Hsi-Ching Yen

TIGP-MBAS PhD student | Taiwan 🇹🇼 | #Agrobacterium | Bacterial Genomics | Plant lover 🌱 | Coffee lover ☕️ | Baseball fan ⚾️

[Nature Microbiology @NatureMicrobiol]

Bacteria–phage coevolution drives variation in bacterial wilt disease incidence via resistance–virulence trade-offs https://t.co/jfARQEJWrn #MicroSky

[WIMI Biotech @wimi_biotech]

🌿 Using a plant virus to deliver CRISPR — no transformation, no regeneration needed!

New bioRxiv preprint: TuMV (Turnip mosaic virus) engineered to carry Cas9 gRNAs into tobacco plants.

🔧 Add Csy4 RNA processing: editing jumps from ~1% → up to 23%
🎯 Simultaneous multi-gene editing at 2 loci confirmed
🌱 Works in both inoculated & systemic leaves
⚠️ Germline transmission not yet achieved

A promising new route for transformation-free plant genome editing 🧬

Whitham lab, Iowa State | bioRxiv
https://t.co/SnZo3ecGZ3

#CRISPR #PlantBiology #VirusDelivery #GenomeEditing #TuMV

[Science Advances @ScienceAdvances]

Researchers have identified a number of effector proteins, molecules secreted by fungal pathogens that can modulate and subvert plant immunity, that likely came from ancient antimicrobials and were repurposed by fungi during coevolution. https://t.co/SbShzrqq3q

[Nature Microbiology @NatureMicrobiol]

Benchmarking shotgun metagenomics https://t.co/1b54JHlpJN #MicroSky

[Nature Plants @NaturePlants]

New Article: "A fungal nuclease effector subverts the chloroplast genome and triggers cell death to promote infection" https://t.co/lBhtnSZRrb

MoNee6 is a chloroplast-targeted nuclease from Magnaporthe oryzae. Engineering OsClpP1 enhances Nee6 degradation and blast resistance.

[Chih-Horng Kuo (郭志鴻) @ChihHorngKuo]

Lotz B, Brodskaia L, Fritz C, Hebecker S, Tauchert MK, et al. The Ti Plasmid-Encoded VirJ Functions as a Lysyl-Phosphatidylglycerol Hydrolase in Agrobacterium tumefaciens. Molecular Microbiology. https://t.co/9WUUdjGjfd

[Huiluo Cao 曹慧荦 @hlcao]

Bacterial defense systems and host ecology drive the evolution of intra-species lineages: Cell Reports https://t.co/G4P6Onm0ug

[Nature Plants @NaturePlants]

New Article: "Amino-acid-transporter-mediated assembly of rhizosphere microbiota enhances soil organic nitrogen acquisition in rice" https://t.co/ao4U73tko4

The japonica allele of LHT1 enhances organic N use efficiency by recruiting specific rhizosphere microbiota.

[Evolutionary Genomics @evol_genomics]

Using gene trees with lineage-specific duplicates for phylogenetic inference mitigates the effects of long-branch attraction https://t.co/lqwxHszp8R @systbiol

[jie huang @jieoxford]

Pathogen-inspired engineering of plant protease enhances late blight resistance | PNAS https://t.co/fFUMm3RVXP Happy to share our story on how pathogen-inspired engineering of a plant protease enhances resistance to late blight.

[Tatsuya Nobori @nobolly]

Host microenvironment in potato–Phytophthora infestans interaction revealed by single-cell spatiotemporal transcriptome https://t.co/5x82jzDUqh

[Patrick Hsu @pdhsu]

an absolute shame. @harvard cutting PhD admissions

"The Organismic and Evolutionary Biology department will shrink its class size by roughly 75 percent to three new Ph.D. students [...] Molecular and Cellular Biology will reduce its figure to four new students, and Chemistry and Chemical Biology will go down to four or five admits"

https://t.co/Q21WLdMpBT

[Meixia Zhao @MeixiaZhao]

I am seeking a highly motivated and enthusiastic PhD student to join my lab in Spring or Fall 2026. If you are interested in genetics, epigenetics, or bioinformatics, please feel free to contact me at [email protected].

[Dr Meming @Dr_Meming]

My advice to new PhD students

[Evolutionary Genomics @evol_genomics]

Horizontal Gene Transfer Inference: Gene Presence–Absence Outperforms Gene Trees https://t.co/DUJE8b7LYs @MolBioEvol

[Hsi-Ching Yen @HsiChingYen]

Co-evolution and Gene Transfers Drive Speciation Patterns in Host-Associated Bacteria https://t.co/ehENRhUjPC

[Nick Desnoyer @NickDesnoyer]

In one year, I genetically engineered the boring Arabidopsis into a beautiful ornamental flower 🧬🌹

Here is how and why I gave this model organism a visual upgrade 🧵(1/7)

[Yu Sugihara @YuSugiharaY]

Please check our latest paper on using @GoogleDeepMind AlphaFold 3 to study NLR immune receptors. Here we use AI-guided structural modelling to distinguish between sensor and helper NLRs! 👇🧵 (1/10) #EvoMPMI #NLRbiology #PlantPath #PlantSci
https://t.co/rwx7pqcM2L

[Ziheng Yang's Group @zihengyang]

If you have ever wondered whether the PAML documentation could be more interactive... We have good news for you! The PAML GitHub repository has been updated and a fresh PAML Wiki is now available for you to navigate the PAML documentation! 📄💻 (1/n)
https://t.co/pJXmmwrL8i

[Mushtaq Bilal, PhD @MushtaqBilalPhD]

AI apps like ChatGPT generate fake references to papers that don't exist.

So, researchers at the University of Washington built OpenScholar.

It's a large language model integrated with millions of research papers. And it's totally free.

Here's how to use it: