For a new MBE Review, Presgraves et al. argue that many features of genome evolution, content, and organization seemingly inexplicable by adaptation or nearly neutral processes are instead best accounted for by meiotic drive. 🔗 academic.oup.com/mbe/article/... #evobio #molbio

New paper alert: Paralog interference contributes to the preservation of genetic redundancy www.cell.com/current-biol...

Our most recent work on the “function and evolution” of #nuclear-speckles is now online at Cell @cp-cell.bsky.social doi.org/10.1016/j.ce... Read the thread👇 for the highlights of our findings.

Now online! In this review, we cover four major topics on butterflies and moths: their evolutionary history and diversification dynamics, genomics, global diversity patterns, and conservation 🦋🌏 (1/8) @natrevbiodiv.nature.com www.nature.com/articles/s44...

@pratikkatte.bsky.social and I just released Lorax 🌲, a tool for interactive exploration of biobank-scale ancestral recombination graphs (ARGs). If you’ve ever wanted to scroll across the ancestries of thousands of genomes… this is for you.

So excited to share this manuscript led by the inimitable Cara Brand, who discovered that Topoisomerase II evolution causes hybrid female lethality in Drosophila. Congrats to Cara, @nickbr0wn.bsky.social, Anirban, and @buszczaklab.bsky.social! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Oft Herr Mendel dreams that genes form living matter. They do the latter. doi.org/10.1093/gene...

Deep models of protein evolution in time generate realistic evolutionary trajectories and functional proteins https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.02.19.706898v1

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

Our paper is now out in Nature: “Ancient co-option of LTR retrotransposons as yeast centromeres” www.nature.com/articles/s41... A short thread on how retrotransposons helped give rise to yeast point centromeres. 1/14

Aspergillus fumigatus - 29.9 crossovers per homologous chromosome pair! That makes about 1500 recombination map units per chromosome....

Pls RT‼️ @hanhtkvu.bsky.social lab @embl.org & we @cosheidelberg.bsky.social are looking for a #postdoc to study #regeneration x #autophagy across kingdoms of life. www.health-life-sciences.de/opportunitie... Pls spread the word & get in touch if you are interested.

🚨📢📄 Article in press in Genome Biology doi.org/10.1186/s130... We introduce panREPET, a reference-free pipeline to detect shared transposable element (TE) insertions across pangenomes and retrace their evolutionary dynamics #TEsky 🧵👇

In #GENETICS, Jacob Marsh, Sachin Kaushik, and @johriparul.bsky.social examine why and when rescaling of forward simulations in population genetics is not accurate, identifying pitfalls in simulation methods. buff.ly/wpzDRV9

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)

How could a simple self-replicating system emerge at the origins of life? RNA polymerase ribozymes can replicate RNA, but existing ones are so large that their self-replication seems impossible. Could they be smaller? Excited to share our latest work in @science.org on a new small polymerase. 1/n

Abstract submissions are open, and the program will be largely driven by the submissions! If you're on the east coast for Biology of Genomes, this will be a fun few day jaunt to CT afterwards. Bonus- if you drive from Long Island, the ferry is a ton of fun!

We're excited to be recruiting an NSF funded postdoc to work in the Villanea lab at CU Boulder. We're specifically interested in candidates who want to work at the intersection of population genetics, ancient DNA, and computer modeling. Please RT jobs.colorado.edu/jobs/JobDeta...

Another announcement! 📣 Our work on hybrid incompatibility in cohesin protection in 🐭oocytes is published!! Congrats Warif El Yakoubi and Eddie Pan!!🎉 We found hybrids with cohesion errors in two distinct genus. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

New research in #GENETICS identifies chromosome number and mean chromosome size as practical proxies for genome-wide recombination rate by analyzing genetic map data from 73 insect species and 157 monocentric flowering plants. buff.ly/L4O68V5

Time for a thread on our Christmas preprint “Origin and evolution of acrocentric chromosomes in human and great apes”. I had so much fun with this project and paper. It will be hard to summarize in a thread, but I’ll try www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... [1/21]

New tool from @alexsweeten.bsky.social to find and classify all your satellites: "AniAnn's: alignment-free annotation of tandem repeat arrays using fast average nucleotide identity estimates" 📄 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... 📦 github.com/marbl/anianns

The performance of genetic-constraint metrics varies significantly across the human noncoding genome https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.01.28.701168v1

New review out in Nat Rev Genet: Emergence & evolution of protein-coding de novo genes by Erich and Lars Eicholt @lacholt.bsky.social. How non-coding DNA becomes translated, persists or is lost in populations, and can yield structured/functional proteins—plus methods & open questions! rdcu.be/e09SM

Excited to announce our latest publication in reporting evidence for three (3!) new whole genome duplications (WGDs) in yeasts. Scientists have often wondered why WGD is so rare in fungi, it turns out we may just not have been looking hard enough! 🧪 🍄 🧬 www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

We hope this little guide and review of the recent literature on SVs will be useful for the community in #ecology #evolution #genomics #PopGen. Great lead by Kat!!

