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

PCA 2026 Core Network Participant Committees Meeting

The 5th annual NSF Research Coordination Network’s Core Network Participant (CNP) meeting is happening this weekend, July 10-11, 2026 in St. Louis, MO at the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center. Accomplishments from the past year and goals for how to continue to grow the PCA community will be discussed. 

CNP members participate in PCA Committees. If you are interested in becoming a member of the CNP,  please review the PCA Committees page and contact the chair of the Committee. More information about joining the PCA Committees is found in the PCA bylaws.

Members of the PCA CNP discuss the future of the PCA Research Coordination Network (RCN) in breakout groups. 

2026 SynBio Hackathon

PCA Synthetic Biology Committee members Jenn Brophy, Nicola Patron, and Alex Borowsky are organizing the 2026 SynBio Hackathon to take place July 12-13, 2026 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, Massachusetts. We’re excited to share that 19 participants have been selected from our application pool. Thank you to everyone who applied - we look forward to seeing everyone at this event!

PCA Imaging Workshop Webinar Series Part III

The third and final session of the 2026 Imaging Workshop Webinar Series: Using AI for Segmenting Plant Images will be happening in the fall of 2026. Keep an eye out for more information!
 

2027 PCA Gordon Research Conference and Seminar 

Save the date for the 2027 Single-Cell Approaches in Plant Biology Gordon Research Conference and Seminar. The Single-Cell Approaches Gordon Research Seminar (GRS) will be held August 7-8, 2027, followed by the Single-Cell Approaches Gordon Research Conference (GRC) on August 8-13, 2027, both 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

Recent Publication Highlights on Single-Cell Approaches in Plant Biology

Coate, J. E., Doyle, J. J., Farmer, A., Huang, S. C., Kajala, K., Kenchanmane Raju, S. K., Kumari, S., Palfalvi, G., Radin, I., Singh, P., Stata, M., Ware, D., Yao, Q., & Nikolov, L. A. (2026). A single-cell blueprint for cellular diversity in the Green Lineage. Current Biology, 36(11), R577–R589. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2026.04.003 

Facundo, R., Bonter, I., Marius, R., Go, T., Guzman-Chavez, F., De Batté, F., Hirakawa, Y., & Haseloff, J. (2026). A simple cell-cycle control system in Marchantia polymorpha provides a framework for understanding plant cell proliferation. The Plant Cell, 38(6). https://academic.oup.com/plcell/article/38/6/koag103/8650546

Li, Y., Dai, J., Dong, Z., Luo, X., Shao, W., Cui, Y., Xu, X., Yang, T., Ma, X., Kong, L., Huang, S., & Dong, S. (2026). Host microenvironment in potato–Phytophthora infestans interaction revealed by single-cell spatiotemporal transcriptome. Nature Plants, 12(1), 241–257. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41477-025-02181-9

Lowensohn, T. N., Cody, W. B., Tsai, C., Vlahos, A. E., Call, C. C., Gao, X. J., & Sattely, E. S. (2026). A single-cell screening platform accelerates functional genetics in plants. Nature Biotechnology. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41587-026-03094-4

Nam, H., Kim, D., Tang, Y., Fang, Y., Haghani, M., Dhulipalla, K. V., Chen, M., Li, S., & Gu, Y. (2026). A multiomics atlas of the Arabidopsis nuclear envelope. Science Advances, 12(19). https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aee7658

Rahni, R., Lee, L. R., Vissers, G., Suresh, I., Gorodokin, B. M., Ip, P.-L., Guillotin, B., & Birnbaum, K. D. (2026). Histone deacetylases and cell-cycle regulators orchestrate cell-identity transitions during Arabidopsis root regeneration. Molecular Plant, 19(5), 1036–1058. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.molp.2026.03.013 

Su, H., Li, Y., Chen, Y., Lu, H., Zhang, R., Dong, W., Han, B., Zhao, Q., & Wang, P. (2026). Assembly of Arundinella anomala genome to facilitate single-cell resolved functional and developmental characterization of C4 distinctive cells. Nature Plants, 12(1), 88–106. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41477-025-02183-7

Wang, G., Wang, J., Yang, H., Wu, J., Yu, Y., Zhang, X., Tian, J., Ma, Y., Xia, G., Xue, Y., Persson, S., Zhou, L., & Kong, Z. (2026). Differential cellulose distribution drives polarized growth of cotton fibers. Nature Communications, 17(1). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-71314-1 

