Kicked off a series on #Drosophila TE discovery and naming. The first post covers elements that predate the term "mobile element", and more. artemilin.dev/posts/te_nam...

🌎👩‍🔬 For 15+ years biology has accumulated petabytes (million gigabytes) of🧬DNA sequencing data🧬 from the far reaches of our planet.🦠🍄🌵 Logan now democratizes efficient access to the world’s most comprehensive genetics dataset. Free and open. doi.org/10.1101/2024...

This is really cool!

So true.

Ever wonder how nature got so diverse? The secret might lie in these colorful cichlid fish 🐠 Cambridge scientists discovered that ‘flipped’ segments of DNA act like evolutionary turbo boosts — helping species adapt fast and evolve into new ones. 👇 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adr9961

What do we know about the earliest history of cichlid fishes? Here’s an extended and updated English version of my article on the biogeography and early evolution of cichlids, which I originally published in German in 2020. 🐟 🧪 #cichlid #biogeography #paleontology cichlidae.com/article.php?...

Latest findings on cryptic infection of giant viruses published in @ScienceMagazine. We discovered a large virus hiding within a green algal genome producing virions. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

1/10 Today in @science.org in collaboration with the Liu group we report the development of a laboratory-evolved CRISPR-associated transposase (evoCAST) that supports therapeutically relevant levels of RNA-programmable gene insertion in human cells. drive.google.com/file/d/1I-Ub...

🚨 🐟🐠 🚨

📢 HPRC Release 2 is here! Now with phased genomes from 200+ individuals, a 5x increase from Release 1. Explore sequencing data, assemblies, annotations & alignments in our interactive data explorer ⬇️: humanpangenome.org/hprc-data-re...

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...

A new result with Teratorns involved. 150Kb!

"Essential components of the genome", indeed.

😍 communities.springernature.com/posts/celebr...

This is a such a great work! So many things to find out now that we start having complete™ genomes.

I’m very proud and happy to share the first paper of my PhD with @millanek.bsky.social that is now published in the latest issue of the journal Evolution @journal-evo.bsky.social. academic.oup.com/evolut/artic...

Pretty much sums up all my concerns, genetic and computational. 😅 xkcd.com

I was so much looking for this after I saw her presenting it last year. Great story!

An excellent postdoc opportunity with Adrian Baez-Ortega at the University of Cambridge on the genomics of transmissible cancer. Adrian is a brilliant scientist and mentor, this is a fantastic opportunity I strongly recommend.

www.nature.com/articles/s41... In collaboration with Andrew Lang and Alison Buchan, we just published a review on the complex and sometimes convoluted interactions and evolutionary relationships among bacterial mobile genetic elements. #phage #plasmid #evolution #bacteria #plasmidbiology #MGE

We did it! We caught Starship #transposons moving between #fungal species in the lab, including between species separated by ~100my. We think Starships are a mediator of HGT in fungi, akin to conjugative elements in bacteria. Check out the preprint. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Why do some animals, like whales, live exceptionally long lives free from many age-related diseases? 🐋 Join Dr Alex Cagan to find out how nature’s solutions to longevity may hold the key to tackling our own health challenges. 🗓️ 03 April ⌚ 8-9pm 📍 Cambridge Union 🎫 Booking required

Did you know that two jumping sequences (LINE-1 and Alu) make up nearly 30% of our genomes? Ever wonder how they jump into new genomic sites? We have some exciting discoveries to share new in @science.org on the structural mechanisms of LINE-1 retrotransposition (aka jumping 🧬➡️🧬) 🧪 #ScienceResearch

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?

Want to level up in #pangenomics? Join our workshop, conference & biohackathon in #Memphis, May 11-15, 2025. Connect with leading scientists, embrace genomic diversity, and contribute to cutting-edge software. Register now! pangenome.github.io/MemPanG25/ #Bioinformatics #MemPanG25

Do you use Darwin Tree of Life (DToL) genomes for your work or grant applications? If so, can you please fill out this form? docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F... We are gathering info on how DToL genomes are used. It will help us raise money to continue producing publicly available high-quality genomes.

