We have been cooking up this story for a while and we are excited to finally be able to share! Read on if you're interested in whole plant regeneration WITHOUT the application of hormones!

Having a hard time keeping up with the fast-moving field of origin of eukaryotes/Asgards archaea? Our new perspective article can help, we review the status of research over the last decade and where it's going. The archaeal roots of eukaryotic life www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Why do the chromosomes of cyperids (sedges & rushes) split and fuse so regularly on evolutionary timescales? Is it because they have so many centromeres? Our new preprint, the first major paper of my PhD, addresses this question. 🧵⬇️ 1/12 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Thank you to my co-authors: @marcelauliano.bsky.social, @charlottewright.bsky.social, @hendersi.bsky.social, Sam Ebdon, @kamilsjaron.bsky.social & Mark Blaxter. Finally, this would not have been possible without the Darwin Tree of Life sequencing & assembly teams @sangerinstitute.bsky.social! 🧵12/12

Exciting News! 🚀 Registration Open! | Loke CTR Annual Meeting 2026 🎉 📅 16-17 July 2026 📍 St John’s College, Cambridge | 💻 Hybrid conference (in-person & online) 🔬 Epigenetics of embryogenesis and placentation 📌 To find out more and to register www.trophoblast.cam.ac.uk/ctrconferenc...

A new study in #GENETICS from @hendersi.bsky.social’s group explores how natural variation in #Arabidopsis influences centromere-proximal crossover frequency and segregation distortion when #centromeres are heterozygous. buff.ly/Ev5Xrro

Come celebrate our Anniversary Day in Edinburgh, 25 & 26 June! Join us for talks from our Honorary Members, Prize & Medal winners, and our Summer Students. Programme & registration details: genetics.org.uk/events/anniv...

Lovely gift of Xiao Qing Gan tea which I shall enjoy!

Repetitive seashore?

Manchester Institute of Biotechnology is looking for a new Professor. There are a few priority areas including microbial engineering (broadly defined, from pathways to cells to microbiomes). Closing 12 Jan. Join us in the best city in the UK 😜 www.jobs.manchester.ac.uk/Job/JobDetai...

Read more about the projects: www.cam.ac.uk/research/new...

Monday morning dot plot...

Interesting study suggesting that nucleus, cytoskeleton, and endomembranes preceded acquisition of mitochondria, during eukaryogenesis www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Rapid compensatory evolution within a multiprotein complex preserves telomere integrity www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... @levine-lab.bsky.social very cool work

A new and fascinating story from @bencarty.bsky.social and the group, with crucial help from the teams of @naltemose.bsky.social, Simona Giunta, and @dfachinetti.bsky.social. Many thanks to all for a fantastic collaboration. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

What a nice coincidence to have Kelly Dawe present his work on karyotype engineering for todays seminar @thesainsburylab.bsky.social @johninnescentre.bsky.social

Genetics Society Anniversary Day 25-26th June, Edinburgh genetics.org.uk/events/anniv... Society Prize Winners: Hilary Martin, Joe Felsenstein, Richard Durbin, Zam Iqbal Honorary Members: Brian Charlesworth, Deborah Charlesworth, Kay Davies, Paul Nurse, David Sherratt, Veronica van Heyningen

Chromosome Dynamics 2026 @ Awaji Japan www.fbs.osaka-u.ac.jp/labs/fukagaw...

CRISPR-Cas–mediated heritable chromosome fusions in Arabidopsis | Science www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... Very nice work from Holger Puchta & colleagues

Nobel Prize winner Svante Pääbo giving the Genetics Society public lecture at @crick.ac.uk. Svante is recounting how Neandertals and Denisovans live on in many of us!

Congratulations @hilarycmartin.bsky.social from @sangerinstitute.bsky.social on being awarded the 2026 Balfour Lecture!

Congratulations to @zaminiqbal.bsky.social from @milnerevolution.bsky.social on being awarded the 2026 Mary Lyon Medal!

Congratulations to @vinuesalab.bsky.social from @crick.ac.uk on winning the 2026 JBS Haldane Lecture. Carola will present her JBS Haldane Lecture next year at @rigb.org!

