John Fowler (he/him)

@jefowlerjr.bsky.social

931 Followers 389 Following

At heart, still mostly a geneticist; admittedly over-enthusiastic about maize; in 2026, reminding everyone that the @TheB52s should be in the @rockhall !

Four smiling people wearing hats, outside on a sunny day. A plowed field with some marker stakes is in the background, with a few small plants visible. At least one hoe is visible, with dirt on it indicating recent use.
Pollen grains germinating in vitro on the left, designated 'Plants'; and an unpollinated maize ear, with silks exposed, on the right, designated 'Landscape'.
(c) Ear from a gex2::Ds-GFP/+ pollen cross showing more fluorescent kernels at both ends. (e) Quadratic GLM fit for the ear in panel (c), illustrating a “true quadratic” pattern.
(a) Ear from a bag1::Ds-GFP/+ pollen cross, showing more fluorescent kernels toward the apex. (b) Linear‑fit lines for ears from all 30 bag1 crosses are overlaid, with about half showing a significant upward trend in transmission toward the apex. Blue lines mark significant increasing patterns on an ear (p ≤ 0.05); grey lines are not significant.
The EarScape pipeline highlights non‑random spatial patterns in kernel transmission across a maize ear. (a, b) A computer vision pipeline identifies the centroid positions of fluorescent and non‑fluorescent kernels, oriented from base (left) to apex (right) for a cross from a heterozygous bag1*/+ parent. (c) The ear is divided into 16 equal sections, and transmission rate is calculated in each as GFP kernels (green) relative to wild‑type (purple). (d) These counts are used to fit a linear GLM that tests for increasing or decreasing spatial trends (blue line; one‑tailed p ≤ 0.05).
Mutant alleles that affect pollen fitness can generate spatial inheritance patterns on maize ears – see the article by Ruggiero et al. Top Left: Maize pollen grains germinated on a silk, with pollen tubes (stained with aniline blue) growing into the silk interior. Image Credit: Caity Smyth. Bottom Left: Unpollinated maize ear with silks arranged to show that silks derived from ovules at the base of the ear are longer than silks from ovules at the ear apex. Image Credit: Elyse Vischulis. Right: Ear projection from a mature ear pollinated with the pollen from a plant heterozygous for the bag1*::Ds-GFP insertion, oriented apex-to-base top-to-bottom (as in bottom left ear/silk image). The GFP-marked bag1* allele is associated with a spatial pattern of fewer fluorescent kernels towards the base of the ear – i.e., kernels generated following pollen tube growth down the longest silks.
A drawing in black pen by a youthful aspiring artist, with three stick figure people (one with multiple tears shown), and a bird attacking an apparently full size corn plant. The sun, a swing set and a building are also present. Above the scene are the eords “Dear Daddy I hope you have a Nice Day a especially because Brids ate your corn! We love Your corn and You! Love liza!”
The cover of Liz Phair’s 1993 debut album, Exile in Guyville. The cover is a cropped photo of Phair topless in a photo booth.
Large crowd outside the Benton County Courthouse, with signs aligned with the No Kings protest
The Beatles, with their mop top haircuts
Trays of 100s of drying ears of corn, all labelled with colored tape.
Corn plants in a field, with many red-striped pollination bags set up on tassels. Trees & the foothills of the Oregon Coast range in the background.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Rx8qRzr2oKWGhMr-OYDn1ydwUCVeH6YPMIFevtSpKes/edit?usp=sharing
A graphic for The McClintock Letters. There is a drawing of Barbara McClintock next to an ear of corn and a DNA double helix. The text reads "The McClintock Letters. Improving communication between scientists and the public is crucial for rebuilding trust and addressing misinformation. Share your science story. Who: You! and other graduate, post-doctoral, and faculty-level researchers. When: Submit to local papers early June to publish on ~June 16th, Nobel Prize-awarded geneticist Barbara McClintock's birthday. What: Collectively publish over 1,000 letters to the editor in local hometown newspapers across the U.S. - https://blogs.cornell.edu/asap/events-initiatives/the-mcclintock-letters/
Two week old corn seedlings, peeking up through the soil at the OSU Botany Farm in Corvallis OR
A large crowd at the #HandsOff2025 rally against Trump/Musk, in front of the courthouse in Corvallis OR. Also, trees blossoming with springtime!
Silhouette of a heron against a body of water, buildings in the distance
A small fuzzy dog, wearing a leopard spot coat, sits by a closed sliding glass door; waits for his person to open it…
Trays if corn ears, arranged to dry
Three maize ears, segregating mutant/green-fluorescent kernels. The two ears on right and left show the expected 1:1 ratio, whereas the central ear shows a highly aberrant ratio, indicating a strong effect of the mutant on pollen fitness.
Ears of corn in mesh bags in bins in the back of a truck.
A field of hand-pollinated maize plants being harvested by two geneticists, collecting ears in pollination bags in a wheelbarrow. Outside Corvallis OR at the Botany & Plant Pathology Field Lab
Image of a corn field in Corvallis OR, with many many pollen bags up on tassels, and the Oregon Coast Range in the distance.