#SMBE2026 S24: Molecular mechanisms of selfish elements and strategies 🗓️ Mon Jun 29, 10:20am 🔗 smbe2026.org/programme Talks by: @levine-lab.bsky.social Yu Hua @cecilecourret.bsky.social @eleanoreritter.bsky.social Elli Cryan @alexand-kwak.bsky.social Steve Perlman @antisense.bsky.social

A big preprint from my group! Muller Elements are considered to be conserved in flies. We tested it by reconstructing the ancestral dipteran karyotype using 340 chromosomal genomes and suprise suprise, they're not... Led by @juliagries.bsky.social and Sam Ebdon. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... 🧵👇

Our latest preprint explores the evolution of the primate amylase locus, uncovering structural innovations, regulatory shifts and molecular convergence. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

New paper with the brilliant @ewanflintham.bsky.social How fast does recombination suppression evolve among sex chromosomes? We show that even weak sexual antagonism (so hard to detect) makes this fast, often via inversions fixing on X/Z depending on mating system: doi.org/10.1093/evle...

I am delighted to share new work with Simon Myers (www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...), on how genetic variants that influence binding patterns of PRDM9 and slow down the repair of meiotic double-strand breaks impact mammalian spermatogenesis and fertility. 1/n

"The selfish ribosome" paper is now published in @plosbiology.org . Have a look! Many thanks to the editors and reviewers! doi.org/10.1371/jour...

longcallR: Long-read RNA sequencing achieves accurate SNP calling, haplotype phasing and allele-specific expression analysis. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Not all #eggs are the same: birds‘ eggs have an incredible range of different sizes, colors, patterns and shapes. 🪺 🤩 Happy #Easter, everyone!

NASA just dropped this image of Artemis II astronaut Christina Koch looking back at us. The first woman to ever see our planet in its entirety. I’m not crying you’re crying 🥹🔭🧪 📸: NASA

🎉 Congrats to 2026 Thomas Hunt Morgan Medal recipient Judith Kimble of @uwbiochem.bsky.social! Her work has built an entire field and inspired generations of scientists through her mentorship and leadership. 🔗Read more: buff.ly/0yzHXvk

Meiosis faces a fundamental problem: It must repair hundreds of DNA double-strand breaks while executing a transcriptional programme essential for gamete development. But many of these breaks occur in genes. So how are these two processes reconciled? www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Want to know how histone marks regulate your favorite gene? Go single molecule with ChromSMF: integrated measure of chromatin accessibility and histone marks + DNA methylation, TF footprints and genotype for free! Very proud of @mpalamin.bsky.social ! @embl.org

Recently amplified gene arrays are a super interesting phenomenon, but many still resist our attempts to assemble them. @dantipov.bsky.social has developed a new method (Trivial Tangle Traverser) that resolves assembly graph tangles caused by such sequences (1/4) www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

How do primordial germ cells (PGCs) migrate across a developing embryo? #LMBResearch from Katharine Goodwin and Kate McDole (@cellbiol-mrclmb.bsky.social) uncovers the mechanisms PGCs use in mouse embryos to navigate this long and surprisingly risky journey. Read more: mrclmb.ac.uk/news-events/...

AlphaFold database has entered the era of complexes. Together with NVIDIA, DeepMind and EBI, we use ColabFold, OpenFold and MMseqs2-GPU to predict ~31 million complexes (homo & hetro-dimers) resulting in 1.8 million high-quality predictions 📄 research.nvidia.com/labs/dbr/ass... 🌐 alphafold.ebi.ac.uk

This is kinda bonkers. In addition, 20 amino acids were found on Ryugu, along with uracil and vitamin B3. These have been found in other instances, but since the samples from Ryugu were collected directly from the asteroid and delivered in sealed capsules, contamination on Earth could be ruled out.

Deep coverage and extended sequence reads obtained with a single archaeal protease expedite de novo protein sequencing by mass spectrometry: Cell Systems www.cell.com/cell-systems.... How great would it be to sequence proteins without a gene-template! We might be approaching this soon.

Quick plug for our new resource, the Drosophila Species Stock Exchange. This is a database and mailing list that documents species currently in culture and the labs holding them. If you want to know more or sign up then please get in touch. See attached for more info and please share!

FYI: New online! Annotating genomes at increased scale and resolution

Pervasive positive selection on X-linked ampliconic genes in primates https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.03.09.710536v1

Very excited to announce that we are hiring for three faculty positions at @universityofleeds.bsky.social in @bioscienceleeds.bsky.social: A/Prof Plant Science, A/Prof Animal Biology and Lecturer in Ecology, Zoology, Biodiversity or Ecosystem Management. Please do get in touch to chat. Links below:

In a new Science study, researchers report on transcriptional adaptation, a dual feedback and feedforward mechanism that uses genetic redundancy to compensate for mutations in protein-coding genes. Learn more in a new #SciencePerspective: https://scim.ag/4ryeXtN

Considerations for the future of in vitro gametogenesis in fertility care - @hannahlandecker.bsky.social @uclacrshe.bsky.social @uclamcdb.bsky.social @uclastemcell.bsky.social go.nature.com/4l2e9en

Many living people carry fragments of Neanderthal DNA, remnants of ancient interbreeding events, with uneven distribution across chromosomes. New work by @sarahtishkoff.bsky.social lab suggests patterns are most consistent with Neanderthal contribution to human populations being highly male biased.🧪

Our internal organs are evolutionary marvels. New technologies are transforming our understanding of the evolution of vertebrate organs. You can find more by reading here: rdcu.be/e5EgU #EvoBio #EvoDevo 🐟🦎🐢🦇🐊🦜

Pangenome analysis reveals families of ubiquitin-ligase adaptors as key genomic divergence drivers that lead to hybrid incompatibility genome.cshlp.org/content/earl...

