Origin and evolution of acrocentric chromosomes in human and great apes https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2025.12.22.696095v1

If you’ve heard me talk in the past ~5 years, you will know I have developed an obsession with acrocentric chromosomes. This is all of that, condensed into one paper. I will do a full thread in the new year, but for those that want something to read over the holidays, have at it. Such a cool story!

Academics and technologists are sounding the alarm about a growing crisis in scholarship as we know it: AI-generated citations of nonexistent papers that have infested real journals. Despite being fake, the sources are widely assumed to be authentic the more they appear in published literature.

já vi essa notícia em vários formatos e ela me emociona sempre não tem mais bebê nascendo com HIV no Brasil. o tamanho disso, sabe.

⚖️ Votaram contra o marco temporal: 🧑‍⚖️ Gilmar Mendes 🧑‍⚖️ Luiz Fux 🧑‍⚖️ Dias Toffoli 🧑‍⚖️ Alexandre de Moraes 🧑‍⚖️ Cristiano Zanin 🧑‍⚖️ Flávio Dino

“A process which led from the amoeba to man appeared to the philosophers to be obviously a progress - though whether the amoeba would agree with this opinion is not known" - Bertrand Russell, 1976. Time-lapse video of Vampyrella lateritia eating Spirogyra algae from Science Source/Oliver Skibbe. 🦠

The world's richest 0.001% now control 3x as much wealth as the entire bottom half of humanity combined. 56,000 wealthy individuals have more than roughly 4 billion people. Read that back.

A global view of human centromere variation and evolution https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2025.12.09.693231v1

A study in Nature analyzes 154 genomes from 21 animal phyla and reconstructs ancestral adaptations to life on land across 11 distinct events, providing strong evidence of convergent genomic evolution and repeated terrestrial colonization in the animal kingdom. go.nature.com/4pHIwYF 🧪 #evolution

Researchers studied 28 new genomes from Africa and found that southern Africans were basically isolated for a long period of time. 🧪🏺

Isso aqui é gigante. Um nível de ação governamental sensacional. Um processo longo de atuação do ministério da saúde que deveria servir modelo para muita coisa

A paper in Nature shows that a 3.4-million-year-old partial foot found in Ethiopia in 2009 belongs to an ancient human relative named Australopithecus deyiremeda, a more primitive species of Australopithecus than the famous ‘Lucy’ (A. afarensis). go.nature.com/49BkCZY 🏺 🧪

Olá, pessoal! Veja os destaques do #g1 nesta quarta (26) até o momento: glo.bo/4pDCB6R

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

Coisa de mau-caratismo extremo fazer isso no dia da consciência negra. Parabéns, seu cocô

A bittersweet acceptance: Between a manuscript and grief Stefanie Williams @sillysciencelady.bsky.social shares the story behind her paper on the synaptonemal complex, including a tribute to her supervisor Scott Hawley, who passed away while Stefanie was completing the research.

Join us! 🧬🪰🎉🔬 We are currently advertising two #PhD projects to study the #evolution, #development and #genomics of sexual traits in stalk-eyed flies. Deadline for applying is Wednesday, January 7, 2026. Get in touch for more info!

Differential nucleosome organization in human interphase and metaphase chromosomes https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.11.11.687715v1

Genome assemblies of Sargassum algae by Kim et al. suggest TE-driven genome size expansion, gene duplications, and salicylic acid responses, which could be mechanisms enabling adaptation to intertidal stress. 🔗 doi.org/10.1093/gbe/evaf084 #genome #TEsky #algae

Fast females, slow males: accelerated ageing and reproductive senescence in Drosophila melanogaster females across diverse social environments url: academic.oup.com/evlett/artic...

Happy to share the results of a long-haul post-doc project, now online @science.org, aiming at understanding the rules of transgeneration epigenetic inheritance over TEs in plants and its extent and impact in nature. More below! doi.org/10.1126/scie...

Are humans really the only rational animals? Our NEW PAPER 🎉 out in @science.org suggests otherwise! In a large collaboration led with my joint first author @hanna-schleihauf.bsky.social, we show that “Chimpanzees rationally revise their beliefs” 🧵

A new release of RepeatMasker is available. This version fixes a bug introduced in 4.2.1 that impacted the handling of poly-A tails and the naming of LINE annotations. See repeatmasker.org for more release details.

Perdemos um gênio gentil.

