Registration now open for @embo.org workshop on the evolution of biological interactions on April 24 - 27, 2026! Come join us in Taipei, Taiwan to see how interactions shaped the genomes of various organisms and meeting people from across the globe. Info: meetings.embo.org/event/26-bio...

Happy New Year! あけましておめでとうございます！新年快樂！Feliz Año Nuevo! Manigong Bagong Taon! The SymGenoEvo Lab wishes everyone a wonderful New Year!

HAPPY HOLIDAYS TO ALL OF YOU!🎄✨

#ArtAdventCalendar Gel Electrophoresis in Green and Blue, watercolor, 2023 #sciart

Can't believe my postdoc paper is finally out. Christmas came early this year, holy moly 🎄 Molecular basis for de novo thymus regeneration in a vertebrate, the axolotl | Science Immunology www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

This is an INCREDIBLE advance in our understanding of coral diversification. 🪸🎉 Fantastic new work led by @claudiavaga.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Very happy to announce that our article in multimodal single cell analyses in planaria is out in Nature Communications @natcomms.nature.com ! Thank you very much to everyone that made this work possible. I am very happy to see it out (: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

How do animals with lifelong growth modulate cell #proliferation? @eudaldpascual.bsky.social @ktgarschall.bsky.social @prhsteinmetz.bsky.social show that starvation induces G1/G0 #CellCycle arrest in Vasa2+/Piwi1+ #SeaAnemone cells; cycle re-entry is TOR-dependent @plosbiology.org 🧪 plos.io/48J2o6P

Honor to join the EMBO Young Investigator Network as a Global Investigator! Very grateful to @embo.org for the support in promoting international exchanges. Excited to strengthen collaborations with colleagues across Europe and beyond. www.embo.org/press-releas...

Twelve scientists from Chile, India, Nigeria, Singapore and Taiwan have been selected as new EMBO Global Investigators – Congratulations to the new cohort! 🧪 Read the press release: https://www.embo.org/press-releases/twelve-scientists-become-embo-global-investigators/ #funding #training

Our December issue is now live: www.nature.com/natecolevol/... Featuring research on 🧪 🦏 rhinocerotid dispersal in the mid-Cenozoic 🐟 biodiversity responses to freshwater stressors 🦋 evolution of butterfly eyespots Cover shows a Korean seahorse, from Meyer et al. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Congratulations to the new cohort of 28 EMBO Young Investigators! They are joining an international network of more than 800 life scientists – Welcome! Read the press release here: https://www.embo.org/press-releases/twenty-eight-group-leaders-become-embo-young-investigators/

I'm very excited that our paper on Project Psyche is now published! 🦋🧬 Over the last two years we've built an incredible community & already made huge progress. Read about this & how @projectpsyche.bsky.social will drive exciting and collaborative science here: www.cell.com/trends/ecolo...

Apply now for EMBO Workshop "Evolving together: From #genomics to biological interactions" in Taipei, Taiwan, 24–27 Apr 2026. Abstract submission/Registration deadline: 20 Jan/28 Feb 2026 meetings.embo.org/event/26-bio... #EMBOEvoGenBio #GeneSky #EvoSky #EcoSky #EMBOevents 🧪

Out today, our take on 6-methyladenine #6mA evolution in Eukaryotes @natgenet.nature.com. We asked a simple question, is really DNA 6mA common across the eukaryotes? The answer is "yes" if you're a unicellular eukaryote 🦠, not so if you're multicellular 🐝🌱🍄. www.nature.com/articles/s41... 1/9

Our paper on the role of neurons in Nematostella head regeneration is now out at @currentbiology.bsky.social Big thank you to all collaborators, it was a pleasure! Ectopic head regeneration after nervous system ablation in a sea anemone: Current Biology www.cell.com/current-biol...

Lophophorates get way too little publicity... Latest issue is out! www.cell.com/issue/S0960-...

