Thank you ETH Zürich Life magazine for this opportunity to share my adventure as #queer #artists and a #postdoc ! Thank you so much Kirsten Bomblies for your kind words in the article, and for your wonderful support in this journey! 🥹

My first ETH PhD student, Amrita Möhl-Raj, graduated & did a great job! At the Apero, a reunion of some ex-Weigel folk (plantevolution.bsky.social 🌱) - former technician (me), former postdoc Francois Parcy (@Francois_Parcy) and former PhD student, now Postdoc here, Thanvi Srikant (@ThSrikant)

Plants with multiple sets of chromosomes have advantages over their relatives with a double set. But they often start out infertile. Why? Biologists at ETH Zurich have now discovered a new reason.

brnw.ch/21wIQPz

D-BIOL @ ETH Zurich Kirsten Bomblies #polyploids

Thrilled to announce - our latest on polyploid arenosa just got published in Science :-) Thanks to the amazing team that made it happen including @Thsrikant and Adrián Gonzalo!! And thanks reviewers for enthusiasm, especially reviewer 1, whoever you are!
science.org/doi/10.1126/sc…

Mark your calendars, dear meiosis community! We have our location: #EMBOmeiosis 2025 will be in Engelberg, Switzerland, June 22-26. Organizers: Joao Matos, Mathilde Grelon, Takashi Akera Takashi Akera, John Weir @weir_science, Marinela Dukic and me (Image from Wikipedia).

We have a new paper out from Adrián Gonzalo showing that we can partially diploidize polyploid meiosis by crossover reduction! It doesn't rescue neo-4X fertility (yet), but what does, is following soon... :-)
pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pn…

To celebrate 10 (actually 11, but who's counting?) years of studying adaptation to polyploidy. I celebrated by making an illustration of my favourite model Arabidopsis arenosa.

This came up as a memory today - 12 years ago one of my star PhD students, Brian Arnold, passed his quals at Harvard, and this is the cake my lab got him. Very pragmatic people. 😂

'And talk to me (not the slide) '

journals.biologists.com/jcs/article/13…

I newly have a book contract with OUP (on molecular basis of plant development/plasticity)! Today I made my 1st figure, for the leaf chapter. I drew this on my iPad, using a software called ProCreate - so fun! And this also serves as a pre-pre-advertisement for the book ;-)

Art tweet! The wonderful plant biologist / poet Anne Osbourne Anne Osbourn wrote some really cool poems for my alliterative animal alphabet drawings. Just published online at Ekphrastic - Here is the link (scroll down to see them). ekphrastic.net/?fbclid=IwAR3G…

This makes me extremely happy - What a wonderful compliment to get from the students!! Thank you VSETH and thank you Biology students VeBiS! This was a truly wonderful honor🙂

My latest review, on the molecular basis of adaptation to polyploid meiosis. This will be my last review for a while. I swear :-) Thank you raphael mercier for the invite - it was fun to write and I learned a lot.
link.springer.com/article/10.100…

Excited to become a new member of the Swiss National Science Foundation Research Council. It is an exciting and demanding role and I am looking forward to it :-) Schweizerischer Nationalfonds (SNF)
snf.ch/en/3SIwuIP6l7B…

The fantastic Francois🌼Parcy 🟦 who taught me what it means to have a high bar in science! Many happy memories from 20 years ago #WeigelFest in 1996 He was a postdoc, I was Detlef’s new technician….

This was such an amazing event - so great to celebrate an awesome scientist and mentor and see so many old friends!

The Bomblies lab went on a fun and informative annual retreat. We had a writing and 'science story' workshop, and lots of good discussion and recreation too! I can very much recommend retreats 😁

Check out our (Katie Peichel&Me) paper in the PNASNews Special Feature on Mendel published today. We review our current understanding of the genetics of adaptation across eukaryotic systems, integrating empirical findings & recent theoretical advances.
bit.ly/PNASMendel

Happy to announce a new chapter in the multigenic story of autopolyploid meiotic adaptation! Out today in PLOS Genetics. This one about allelic variation in REC8, and its interaction with ASY1 and ASY3. Beautiful cytology as always from Chris Morgan! tinyurl.com/yckbh9db

When holiday merges with work - found an Arabidopsis arenosa population on a hike in the Gorge du Doubs. #arabidopsis #arenosa - It may be the southernmost of the Hiercynian lineage. In any case close.