/13) www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

PLEASE SHARE! New job openings in my lab @zmbp-tuebingen.bsky.social. We have a broad interest into the mechanistic basis of how molecular complexes are rewired during cellular development in plants and during invasion by pathogens. 🌱🍄🔬 See details below 👇 #PlantSciJobs

www.nature.com/articles/s41... It's been a long time coming, but delighted to say that the first major output from my Royal Society Fellowship is now published. 🙂 #PlantScience

Happy to share the final version of our study on the evolution of chromatin states across eukaryotes, out today in @natgenet.nature.com Led by @crisnava.bsky.social and @seanamontgomery.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/s41... Some highlights below

Delighted to share our paper on neo-chromosomes! We induced centromere fission using CRISPR in Arabidopsis and increased the chromosome count from n=5 to n=6. The broken chromosomes ends quickly “healed” by adding telomeres de novo and the new karyotype is stable through mitosis and meiosis! 1/3

Online at @cellcellpress.bsky.social today: everything you always wanted (???) to know about Auxin Signaling and never dared to ask. From Jiashu, Aaron and Martijn in our team, with @luciastrader.bsky.social and Tongda Xu www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Excited to share our latest preprint on #PhycologyFriday. We map out the carbon fixation pathway for the first time in a multicellular alga, the green seaweed Ulva, and reveal a unique Rubisco-Linker interaction in the pyrenoid, a chloroplast condensate. Below I summarize some key points. #seaweeds

🌾 Every grass leaf shares the same repeating short-long cell pattern in its epidermis. Our new #preprint identifies the protein that builds it. 🔬🧬 📄 preprint: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... 🧵⬇️ 1/11

www.cell.com/molecular-ce... I'm happy to see our work published! If you are interested in transposons, transcriptional regulation and Pol III come and check it out 👀 🧫 🧬

Excited to be able to advertise 1x postdoc and 2x technician positions to join my group in Cambridge working on an exciting ARIA funded project to help bring a plant artificial chromosome into existence! Reposts very welcome please 🙏 (1/2)

Delighted and grateful to receive the 🥇 best poster prize 🏆at #EpiPlant at Nantes, France. Thanks a bunch to the organizers and fellow participants for a wonderful meeting and inspiring conversations. Feeling delighted to represent Shivaprasad lab @ncbsbangalore.bsky.social

Latest from the lab: @ruolinwu.bsky.social integrates fossil and molecular evidence to estimate the timing of origin of flowering plants. Thanks to @sabifo4.bsky.social @jameswclark.bsky.social Yue Tong, Shan Wan, Davide Pisani, Harald Schneider and Daniele Silvestro for helping to make this happen

Our work is out now! (www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...). We discover a selective autophagy pathway that protects plants from the mess caused by RNA viruses. Intrigued? Follow the spaghetti trail for a summary of our findings🧵-->

Capolavoro 🎨 alert 🚨! What is the role of gene body methylation in invertebrates? Despite extensive speculation linking it to plasticity and environmental responses, its mechanistic effects and heritability remain unclear. Our take out in @natecoevo.nature.com: www.nature.com/articles/s41... 1/

Call for Papers Submit your latest plant and multicellular algae #DevBio research to our upcoming special issue – Plant and Algae Development #DevSIPlantAlgae Editors: @stanfordstomata.bsky.social & Susana Coelho Deadline: 2 November 2026 journals.biologists.com/dev/pages/pl...

Many pathogens that infect wild plants are close relatives of crop pathogens. Important model systems for studying plant diseases. Check out the special issue on wild plant pathosystems published in the Philosophical Transactions B: royalsocietypublishing.org/rstb/issue/3...

Now online at @natplants.nature.com ‼️ Led by Jierui Zhao, a former PhD student @gmivienna.bsky.social & together w/ @moritznowack.bsky.social lab, we uncover how #autophagy shapes salt stress tolerance and lifespan. www.nature.com/articles/s41... www.nature.com/articles/s41... A short 🧵👇

We are very happy and proud to present a study led by @jorgehg.bsky.social (now PI in Madrid – keep an eye on him!) in our team @bic-wur.bsky.social. In this work, we discover how auxin-regulated ARF transcription factors learned to activate transcription. A 🧵…(1/17) www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

A short review from us on the easiest way to make an allopolyploid. It was a lot of fun writing with these two. We hope you will enjoy the Pac-Man inspired allopolyploidy maze!

