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...

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... @soreklab.bsky.social Sorek lab does it again! Such a cool signal to specifically detect the event of genome degradation by a phage

Some impressions from the rather fabulous #EMBOmobilegenome Mobile Genome meeting in Heidelberg Morning walk through the woods, exciting panel discussion, flash talks, lab community, drosophila friends, … @events.embl.org The transposon community is going very strong. see you all again in 2027!!

How is epigenetic information inherited? We found that CDCA7 proteins are critical players in the inheritance of DNA methylation at CG sites in plants, and this is true both in the lab and in the wild. How does this work? 🧵👇

🚨 First pre-print from my team !! TL;DR: presence of polymorphism (sequence differences between the homologous chromosomes) can *increase* the local rate of recombination in Arabidopsis thaliana, turning cold regions of the genome hot (purple v. grey) !

Happy to share the results of a long-haul post-doc project, now online @science.org, aiming at understanding the rules of transgeneration epigenetic inheritance over TEs in plants and its extent and impact in nature. More below! doi.org/10.1126/scie...

My first first-author paper is out!🎉 Here we propose a model where a silencing complex, PIWI*, assembles on target RNAs to recruit effectors and shut down transposon activity. Huge thanks to the Brennecke and Plaschka labs, especially Julius and Clemens, and all co-authors!

🚀 Checkout our new #nextflow MNase-pipeline nucDetective Features: ✅ MNase QC analysis ✅ high resolution nucleosome maps ✅ detect nucleosome dynamics ✅ multi-condition comparison ✅ nucleosme-repeat-length Try it here: github.com/uschwartz...#nextflow1/2

BOKU University in Vienna is recruiting a full professor for Biochemistry! Check out the description below, apply and join us in beautiful Vienna. @bokuvienna.bsky.social 🧪🧪🧪 short.boku.ac.at/53e6g6

Further evidence that sugar in the plates changes the plant biology you study. Best to avoid putting sugar in the agar, unless you want to study what sugar in the agar does to plants. This paper uses sugar in the agar to study what sugar does. www.nature.com/articles/s41... #plantresearch

Attention plant proteomics specialists: We are looking for a Head of our new Proteomics Unit at our international and dynamic Max Planck Institute of Molecular Plant Physiology. @mpi-mp-potsdam.bsky.social Applications are welcome until 30. Sept 2025: jobs.mpimp-golm.mpg.de/jobposting/8...

Thanks for sharing! All activities were spearheaded by Roberto Torres @lcatmon.bsky.social in collaboration with the "44 Perills" association and with the support of @sesbe-org.bsky.social @eseb2025.bsky.social and @ajuntamentbcn.bsky.social. Big shout out to #eseb2025 scientists that participated!

August’s Nature Plants cover story shows how we integrated large-scale multiDAP and snRNA data to reveal drivers of cell type identity and evolution in flowering plants. www.nature.com/nplants/volu... We packed a lot into this paper! Here’s a single-cell spin on what we found:

Out after peer review, collaborative study from Nordborg & Weigel labs with help from many others. Not the largest collection of new Arabidopsis thaliana genomes, but we hopefully put forward some good ideas for how to think about pangenomes and their analysis! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Thrilled to have our spatial single-cell atlas of the Arabidopsis lifecycle in @NaturePlants. Turns out that its easy to make nice images when spatial expression of 1,000 genes is available! 1/n @natanellae.bsky.social @tatsuyanobori.bsky.social @joeecker.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/s41...

🌱 come join our lab 😀 🔬 PhD: small RNAs & plant stress (36 mo) 🧬CDD researcher: plant molecular biology (24 mo) Apply 👇 PhD: emploi.cnrs.fr/Offres/Docto... CDD: emploi.cnrs.fr/Offres/CDD/U... #PlantScience #PhD #ResearchJobs#ERC#CNRS

Very proud of this work where we define how the MORC2 ATPase directs CpG methylation of active human L1 transposons in early development. Thanks to co-authors, funders & wonderful environment @lundstem.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... Brief thread below (do people still do that?) 1/X

I can only recommend working with Heïdi at the GReD, she is a terrific scientist and human being! Clermont-Ferrand has high quality of life, is affordable and the surrounding nature is a beauty.

1/7 I am very excited to announce our🌹NEW PAPER OUT IN 𝑁𝐴𝑇𝑈𝑅𝐸!🌹 𝐃𝐑𝐈𝐕𝐄 𝐓𝐎 𝐒𝐔𝐑𝐕𝐈𝐕𝐄: Bimodal centromeres in pentaploid dogroses shed light on their unique meiosis With the Ritz and Kovařík labs we show a potential role for centromeres on 𝘙𝘰𝘴𝘢 𝘤𝘢𝘯𝘪𝘯𝘢 bizarre reproduction! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

1/ How many hours do bioinformaticians lose matching sample IDs across assays? Too many. And it’s avoidable. Let’s talk about why this happens—and how to stop it.

I am super excited to announce the first (brief) pre-print purely from my group: Start right to end right: authentic open reading frame selection matters www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... This marks a return to NMD research for me. NMD detects early stop codons but we need to find the true stop!

The rest of Mendel's alleles characterized! So, out of 7 traits, 3 caused by TE insertions!!! (though apparently there are two different green alleles, one cause by a TE insertion, but another a promoter deletion allele) www.nature.com/articles/s41...

🚨 Preprint alert!! Thrilled to share our new story where we report the discovery of a new sporophytic maternal-effect mutant in Arabidopsis. 🧵 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

🧪 A new method called MagIC-Cryo-EM allows scientists to use powerful #CryoEM techniques to examine proteins that have been difficult to study so far.