Congratulations to Joe Felsenstein on being awarded the 2026 Mendel Medal!

Congratulations to Richard Durbin on being awarded our Genetics Society Medal!

FastGA -> ALNview; step into the centromeric matrix! github.com/thegenemyers Probably the best dot plot software on the planet...

An Asgard archaeon with internal membrane compartments Brilliant study led by @fmacleod.bsky.social and Andriko von Kügelgen. Tight collaboration with @buzzbaum.bsky.social and lab. Congrats to all authors! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Some impressions from the rather fabulous #EMBOmobilegenome Mobile Genome meeting in Heidelberg Morning walk through the woods, exciting panel discussion, flash talks, lab community, drosophila friends, … @events.embl.org The transposon community is going very strong. see you all again in 2027!!

After 5 years of waiting, the new #CRISPR classification by Makarova et al. is out @natmicrobiol.nature.com www.nature.com/articles/s41...

BehaveAI is live! Our biologically inspired video analysis tool sees motion as colour. Track animals or objects, classify their behaviour, and handle complex natural scenes with ease. Semi-supervised annotation, no GPUs required, user-friendly, free & open source. Pre-print tinyurl.com/BehaveAI

Magnus Nordborg of the GMI from the @oeaw.bsky.social has received a Synergy Grant from the @erc.europa.eu. With Richard Durbin and @felipekteixeira.bsky.social, they will investigate how transposable elements shape genome evolution in eukaryotes. Read more: www.oeaw.ac.at/gmi/news-eve...

Very excited to share our work published in Nature Comms last week! Here we describe a range of cool things that can be done once you have the power to control deposition of H3K4me3… rdcu.be/eNEf4 A short thread:

Our latest paper has just been published in Cell! doi.org/10.1016/j.ce... We developed a new method called MCC ultra, which allows 3D chromatin structure to be visualised with a 1 base pair pixel size.

great to be at the #EMBOMobileGenome meeting in Heidelberg with a wonderful bunch of colleagues, speakers and attendees. this meeting is a good reflection of the excitement and collegiality in the transposon field. kindly sponsored by @embo.org

‘Epigenetic serum’ makes you wonder !

Lab’s first paper is out!! We show the first structures of #Asgard #chromatin by #cryo-EM 🧬❄️ Asgard histones form closed and open hypernucleosomes. Closed are conserved across #Archaea, while open resemble eukaryotic H3–H4 octasomes and are Asgard-specific. More here: www.cell.com/molecular-ce...

Really cool work by the @dodonova-sveta.bsky.social lab @embl.org www.cell.com/molecular-ce... #archea #evochromo

We are recuiting two new Associate Professors here in Oxford Biochemistry. Come join us! Reach out to me if you have any questions. Please repost! tinyurl.com/mr3m7bd3

Genome maintenance by telomerase is a fundamental process in nearly all eukaryotes. But where does it come from? Today, we report the discovery of telomerase homologs in a family of antiviral reverse transcriptases, revealing an unexpected evolutionary origin in bacteria. doi.org/10.1101/2025...

1/10 Genome maintenance by telomerase is a fundamental process in nearly all eukaryotes. But where does it come from? Today, we report the discovery of telomerase homologs in a family of antiviral RTs, revealing an unexpected evolutionary origin in bacteria. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Crazy red flesh apple - tastes good too! 🍎

Out in @science.org this week: A new FRET sensor for salicylic acid gives insight into spatial dynamics of pathogen infection www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... (1/2) #PlantScience

Congrats, Joe Ecker @salkinstitute.bsky.social, to receiving the McClintock Prize! Joe has been a visionary leader of the field of genetics and genomics – not only for plants – for decades www.salk.edu/news-release...

🚨 New paper alert on telomeres! 🚨 Something different from the group! Thanks to Yuxin, a talented student in the lab, we used long-reads in 75 human trios to study telomeres and their inheritance.

My HPLC was definitely overlooked www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Heading in the correct direction: After success of pilot, Ireland expands basic support payments for artists, making them permanent: www.irishtimes.com/politics/202...