Long before Darwin, the French polymath comte de Buffon “accepted both that species could become extinct and that they could change, and he even entertained the idea that humans and apes…might have had a common ancestry.” —Ian Tattersall

The #fly community aims to achieve a comprehensive genomic study of the Drosophilidae family. @pankajd.bsky.social @bernardkim.bsky.social @petrovadmitri.bsky.social @darrenobbard.bsky.social present a comparative gene annotation for 301 #Drosophilidae species @plosbiology.org 🧪 plos.io/4c3pyrI

This new #RSOS study examines the heritability of cognitive and behavioural traits in a pedigreed population of assistance #dogs. Read more: doi.org/10.1098/rsos... @ggnanadesikan.bsky.social @dremilybray.bsky.social @marinawatowich.bsky.social @smacklab.bsky.social

New online! Annotating genomes at increased scale and resolution

🧵Good news out of #NIH today. (1) NIH is extending #ESI and #K99/R00 eligibility to accommodate researchers whose eligibility would have ended during the previous shutdown. Take a look at NOT-OD-26-020. If your ESI status would have ended in 2025, you get an automatic extension through 2026/03/31.

New online! Evolutionary causes and consequences of gene duplication

How does the piRNA pathway solve the self vs. non-self problem? 🧬 Since piRNAs come from single-stranded RNA, how does the cell choose the right ones? For years, "piRNA clusters" were seen as THE privileged source. But are they really special and earmarked for biogenesis? (1/19)

We have an opening for a Research Associate in my group. This is an excellent position for recent graduates or students with a master's seeking research experience prior to graduate/medical school. Apply via the job portal (Job ID: 14797). DM for queries. www.utsa.edu/people-excel...

De novo genes arise from previously non-coding sequences. This evolutionary path — when randomly expressed sequences become folded and active proteins — challenges our understanding of genetic innovation. New Review by @bornberglab.bsky.social and @lacholt.bsky.social out now!

Make your gene knockouts more efficient with multiplexed Cas12a sgRNAs. Our new paper is out now, with tools available from @addgene.bsky.social , www.plasmids.eu and @vdrc-flies.bsky.social. www.nature.com/articles/s41... #CRISPR #geneediting #Drosophila 🧪🧬✂️🔬🪰 Summary 🧵 below.

New online! Long non-coding RNAs as orchestrators of dosage compensation

Germ cell development across model organisms From our #Review: How germ granules promote germ cell fate by Melissa C. Pamula & Ruth Lehmann @remlehmann.bsky.social @whiteheadinstitute.bsky.social Free to read here: rdcu.be/e05TK

This is an important paper, hopefully it will set the tone for similar efforts for rigor and reproducibility in other systems/fields. In @eLife.bsky.social: Reproducibility of Scientific Claims in Drosophila Immunity: A Retrospective Analysis of 400 Publications doi.org/10.7554/eLif...

Restorative epistasis can occur between 2 complementary loss-of-function mutations (in yeast) if they happen to cooccur in just the right way (2 wrongs making a right). "Predicting epistasis across proteins by structural logic" by Tang et al. (2026, PNAS) www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Review: DNA methylation in mammalian development and disease www.nature.com/articles/s41... (free: rdcu.be/dUbb8)

Check out our new paper in early access at Nature Communications! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Need a bit of escapism? Not exactly Lord of the Rings, but in similar vein: doi.org/10.1038/s443...

Sensitive and unbiased genome-wide profiling of base-editor-induced off-target activity using CHANGE-seq-BE - @stjuderesearch.bsky.social go.nature.com/4qB6qp8

The genetics, evolution, and maintenance of a biological rock-paper-scissors game | Science www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

I'm really excited to break up the holiday relaxation time with a new preprint that benchmarks AlphaFold3 (AF3)/“co-folding” methods with 2 new stringent performance tests. Thread below - but first some links: A longer take: fraserlab.com/2025/12/29/k... Preprint: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Our next extraordinary biologist is Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard, a Nobel Prize winner and Emeritus Director of the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology in Tübingen, Germany. #100biologists

Happy to highlight an essay I wrote together with @marcdemanuel.bsky.social, @natanaels.bsky.social and Anastasia Stolyarova, trying to think through what sets the mutation rate of a cell type in an animal species: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... 1/n

How did dogs evolve from wolves—and what does their DNA reveal about behavior? 🐕 A new PNAS Special Feature explores canine domestication, migration, and genetic links to behavior and human traits. Read now: https://ow.ly/y4aS50XMxef