The pitfalls of class prediction in omics 🧵 1/ You think you’ve built the perfect omics predictor. The accuracy is high. The p-value is low. But is it real—or just a story your data whispered back?

A three year postdoctoral position is available in my group, investigating plant centromere structure, function and evolution @camplantsci.bsky.social www.jobs.cam.ac.uk/job/51488/

Super cool work on the function of intrinsically disordered regions in regulating transcription factor DNA binding.

[Daily Watch] Rice plants inherit cold tolerance through epigenetic changes. Landmark study challenges traditional evolution views. #Evolution #Epigenetics #PlantScience www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Transposable elements are a major driver of intron gain in eukaryotes, and are capable of transmission between diverse species #HGT #evolution - www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

A giant virus in the genome of Chlamydomonas - this week in @science.org #plantscience Cryptic infection of a giant virus in a unicellular green alga | Science www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

This is wild. Chromosome distributions into different nuclei! Distribution of haploid chromosomes into separate nuclei in two pathogenic fungi www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

At the GMI, we value collaboration that bridges diverse research areas. Our institute is looking for a Senior Group Leader to contribute to our mission of making fundamental discoveries that enhance our understanding of how plants and other autotrophic organisms function. 👇 Links below.

Delighted to see our work now published in @currentbiology.bsky.social. A great place for Bostrychia to stake its claim as an emerging red algal model system. Check it out here: www.cell.com/current-biol...

Massively parallel jumping assay (MPJA) enables to test the jumping potential of thousands of transposons. Analysis of >160,000 Alu haplotypes identified transposition-asssociated domains. Amazing work by Navneet Matharu, Jingjing Zhao, Martin Kircher and many others. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

I’m very excited to share our work on the early evolution of animal regulatory genome architecture - the main project of my postdoc, carried out across two wonderful and inspirational labs of @arnausebe.bsky.social and @mamartirenom.bsky.social. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Our new contribution to the quest to find causal GWAS genes! Sam Ghatan from my lab at @nygenome.org led a systematic comparison of eQTLs and CRISPRi+scRNA-seq screens. TL;DR: they provide highly complementary insights, with ortogonal pros and cons. 🧵👇 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Excited about the future of plant epigenetics? Join us at the Keystone Symposium Plant Epigenetics & Epigenome Engineering in Fort Collins, October 13-16, 2025! keystonesymposia-19559593.hs-sites.com/%F0%9F%8C%BF... Registration is open! #PlantScience #Epigenetics #KeystoneSymposia

Solid work from the Choi lab, showing that H2A.W histone variants limit meiotic crossovers. #Epigenetics #PlantSci

🥳Just published @nature.com. Over 25 years after the discovery of SPO11 as the enzyme responsible for initiating meiotic recombination, we finally succeeded in reconstituting its DNA cleavage activity.🧵 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

1/ Transposable elements are often called "jumping genes" because they mobilize within genomes. 🧬 But did you know they can also jump 𝘣𝘦𝘵𝘸𝘦𝘦𝘯 cells? 🤯 Our new study reveals how retrotransposons invade the germline directly from somatic cells. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... A short thread 🧵👇

Excited to share this story from the “Chromatin Dream Team” in the @arnausebe.bsky.social lab on chromatin evo across eukaryotes! 12 histone mark profiles from 12 species, including rhizarians, discobans, and cryptomonads. Read on to see what we found! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... 1/n

Multi-omics analysis reveals that a 254-bp transposon induces defensive camouflage in an alpine plant and reduces herbivory by caterpillars of a specialist butterfly. Protective effects of this camouflage are reflected in the long-term dynamics of co-evolving plant and butterfly populations.

New preprint of my postdoc work! We found a novel group of zinc-finger proteins that rapidly evolved in a lineage-specific manner to repress regulatory activities of transposon-derived sequences through anchoring nucleosomes. #TEsky biorxiv.org/content/10.110…

Happy to share our manuscript on the in situ visualization of the copia retrotransposon in its final form today published in @cellcellpress.bsky.social www.cell.com/cell/fulltex.... What’s new?

New paper alert! Arturo Marí-Ordóñez’s team show that _Spirodela polyrhiza_, the most ancient member of the duckweed family, uses an understudied epigenetic mechanism to mark old transposons without DNA methylation - contrary to other plants. Read more: https://bit.ly/4h47flb

Mon cours sur les enhancers continue demain vendredi 10h @collegedefrance.bsky.social Marques épigénétiques, captures chromosomiques, multiomics, syntaxe des enhancers et tout le toutim. Entrée libre. Tesla interdites.

Very excited to share our paper on Gene and Transposable Element expression in mammalian preimplantation development, online today! www.cell.com/cell/fulltex... A short thread to highlight some of our findings 🧵

One of the coolest and most novel findings I’ve seen in years. This is why I work in worms. To find things no one even really knew to look for. Like a conserved system that splices transposons out of mRNAs to prevent otherwise lethal insertions in essential genes! - www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

You are passionate about mobile DNA, structural biology, and genome engineering? 👀 Exciting #postdoc opportunity ahead! @irmaquerques.bsky.social's lab is seeking a postdoctoral researcher with a background in biochemistry and structural biology (cryo-EM) 🥼 More ➡️ tinyurl.com/nd9zbmt6

Centrophilic Retrotransposons of Plant Genomes www.annualreviews.org/content/jour... new review @annualreviews.bsky.social from @abousios.bsky.social, Tetsuji Kakutani, and myself on my favourite type of mobile genetic element