Johannes Herpell

Johannes Herpell

@herpell.bsky.social

Microbes | Plants | Ecology | Climbing | Cycling | Surfing Postdoc @mpipz.bsky.social with @hacquardst.bsky.social | Views are my own

339 followers226 following16 posts

Putting it together: Whole genome duplication → diploidization → rewiring Depending on environmental pressure: • CAM traits are retained & strengthened • or partially lost 👉 generating a spectrum of CAM physiotypes. 11/14

Example: Clusia major looks like a C3 plant… But: • shows weak/background CAM • accumulates more starch at night • runs core CAM machinery at low levels 👉 a “hidden” CAM physiotype. 10/14

So what did we do? We sequenced the genomes across this physiotype spectrum. All are polyploid. All underwent diploidization. This gave us a framework to ask: 👉 how does genome evolution relate to CAM diversity? 7/14

Key insight: It’s not about evolving new enzymes. The molecular machinery for CAM is largely there—even in weak CAM / C3-like species. 👉 The difference lies in how the system is regulated and wired. 8/14

Enter Clusia: • Clusia rosea → strong CAM (coastal, harsh environments) • Clusia minor → flexible (can switch C3 ↔ CAM) • Clusia major → looks like C3… but isn’t quite Perfect system to study the full range. 5/14

Fun historical note: ~200 years ago, Alexander von Humboldt submerged a Clusia (rosea) leaf in water in the light… No bubbles. No gas exchange. He had stumbled onto CAM—without knowing it. 6/14

This question has been bugging us (and the field): How do these different CAM physiotypes arise? What changes when evolution moves along that spectrum? And what would it take to engineer this into crops? 3/14

A side project that got out of hand—in the best way 🚀 New paper is out: www.nature.com/articles/s41... We sequenced the first Clusia genomes to understand something subtle but fundamental: 👉 CAM is a drought adaptive mechanism in plants - how do different physiotypes of CAM evolve? A 🧵 👇 1/14

nature.comClusia genomes shed light on the evolution and diversity of crassulacean acid metabolism physiotypes - Nature CommunicationsClusia species exhibit diverse photosynthetic physiotypes. The authors present genome assemblies for C. major (weak CAM), C. minor s.l. (facultative CAM), and C. rosea (strong CAM), and speculate that...

Johannes Herpell reposted

Great to see this really cool story (see quoted post) published in @newphyt.bsky.social! nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.... Congratulations @laravdijck.bsky.social, @parkergroup.bsky.social! Plant-Scopoletin-Fungal Endophyte-Iron #PlantScience #Coumarin #PlantImmunity #PlantNutrition

nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.comCooperation between a root fungal endophyte and host‐derived coumarin scopoletin mediates Arabidopsis iron nutritionIron acquisition is a critical challenge for plants, especially in iron-deficient soils. Recent research underscores the importance of root-exuded coumarins in modulating the root microbiome communi...
Marc Somssich@somssich.bsky.social

This is such a cool story! ➡️ Arabidopsis produces scopoletin to fend off pathogens. ➡️ The beneficial M. phaseolina converts scopoletin to esculetin, thus evading its negative effects & out-competing pathogens. ➡️ Esculetin serves as iron-chelating coumarin to support the plant. #PlantImmunity

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Fascinating innate immune evasion strategy in SCIENCE #glycotime 𝘗𝘴𝘦𝘶𝘥𝘰𝘮𝘰𝘯𝘢𝘴 𝘴𝘺𝘳𝘪𝘯𝘨𝘢𝘦 makes GLYCOSIRIN, a novel iminosugar that blocks plant glycosidases from degrading bacterial flagellin—hiding pathogens from plant immune sensors. New cryo-EM insights reveal exactly how this stealthy trick works

science.orgBacterial pathogen deploys the iminosugar glycosyrin to manipulate plant glycobiologyThe extracellular space (apoplast) in plants is a key battleground during microbial infections. To avoid recognition, the bacterial model phytopathogen Pseudomonas syringae pv. tomato DC3000 produces ...

Johannes Herpell reposted

Would you like to study metabolite-based microbe-microbe or plant-microbe interactions but do not have the tools to? @chesneau-g.bsky.social came up with a simple solution with great potential! Check out our new publication in @naturecomms.bsky.social and Guillaume’s 🧵 below for details👇

Guillaume Chesneau@chesneau-g.bsky.social

🚨Excited to share our new publication! MetaFlowTrain, a highly parallelized and modular fluidic system to study exometabolite interactions between microbes-microbes-plants 🌱 @hacquardst.bsky.social @herpell.bsky.social S.Wolf S.Perin @mpipz.bsky.social www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNUf... 🧵Thread 5/5:

Johannes Herpell reposted

Johannes Herpell reposted

Finally! Im so excited to present to culmination of many years of work from the fantastic Defeng Shen and some great collaborators. For details, I have made a digested thread below, but if you are more interested feel free to reach out (and read the paper of course). www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

science.orgApoplastic barriers are essential for nodule formation and nitrogen fixation in Lotus japonicusEstablishment of the apoplastic root barrier known as the Casparian strip occurs early in root development. In legumes, this area overlaps with nitrogen-fixing nodule formation, which raises the possi...

Johannes Herpell reposted

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Johannes Herpell reposted

Johannes Herpell reposted

🚨New paper published in @nature.com! Using pan-genetics across the Solanum genus🍅🥔🍆we reveal why gene duplications🧬are major contingencies in crop engineering. My postdoc work in the Lippman lab @CSHL, collab. with @katiejenike.bsky.social @mikeschatz.bsky.social chatz.bsky.social and many others!

nature.comSolanum pan-genetics reveals paralogues as contingencies in crop engineering - NatureGene duplication and subsequent paralogue diversification are major obstacles to genotype-to-phenotype predictability.

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Johannes Herpell reposted

Johannes Herpell reposted

The data is in. 2024 was the warmest year on record, and probably in the whole of human history – about 1.6°C warmer than the pre-industrial period. More than 1 billion individual thermometer measurements have been condensed into a single vital number. theconversation.com/my-new-dark-...

theconversation.comMy new dark red climate stripe for 2024 shows it’s the hottest year yetThese ‘warming stripes’, adopted around the world as a symbol of climate awareness, action and ambition, now include another dark red stripe for 2024.

Johannes Herpell reposted

Johannes Herpell reposted

🚨We are filling a 5-year postdoc/junior lecturer position in Soil Biogeochemistry at the University of Lausanne. Fully-funded, independent, cutting-edge research on microbe-mineral-organic matter interactions, #climate, and #soils. Deadline: Jan 30. Start: Sept 2025. Info👇

Johannes Herpell reposted

Towards community-driven visual proteomics! Excited to finally share this large-scale curated & annotated dataset of 1829 high-quality #cryoET tomograms of the little green alga that just keeps giving— Chlamydomonas! 🧪🧶🧬🌾🌊🌍 Preprint📜: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... A short thread🧵👇

Johannes Herpell reposted

We are still waiting for applications to join us as a group leader in the department of Chromosome Biology! Apply until the first of Feb.

raphmercier.bsky.social@raphmercier.bsky.social

The department of Chromosome Biology of the Max planck @mpipz_cologne is looking for a new group leader. Join us, with @Polina_Novik @marques_et_al @LabSchneeberger We are very open minded concerning the project, it just needs to be exciting. jobs.mpipz.mpg.de/jobposting/8...