Glad to see our phoronid genome study featured on the cover of @currentbiology.bsky.social! It shows how genome structure can be used to test competing hypotheses of nested topology and how derived structural changes provide evidence for monophyly. www.cell.com/current-biol...

Happy to share Jialin's first publication. She did a great job exploring the transition to land in animals. Co-supervised by the great Jordi Paps and me and in collaboration with Davide Pisani and @phil-donoghue.bsky.social

A truly refreshing perspective on an age old debate. Big implications for animal evolution but also useful techniques to address many other remaining phylogenetic questions. Congrats to you both on a wonderful piece of work!

NEW pub in @science.org 🥳 Is it sponges (panels A & B) or comb jellies (C & D) that root the animal tree of life? For over 15 years, #phylogenomic studies have been divided. We provide new evidence suggesting that... 🔗: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

We are happy to share our latest work in @nature.com . We study the genomic and cellular basis of facultative symbiosis in Oculina patagonica - a Mediterranean coral remarkable for its ability to survive long periods without algal symbionts. Led by Shani Levy and @xgrau.bsky.social rdcu.be/eLbaZ

Tissue-specific transcriptomics, comparative genomics and genome editing identify a taxon-specific promoter of a Hox gene that controls eyespot size plasticity and probably contributed to wing eyespot diversity in satyrid butterflies 🧪 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

My book 'The Tree of Life' is published in the USA and Canada today. Available as book, on kindle and as audio. I would be really grateful for reposts. www.amazon.com/Tree-Life-So... www.amazon.ca/Tree-Life-So...

🗨️ Just published in Nature Biotechnology: Our CellWhisperer AI enables chat-based analysis of single-cell sequencing data. You can talk to your cells & figure out the biology without writing any computer code. Paper here: www.nature.com/articles/s41.... Annotated walkthrough in a thread below (1/11)

Lophophorata is monophyletic! Super excited to see this work out in Current Biology - we sequenced a phoronid genome and used shared chromosome fusions to confirm the monophyly of Lophophorata. A big team effort from the Luo Lab @yjluo.bsky.social! More here: authors.elsevier.com/c/1m3mV3QW8S...

Pleased to share our latest paper led by @tomlewin.bsky.social, now out in @currentbiology.bsky.social! We present the first chromosome-level genome of a phoronid and show that shared chromosomal fusions unite phoronids and bryozoans as sister groups. www.cell.com/current-biol...

2025 spirit animal: the upside-down jellyfish 🪼🙃 Find out about their amazing biology here👇 www.cell.com/current-biol... by Noémie Buratto& @elisjthore.bsky.social

New preprint! We unexpectedly discovered that some Caenorhabditis species delete parts of their somatic genome early in development, which fragments their chromosomes and eliminates key germline genes. Multiple lines of evidence suggest this bizarre process was present in the ancestors of C. elegans

Apply Now! Tenure-track Faculty Position in Marine Bioscience at the University of Florida's Whitney Lab. explore.jobs.ufl.edu/en-us/job/53...

Latest work out today in @currentbiology.bsky.social We find the fly development gene bicoid is much older than previously thought (~20 million yrs older!) 🪰🧬 To pinpoint its origins we tackled the Diptera phylogeny, providing some resolution (many open questions remain). 🔗 tinyurl.com/2vyuevpy

How to swap the foot for a tentacle and vice versa? Find out in our new story featured in @dev-journal.bsky.social uncovering a transcription factor toggle switch behind the identity of Hydra's extremities.

Great pleasure hosting Jochen Rink @mpi-nat.bsky.social in Taipei with @tosuke-s.bsky.social and Tasuku—perfect weather, good hike, and great science chats on Elephant Mountain.

