Inlay

Postdoc in Molecular Palaeobotany and Evolution Group @ Uni of Edinburgh. Working on bryophytes and lycophytes, interested in how plants conquered land at the molecular level 🌱🍀🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

There are Science papers and then there are *I just dropped and shattered my mug of coffee Usual Suspects style* Science papers www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

#Viewpoint: Status of mycorrhiza research in 2026 @alexdallaire.bsky.social & Hiromu Kameoka 👇 📖 nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... #LatestIssue #PlantScience

Super excited to see Atlas of Botany in print!!! A pleasure to work with the wonderful team from DK and the @thebotanics.bsky.social I wrote the Ancient Biomes section covering some of my favourite stories about plant evolution from the last 500 million years! @instmolplantsci.bsky.social

Mycena subcyanocephala, a tiny, bright blue mushroom species, was discovered in the tropical forests of Taiwan.

The final version of our Marchantia cell cycle paper is now published. A much improved version compared to the preprint. Cyclins, repressors, and more. Thanks to co-authors and reviewers. #PlantScience. academic.oup.com/plcell/advan...

Institute of Molecular Plant Sciences are at the Meadows Festival! Please visit if you'd like to know more about what we do and why we study molecular plant sciences 🌱 @instmolplantsci.bsky.social

RNA from herbarium samples is more stable than previously thought and can be extracted for different uses genome.cshlp.org/content/earl.... Study led by @atyszka.org and in collaboration with @philcarella.bsky.social @khongsamchia.bsky.social @phylonatworks.bsky.social @sciencedrew.bsky.social

Our latest review on the evolution of molecular networks involved in the development of plant conducting tissues is now out in @jxbotany.bsky.social @ibmcp.bsky.social Check it out here: academic.oup.com/jxb/advance-...

The last paper of my PhD work in Argentina. We dig deeper into the Marchantia MpC1HDZ transcription factor. Many experiments, but my favourite: in addition to its role in oil body cell differentiation, it is also important for another cell type! #PlantScience academic.oup.com/plphys/advan...

How common is multicellularity in bacteria? And archaea? And how does it evolve? We wrote a short review "On the architecture and evolution of prokaryotic multicellularity". Preprint link: bit.ly/4ta06Gq Sharing and comments are much appreciated. 1/4

Noel Blanco-Touriñán

Although DNA has built the framework for molecular insights from museum collections, the utility of archival RNA remains largely unexplored. Likely a consequence of the known instability of RNA relative to DNA, this has effectively precluded the use of herbaria for transcriptomics. Here, we challenge the assumption that herbaria cannot be used for transcriptomics by assembling transcriptomes from RNA extracted from herbarium specimens. Through systematic comparison of transcriptomes from fresh-collected, silica-dried, and archival specimens, we demonstrate the suitability of herbarium-derived RNA for transcriptomics. We show the practical applicability of archival mRNA by functionally validating a plant immune receptor synthesized from a specimen collected in 1956. These results contradict the community consensus regarding archival RNA and open the door to subsequent transcriptomic explorations of rare and extinct plant species. Our findings highlight the importance of preserving and utilizing the diversity embedded within herbarium collections.

Enrico Sandro Colizzi