A very nice piece about our latest paper published in Open Biology by @royalsocietypublishing.org It's about how venom-producing stinging cells use chromatic modifications to determine their biochemical identity: royalsociety.org/blog/2026/04...

Today the EMBO Journal special issue on molecular ecology and evolution is finally published. It was a pleasure coordinating this collection together with @berndpulverer.bsky.social and many outstanding authors. Editorial: link.springer.com/article/10.1... Cover art by @munafomarzia.bsky.social

Read how @embopress.org is expanding its focus on molecular ecology and evolution as central underpinnings of functions/interactions/diversification of biological systems – by @yehumoran.bsky.social, @berndpulverer.bsky.social, and our new team of Editorial Advisors link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Editor perspective: finding 2–3 reviewers often means sending >20 invites. The peer-review system doesn’t run on magic. Worth remembering before clicking “decline” and later complaining about extremely slow reviews.

#Tel_Aviv still has a few things going for it in February.

1/3 🚨New paper from our lab!🔥 Most textbooks will tell you that invertebrates employ #RNAi as antiviral mechanism. Yet, do 🪸🪼 actually do it? Well, the answer is complicated. We show that in #Nematostella dsRNA induces RNAi 🧵 journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...

1/5 🚨🚨 preprint alert! 🚨🚨 I wish to introduce CARDIB, not the singer, but the protein. CARDIB=CARD Inhibitory Binding protein. In our new work we discover this antiviral protein that is found in all Anthozoa (sea anemones and corals 🪸) but not in other animals. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Very happy and honored for being invited to give a keynote lecture at the 5th ISFSI conference in beautiful Tainan (and no, sea anemones are not fish or shellfish, but they are certainly marine invertebrates and have a fascinating immune system).

1/3 🔥🚨 We have a new @biorxiv-evobio.bsky.social #preprint from our lab! Itamar Kozlovski, an excellent PhD student, established CUT&TAG in #Nematostella. He used this technique to map the transcriptional activation mark H3K27ac in two stinging cell populations www.biorxiv.org/cgi/content/...

My first ever non-peer reviewed science-related piece. Together with Howard Wolinsky and Holger Breithaupt @embopress.org It's about how scientists critical of de-extinction are targeted by dark PR tactics: www.embopress.org/doi/full/10....

There’s a reason no one remembers philosophers from Sparta: they had none. Athens valued ideas, Sparta only force. A 21st-century leader dreaming of a “super-Sparta” isn’t being visionary, he’s showing deeply flawed judgement. Oh, my country, what a train wreck you’ve become.

I'm super proud of this guy!!! 👇

Our paper about the interplay between heat stress, viral and antiviral response in sea anemones and #corals 🪸 is finally out! #OpenAccess Collaboration between my lab, Maoz Fine and @reefgenomics.bsky.social onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Very interesting results and a technical breakthrough in gene silencing in Trichoplax: Dissecting a peptidergic signaling pathway in Trichoplax adhaerens by gene silencing: Current Biology www.cell.com/current-biol...

A journal drags our review process for months over months. Even the final round after "accepted in principle" with some light text editing drags for weeks. Then the proofs come in, in the least convenient time possible, "we expect you to return your comments within 48 hours" 😖

Our work on the function of miR-51/miR-100 is out! miR-100 is widely conserved across eumetazoans but its function has been mysterious. Emilio Santillán found in worms it regulates signaling and extracellular matrix genes, some of which seem to be conserved targets! www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

We sent a paper to a "posh" journal. Waited for more than a month, Finally today the editor rejects the paper without external review. The logic is as follows: "I wanted 🍕, but you sent me a 🍔, and despite my expectations, there was no 🍕! I admit it's a fine 🍔, but where is the 🍕 I was expecting?"

Achievement unlocked! Now, I can finally rest 🤪

Hello, old friend. Didn't expect to meet you here... #Berlin #aquarium #Anemonia

1/2 The new impact factor numbers are out. No sane person should use them as a proxy for anything, multiple organizations and institutes signed DORA, and still many people rely on them: I'll make it short and sweet: everything that carries "Nature" in its title went up. Sometimes crazily so -->

#TCTeAC ... what's more than organizing one conference? Two conferences! This one is more Day Science on biology of Argonaute proteins from prokaryotes to Metazoa. Great line up of invited speakers. Some special fun included!

The fascinating work spearheaded by Kirsten Senti on the diversification and adaptation of endogenous retroviruses in the host gonad 'ecosystem'' is officially published.

After more than 11 years, a long-due "postdocs reunion" with @xxxmichixxx.bsky.social at the @fmiscience.bsky.social Many thanks for the invitation, Michi! It was great meeting you and your colleagues and catching up on some cool science!

Our new paper is online in Genome Biology: "Plasmids, prophages, and defense systems are depleted from plant microbiota genomes" genomebiology.biomedcentral.com/articles/10....

