Our work on chromatin evolution in brown algae is finally out! This is also my first "co-first author" paper!! I’m excited to share what we found 👇

🌡️🧬 RESEARCH 🧬🌡️ Arabidopsis plants use a heat-responsive protein pair, HIT4 and PUB49, to loosen tightly packed DNA, helping them survive high temperatures through a newly discovered stress adaptation mechanism – Wu et al. 🔗 doi.org/10.1093/jxb/... #PlantScience 🧪

Ever wondered how the #cuticle, a hallmark of land plants, was established? In our latest study, we show that the CUTIN SYNTHASE enzyme family was a key driver of this evolutionary innovation. #plantscience ▶️ www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... A thread 🧵 [1/8]

🌱🧬 EPIPLANT 2026 is happening soon! Registration for the conference is still open, but places are limited and filling up fast. If you haven’t registered yet, now is the time to secure your spot 👉 epiplant-2026.sciencesconf.org We look forward to welcoming you to Nantes!

The fact that Americans thought Auxin was a “Hoax from Europe” rightfully got some attention in my latest #PlantScienceClassics post. But it’s actually even funnier if you learn about the context & consequence of White speaking these words to Went at the AAAS Meeting in Pittsburgh. #PlantScience 🧪 🧵

ChromSMF preprint is out!🚀 tinyurl.com/ChromSMF We often piece together chromatin regulation layer by layer from separate assays. But this can be limiting! In @arnaudkr.bsky.social's lab, we developed a method to directly study multiple layers on the same DNA molecule! 🧬 What does this unlock? ⬇️

You asked, we listened. Millions of AI-predicted protein complex structures are now available in the #AlphaFold Database. This spans homodimers from 20 of the most studied species, including humans, as well as the World Health Organization’s priority pathogens list. www.ebi.ac.uk/about/news/t...

Back in the noughties when I was an academic, my lab did quite a bit of work on (conserved) alternative transcripts. This study in @plosbiology.org presents compelling evidence that most alternative transcripts are deleterious noise journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...

How did farming reach the Southern Andes? Through migration or cultural transmission? Our new paper in @nature.com combines ancient DNA, isotopes, archaeology & paleoclimate to reconstruct 2,000+ years of history in Uspallata, Mendoza. www.nature.com/articles/s41... A Thread🧵 (1/25+)

‪ 🌳 Do you want to contribute to research on how humans perceive forests? Take this quick, anonymous 10-min survey 🌲 👉 www.biodiful.org#/forest This will help us explore how people experience forest biodiversity! Please share on 🦋 & tag @biodiful.bsky.social to reach more participants 🙏💚 🌐🌍🦤🦑🪴🍁🧪

War is reshaping global markets. I have a paper under review that asks: who wins or loses when supply chains meet geopolitics, and what are the political implications? Since the world is changing faster than our overburdened peer-review system can handle, here's the 📃 + a🧵 osf.io/preprints/so...

Excited to announce I’m starting a new lab at @gmivienna.bsky.social (Vienna BioCentre) in Sept 2026 We study how carbon fixation is inherited and maintained in algae using cryo-ET, imaging, environmental sampling&more Looking for people who want to build the lab together, get in touch! #teamtomo

📢 Postdoc position in plant chromatin biology 🌱 (Strasbourg) Apply before March 30 🔗 www.unistra.fr/fr/recruteme... #PlantBiology #Postdoc

#JobAlert #PhD 🌱 We are offering a PhD project to explore how transcription factors have shaped the evolution of plant protective barriers. We will support suitable candidates in applying to the @unistra.fr Graduate School competition. Interested? Please get in touch for more information!

📢 PhD position in our lab! (MSCA COFUND) About dystrophin in Drosophila muscle progenitor cells 🧬🪰 #PhDPosition #DevBio #Drosophila #StemCells For candidates from outside France or have lived in France <12 months in the last 3 years. More info 👇 (Project #16) www.muskle.eu/recruitment/

How do the H2A.Z histone variant and its dedicated chromatin remodeller SRCAP regulate gene expression ? Beautiful work from @armelletollenaere.bsky.social now published @ www.nature.com/articles/s41...

I am happy to announce the launch of a new Arabidopsis genomics resource! Check out arabidopsislyrata.org Now you can easily look at the natural genetic variation across the entire species range of A. lyrata and A. arenosa.

➡️ preprint from the lab! Bacteria have loads of antiviral defences in their mobile genetic elements (MGEs). So when MGEs move between bacteria, the defences move with them, generating a fast turnover of defences in bacteria. But what about the antiviral defence turnover in the MGEs themselves? 🤔 🧵👇

We are very excited to share a new resource from our team: spatial subcellular proteome maps in plants! We developed an MS-based method that registers localizations of about 8000 proteins in Arabidopsis roots in a single experiment. (1/9) www.biorxiv.org/cgi/content/...

A reminder that we are actively recruiting a geneticist to the Department of Genetics at Albert Einstein College of Medicine careers-einstein.icims.com/jobs/17847/a...

Another great science appointment is coming up with @centromellone.bsky.social, Michele Pagano and Gergely Róna! Join us live on Tuesday, March 3rd at 5pm (Rome) / 11am (NYC). Zoom link: uniroma1.zoom.us/j/95149984403 Register here to stay in the loop: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

DNA replication globally disrupts the epigenome. But does this create a chromatin-access opportunity for TF binding to facilitate cell identity change? Now 𝐫𝐞𝐩𝐥𝐢-𝐀𝐓𝐀𝐂-𝐬𝐞𝐪 shows 𝘥𝘦 𝘯𝘰𝘷𝘰 chromatin opening & TF binding occurs specifically post-replication, in cellular differentiation & reprogramming!

