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)

Congrats to talented graduate student Aaron Lemus for leading this litterature review on #transposons and #epigenetic remodeling with #aging! @uscleonarddavis.bsky.social

New preprint from the lab! We dig into the regulatory roles of TEs in the mouse placenta, with some surprising findings. Led by the awesome @smamante.bsky.social. Particular kudos to him for navigating the many twists and turns of the project.

Today, we're sharing an open letter from our Chief Executive, Professor Sir Ian Chapman, outlining changes to UKRI investment approach, and addressing concerns about research funding and the financial position of STFC. Read his letter here: www.ukri.org/news/open-le...

Huge congratulations to @juancruedas.bsky.social for successfully passing his PhD viva with minor corrections yesterday! 🧬We’re incredibly proud of you! And even more exciting, the manuscript is on the way. Stay tuned! 👏🥳 @cambiochem.bsky.social

One protein. One pathway. A whole germline fate. New paper from my postdoc @mpi-bio-fml.bsky.social out in PNAS: Germline fate determination by a single ARGONAUTE protein in Ectocarpus www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

It is finally out! If you are interested in TE-derived CREs, and newly described, but evolutionary old KZFP-TE mechanistic modalities, read it at www.cell.com/cell-reports.... Thankful to everyone who took part in this work, namely @orpsf.bsky.social and other @trono-lab.bsky.social members. 🫀🧬✨

Crushed to hear of Mark Batzer’s passing. He was the Boyd Professor at Louisiana State University. His influential research revealed how mobile elements shape the genomes of humans & other mammals. Mark’s personality, generosity & positivity were larger than life. He lifted everyone up. HUGE loss 💔

We had a great time at the @cambiochem.bsky.social Away Days, learning about the exciting research across the Department! It was a pleasure to share some of our group’s projects thanks to @migueldvalmeida.bsky.social and @ecwalsh.bsky.social . All set for a year full of science! Stay tuned!

Interested in the unexpected? How about a link between piRNAs and maternal histone mRNAs … Great collab with @sebastianfalk.bsky.social, @koenig-lab.bsky.social and Florian Steiner. #piRNA #histone #mRNA #maternal #RNAbiology #RNASky www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

New Year, New Paper!🎊 Pervasive cis-regulatory co-option of a transposable element family reinforces cell identity across the mouse immune system www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... Centerpiece of Jason Chobirko's PhD, talented PhD student co-mentored by Andrew Grimson & me. Really excited about it!🧵

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

Very happy to see this preprint out! 🎉 This was the last project I started during my time in the Ketting lab, which was later picked up by Shamitha, who did an amazing job extending our initial observations on C. elegans GTSF-1 to other nematodes + further insights into RdRP interaction.

Happy to share two BioRxiv manuscripts from our lab. One on genetic Argonaute interaction and unexpected non-correlation between small RNAs and their targets: doi.org/10.64898/202... The second on IDR processing and IDR-mediated Argonaute loading control: doi.org/10.64898/202... Merry Xmas😊

☕Earl Grey v7.0.0 brewed fresh☕ Nested TEs finally get the treatment they deserve: iterative detection of deep nesting, cleaner GFF annotations, and coverage stats that don’t double-count genomic space + a RepeatCraft edge-case fix. Happy new year to the TE folks! 🧬 github.com/TobyBaril/Ea...

Intrigued by a long-standing conundrum in small RNA biology—how nuclear Argonaute proteins silence transposons when they *need* target transcription for their own recruitment—we studied the piRNA pathway. And found a hidden RNA-decay axis from Piwi to the RNA exosome.

Very happy to share that I have been awarded an ERC CoG to build predictive and mechanistic models of pigment pattern development and evolution across cichlids!! 🐠🎨 I've been dreaming about this for a long time, and I’m incredibly excited that we can now pursue it in full. #ERCCoG @erc.europa.eu 1/3

WormTagDB: A Systematic Survey of Endogenously Tagged Proteins in C. elegans and Roadmap Towards the Tagged Proteome https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2025.12.02.691955v1

High-quality mouse reference genomes [PacBio Long Read genomes of 17 strains] reveal the structural complexity of the murine protein-coding landscape, Cell Genomics. www.cell.com/cell-genomic... Genomes and annotations here: projects.ensembl.org/mouse_genomes/

Rapid compensatory evolution within a multiprotein complex preserves telomere integrity www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... @levine-lab.bsky.social very cool work

All hail Caenorhabditis elegans, one of the most researched organisms on Earth. Collaborative data sharing in the nematode research community led to four Nobel Prize-winning discoveries about human development and disease. In PNAS: https://ow.ly/uNqU50Xyj4e

Happy to share that my PhD project is finally published!🪱✨ Selfish genes are found across the tree of life. They can disrupt inheritance patterns and at the same time act as units for molecular innovation. Here we tried to answer one big question: how do selfish genes emerge in the first place?

Roussel, Suh, @fjruizruano.bsky.social & @amdioncote.bsky.social characterized TE content in naturally occurring killifish hybrids, finding higher TE load and accumulation of Neptune subfamilies in hybrids. 🔗 doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msaf266 #evobio #molbio #TEsky

Looking for a PhD in RNA biology? The deadline is approaching fast! This is a great opportunity to do a PhD together with an industry partner fully funded by @nrpdtp.bsky.social BBSRC Case studentship.

piRNA-directed DNA methylation may not be a mammalian invention, but can already be found in the germline of axolotl salamanders Donal O’Carroll and coworkers www.embopress.org/doi/full/10....