A new extreme of meiotic evolution: ✔️ 𝗻𝗼 crossovers ✔️ 𝗻𝗼 gene conversion ✔️ 𝗻𝗼𝗿𝗺𝗮𝗹 meiosis & fertility Sex mimics clonality without becoming asexual, in the holocentric multicellular eukaryote 𝘙𝘩𝘺𝘯𝘤𝘩𝘰𝘴𝘱𝘰𝘳𝘢 𝘵𝘦𝘯𝘶𝘪𝘴. more about it: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Meiotic drive has long been considered as a genetic curiosity. Genomic "footprints" suggest otherwise. Check out our new review doi.org/10.1093/molb..., a cross-taxa synthesis arguing that recurrent drive is a pervasive and underappreciated force in genome evolution.

Pregnancy loss is common in humans, and chromosomal abnormalities are the leading cause. Using genetic data from ~140,000 IVF embryos, we show that maternal variation in meiosis genes influences recombination and aneuploidy risk. First authors: @saracarioscia.bsky.social & @aabiddanda.github.io

📢 Three new #bioRxiv preprints from our team on holocentric chromosomes. Together, they connect centromere repeat evolution, karyotype dynamics, and meiotic recombination outcomes, revealing how holocentric genomes evolve and function. 🧬👇

Pangenome analysis reveals the evolutionary dynamics of repeat-based holocentromeres https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.01.17.700053v1

Breast milk isn't just nutrition – it delivers live bacterial strains that colonize the infant gut and persist for months. Happy to share our new paper, where we used metagenomics to track bacterial strains between 195 mother-infant pairs over the first 6 months of life: doi.org/10.1038/s414...

Registration for the 2026 NY Area Population Genetics meeting is now open, at events.simonsfoundation.org/e0mEoL?rt=8k.... Registration is free but required; if you are submitting an abstract, note that the deadline is *January 30th*.

Representation in genetic studies affects inference about genetic architecture https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.01.12.699135v1

Characterising the detectable and invisible fractions of genomic loci under balancing selection https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.01.13.698512v1

Want to study the genomics of repeated adaptation with data from hundreds of species? New funding for non-Canadians @ grad or postdoc level. Internal competition at UCalgary with very short deadline so please get in touch ASAP!! sshrc-crsh.canada.ca/en/funding/o...

Targeted Chromosomal Sequencing of Wild Bonobos Identifies a Genetically Distinct Subpopulation East of the Lomami River https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.01.08.698381v1

Postdoc position call @univie.ac.at - happy to host projects related to introgression, great ape genomics, and more! careers.univie.ac.at/en/postdoc/e...

Global patterns of natural selection inferred using ancient DNA https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.01.07.697984v1

🎉 New year, NEW PREPRINT! Bacteria exhibit astonishing genetic diversity, but where do new genes come from? My best friend Arya Kaul (/labmate in the @baym lab) investigates how advantageous deletions can spawn new genes - "deletion-born fusions." 🧵:

New review from @gokcumenlab.bsky.social led by Petar Pajic on VNTRs. If you’re interested in VNTRs, this is a very nice synthesis. academic.oup.com/gbe/article/...

How well does TWAS estimate a gene’s direction of effect on a trait? We think of this as an important stress-test for the accuracy of TWAS. In a new pre-print, we find that TWAS gets the sign wrong around 20-30% of the time! doi.org/10.64898/202... 1/n

I'm just delighted to announce our new preprint on genome-scale perturb-seq in CD4+ T cells. We learned both general lessons about the power of perturb-seq, and specific lessons about T cell biology. Led by amazing postdocs Emma Dann and Ronghui Zhu, with my wonderful collaborator Alex Marson.

Thawornwattana, Rannala & @zihengyang.bsky.social use simulation to study the false positive rate of a Bayesian test of gene flow under the MSC with multiple influencing factors. 🔗 doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msaf327 #evobio #molbio #compbio

Somatic and germline mutational processes across the tree of life https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2025.12.28.691837v1

Did you know there are 2 types of avocado varieties? A-types switch from female to male, B-types male to female, within a single day. This reciprocal sex alternation promotes cross-pollination and has a simple genetic basis. Read more in this recent preprint from the final chapter of my PhD thesis 🥑