✨Exciting news: the main story of my PhD is out in Science! Together with Christine Moene @cmoene.bsky.social, we explored what happens when you scramble the genome—revealing how Sox2’s position shapes enhancer activation. 📖 Read the full story here: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Transposable elements are vectors of recurrent transgenerational epigenetic inheritance @science.org @pierrebaduel.bsky.social www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Interested in repetitive DNA? We are organising a free workshop on Oct 2nd at the Botanical Institute of Barcelona! All organisms included - not only plants ;-) Last chance for registration, don’t miss it! bit.ly/repetitiveDN...

Hi! We are looking for a PhD to work on the cross talk between transposable elements, insects and intracellular bacteria on the bioinformatics side. The PhD would be supervised by @mariefablet.bsky.social and myself along with @nicolasparisot.bsky.social Deadline December 2025! Please share! #tesky

#TEsky Endogenous viral elements in termite genomes reveal extensive diversity of deltaviruses and provide insights into their origins www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

#TEsky Patterns and Processes of Genomic Evolution Inferred From the Ten Smallest Vertebrate Genomes doi.org/10.1002/advs...

Thrilled to share our story in its final form! nature.com/articles/s41... 💥 After ~10 years, we show that BMAL1 represses transposons via chromatin regulation in embryonic stem cells—rather than circadian rhythms as in adult tissues.

I am thrilled to share our review with @claudiakohler11.bsky.social in which we discuss on the latest research on the classical and emerging roles of transposable elements in shaping genomic imprinting in plants. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... #imprinting #epigenetics #plantReproduction

#TEsky MITE Annotation and Landscape in 207 Plant Genomes Reveal Their Evolutionary Dynamics and Functional Roles doi.org/10.1111/1755...

New preprint from my lab! We describe how transposable elements are activated in Parkinson’s disease, which is linked to an interferon response. We believe this study significantly advances our understanding of transposons and their role in human brains. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

The scent of silence! Cool research in Cell @cellpress.bsky.social to brighten up your day🌹. The mystery of why some roses are fragrant and others aren't has an answer. It's called SCREP: a rose-specific gene that evolved from non-coding DNA 16.8 million years ago 👇

Excited to share my talk at the EMBL John Kendrew Award ceremony about what transposons taught me about science, life, and change along the way. Big thanks to my mentors, the @embl.org Alumni community, and my current scientific home @maxperutzlabs.bsky.social 💛 youtu.be/NwIikKS7EWE?...

Structural variation in 1,019 diverse humans based on long-read sequencing 🏺🧪 www.nature.com/articles/s41... More than half of the new genomic variation uncovered in the study was found in those tricky repetitive regions, including in transposons, also known as jumping genes.

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...

I'm super bummed to be missing #ESEB2025 @eseb2025.bsky.social due to a cancelled flight! Here's a quick overview of my talk "Gene- and genome-focused perspectives on microbial pangenomes" slated to be part of The Evolution of Microbial Pangenomes -- which I recommend you attend tomorrow (Fri) ! 1/n

Extremely excited to share that I’m joining Columbia University @columbiauniversity.bsky.social as an Assistant Professor! We will explore how the mobile genome works—how transposons shape us, our DNA and how they can be harnessed to build useful technologies. #NewPI #RNAsky #TEsky thawanilab.org

🍹 @abbybuch.bsky.social & co report the role of #lamin proteins and the lamin B receptor (LBR) in #chromatin positioning at the nuclear periphery. Knockout of all lamins and LBR in mouse ESCs leads to heterochromatin detachment and derepression of gene and transposon expression. bit.ly/4mPf5Cx

1/ How do animals develop immunity against a newly encountered transposable element from scratch? Our study reveals that the mobility of TEs is their Achilles heel, allowing hosts to develop a powerful small RNA-mediated silencing response. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Chaetognaths have lost gene body methylation and shifted #5mC back to Transposable Elements. This reversion to the ancestral state is coupled with a simplification of DNMT3 architecture. We posit that trans-splicing might compensate. It is an honour to have contributed to this 20y struggle ⛰️.

#TEsky Phylogenetic relatedness rather than aquatic habitat fosters horizontal transfer of transposable elements in animals doi.org/10.1101/gr.2...

Composite transposons with bivalent histone marks can serve as RNA-dependent enhancers, controlling key developmental and aging-related gene programs @cellcellpress.bsky.social www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...

Really beautiful work led by Jessica Leismann in Joan Barau’s lab @imbmainz.bsky.social . If you like elegant mouse genetics, the transposon arms race, and a healthy dose of epigenetics, this one’s for you. www.embopress.org/doi/full/10.... @emboreports.org

Looking forward to this new installment of the Woods Hole Mobile DNA Meeting! Fantastic program, laid-back atmosphere, and gorgeous setting at the Marine Biological Laboratory ⛵️🪼🐋 Abstract submission closes Aug 7 but registration after that date is possible. www.eventsquid.com/event.cfm?ev...

Uncover the hidden power of a tiny protein - the ERVK3-1 microprotein - as it interacts with the HUSH complex, a key player in silencing parasitic genomic elements, shedding light on a po... 🧵 Thread below Full analysis: https://helixbrief.com/article/aa18903a-395a-48df-be22-64c6cf0fd0be

#TEsky Structural basis for the evolution of a domesticated group II intron–like reverse transcriptase to function in host cell DNA repair doi.org/10.1073/pnas...

