KunzLab@LMU

Our recent paper on the chloroplast ionome was featured in ASPB's newsletter a the Plant Cell Article of the Week.

Thx @aspbofficial.bsky.social @plantaeofficial.bsky.social for featuring our recent study doi.org/10.1093/plce... at @theplantcell.bsky.social as the TPC Article of the Week. The entire team was unbelievably thrilled.

In Vivo Monitoring of Energy Metabolism with Genetically Encoded Fluorescent Biosensors All organisms fuel and build themselves through their energy metabolism. While classic biochemistry conceptualizes the fluxes of energy and matter, our understanding of how energy metabolism works in ...

Freshly online 🗞️
In Vivo Monitoring of Energy Metabolism with Genetically Encoded Fluorescent Biosensors 🌱🔋🌈🔬

@jan-oleniemeier.bsky.social
@morganlab-saarland.bsky.social
@uni-muenster.de
doi.org/10.1146/annu...

🍃🎤🍃 Speaker announcement 🍃🎤🍃

Its that time again... introducing our next set of Invited Speakers for Photosynthesis 2026 🌱

🌿 Join us in Liverpool this July 🌿
⏰️ Abstract submission for oral presentations closes 31st March

Find out more 👉 photosynthesis2026.com

#plantscience #ICPR26
🧵1/7

An unconventional Rubisco small subunit underpins the CO2-concentrating organelle in land plants In many algae, photosynthesis is boosted by biophysical CO2-concentrating mechanisms, which pack the CO2-fixing enzyme Rubisco into liquid-like organelles called pyrenoids. Engineering C3 crops with a...

Our work on #hornwort #pyrenoids is finally out in @science.org! 🎉 We uncovered how hornworts pack their Rubisco into pyrenoids and successfully recreated them in Arabidopsis. A key step toward engineering more efficient photosynthesis in crops @btiscience.bsky.social www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Excited to share our latest preprint. Arabidopsis thaliana has been the leading model for plant genetics - but most of what we know comes from growth chambers.
Can this model also help us understand how climate shapes plants in the wild and reveal gene functions under real environmental variability?

"From industrial Past to Green Future" written around an ancient industry tower typical for the region together with a plant changing colours from blue to green is the motto of the German Society for Plant Sciences international Conference, the Botanik-Tagung, 2026 in Bochum Germany, that brings together plant scientists from several scientific disciplines. The logo highlights the structural change of the Ruhr area, from coal mining + heavy industries to the increasingly important issues of climate protection, sustainability + preservation of biodiversity, with plant sciences at the forefront of this transformation.

#PlantSciConfi

Registration open for
International Conference of our German Society for Plant Sciences
Botanik-Tagung #BT2026
in #Bochum, Germany
6 – 10 September 2026
www.deutsche-botanische-gesellschaft.de/u/82bsBT2026

#PlantSciJobs #PlantSciJob
7 PhD positions

SMART Plants for Tomorrow’s Needs

SMART Plants for Tomorrow’s Needs

@ceplas.bsky.social
in several locations

Deadline: 18 March 2026

www.deutsche-botanische-gesellschaft.de/stellenangeb...

Ionic regulation of thylakoid membrane architecture: Mg2+-driven destacking and restacking visualized Thylakoids destack and photosystems intermix upon Mg2+ removal; Mg2+ re-addition leads to structural reorganisations, as observed via expansion microscopy.

Ionic regulation of thylakoid membrane architecture: Mg2+-driven destacking and restacking visualized url: academic.oup.com/plphys/artic...

Thanks Christopher Grefen and organizers for the kind invitation to "Botanik-Tagung International Conference of the German Society for Plant Sciences" see you there: 6th – 10th September 2026 at Ruhr University Bochum, Germany

Please consider attending this conference in the Swiss Alps meetings.embo.org/event/26-pla... . Exciting science & great venue, lots of opportunities for selected talks from abstracts.
Join the conversation on Bluesky with #EMBOispp2026

Please share with potentially interested colleagues :)
#Bioinformatics #Genomics #EvolutionaryBiology

Location and date of the Molecular Biology of Plants Conference in Hennef, Germany, from 16 - 19 March 2026

#PlantSciConfi

Updated programme of the

Molecular Biology of Plants Conference
organized by @kunzlab.bsky.social et al.

is available on the website of our Section @molplantsci.bsky.social

www.pflanzen-molekularbiologie.de/en/conferenc...

Co-translational control of protein stability and quality in plants Abstract. Proteostasis relies on the coordinated control of protein synthesis, folding, modification and degradation, and an increasingly clear picture is

My review “Co-translational control of protein stability and quality in plants” is now online at @jxbotany.bsky.social, in which I describe how co-translational processing and ribosome-associated quality control together establish protein stability and fate early in synthesis. tinyurl.com/5dhhz9h6

A red/blue optoswitch for temporal control of chloroplast transcription and biogenesis in Arabidopsis www.nature.com/articles/s41... @natcomms.nature.com

'They've probably been untouched for 49 million years': The New Mexico cave expanding our search for alien life In one of the most baffling discoveries of the last decade, scientists have found a clue in a cave to how life might survive in deep space without light.

