Piotr Ziolkowski

‼️Very happy to share this! A long story from our lab on how cold reshapes meiotic recombination in Arabidopsis🌱. SNI1/NSE5 acts as a temperature-sensitive brake on Class II crossovers. Huge thanks to all co-authors and especially to Alex, whose hard work and persistence made this project possible🙏

⏳ Last days to register for the Plant Meiosis Meeting! Join us in Poznań for PMM 2026, with invited speakers Neil Hunter, Mathilde Grelon, André Marquez and Kyuha Choi. Raphaël Mercier, Chris Morgan, and many others also confirmed. 55 talk slots are waiting to be filled! Register: pmm.amu.edu.pl

📣We’re excited to announce that registration for the Plant Meiosis Meeting is now open‼️ The website and preliminary program are live, and abstract submission will open soon. Book accommodation early due to major trade fairs in Poznań! See you in Poznań! 🌱 pmm.amu.edu.pl

A quick correction: the post below should say H3K4me3, not H3K9me3.👇

📣Our paper is out! 🤩 We found that local modification of H3K9me3 using CRISPR/dCas9 at hotspots changes crossover activity, bringing us closer to targeted recombination in plants.🌱 Huge thanks to @szymanskalejman.bsky.social, Wojtek, Ania, and Karolina! www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

An early Christmas present from our team for all of the tomato 🍅 & recombination fans: Chromosome-scale Solanum pennellii and Solanum cheesmaniae genome assemblies reveal structural variants, repeat content and recombination barriers of the tomato clade biorxiv.org/content/10.648…

📣Plant Meiosis Meeting is back for its second edition‼️ Save the date: 9–11 September 2026, Poznań, Poland🌱 More details coming soon🤩

CRISPR-Cas–mediated heritable chromosome fusions in Arabidopsis | Science www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... So cool!!!🤩

How do plants control the genes needed for successful sexual reproduction? Our new work uncovers the DREAM complex as a crucial regulator of meiotic recombination in Arabidopsis. Without DREAM, plants are sterile—key recombination genes like MER3 are switched off...

🌿🔍Paper alert‼️ A fantastic study from James Higgins’ group on SCEP3 – a newly identified component of the synaptonemal complex in plants! Happy that our team could be part of this! 😄🧬

⏰ Last week to apply! Don’t miss the chance to join our lab and explore the fascinating world of meiotic recombination 🌿 👉 Deadline: Nov 1, 2025

🚨 New from our lab in #ScienceAdvances! RAD21L cohesin acts as both a 3D genome architect and a transcriptional gatekeeper in the male germline. Its loss disrupts both structure and function—highlighting the tight link between genome folding and gene regulation www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

A great story from @chloegirard.bsky.social, confirming and extending our findings on how interhomolog polymorphism shapes crossover distribution in plants 🌱

Please consider signing a petition to increase the spending on science in Poland / List otwarty w sprawie finansowania nauki, w tym @ncn.gov.pl www.petycjeonline.com/list_otwarty...

🚀 We’re hiring a Postdoc! Join our group in Poznan, Poland to study meiotic crossover recombination in plants 🌱 Highly motivated & enthusiastic candidates are welcome! 📅 Deadline: Nov 1, 2025 🔗 ibmib.web.amu.edu.pl/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Postdoc_position-2025-Ziolkowskis-Lab.pdf

Holliday junction–ZMM feedback ensures meiotic crossover assurance in yeast! Great work from the Joao Matos lab! 👉 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Fantastic work coming out of Neil Hunter’s lab! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Thrilled to see our paper featured on the cover!!! 🎉🌽

Hybridization and introgression are major evolutionary processes. Since the 1940s, the prevailing view has been that they shape plants far more than animals. In our new study (www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... ), we find the opposite: animals exchange genes more, and for longer, than plants

Paper led by @movillome.bsky.social on unbiased detection of (somatic) #TE insertions in #Arabidopsis with @pacbio.bsky.social long reads out after peer review. Thanks to academic editor Leandro Quadrana for shepherding it through the review process. #plantscience link.springer.com/article/10.1...?

A three year postdoctoral position is available in my group, investigating plant centromere structure, function and evolution @camplantsci.bsky.social www.jobs.cam.ac.uk/job/51488/

Very happy to have contributed to this collaborative work, with main drivers Marion Orsucci and Adrien Sicard: Sexual selection drives the speciation of lineages with contrasting mating systems: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Here’s an interesting new paper on ROS1, an enzyme that removes DNA methylation and that is POSITIVELY controlled by DNA methylation. It’s repression during heat stress 🥵🌱 is crucial to suppress transposon mobility! 🧬 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Aneuploidy is the leading cause of pregnancy loss. In work led by @saracarioscia.bsky.social and @aabiddanda.bsky.social, we reanalyzed genetic testing data from 139,416 IVF embryos to discover variants associated with recombination phenotypes and aneuploidy risk. www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...

