New CRISPR tools for brown algae: a transgene-free genome editing methodology, developed in Ectocarpus and validated in kelps such as Undaria pinnatifida, opens new possibilities for functional genomics, aquaculture, and blue biotechnology. Online ahead of print: doi.org/10.1016/j.cr...

Looking back at a highlight from 2025: Great energy at the 2025 SALTO Symposium we organized at the MPI for Marine Microbiology! Researchers from Germany, France, Spain, Portugal, and Australia joined us in Bremen to explore the evolutionary links between specialized bacteria and their algal hosts.

🏆𝐑𝐞𝐬𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐜𝐞 𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐢𝐜𝐥𝐞 (𝐬𝐭𝐮𝐝𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐚𝐬 𝐟𝐢𝐫𝐬𝐭 𝐚𝐮𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐫) PETROLL et al. Enhanced sensitivity of tapscan v4 enables comprehensive analysis of streptophyte transcription factor evolution doi.org/10.1111/tpj.... Congrats @petrollromy.bsky.social !

Excited to introduce Auxenochlorella as a new algal reference organism for fundamental plant science and bioengineering. A paper in two parts: a genetic toolkit for site-specific genomic manipulation, paired with the most unusual genome I’ve ever worked on academic.oup.com/plcell/artic...

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

Excited to share our new preprint on giant virus infection in brown algae: Latent endogenous viral elements drive active infection and inheritance in a multicellular host doi.org/10.1101/2025...

Super glad to contribute to this study on chromatin evolution in brown algae! Special thanks to Jeromine Vigneau, @borglab.bsky.social and Susana Coelho for making this happen. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Genomes of brown algae with different sex determination systems show that U/V sex chromosomes evolved 450–224 million years ago and show remarkable conservation of genes within the sex-determining region, despite independent expansions of the sex locus in each lineage www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Transposable elements in brown algae? 🌊 Yes, they’re full of surprises ✨ Come meet Ectocarpus at #ESEB2025! 📍Room 113 - S28.03 🗓️ Thursday, 2:30pm

So excited to be at #ESEB2025 presenting poster 221 today!☀️ Check out our chromosome-level genome of Bostrychia, a red alga from the complex Ceramiales order, revealing massive genome expansion by giant Plavaka DNA transposons, the evolution of expanded gene families and UV sex chromosomes!

A wonderful summary of our recent work in @currentbiology.bsky.social . It’s an honour for it to have been written by such respected researchers in the field. Thank you @multicellgenome.bsky.social & team! 🤩

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...

New study with @petrollromy.bsky.social @borglab.bsky.social traces the evolution of epigenetic silencing in plants. Deep conservation of PRC2-mediated H3K27me3 marks across green algae suggest ancient, conserved networks of gene repression. 🔗 doi.org/10.1093/molb... #evobio #molevol #plants

I am very excited to see my first PhD paper out as a preprint. "The expanded Bostrychia moritziana genome unveils evolution in the most diverse and complex order of red algae". Huge thanks to @borglab.bsky.social for the great supervision and guidance through this exciting project!🎉

In our latest @biorxiv-genomic.bsky.social preprint, we describe our approach to use PacBio HiFi reads to detect somatic TE transposition -- good enough to detect rare events that are present in only single cells. Led by Andrea Movilli. #plantscience www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

TAPscan v4, final verson available: dx.doi.org/10.1111/tpj.... Annotate TF families yourself or access web-UI online. Thanks to @petrollromy.bsky.social @shiltemann.bsky.social @jandevries.bsky.social @watertoland.bsky.social

Very happy to share my PhD paper! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

New preprint! How does meiosis work in non-model organisms? Together with Susana Coelho at the MPI for Biology Tübingen @mpi-bio-fml.bsky.social , we took a look at the proteins of the meiotic axis in the brown alga Ectocarpus www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

More than one-third of all family gains were identified during the evolution of streptophyte algae, before the emergence of land plants, and are thus likely to have been significant for plant terrestrialization. 2/2 onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

Proud to share TAPscan v4, automated annotation of 138 TF families; code, webtool and database available online. @watertoland.bsky.social @nfdi4plants.bsky.social @jandevries.bsky.social @shiltemann.bsky.social doi.org/10.1111/tpj....