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

🚨 New preprint alert! Our latest work from @immler.bsky.social lab 🐟🧬 Sex-specific responses of small RNAs and transposable elements to thermal stress in zebrafish germ cells #TESky #TE #piRNA #miRNA #zebrafish #DanioDigest 🔗 Read here www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... A thread 🧵...

Thrilled to share our new review in Current Opinion in Genetics & Development on TE driven innovation in gene regulation🤘. I am honored to be part of this with two major TE aficionados @cedricfeschotte.bsky.social and @trono-lab.bsky.social #TEsky #TEworldwide authors.elsevier.com/c/1m6MC,LqAZ...

I am so excited to share new work on a TE insertion that regulates iridescence in swordtails, led by fantastic grad student @nadiahaghani.bsky.social and with help from many coauthors! In a time that has been so difficult to navigate, this & other projects have kept my spirits up: shorturl.at/NE65A

TEs aren’t just genomic parasites, they’re also engines of genomic novelty. Our new study with ~2,000 Z. tritici genomes shows repeated TE mobilization waves during global expansion. With @danielcroll.bsky.social & @guidopuccetti.bsky.social 🧬 www.nature.com/articles/s41... #TEworldwide

Excited to share our new preprint on BioRxiv! A collaborative effort spanning many years and several labs to uncover what the germline chromosomes of Paramecium really look like. 🔗 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... 1/5

PhD opportunity in plant developmental biology for UK based students of Black heritage! How do they know when to grow up? Join us at the University of Bristol to find out. Application deadline Jan 6th www.findaphd.com/phds/project... #PlantSciencePhDs @blackinplantsci.bsky.social

Having a lot of fun at #EMBOMobileGenome 😃 Perfect timing for our paper from the lab of @toddmacfarlan.bsky.social to be out @natcomms.nature.com!! …and I’m currently on the job market looking for a new scientific home! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Welcome to Day 1 of 'The mobile genome: genetic and physiological impacts of transposable elements'! 🧬 The opening remarks by Julius Brennecke accompanied by his fellow scientific organisers: 🔹Déborah Bourc'his 🔹Josefa González 🔹Joseph Peters #EMBOMobileGenome

1/ Ever needed to annotate TEs in a fungal genome, but didn't know where to start? We have released #MycoMobilome, a community-focused non-redundant database of transposable element consensus sequences for the fungal kingdom, constructed from >4,000 fungal genomes! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

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

1/10 Genome maintenance by telomerase is a fundamental process in nearly all eukaryotes. But where does it come from? Today, we report the discovery of telomerase homologs in a family of antiviral RTs, revealing an unexpected evolutionary origin in bacteria. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

PREACH! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Evolution of chromatin accessibility associated with traits of cichlid phenotypic diversity https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.10.09.681187v1

#TEsky The phenotypic variation of widefins medaka is due to the insertion of a giant transposon containing a viral genome within hoxca cluster doi.org/10.1093/gene...

Very sad news, John Gurdon has died. A developmental biologist's developmental biologist, Nobel prize winner His work is the foundation of much of today's dev & stem cell bio. An inspiration to many, including me. Always asking questions & wanting the answers www.magd.cam.ac.uk/news/profess...

We discovered an endogenous retrovirus that's still spreading in natural D. melanogaster populations! It was horizontally transferred from D. erecta in Central Africa, so we named it "Kuruka", which means "jump" in Swahili. Read its cool story here: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Preprint Alert! 🦥 We produced complete genomes for 2 Xenarthra and placed them in a mammalian comparative framework. We found that Xenarthra harbour the largest number of retrocopies in mammals! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Hi fellow C. elegans scientists, I've made a few videos that may be of use for new trainees working in worm labs. Hoping to add more in the future, but figured I'd share this resource as is in case it's helpful :) www.youtube.com/@Workingwith...

So happy to see my first first-author paper published! 🎈 A short thread on how Ectocarpus and its TE secrets have kept me busy lately: rdcu.be/eITQH

C. elegans is a real animal and we set out to understand how it comes to have its distinctive biogeography. Its ancestral center of diversity is in the higher elevation forests of Hawaii. Its closest relatives are spread across east Asia. Did they travel from Asia? [Preprint 🧵]

📣 Our department is hiring an Assistant Professor in Evolutionary Cell and Molecular Biology to join the @weillinstitute.bsky.social PLS spread the word! academicjobsonline.org/ajo/jobs/30607

Our study on the role of LTR5HS and SVAs in regulation of human neural crest migration is now published as peer-reviewed paper on @molsystbiol.org! Congrats to first author brilliant postdoc Laura Deelen, and all the authors involved! @imperialsci.bsky.social www.embopress.org/doi/full/10....

PIWI clade Argonautes are essential for transposon silencing. Without them, animals are sterile due to massive transposon activity. But how does piRNA-guided target interaction translate into silencing? PhD student Júlia Portell Montserrat has an intriguing answer www.cell.com/molecular-ce...