Cryogenic electron microscopy has been used to determine the detailed structure of an intermediate state called a “D-loop” that forms when strands of DNA are exchanged during homologous recombination. buff.ly/pZZfIso

How many chromosomes can an animal have? In our paper out now in @currentbiology.bsky.social we show that the Atlas blue butterfly has 229 chromosome pairs- the highest in diploid Metazoa! These arose by rapid autosome fragmentation while sex chromosomes stayed intact. www.cell.com/current-biol...

Do you want to know how to live-image internal floral organs with confocal microscope for up to 2 weeks? Check out our protocol: bio-protocol.org/en/bpdetail?... #Arabidopsis #Flower

Thrilled to share our latest work on meiotic recombination, where we mapped rates and distributions by sequencing thousands of individual sperm. This study was led by Stevan Novakovic and @caitlinharris.bsky.social , in collaboration with @davisjmcc.bsky.social and Cynthia Liu.

Thrilled to see such a thoughtful commentary on our paper by Maria Cuacos & Stefan Heckmann 🙌 Many thanks! 🔬🙏

The identification of the very conserved CTF18, SGO2 and SPF2 as suppressors of centromere-proximal crossovers highlights the importance of cohesin turnover in this process and opens up new possibilities for plant breeding. Much more in the paper : www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Preprint Alert! 🚨🧬 Not one, but two preprints! Meiotic orientation of kinetochore at meiosis is inforced by...[see below] www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... and Unlocking meiotic crossovers next to plant centromere www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... #meiosis4ever #everythingisconnected a thread👇

Six more years—plus a lot of blood, sweat, and tears—later, we are thrilled to finally share it: a cytological framework of female meiosis in Arabidopsis! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Our latest work is out in @pnas.org! We have quantified and modeled the dynamics of early meiosis events, which can get really messy in polyploids (doubled number of chromosomes, double the trouble), but can also get fixed through adaptive evolution 🧵1/8. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

We had some amazing talks from ECRs at the British Meiosis Meeting with winning talks jointly from Maja Szymanska-Lejman from @piotraz.bsky.social lab and Omar El Tokhy from Martinez-Perez lab with runner up Katie Hodson from @genomedymanics.bsky.social lab #BMM2025 #meiosis4eva

Very excited to share this new preprint from the lab (shorturl.at/l7lNq)! @hendersi.bsky.social si.bsky.social @camplantsci.bsky.social

@bencarty.bsky.social and the team did a fantastic job in a wonderful collaboration with @naltemose.bsky.social as well as Dani Fachinetti and Simona Giunta’s teams to help define the molecular basis for maintaining centromeric chromatin size and position. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Well, today wasn't a total loss. Saw an awesome tenure talk by my colleague @moorjanipriya.bsky.social, and this paper from former postdoc Simone Kohler (now at @embl.org) is finally out! Dynamic molecular architecture of the synaptonemal complex | Science Advances www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Natural variation modifies centromere proximal meiotic crossover frequency and segregation distortion in Arabidopsis thaliana biorxiv.org/content/10.1... new work from us on centromere inheritance and organisation @matt-naish.bsky.social @plantevolution.bsky.social @genomeevolution.bsky.social

Announcing a curated collection of long-read genomes for Arabidopsis thaliana: The 1001 Genomes Plus Project. Currently 453 unique accessions/almost 600 assemblies. Interested in contributing? Please contact us! #plantscience www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Centrophilic retrotransposon integration via CENH3 chromatin in Arabidopsis from Tetsuji Kakutani & colleagues - beautiful insights into control of transposon insertion into the centromeres www.nature.com/articles/s41...

This very moment when research on meiotic recombination, part of @szymanskalejman.bsky.social ’s PhD project, catches the attention of Poland’s Prime Minister 🇵🇱 @donald-tusk.bsky.social Alongside the announcement of increased funding for research. Can you imagine a better start of the weekend?🥳

Hi Bluesky. For my first post, I'd like to advertise the latest preprint from my lab, describing at long last our reconstitution of SPO11-dependent double-strand break formation from purified recombinant proteins. Outstanding work from PhD student Zhi (Zack) Zheng.