Ben Williams
@WilliamsSci
Assistant Professor @PMB_Berkeley. Fascinated by epigenetics, evolution, genomes, and all aspects of plant biology.
Few things in science are as heart-warming as seeing one of your PhD or postdoc buddies start their own lab and begin absolutely KILLING IT with amazing discoveries!
I am excited to share the latest paper from my lab where we leverage the selection bias of condensate-promoting oncofusions to uncover molecular rules governing condensate specificity and function. cell.com/cell/fulltext/….
I am excited to share the latest paper from my lab where we leverage the selection bias of condensate-promoting oncofusions to uncover molecular rules governing condensate specificity and function. cell.com/cell/fulltext/….
please share - 2 postdoc positions available - molecular physiology of stomata and plant water use of efficiency lab.igb.illinois.edu/leakey/post-do… @RIPEproject @ASPB @Stomata_Tweets @PlantPhys
Delighted to share this. A novel H4 variant that modulates chromatin to mediate salt stress response. This mammoth work was driven to perfection by @VivekHariSunda1, a wonderful PhD student who also taught me. We report its CryoEM structure & unusual chemistry @NCBS_Bangalore 1/3
New Article: "An Oryza-specific histone H4 variant predisposes H4 lysine 5 acetylation to modulate salt stress responses" rdcu.be/eg0Zs An Oryza-specific histone H4 variant (H4.V) forms condensed, less stable nucleosomes, regulating the salt stress transcriptome.
> bacteria were engineered to make molecules that absorb light in unique ways. > the microbes were buried in soil. > using a drone with a hyperspectral camera, one can "see" where the microbes are buried from ~300 feet away. one of the most sci-fi papers I've seen in awhile.
In 2004, it took the world a year to add one gigawatt of solar power — now it takes a day.
Extremely clever new NGS tech from Roche 🧬 If it's hard to discriminate between nucleic acids accurately with a nanopore, why not synthesize a new polymer off a DNA template that is easier to sequence? It's an intuitively simple idea, but took *a ton* of creative nucleic acid…
Transcription factors instruct DNA methylation patterns in plant reproductive tissues biorxiv.org/content/10.110… #biorxiv_plants
Excited to share work from Zhongshou Wu in our lab showing that GDE1 and REM transcription factors help shape DNA methylation patterning. Together with work from Julie Law’s lab also just out, this shows an important way that genetics directs epigenetics. biorxiv.org/content/10.110…
🌱 Egg cell-specific degradation of CENH3 using engineered E3-ligases successfully induce haploids ⚠️ Preprint from Andreas Houben's lab @LeibnizIPK 👉🏼 Gametophytic degradation of CENH3 - a synthetic biology approach for haploid induction in plants 📖doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.…
Very pleased to see this work out that identifies a code in C3 rice co-opted to allow C4 photosynthesis. doi.org/10.1038/s41586… Thanks to all involved but in particular @l_luginbuehl @JoeEcker @_joseph_swift Great transatlantic partnership. @plantsci
Here is something to distract you from the gloom: What can metagenomics tell us about the taxonomic composition of lichen symbioses? A peer-reviewed version of our analysis of >400 lichen metagenomes from around the world is now out in @PLOSBiology. 1/12 doi.org/10.1371/journa…
Our work on evolution and functional divergence of DNA methyltransferases is out @ScienceAdvances. Kudos to @jiang_jianjun. We revealed how two closely related CMTs evolve and coordinately shape the non-CG methylation landscapes in plants. science.org/doi/10.1126/sc…