Peer Review can be of great value when done properly and awful when done badly. We waited 3.5 months for the decision, Reviewer #2: "Looking on the figures, I get the feeling their antibody is not specific". That's so insightful & informative! It was worth waiting just for this!!! 🙏🤪🤦😱

I’m very excited to share our work on the early evolution of animal regulatory genome architecture - the main project of my postdoc, carried out across two wonderful and inspirational labs of @arnausebe.bsky.social and @mamartirenom.bsky.social. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

I'm starting a short sabattical of 4 months at @embopress.org today! I hope we can achieve some good things for the molecular eco-evo community and science publishing during this time! #heidelberg

✨🦟✨HOW DO MOSQUITOES HAVE SEX? ✨🦟✨ Join us for a wild journey into hidden female control, rapidly evolving stimulation devices, fierce species competition, and DEADLY MOSQUITOES! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

born too late to get a two Western blot Nature paper, born too early to be a science TikTokker, born just in time to start a postdoc during a global pandemic and look for faculty positions during a historic hiring freeze

Excellent work (as usual!) from the Genikhovich group! Highly recommended read.

Woohoo! Our image made the cover! 🎉 @jexpbiol.bsky.social The image captures photosymbiotic Anemonia viridis pointing it's tentacles towards the light. journals.biologists.com/jeb

Happy Darwin day, everyone! Charles is 216 years old today. He is not here anymore, but his theory is still alive and well!

Elon Musk trying to fix the grant overhead system in US academia is like a brain surgeon performing an operation on a patient using a sledgehammer... 🤦 BTW, the ones who are going to suffer the most from this are state universities, not the Ivy League... www.science.org/content/arti...

1/3 🎬 film review: I am very bad in working and sleeping on 🛩. So flying to Colorado and back on multiple Delta/Air France flights enabled me to fill quite some gap in recent movies (I love cinema but have no time). My impressions: Killers of the Flower Moon: Breathtaking and heartbreaking. 5⭐️ 🧵

1/4 🚨 a brand new @biorxiv preprint from the lab! We charcterized both transcriptionally, morphologically and functionally (phagocytosis) immune cells from #Nematostella! We are convinced that our data supports the existence of such specialized cells! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... 🧵

Transferring flights at Paris CDG as part of my long journey to @keystonesymposia.bsky.social on Non-coding #RNA. I'm very excited to attend this cool event for the first time! (and also visiting beautiful Colorado would be a 1st for me. Ummm, but temperatures look a bit scary! 🥶).

It was a pleasure to host the awesome @yehumoran.bsky.social in our Developmental Genetics Club and learn about toxins and their role in modulating complex predation interactions!

1/3 🚨 new preprint from our lab! For many years, it was unclear if and how RNAi contributes to antiviral immunity in Cnidaria. Sure, it is a key component in flies and nematodes, but these are protostomes. Yael Admoni finally tested this with help from 🧵 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

New insight on gonad morphogenesis ! Our new paper reveals how germ & somatic cells interact through TGF-Beta feedback loop to drive gonad morphogenesis in Hydractinia. Check out the full paper in Science Advances ! tinyurl.com/245rw699

1/3 Our paper about miRNA target complementarity in Cnidaria is finally published in @emboreports.bsky.social This work was led by the talented Yael Admoni with help from Arie and Rubi in collaboration with the labs of @thecocodium.bsky.social and Michal Rabani www.embopress.org/doi/full/10....

1/3 I am very excited to tell you about our latest work where we looked not only into sea anemones but also 🪸 We find in #Nematostella that stress induces not immunity, but also viral replication, actually much faster than the immune response! 🧵 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

We went today to visit my parents, and this is what we came back to...

Scared to share this after 10 freaking years of waiting, but here we go: We found that temperature *perception* can change the biology of the next generations, even when “it’s just in the parents' head”. Read how C. elegans neurons control epigenetic inheritance! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

1/12 1. I’m very excited to share the first piece of my postdoc work! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

התראיינתי היום לשרון קנטור ב-"כאן תרבות" בנוגע לארס בעלי חיים 🐍🪸🪼🦂🕷 החל מ-1:37:10. מוזמנים להאזין! (My interview in Hebrew on the national radio about animal venom). www.kan.org.il/content/kan/...

Anyone has experience with the Illumina NextSeq P4 50 bp kit (1.8 billion reads) for RNA-seq? Did it work well for your needs?

Giving a talk about a project that is now in the 3rd round of major revision in a CNS journal... @odedrechavi.bsky.social is this how you do it? 🤪

SOX and POU are crucial Transcription Factors in animal development, believed to be innovations of this group. Here we find them in unicellular relatives of animals. And hold tight, you can use a choanoflagellate 🦠 SOX gene to make a full chimeric 🐁 ! Read more here 🧵: rdcu.be/d0dPN 1/6

Happy to share that the Gahan lab will be branching out (or more like returning) to working on Nematostella in the near future. Details will follow but for now if anyone is interested in doing a Postdoc or PhD in 2025 on chromatin in Nematostella drop me a message :)