🥳 Congratulations to our postdoc, Dr. Anna Czarkwiani @aniaczark.bsky.social, on receiving the ERC Starting Grant @erc.europa.eu! With €2 million in funding, Anna will explore the biology of gravisensation and uncover insights into related disorders. 🧠 #CMCBnews @tudresden.bsky.social #ERCStG

We're excited to share with everyone a preprint of our manuscript that resolves the cellular origins of the symbiosome in cnidarian-algal symbiosis through proteomics of the symbiosome, RNAi, and CRISPR/Cas9 experiments. ⬇️ www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... Read on below! 1/12 🧵

"Why sequence the #genome of every species? A view from evolutionary biology" Did you catch this amazing new review in our journal by @peterhox.bsky.social? REad it for FREE here now: www.cambridge.org/core/journal... @thembauk.bsky.social #dnasequencing #chromosome #mutation #evolution

A Nobel-winning scientist of great modesty and humour, John Gurdon died on 7 Oct. Not only did he make a discovery that laid the foundations for stem cell research, he also created one of the best environments for research at the Wellcome/CRUK Gurdon Institute wellcome.org/news/sir-joh...

I am very happy to announce that the Echinox Lab will open in the BIOM unit at @obs-banyuls.fr in January 2026!! 🥳 We will use several echinoderm species to study animal body plan evolution. 🔽 Check our brand new lab website if you want to learn more about our future research www.echinox.org

Happy to share the Biodiversity Cell Atlas white paper, out today in @nature.com. We look at the possibilities, challenges, and potential impacts of molecularly mapping cells across the tree of life. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Very happy to have contributed to this review on "non-CG" #methylation in animals now out in @natgenet.nature.com. Working again with @obog.bsky.social and Tirsa is always a pleasure. We think this not so well studied form of methylation should be more widely considered, please read: rdcu.be/eFAEk

Latest from ours: www.cell.com/cell-reports... This is two stories in one: a case study/cautionary tale on developing genetic tools in new organisms, and the first hint at a gene regulatory network for choanoflagellate multicellular development (which turn out to involve a Hippo/YAP/ECM loop!) A 🧵

How did animals repeatedly conquer land? 🌊➡️⛰️ We analysed ~1,000 gene repertoires (24M genes!) from all animal phyla to uncover how this happened. Work led by @gemmaeling.bsky.social & Klara Eleftheriadi, both first coauthors of this titanic effort! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

📢🦋 Our paper ‘Global selection on insect antipredator coloration’ is out and featured on the cover of @science.org We ran a huge experiment to find out how ecological context favours camouflage and warning colouration as antipredator strategies. 1/6 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Why are some species widespread while others are found only in small, isolated areas? A study in Nature Communications shows that species with narrow ranges, and thus higher extinction risk, are often island-restricted, poor dispersers, and have evolved relatively recently. #evosky 🧪

New short paper from our lab @currentbiology.bsky.social, in which we discover of a new mode of cell motility for choanoflagellates: flagellar gliding. www.cell.com/current-biol... - A 🧵

How many chromosomes can an animal have? In our paper out now in @currentbiology.bsky.social we show that the Atlas blue butterfly has 229 chromosome pairs- the highest in diploid Metazoa! These arose by rapid autosome fragmentation while sex chromosomes stayed intact. www.cell.com/current-biol...

🧪Discovery of calcarins in @elife.bsky.social, a protein family in the sponge Sycon ciliatum, clarifies spicule formation and suggests parallel evolution of carbonate biomineralization in sponges & corals—key for animals as ecosystem engineers of reefs. @lmumuenchen.bsky.social #molpalmuc

Congrats! Such a needed message, this debate has gone very quickly from "probably no macrosyntenic conservation in animals", to "holy molly, sponges to amphixous are the same!", to "look, new rearrangements must be adaptive". Neat to see such a clear link with rate of molecular evolution.

My dispatch on early echinoderms (www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...) is now out in @currentbiology.bsky.social www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

My first steps into paleontology!! 😀 Big thanks to @imranrahman.bsky.social for having me on this cool project to look at some fascinating echinoderm fossils ⭐