Cyanobacteria photosynthesise deep inside caves - use chlorophyll d and f to harvest IR light (surely the photosystem must still have chlorophyll a at its heart?) 🪴🌾🌱 #PlantScience
www.bbc.com/future/artic...

Beyond Mendel: a call to revisit the genotype–phenotype map through new experimental paradigms Abstract. The long-standing notion that genotypes map to phenotypes through simple one gene–one trait relationships continues to shape both research in the

Oft Herr Mendel dreams

that genes form living matter.

They do the latter.

doi.org/10.1093/gene...

CHLOROPLAST LIPID-REMODELING PROTEIN 23 functions during cold acclimation in Arabidopsis url: academic.oup.com/plphys/artic...
Finally out now. Thx Serena & team from @lmu.de & @lifescimunich.bsky.social for resolving this conundrum. The inner not the outer envelope is the home of this protein.

Loving this deep dive into the plastid ionome ➕🌿➖

@kunzlab.bsky.social neatly demonstrate how manipulatable the plastid ionome really is 🔧

Beautiful science, beautiful figures, beautiful team effort! A true go-to reference! Congrats, everyone! 🎉

Hey everyone joining us @ #MBP2026 in mid March, we just released the conference program. Please check it out here: syncandshare.lrz.de/dl/fiPnsPinb... we are super excited to see you all soon and to talk 🌱🔬🥼 over 🍻all night long!

One more week to apply! Send us your CV and motivation letter and be part of shaping the next generation of climate-resilient plants 🌱 More info 👇
@nicoeblanco.bsky.social
#Postdoc #CPUPR #ClimateChange #Multidisciplinary
📩 blanco@cefobi-conicet.gov.ar 📩 rosano@ibr-conicet.gov.ar

"A promotional graphic featuring a group photo of six DataPLANT team members. The image includes the DataPLANT logo and text that reads 'Empower your research. Dive into the DataPLANT ecosystem!' and 'Navigating change to build a stronger research data infrastructure.' The graphic is styled with a megaphone icon, wavy colorful banners, and a search bar displaying the URL https://nfdi4plants.org/.

Building a stronger research data infrastructure! 🌱
The DataPLANT team met in Mannheim to adapt our 2026 roadmap and Community Call. Empower your research and dive in! 👇
🔗 nfdi4plants.org
#DataPLANT #NFDI #PlantScience

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

Chemodiverse cell systems responses to UV in an algal sister of land plants #plantscience @jandevries.bsky.social

Oxygen metabolism in descendants of the archaeal-eukaryotic ancestor - Nature Sequencing of marine sediments finds 136 newly identified Heimdallarchaeia and several novel lineages, and indicates that Heimdallarchaeia evolved distinct metabolic capabilities from other Asgar...

This argues against the hydrogen hypothesis of mitochondrial origin. 👇
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

See also this excellent context (including a microscopy 🔬movie of crawling Asgards) by @carlzimmer.com:
www.nytimes.com/2026/02/18/s...

Announcing the publication of TAIR12: Consult the fully reannotated genome on the European Nucleotide Archive - Phoenix Bioinformatics TAIR (The Arabidopsis Information Resource), together with our nonprofit host Phoenix Bioinformatics, is pleased to announce the public release of TAIR12

🎉📣 #TAIR12, the latest reannotation of the Arabidopsis thaliana genome, is now available under accession number PRJEB100887 on ENA and NCBI!

Thank you all the volunteer researchers whose hard work has made this possible!

#plantscience #plantbiology 🧪

bit.ly/3ZHtneT

Latest #Parasiticplants research from my lab, incl. newly designed metabolic indices that may be useful in other plant studies:

Compartmentalisation along the stem axis of Striga and Alectra reflects distinct zones of carbohydrate acquisition and utilisation url: academic.oup.com/pcp/article/...

A pilot in a submersible vehicle collecting sediments samples in 30 meters of water looking for Asgards (microbial relatives of eukaryotes)

One of the biggest questions in biology is how complex cells evolved about 2 billion years ago. Here's my new story on how scientists are solving the mystery of eukaryotes like us. Gift link: nyti.ms/4qMbo22

We are hiring!
Fully funded PhD position on an exciting project to understand a fundamental mechanism of mitochondrial biogenesis. We will primarily rely on cryo-EM and protein-biochemical approaches.
Please share!

More about us: martinottlab.com

Apply here:
web103.reachmee.com/ext/I005/103...

Loss of Mitochondrial FMT Restores Chloroplast Proteostasis via Inter-organelle Compensation www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Pegatina con la cara de un perro adorable con la inscripción "el ayudante garantiza la calidad de tu pedido"

Tarjeta de Dinosa Labs y un boli verde con dibujos de dinosaurios

Caja abierta con papel de envolver verde y un cloroplasto de crochet dentro

cloroplasto de crochet en sección longitudinal

Mirad quien llegó hoy al laboratorio! Estoy más allá de contenta 💚 🌱 con el cloroplasto que me ha tejido @dinosalabs.es (hay mucha ciencia y magia de por medio)
Artistaza!!

Very nice genetic dissection of the roles of BSK kinases in brassinosteroid signaling by Wenqiang Tang's lab. bsk-u (ko for BSK1 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 11 & 12) really looks like a bri1 null mutant and can be rescued by over-expressing BSK3. nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10....