The Plant Cell Atlas (PCA) is a community of scientists interested in comprehensively describing the state of various plant cell types and integrating high-resolution location information of nucleic acids, proteins, and metabolites within plant cells. After a two-year hiatus, this newsletter will be sent out quarterly to keep you informed about the latest developments, events, and resources from the PCA community. If you have any news that you would like to share in upcoming newsletters, visit this form here: PCA Newsletter Collection Form.

In This Issue

Plant Methods Exchange (PMEX) Workshop Series 

PCA Plant Cell Identity Committee Member Mingyuan Zhu is organizing the next iteration of the PMEX Workshop Series, Interactome and PTM Discovery: Profiling with LC-MS Proteomics.

This workshop will feature two panelists: 

Dr. Lin Xi, Department of Plant Systems Biology, University of Hohenheim, Germany
Topic: LC-MS-based Quantitative Interactome of membrane protein complexes

Dr. Zhi Li, Department of Genetics, Development, and Cell Biology, Iowa State University, US
Topic: Using LC-MS for study post-translational modification from plant samples

Registration for this workshop closes on January 27th, 2026.

Dates: January 28th, 2026 9:00am PT / 12:00pm ET / 6:00pm CT. 
Location: Zoom

Data Reproducibility Workshop

Registration is open for the 3-part Data Reproducibility Virtual Workshop Series! The Data Management & Infrastructure and Single-Cell Sequencing Committees are co-organizing a workshop series that aims to equip participants with essential skills and knowledge to achieve the critical goal of ensuring data reproducibility in single-cell research, especially as the technology that enables this research strategy becomes more widely adopted, and the utility of the data generated grows in scale.

This 3-part workshop will take place over three days and will cover:

Day 1 (February 9, 2026 - 9:00 AM PST): Version control (git) for single-cell code repositories and recording sample metadata
Day 2 (February 10, 2026 - 9:00 AM PST): Reproducibly running single-cell preprocessing pipelines using Docker
Day 3 (February 11, 2026 - 9:00 AM PST): Using reproducible workflows in R and/or Python for analyzing and visualizing single-cell data

Each workshop will consist of a 30-minute introduction to the topic followed by a 60-90 minute live demonstration. Participants will learn practical approaches to enhance the reproducibility of their single-cell data analysis, leading to more robust and reliable research outcomes.

Dates: February 9-11, 2026 9:00am PT / 12:00pm ET / 6:00pm CT. 
Location: Zoom
Registration Deadline: February 8, 2026 11:59pm ET

PCA Imaging Workshop Webinar Series Part II

Save the date for the second session of the PCA Imaging Workshop Webinar Series: Segmentation Plant Images with FIJI and MorphoGraphX (For Intermediate Users). The full event description and registration will be available soon on the PCA website. Keep an eye out on our social media and website for more information!

Dates: Wednesday, April 29, 2026 9:30am CT / 10:30am ET / 7:30am PT
Location: Zoom

2027 PCA Gordon Research Conference and Seminar 

Save the date for the 2027 Single-Cell Approaches in Plant Biology Gordon Research Conference. The Single-Cell Approaches Gordon Research Seminar will be held August 7-8, 2027, followed by the Single-Cell Approaches Gordon Research Conference on August 8-13, 2027 at the University of Southern Maine, Portland, Maine. Keep an eye out on our social media and website for more information!

Dates: August 8-13, 2027
Location: University of Southern Maine, Portland, Maine

New Selected Publications from the PCA Committee Members

Kawa, D., Schneider, H. M., & Kaisa Kajala. (2025). Coordination of cortex modifications in time, space, and under stress. New Phytologist, 248(4), 1677–1685. https://doi.org/10.1111/nph.70581

Nguyen, C. C., Thibivilliers, S., Li, Y., Fazekas, C. T., Yang, E. J. Y., Asiamah, J. Y., Peláez‐Vico, M. Á., Castro‐Guerrero, N., Mendoza‐Cozatl, D., Martin, O. C., Huang, S. C., Mittler, R., & Libault, M. (2025). Uncovering the core genetic programs governing plant guard cell biology. New Phytologist, 249(1), 198–217. https://doi.org/10.1111/nph.70678 

Tennant, S., Amezquita, E. J., Li, Y., Smith, B., Subramanyam, S. S. M. V., Cervantes-Pérez, S. A., Thibivilliers, S., Bhattacharya, S., Klaver, J., & Libault, M. (2025). The differential subcellular localization of soybean transcripts, an additional regulatory mechanism of gene activity. Genome Biology, 10.1186/s13059-02503920-z. https://doi.org/10.1186/s13059-025-03920-z

Single-Cell Paper Curation Initiative

Together with the Center for Sustainable Plant Innovation and Resilience Through International Teamwork (C-SPIRIT), the Plant Cell Atlas is curating 186 single-cell plant papers to help with ingestion into the EBI's Single-Cell Expression Atlas!

You can view this list of papers here!

2024-2025 PCA Annual Report

The 2024-2025 PCA Annual Report is out! Take a look to learn about the accomplishments of the PCA community from the past year. View it Here!

Plant Cell Identity series is on YouTube

Did you miss a session from the Plant Cell Identity Webinar Series? We’ve got you covered! Full recordings of each webinar, as well as all other public PCA recordings, are now available on our YouTube channel!

Follow us on Bluesky!

The Plant Cell Atlas is on Bluesky! Don’t forget to follow us!

For questions about the PCA Initiative please contact us at plantcellatlas@gmail.com.

This initiative is funded by grants from the National Science Foundation (Grant #'s MCB-1916797, MCB-2052590, and MCB-2420360).