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...

Excited to share our Review on human PGC development covering the latest in vivo observations & in vitro developments, esp. in the last 5 years. Have a read! journals.biologists.com/dev/article/... From: @astar-gis.bsky.social @ki.se Warwick University, @gurdoninstitute.bsky.social

Really excited to share our latest paper led by @simonaube.bsky.social. Fascinating results examining whether regulatory mutations can lead to adaptation as fast as coding mutations do. #mevosky #evobio #evoSky www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

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

We are hiring-join us!

I’m super happy to present the first discoveries of the RIKEN-Cambridge Joint Crop Symbiosis Research Team, based in Japan 🇯🇵 doi.org/10.1101/2025... A thread 👇

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/...

In crater Lake Masoko one fish species is splitting into shallow and deep-living ecotypes occupying different light environments. New research shows their visual systems are diverging, and how colours of male eggspots have changed to maximise their visibility. doi.org/10.1093/molb...

Now published @natecoevo.nature.com with @annika-nichols.bsky.social, our latest on the evolution of 𝘴𝘭𝘦𝘦𝘱 across 𝟲𝟬 𝘀𝗽𝗲𝗰𝗶𝗲𝘀 of cichlid fishes! doi.org/10.1038/s415... with members of the @schierlab.bsky.social and Salzburger labs, as well as the burgeoning Shafer lab @uoftcellsysbiol.bsky.social

New paper from our lab! We found that LINE-1 transposons contribute to early human brain development. Funded by @asapresearch.parkinsonsroadmap.org www.cell.com/cell-genomic...

New from the lab led by @natrigg.bsky.social. We started by characterizing mRNA in sperm, EVs, and the epithelium across epididymal transit. This revealed evidence that sperm acquire specific mRNAs through fusion with epididymal EVs, which we further established with in vitro co-incubation assays

Thrilled to have been selected for a short talk at the EMBO mobile genome meeting in Heidelberg in November! Want to hear about the adaptive potential of TEs but can’t wait til then, and happen to be at #ESEB2025? Come and see my talk at 16.20 today, room 120+121! #TEsky #TEworldwide

🔥my latest paper from @odedrechavi.bsky.social lab🔥 we found small RNAs act across tissues to regulate fertlity in C. elegans 🪱. Surprisingly, we also found that O2-sensing neurons inhibit germline maintenance. Follow along our journey👇https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.08.07.669182v1

My colleagues Baptise Rafanel et al. investigated how a newly invading transposon can be silenced. They found that not only antisense insertions in piRNA clusters such as flamenco, but also insertions in the 3‘UTR of genes can drive potent silencing.

After 10 years of work, a complete telomere-to-telomere gap-free genome for C. elegans finally exists: it has 106 Mb rather than the textbook 100.3 Mb, and up to 366 additional genes. genome.cshlp.org/content/35/8...

Paper led by @movillome.bsky.social on unbiased detection of (somatic) #TE insertions in #Arabidopsis with @pacbio.bsky.social long reads out after peer review. Thanks to academic editor Leandro Quadrana for shepherding it through the review process. #plantscience link.springer.com/article/10.1...?