Excited to share this work done during my PhD here in Vienna! We show how chromatin compaction prevents the release of fragmented DNA in apoptosis, and use new tools to study the mechanism of compaction itself. See our summary/"bluetorial" below & our preprint here: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

🎉📣 #TAIR12, the latest reannotation of the Arabidopsis thaliana genome, is now available under accession number PRJEB100887 on ENA and NCBI! Thank you all the volunteer researchers whose hard work has made this possible! #plantscience #plantbiology 🧪 bit.ly/3ZHtneT

#InvertebrateShitposting as per @joabaldwin.com's request

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

The PopGen Vienna Seminar series schedule is ready for the next term (March-June). It's jam-packed with fantastic speakers in #evolution, #genetics, #genomics, #popgen, and more! Details and streaming link signup can be found on our website popgen-vienna.at/news/seminars/

🚨📢📄 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 🧵👇

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

Check out this story by Handler, Brennecke et al. on how the piRNA pathways distinguish transposable element transcripts. Beautiful work!

Thrilled to announce I've been awarded a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship! 🇪🇺 I'll be joining @pejullien.bsky.social's group at @ibmp-cnrs.bsky.social in Strasbourg. Excited for what's ahead! 🎉

This week in @science.org, a celebration of plant pangenomes. A pangenome analysis for massively polyploid sugarcane species, and one for Brassica rapa giving insight into subspeciation. What's all the fuss about pangenomes? Pamela and Douglas Soltis explore this in an insightful Perspective(1/4)

'The Centre for Research in Cellular Biology of Montpellier (CRBM) is recruiting Junior/Senior Group Leaders to shape its research in the coming decade. The deadline for application is 31st of March 2026.' #sciencejobs focalplane.biologists.com/cell-biology...

Here we go again! Join us in Vienna, May 21–22, for two days of plant science—talks, discussions, and celebration of what makes plants both beautiful and essential 💚Full program + registration here: www.oeaw.ac.at/gmi/news-eve... Come be part of it — each of you counts!

I am excited to offer a postdoctoral research position in my lab in Oxford studying the distribution of small RNAs during plant sexual reproduction. shorturl.at/7Goxt Reposts appreciated! Obligatory cat video to brighten your day. :-)

📢 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. 🧬👇

Dominant contribution of Asgard archaea to eukaryogenesis. tldr; Best guess, ~ 50% of conserved eukaryotic protein families are from from Asgard archaea! #science #biology #evolution #nature #bioinformatics www.nature.com/articles/s41...

After a short break in our webinars we are delighted to be back up & running this month! First up, on Jan 30th we will be joined by @lucas.farnunglab.com from @harvardmed.bsky.social 🔬 Shortly after, on Feb 13th we will be hosting @heardlab.bsky.social from @crick.ac.uk 🧬 Registration details 👇

The (Yoav) Voichek lab has opened its gates at the Weizmann Institute, and is actively recruiting students and researchers at all levels - come explore gene regulation and computational genomics in a fun, friendly sprouting lab 🤗🥼⚗️🧪 www.weizmann.ac.il/plants/voichek

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!🧵

Have we been overstating the role of transposable elements in adaptation to local or rapidly changing environmental conditions? Happy to share my (somewhat unpopular?) opinion paper on this matter: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... Thanks to those who already shared the link!

REFEREE 1: “I conclude with a simple, direct statement - this is the best paper I have read all year!” #TransparentPeerReview Co-evolving infectivity and expression patterns drive the diversification of endogenous retroviruses @juliusbrennecke.bsky.social et al www.embopress.org/doi/full/10....

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.

Applications for our international #PhD program open until 11th Jan. Come work with us @uoe-igc.bsky.social and @hannahlong.bsky.social to understand DNMT3B in ICF syndrome or with our wonderful colleagues. Details here: institute-genetics-cancer.ed.ac.uk/igc-graduate... #epigenetics Please repost 🙏

While stories of singular DNA changes that drove evolution of human brain/behaviour remain seductive, advances across multiple fields of biology cast doubt on such simplistic narratives of our origins. A new paper from my lab shows how biobanks may speak to this fundamental question.🧪 Explainer🧵👇1/n

Closing out my year with a journal editor shocker 🧵 Checking new manuscripts today I reviewed a paper attributing 2 papers to me I did not write. A daft thing for an author to do of course. But intrigued I web searched up one of the titles and that's when it got real weird...

Aujourd'hui c'est le solstice d'hiver dans l'hémisphère Nord. Les journées vont commencer à rallonger! Le soleil ne se lève à l'Est (centre de l'image avec Nord à gauche, Sud a droite) que lors des équinoxes. La position du lever change un peu tous les jours! (©Z. Al-Abbadi)

1/ I’ve reviewed hundreds of bioinformatics GitHub repos in my career. Here’s the brutal truth: most tool documentation fails the people it’s meant to help. And it’s not because the algorithms are bad.

Have you ever wondered how new DNA methylation patterns are established? Paradigm shift ahead! We discovered a new mode of DNA methylation targeting in plants that relies on transcription factors and sequence motifs rather than chromatin modifications to regulate the methylome. rdcu.be/eQ6L5 1/8

An early Christmas present for those interested in chromatin and transcription! Fantastic work from @au-ho-yu.bsky.social and @aleksszczurek.bsky.social . Thanks to Inge and Michiel for their help. Please repost! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...