🚨 Why can’t mammals regenerate limbs like frog tadpoles or salamanders? In our new paper in @science.org , we show that species-specific oxygen sensing acts as a gatekeeper for initiating limb regeneration 🐭🐸 🔗 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... #EvoDevo

New #preprint 😍‼️ led by 2 incredible postdocs @ninizhani.bsky.social & Ranj Papareddy: transforming #UFMylation from a local ribosome rescue pathway to systems level regulator of mRNA splicing www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... A short 🧵

Behind the scenes! go.nature.com/4bYY8BM

Our work on chromatin evolution in brown algae is finally out! This is also my first "co-first author" paper!! I’m excited to share what we found 👇

Congrats Thorsten!!

I am very grateful to be featured discussing my work on transcription associated proteins and TAPscan @rensingstefan.bsky.social Many thanks to @theplantjournal.bsky.social for the opportunity and recognition!

I'm very happy to have been selected as a JGI New Investigator! It's exciting to know we will work closely with their fantastic team and help generate new genomic data for the wider community 🪸

1/11 🔥 New preprint alert 🔥 We wanted to know what plants in the wild really care about. So we asked them 🎤. Here is what we learned: “Biotic-response networks are an important organizer of the transcriptome in wild Arabidopsis thaliana populations” www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Turn your study species into detailed drawings. Get in touch: lazaroillustration@gmail.com

Does hidden protein biology live in the suboptimal alignment space? When we align two divergent proteins, we usually trust a single optimal alignment. 🧬 But what if the real structural signal lies in the space of near-optimal solutions? With EMERALD-UI you can unfold this perspective.

🚨We are hiring!🚨 The #ROVKA project focuses on the productivity and vulnerability of Baltic brown algae populations. Join us as a scientist (2 years, 100% salary) for population genomic analyses and mesocosm experiments @geomarkiel.bsky.social @bfn-de.bsky.social See www.geomar.de/en/karriere/...

Josué Barrera Redondo (CINVESTAV Irapuato), expert in molecular evolution, comparative genomics, de novo genes, plant domestication, and brown algae genomics, joins the GBE editorial board. #societyjournal

New paper in @natplants.nature.com finds that #siRNAs can act as long-distance communication signals from maternal to male tissue in #Capsella with functional role in #pollen development. Read here: nature.com/articles/s41477-026-02219-6 @claudiakohler11.bsky.social @jiali024.bsky.social

The (Yoav) Voichek lab has opened its gates at the Weizmann Institute, and is actively recruiting students and researchers at all levels - come explore gene regulation and computational genomics in a fun, friendly sprouting lab 🤗🥼⚗️🧪 www.weizmann.ac.il/plants/voichek

Can we tune a plant’s epigenetic toolkit to disrupt plant homeostasis in ways that enable phenotypic innovation? 🌱Check out our new Opinion Paper with @thanvisrikant.bsky.social discussing this topic in @cp-trendsplantsci.bsky.social! www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Preprint alert! It is my great pleasure to announce the first manuscript from the lab, a story that started @gmivienna.bsky.social and was mainly accomplished by the intrepid @gesahoffmann.bsky.social at @mpi-mp-potsdam.bsky.social. A brief thread with our findings www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Excited to introduce Auxenochlorella as a new algal reference organism for fundamental plant science and bioengineering. A paper in two parts: a genetic toolkit for site-specific genomic manipulation, paired with the most unusual genome I’ve ever worked on academic.oup.com/plcell/artic...

We are happy to share our latest work in @nature.com . We study the genomic and cellular basis of facultative symbiosis in Oculina patagonica - a Mediterranean coral remarkable for its ability to survive long periods without algal symbionts. Led by Shani Levy and @xgrau.bsky.social rdcu.be/eLbaZ

Thrilled to share what we learned from re-annotating the mobilome of the brown algae model [Ectocarpus] 🌊🌿🏖️ genomebiology.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.... A wonderful collaboration with @ericadinatale.bsky.social, @cssmartinho.bsky.social, @rorycraig.bsky.social, and Susana Coelho! 🎉

So happy to see my first first-author paper published! 🎈 A short thread on how Ectocarpus and its TE secrets have kept me busy lately: rdcu.be/eITQH

Please share! I'm looking for a postdoc. The position is to lead one of the following projects: 1) regulation of plant specialized metabolism by cell fate, or 2) foliar embryogenesis in the succulent plant Kalanchoe. Learn more abt projects: cxli233.github.io/cxLi_lab/res...

The Tübingen & Amsterdam crews have landed in Barcelona for #ESEB2025! Cooling off with helados before the science (and festivities) begin🍦

So excited to be at #ESEB2025 presenting poster 221 today!☀️ Check out our chromosome-level genome of Bostrychia, a red alga from the complex Ceramiales order, revealing massive genome expansion by giant Plavaka DNA transposons, the evolution of expanded gene families and UV sex chromosomes!