Happy to share our new paper out today in @cp-cellreports.bsky.social in collaboration with @tobiaswarnecke.bsky.social @akihisaosakabe.bsky.social about how evolution can do big things with small changes. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

My first co–first author paper with the amazing PoPo @popomicro.bsky.social is now on bioRxiv ! 🧬 We found that Tn7-like transposons - known for finding specific insertion sites before they jump - aren’t just in bacteria. They're in archaea distributed across all major superphyla!

Join the online course on Bioinformatic Analysis of Transposable Elements from Nov 3-7. No prior TE experience needed. More info: https://www.physalia-courses.org/courses-workshops/course24/ #course

Today is the last day to submit to be considered for a podium presentation at the EMBO transposon meeting this Fall. The organizers prioritized speaker slots sourced from submitted abstracts, we want to hear about your science!

The preprint of my first article is available on bioRxiv! We use a transposon ecology framework to analyze the distribution of insertion sequences within prokaryotic genomes. We characterize their ecological niche and show evidence of niche construction 🧪🧬💻 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Giant virus endogenization in Acanthamoeba we covered more in detail in a separate manuscript published some weeks ago in @bmc.springernature.com Biology, in a great collaboration with John Archibald's group at Dalhousie: bmcbiol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10..... 6/7

Happy to see our latest work out in @molbioevol.bsky.social. We revisit the evolution of 5-methylcytosine across neglected eukaryotic supergroups, establishing an ancestral repressive role silencing genome invaders, both transposons and viral elements👾: academic.oup.com/mbe/advance-... 🧵 1/7

I need you, and I can't stress this enough, to read this paper by Margaret Kidwell et al. on horizontal transfer of P elements from mites to flies and back...from *1991*: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

#TEsky Deciphering Complex Interactions Between LTR Retrotransposons and Three Papaver Species Using LTR_Stream doi.org/10.1093/gpbj...

Lungfish have really lost control of their transposons with resulting expansion in size - 10MB genes in there. Each of the chromosomes of the South American lungfish is bigger than the whole human genome. Splicing, TF binding, all sorts must be pretty interesting in this context.

Now online! This review explores the origin and evolution of #retrotransposons, focusing on how long interspersed element-1 & #EndogenousRetroviruses regulate pre-implantation development and contribute to cellular #totipotency. #medsky #OpenAccess:

📣 Happy to see the journal publication 📄 of our work on Starships 🚀 in Verticillium fungi: terrific work led by @yukiyosato.bsky.social rdcu.be/exBSp

Very cool story about GIANT transposons (up to 700 kb) that can transfer virulence-associated genes between diverse fungi 🧪

How the complex issue of delineating #Transposons families plays out in the interpretation of epigenetic experiments. Congrats Xun Chen and @guilbourque.bsky.social for leading this work, and thank you for having me on this! www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... #TEsky

Transposon Gene Regulatory Roles Revealed Using Phylogenetic Approach https://www.newsbeep.com/uk/12192/ A new study suggests that ancient viral DNA embedded in our genome, which were long dismissed as genetic…

O'Donnell et al. investigated the evolution of Starships - a class of giant transposons - in Aspergillus and Penicillium, finding that domesticated lineages exhibited greater Starship content than relatives from non-human environments. 🔗 doi.org/10.1093/gbe/evaf125 #genome #evolution #TEsky

Curious about how novel #plant #pathogens emerge? Check out our microreview on whether #fungal disease outbreaks are instigated by Starship #transposons. We present three examples that we think are evidence of outbreaks caused by Starship HGT. bsppjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Are you bravely deciding to do a postdoc in the US? And also interested in some combination of genomics, immunology, and transposons? If so, consider applying to my lab at the BioFrontiers Institute in Boulder, Colorado! jobs.colorado.edu/jobs/JobDeta... 🧪🧬 #TESky #interferosky

My colleague David Garfinkel is looking for a postdoc to join our NIH-funded project on the “Evolution of Retrotransposon Control Mechanisms” More info here: reporter.nih.gov/search/u7dKr.... The official job listing can be found here: www.ugajobsearch.com/postings/437... Please repost! #TEsky

Zooming in on the genetic environment, we found every npmA2 copy in the same vehicle; a 5 kb composite transposon (Tn7734) nested inside a 30 kb ICE element (ICE Tn7740). Both elements are novel, no previous records in public databases 🧬 (8/14)

Very happy to share our protocols paper for CELLO-seq. This will make single cell long read RNA-seq more accessible and provides analysis guidelines. We hope this helps the #transposon #TEsky community and folks working on #singleCell isoform and allelic #gene expression. doi.org/10.1038/s415...

From 2018: Neutral Theory, Transposable Elements, and Eukaryotic Genome Evolution. academic.oup.com/mbe/article/...

Pls. share widely Calling all transposon fans & lovers of genetic innovation MOBILE GENOME welcomes you in Heidelberg, Nov. 4–7 2025 → Vibrant & friendly community → Cutting-edge talks from mechanisms to physiology → Plenty of surprises (TEs never stop innovating) submit abstract by July 29

@mcdonaldmeganc.bsky.social presents on the ToxB fungal effector. Pacbio long-read sequencing ~doubles detection of transposons compared to short-read. Helpful for finding where the multiple copies of ToxB -flanked by TEs- are throughout the genome. Sometimes in tandem copies! #2025ISMPMI