My awesome grad student Shashank and I wrote this paper trying to look at broader patterns of HT in TEs. HT is happening everywhere! DNA transposons jump further than other classes! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

From 2020: Genome size evolution: towards new model systems for old questions. royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...

(1/9) Join us in Bern, Switzerland (8–11 Feb 2026) for our EMBO Workshop on Molecular Mechanisms of Selfish Elements and Strategies! Organized with Tanja Schwander, Laura Ross (@laurarossevo.bsky.social) and Axel Imhof. meetings.embo.org/event/26-sel... #EMBOselfishElements #EMBOevents

Evidence from 14 research funding programmes confirms that early winners tend to keep winning (Matthew effect). But the idea that an early setback makes you stronger later doesn’t replicate widely. buff.ly/UEtcRd4

New preprint!

A short-necked sauropodomorph from a new Triassic locality in Argentina shows sign of the neck extension that characterised its larger, later cousins.🧪👇 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Não é possível uma coisa dessa

In a new paper led by Jiaqi Yang we trace the distribution of Denisovan introgressed DNA in ancient modern human genomes over time. www.cell.com/current-biol...

New preprint up with collaborators Jianguo Lu, @mpodobnik.bsky.social, Uwe Irion, Braedan McCluskey, John Postlethwait and others. New Danio genomes, evolution and pigment pattern variation. Long time in the making www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

True.

1/9 Thrilled to share that our paper, “Origin of Ewing sarcoma by embryonic reprogramming of neural crest to mesoderm,” is now published in @cp-cellreports.bsky.social! @amatrudalab.bsky.social @crumplab.bsky.social www.cell.com/cell-reports...

The T2T zebra finch genome has hatched! 🐣 🧬 @vertebrategenomes.bsky.social

Pervasive suppressors halt the spread of selfish Segregation Distorter in a natural population https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.10.13.681989v1

The pangenome resources and genome assembly/inference approaches we are building will eventually enable complete, personalized “T2T” genomes for everyone. This is the thesis of the Q100 project (www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...) and what my group is currently working towards. Stay tuned... [10/10]

Unconventional centromere architectures in Tapirus indicus reveal hotspots for satellite-free centromere formation in Perissodactyla https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.10.09.681474v1

Last week we were in the Washington Post for our characterization of Robertsonian chromosomes. This week we are entering our 10th day of being shut down and all of our research is on hold. To help me feel not-so-bad, here is a thread of some studies we released right before the shutdown 🧵 [1/n]...

Hominoid-specific retrotransposons fuel regulatory novelty in early brain development , by @retrogenomics.bsky.social. ➡️ www.cell.com/cell-genomic...

Stowers scientists discovered a heritable rDNA fingerprint — “off” switches on ribosomal RNA gene clusters that can be passed from parent to child. Read how the Gerton Lab uncovered this #genetic + epigenetic signature published in Cell Genomics: bit.ly/3J0RXCE

Snow leopards have the lowest genetic diversity of all big cats–a dubious distinction once held by cheetahs. It increases their risk of extinction in a warming climate. #Stanford-led #research #snowleopards @kasolari.bsky.social @petrovadmitri.bsky.social news.stanford.edu/stories/2025...

A species of lungfish found in South America has claimed the title of the animal with the biggest genome sequenced so far. Learn more on #WorldAnimalDay: https://scim.ag/46OMl6v

Red devil spiders from the Canary Islands have a genome half the size of mainland counterparts - Pisarenco, @jrozasub.bsky.social et al. show how purifying selection against slightly deleterious DNA and TE insertions is the primary mechanism. 🔗 doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msaf206 #evobio #molbio #TEsky

🦒Long read giraffe is out!🦒 Mapping long reads to pangenome graphs is ~10x faster than with GraphAligner, with veeery slightly better mapping accuracy, short variant calling, and SV genotyping than GraphAligner or Minimap2

🚀 Thrilled to share our new review on how structural variants reshape 3D genome architecture and cause disease! 🧬🔀 Out now in Nature Reviews Genetics: www.nature.com/articles/s41... #3D-Genome #StructuralVariants #uksh

you can make anything stronger by adding the brazilian prefix. jiu-jitsu? brazilian jiu jitsu is stronger. wax shave? brazilian wax shave is more effective. butt lift? brazilian butt lift is hotter. hatsune miku? you already know

Well don't I feel stupid