Xia, F.-N., Liu, K., Wang, J., Zhan, L., Ang, L., Zheng, H., Li, J.-F., & He, X. (2026). Mapping the zygote-to-adult developmental cell phylogeny in Arabidopsis thaliana reveals a three-cell rule of branching. Nature Plants, 12(4), 880–896. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41477-026-02264-1 

Yan, M., Fan, W., Meng, Y., Zhao, J., Yang, W., Xu, Z., Gao, Y., Zhuang, H., Zhou, W., Wang, Y., Huang, Q., Yuan, L., Wang, H., & Yang, J. (2026). A conserved ethylene-triggered cell death mechanism may underlie hollow stem formation across plant species. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 123(13). https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2530957123 

Yan, H., Jin, Y., Wang, C., Zhang, X., Jia, J., Cao, X., Marand, A. P., Xia, M., Zhang, X., Zhong, Y., Tang, X., Zhai, Q., Liu, T., Tian, S., Li, X., Li, X., Yao, J., Schmitz, R. J., Wang, Z., & Huang, L. (2026). Single-cell chromatin accessibility and cis-regulatory element analyses in plants using the scPlantReg platform. Nature Plants, 12(5), 1116–1132. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41477-026-02289-6 

Yi, J., Chen, Y., Tian, S., Vlad, D., Yang, J., Sedelnikova, O., Zhao, C., Su, H., Dong, W., Zhang, Y., Zhu, X.-G., Langdale, J. A., Wang, J.-W., & Wang, P. (2026). Single-cell and tissue transcriptomes unveil factors regulating vein initiation and development in grass leaf primordia. The Plant Cell, 38(3), koag035. https://doi.org/10.1093/plcell/koag035

Zheng, D., Lu, X., Lu, Y., Liang, P., Shang, N., Xu, J., Yao, J., Mo, F., Chu, Q., Fan, L., & Chen, H. (2026). PlantscRNAdb 4.0: Improved marker identification and annotation under a cell-type uniformity for plants. Molecular Plant, 19(3), 673–688. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.molp.2025.12.026

A Call for Synthetic Plant Biology Research Proposals from the Simons Foundation

From the website:

"The Simons Foundation’s Life Sciences division is accepting applications for the Synthetic Plant Biology program. Deadline for application submission: 12:00 p.m. (noon) Eastern time on July 30, 2026.

The Synthetic Plant Biology program is intended to support research that applies engineering principles and techniques to advance our understanding of how plants function. These projects can tackle a variety of goals, including the development of sensors to study plant physiological responses, the engineering of plants capable of withstanding inhospitable environments, genetic modifications that reveal the trade-offs inherent in plant growth and development, and many others. We are interested both in the generation of fundamental insights in plant biology and in the development of innovative tools and techniques that will empower plant biological research in the future. Research funded under this initiative is expected to be exploratory, and there is not a requirement to have preliminary data at the application stage. Instead, we are seeking investigations that are high-risk but which, if successful, would enable highly impactful research in the synthetic biology of plants in the future. Generation of preliminary data is one of the anticipated objectives of these awards."

2025-2026 PCA Public Annual Report

The 2025-2026 PCA Public Annual Report is out! Take a look to learn about the accomplishments of the PCA community from the past year.

The Plant Cell Atlas Computation, Modeling, & AI Speaker Series is on YouTube

Did you miss a session from the Plant Cell Atlas Computation, Modeling, & AI Two-Part Speaker Series? We’ve got you covered! 

• Watch Dr. Dong Xu’s talk on "Deep-Learning Methods for Single-cell Data Analyses" here!
• Watch Dr. Romain Lopez’s talk on "Multimodal pooled genetic screens integrating transcriptomics and image-based phenotypes" here!
   

The Second Part of the Imaging Workshop Webinar Series: Introduction to 2D and 3D Segmentation with MorphoGraphX is on YouTube

Make sure to check out the second session of the Imaging Workshop Webinar Series before the third session this fall! You can view the video here!

New Job Opportunities

You can view the full post for a Postdoctoral Research Associate – Cell Fate Reprogramming and Haploid Gene Regulation in Maize in the Nelms Lab at the University of Georgia and a posting for a Postdoctoral Research Associate at UMass Amherst below:

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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).