Jake Harris

Congrats Martin! Looking forward to reading in detail!!

Designing and testing CRISPRi-based synthetic gene circuits in plants - Nature Protocols This protocol details the design principles and procedures for building programmable CRISPRi-based gene circuits, and for testing individual components and the assembled circuits in various plant spec...

Where is the #Arabidopsis community on @bsky.app? Any #Brassica fans? See our recent protocol covering design principles and considerations for building and testing programmable and reversible CRISPRi-based gene circuits in plants.
🧪 #plantscience @natprot.nature.com @ryanlister.bsky.social

SET1/MLL complexes control transcription independently of H3K4me3 Histone H3 lysine 4 trimethylation (H3K4me3) at gene promoters is thought to play a central role in gene transcription. H3K4 methylation is deposited by the SET1 (A/B) and MLL (1-4) multi-protein comp...

An early Christmas present for those interested in chromatin and transcription! Fantastic work from @au-ho-yu.bsky.social and @aleksszczurek.bsky.social . Thanks to Inge and Michiel for their help. Please repost!

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Congrats Julia!!

🌿 3 new PhD positions in the Ton lab @PPS_UoS. Part of the ERC project '#PlantMemo', exploring how plants remember & respond to stress.
🧬 PhD 1 (UK only)👉 www.findaphd.com/phds/project...
🦠 PhD 2 (UK & EU)👉 www.findaphd.com/phds/project...
🌱 PhD 3 (UK only)👉 www.findaphd.com/phds/project...
#PhD

Bioluminescent sentinel plants enable autonomous diagnostics of viral infections Plants engineered with synthetic genetic programs can transform how we monitor and manage the extension of crop pests and diseases. Here, we establish a bioluminescent platform in Nicotiana benthamian...

Such a cool pre-print on making sentinel plants - so much potential!

Bioluminescent sentinel plants enable autonomous diagnostics of viral infections

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

advert text as bitmap

picture of the Schornacklab team

Plz RP. Come join us at @slcuplants.bsky.social @cam.ac.uk to study effector-targeted plant processes impacting plant cell biology and development.
www.cam.ac.uk/jobs/post-do...
www.schornacklab.net

The research led by @c-jake-harris.bsky.social's group in collaboration with @hendersi.bsky.social's lab, has uncovered a new way to reprogramme plant genomes using ‘epigenetic engineering’ to change gene activity without altering the underlying DNA sequence.

tinyurl.com/5n88wrju

Thanks Sjon!!

And last but definitely not least, a BIG thank you to the reviewers - fair, respectful, insightful. Genuinely thank you, whoever you are 🙏

I also want to send a big shout out and thank you to Jason @gardiner-lab.bsky.social, who helped me get set up with SunTag and SDG2 while we were both still postdocs in the Jacobsen lab.

And also a huge thank you to @jacobsenucla.bsky.social , where the discovery that SDG2 activates gene expression was first made by his then PhD student, Ash, and for allowing me to work on and then further develop the system in my own lab.

Also huge thank you to @hendersi.bsky.social and his group, was a fantastic collaborative effort!

This was a big team effort, I want to thank in particular the first authors Jenia and Vanda!

To overcome this, we turned to the mammalian H3K4 methyltransferase, PRDM9. Not only does PRDM9 function brilliantly to activate gene expression, it also results in less off-target. Perhaps the orthogonality of PRDM9 means nothing to recruit /stabilise at non-targeted plant chromatin..?

All peachy right? Well there is a catch, SunTag-SDG2 also causes some off-target effects, which manifest as increased background noise in H3K4me3 ChIP-seq datasets.

Ok what about modulating something other than gene expression, like crossovers? Here, we teamed up with @hendersi.bsky.social , targeting SunTag-SDG2 to an entire centromere, finding that this unlocked recombination in surrounding regions that are normally highly suppressed. Hello plant breeding…

Next we targeted a ‘useful’ gene, namely the plant resistance gene, SNC1. We show by modifying the epigenome at this single locus, you can generate plants with enhanced resistance to pathogens. (big thanks to @jurriaanton.bsky.social group for getting us set up with this assay!)

By coupling the CRISPR/dCas9 based SunTag system with the plant H3K4me3 methyltransferase, SDG2, we show that H3K4me3 can activate the expression of a gene that is typically silent, FWA. Works super well, and honestly slightly unexpected as DNA methylation is though to be the main player for FWA...

H3K4me3 is one of the most highly conserved and well-studied chromatin marks. Yet, its function remains debated. Spoiler alert – our work provides more pieces of evidence to stack on the pile in favour of it having a direct instructive effect on transcription.

CRISPR targeting of H3K4me3 activates gene expression and unlocks centromere-proximal crossover recombination in Arabidopsis Nature Communications - Binenbaum et al. demonstrate that precise CRISPR-based targeting of a key chromatin mark (H3K4me3) can switch on genes, boost disease resistance, and unlock meiotic...

Very excited to share our work published in Nature Comms last week! Here we describe a range of cool things that can be done once you have the power to control deposition of H3K4me3…

rdcu.be/eNEf4

A short thread:

Bryophytes hold a larger gene family space than vascular plants - Nature Genetics A super-pangenome analysis incorporating 123 newly sequenced bryophyte genomes reveals that bryophytes exhibit a larger number of unique and lineage-specific gene families than vascular plants.

Very important paper and resource. Bryophyte genomes expanded by one order of magnitude. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Transposable elements are vectors of recurrent transgenerational epigenetic inheritance DNA methylation loss at transposable elements (TEs) can affect neighboring genes and be epigenetically inherited in plants, yet the determinants and significance of this additional system of inheritan...

Out First Release in @science.org this week:

A large scale analysis of the epigenetics of transposable elements in Arabidopsis shows transgenerational stability

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

#PlantScience

HDAC3 prevents enhancer hyperactivation to enable developmental transitions Dynamic gene regulation requires precise cooperation between transcription factors and chromatin modifiers at regulatory elements to achieve not only activation or repression, but also appropriate tra...

Genes are not On/Off switches. In a new preprint we show that HDAC3 is key to establish correct transcriptional dose in development. Gr8 work from N. Stamidis @ucph.bsky.social and collab. @jamiehackett.bsky.social @gregersenlab.bsky.social . Huge thx to all authors! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Wow congrats! Awesome news and well deserved!!

Our paper on VEL-dependent polymerization is featured on the cover of this month's issue of @cp-molcell.bsky.social 🎉 The cover art was created by my talented friend Awesta - the result of hours of brainstorming together over video. Great fun teaming up for this!

Welcome @jsontgerath.bsky.social and @hartman-plantlab.com looking forward to many memory related collabs in the future!

Awesome. Just awesome 👏👏

Congrats - looks awesome! And as a new parent, I love marigold..!

Mutation of a stromal C-terminal threonine residue of Photosystem II subunit S slows down NPQ induction and speeds up relaxation In order to prevent damage by excess light, photosystem antennae can switch to an energy dissipative mode (termed non-photochemical quenching, NPQ). In higher plants, this switch is facilitated by the...

Check out our recent pre-print which identifies the role of the first stromal residue involved in PsbS’ NPQ function!

We found mutating the c-term b-strand reduced induction but increased relaxation ☀️ 🌿

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...