How did octopuses evolve novel traits? Rishav Mitra, Richard Han, Trey Scott, et al serendipitously discover a unique ribosome adaptation that increases the accuracy of protein synthesis and evolved alongside their elaborate nervous systems vs deep sea relatives. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Intriguing and positive! www.theguardian.com/business/202...

Also very cool!

Wow!

Cool work!

The evolution of structural variation across 500 million years of vertebrate evolution https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.06.26.733778v1

Terrific resource, now on @biorxivpreprint.bsky.social: The Vertebrate Genomes Project Phase I: A global reference genome resource 🧪🧬 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Possibly what all British cats are currently thinking about.

Had to! "So we sailed on to the sun 'Til we found a sea of green" 🎵🎼🎶

Great. Goes well with this paper on how to write bad papers: doi.org/10.1111/j.00...

Agree 100%

Super interesting!

Interspecies variation of 45S ribosomal DNA in vertebrates https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.06.09.731232v1

Our next guest speaker webinar is happening on Friday, 12th June, 15:30-16:30pm BST. Madzia Crossley, will be giving a talk on ''Distinct mechanisms generate immunogenic cytoplasmic RNA-DNA hybrids as signals of transcriptional dysregulation'' Follow this link to join: www.qmul.ac.uk/epigenetics/...

Ribosome heterogeneity in E. coli : ribosomal RNA (rRNA) sequence and modifications, r-protein stoichiometry and PTMs, and ribosome-associated proteins pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/... 🦠

Capolavoro 🎨 alert 🚨! What is the role of gene body methylation in invertebrates? Despite extensive speculation linking it to plasticity and environmental responses, its mechanistic effects and heritability remain unclear. Our take out in @natecoevo.nature.com: www.nature.com/articles/s41... 1/

Very nice!

@johanduchene.bsky.social @sholtodavid.bsky.social Spent the last hour looking, found ten more apparently manipulated Western blots in Thermo Fisher's antibody verification data (across eight different catalogued products). Thread below. www.thermofisher.com/antibody/pro...

Excited to share our latest paper! We found that large pieces of the human genome can transfer between cells upon direct contact, endowing recipient cells with heritable phenotypic changes. @cp-cell.bsky.social (1/7) www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...

Truly embarrassing….

The human genome's most variable and clinically important regions (centromeres, telomeres, and acrocentric short arms) have been hardest to study at scale. Thrilled to share KaryoScope, our new preprint that brings them within reach. 🧵 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Based on 25RM3 outcomes, #BBSRC success rate for standard research grants is now down to 13%….

This will be a great resource! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

We are very happy to kick off the #DNAmethylation course with @alexdemendoza.bsky.social Hollie Marshall James Ord and a great group of attendees from all over the globe! www.physalia-courses.org/courses-work...

And a very nice article by @cofford.bsky.social in Science covering our work: www.science.org/content/arti...

More acrocentric investigations, this one led by @arhie.bsky.social 🕵🏻‍♀️ “Biobank-scale genotyping of Robertsonian translocations reveals hidden structural variation on the human acrocentric chromosomes” 🧵[1/8] 📄 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Super happy to share the published version of our study: “Germline sequence variation within the ribosomal DNA is associated with human complex traits” in Cell Genomics www.cell.com/cell-genomic...!

Very interesting!

My first PhD student‘s, Kavan Gor, paper on 5-color single-molecule imaging of co-transcriptional RNA folding is out in @science.org Advances! He finds how RNA modification enzymes, antisense oligonucleotides and ribosomal proteins re-route nascent RNA folding. See more details in EMBL post below!

Ominous seating arrangements.

May 5th: if you are around London, please join the London #EvoDevo symposium at QMUL / Charterhouse campus, as usual we will have selected talks and post-event 🍻. A warm up for #EED2026 in Glasgow. Registration £0, more info here: londonevodevo.co.uk

It’s a pity other countries don’t adopt this idea. Maybe something to consider for our new funding agency @researchireland.ie ?

Some molecular machines, like ribosomes, can persist for long periods of time in cells. Could molecular aging of ribosomes shape how proteins are made? In our new preprint we track ribosomes as they age in cells and uncover unexpected effects on translation (1/10) www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

there's so much bad in the world but there's also people who lift up and carry an elderly bat around every day so he can pretend he's flying again, and that's the part of the world I think is worth fighting for

Excited to share this preprint that describes my latest work on using GPUs to accelerate processing of RNA-seq data. The title says it all: "RNA-seq analysis in seconds using GPUs" now on biorxiv www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... and github github.com/pachterlab/k... Figure 1 shows they key result

Wow!

We're excited to announced that our 2nd Annual QMUL Centre for Epigenetics Conference is happening on June 18th, 2026 at Mile End! To find out more and book your ticket, please follow this link: www.qmul.ac.uk/epigenetics/... The deadline to book your tickets is Monday, June 8th 2026.

Excited to share our latest publication on interindividual variation of DNA methylation in human whole blood, spearheaded by the amazing Olivia Grant and co-led with @leo-schalkwyk.bsky.social and Meena Kumari. link.springer.com/article/10.1...

A jumbo cyanophage encodes the most complete ribosomal protein set in the known virosphere www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

“Subsequent evolution is construed as a ribosomal takeover, whereby the ribosome evolved to consume most of the cell’s resources, while other cellular componentry ensured the propagation of the ribosome. Under this perspective, the ribosome is the ultimate biological selfish element.” !! 💪🏽

Long in the making, but happy to present the Chlamydomonas chlororibosome! Cryo-ET🔬reveals a large new domain on the small subunit, built from multiple extensions in conserved ribosomal proteins. bioRxiv 📖: shorturl.at/q44tG This suggests greater chlororibosome diversity than expected! 1/n 🧵

🧬 A major data reanalysis in December's most-read Genetics paper uncovers thousands of previously hidden protein-coding regions in human and mouse genomes: buff.ly/Bxw7cKf

This is such a cool finding! Undergraduate GPA does not predict success in PhD programs for cohorts of MS students at two minority-serving institutions pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41628237/

Excited to share our new study: rRNA expansion segments are not passive structural elements — they mediate hibernating ribosome interfaces and reshape translation under stress. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

We're excited to announced that our 2nd Annual QMUL Centre for Epigenetics Conference is happening on June 18th, 2026 at Mile End! To find out more and book your ticket, please follow this link: www.qmul.ac.uk/epigenetics/... The deadline to book your tickets is Monday, June 8th 2026.

Wish they had stuck with this. At QMUL, we get paid on the 24th of every month.

Year of the horse indeed! Cool finding.

🔥🔥🔥💥💥💥🌶️🌶️🌶️ Hottest new lab in town, led by the exceptional @calumgabbutt.bsky.social, is recruiting it's first #PhD student. If you love #maths and somatic #evolution it could be your dream come true! 🌶️🌶️🌶️💥💥💥🔥🔥🔥

And hot on the heels of the Schuman lab’s rRNA ES paper.

Interesting!