Why do some animals, like whales, live exceptionally long lives free from many age-related diseases? 🐋 Join @atjcagan.bsky.social to see how nature’s solutions to longevity may hold the key to tackling our own health challenges: www.festival.cam.ac.uk/events/impos...

(2/2) Giant sex chromosomes were discovered in Silene latifolia more than 100 years ago. Two papers back to back now show the sequence of the 550 Mbp Silene Y chromosome helping to understand sex determination www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... #plantscience

I am recruiting an #ERC funded PostDoc to work on the evolution of vertebral counts in cichlids. This is an experimental project & will be looking for candidates with experience generating reporter lines, live-imaging and experimental embryology. Application deadline: 25th Feb. tinyurl.com/33jbu8fa

💜Feliz #11F y #DíadelaMujeryNiñaEnLaCiencia💜

This week from the Genetics Seminar Series: 👤 @justinmcrocker.bsky.social from @embl.org 🎤Drosophila in context: evolution, toxins, and behaviour 🗓️ Thursday 06 February 🕑 2 - 3pm 📍Biffen Lecture Theatre, Downing Site

⬇️⬇️⬇️ "Our study of three human neocentromeres and a native, repetitive human centromere reveal that CENP-A position and patterns of DNA methylation and H3K9me3 are heterogenous at the same centromere within a population of cells , and these epigenetically distinct centromeres are equally functional."

New paper out 📝✨ "k-mer approaches for biodiversity genomics" We discuss k-mer spectra, sex determination, allopolyploid subgenome separation, among other topics - and offer a large tutorial list Link to paper: genome.cshlp.org/content/earl... Link to all tutorials: github.com/KamilSJaron/...

"Both the large-scale genomic and the micro-scale regulatory variations identified in this study highlight the importance of extensive and differential TE proliferation." www.nature.com/articles/s41...

This is interesting. "These results are consistent with the idea that most large events of gene acquisition are of MGEs encoding their own integrases."

Putting the final touches to my Crick biography, it will go off for copy-editing at the end of this week. Over three years in someone else's head is enough. It will be out in October/November this year. 150k of text, 40k of notes. It will be a wrist-sprainer, but will look lovely I promise.

Transposable Elements are Dysregulated in Brains of Individuals with Major Depressive Disorder https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.01.22.634143v1

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39786570/ Nice work showing how Ty retrotransposons have shaped Saccharomyces genus genomes.

A great work that benefits from a comparative genomics approach and highlights the difficulties of mapping TEs. www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...

🚨 New pre-print from Team Jakobsson! LINE-1 retrotransposons regulate the exit of human pluripotency and early brain development. This work was led by @anitaada.bsky.social, @raquelgarza.bsky.social and @jakobssonlab.bsky.social from the Jakobsson Lab. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

⚠️ Job(s) alert! ⚠️ We are launching a new postdoctoral program in Systems Biology at IBFG. Join us! 👉 Several positions available with competitive work conditions for up to 4 years 📄 More info: jdiazc9.github.io/files/jobs/2...

"Centromere evolution is in fact the result of an interplay of various factors, including drift and selection during both mitosis and meiosis, following evolutionary trajectories that are constrained by the kinetochore interface."

TEs at work. Very interesting results.

Natural variation modifies centromere proximal meiotic crossover frequency and segregation distortion in Arabidopsis thaliana biorxiv.org/content/10.1... new work from us on centromere inheritance and organisation @matt-naish.bsky.social @plantevolution.bsky.social @genomeevolution.bsky.social

Excited to share a preprint for (w/ @benlangmead.bsky.social) our new tool, Mumemto, on biorxiv! Mumemto finds multi-MUMs across pangenomes (i.e. mummer but for pangenomes). It can rapidly visualize synteny, identify misassemblies, and accelerate core genome and multiple alignment, highlighting SVs.

Also, check out a pre-print from the lab of Jose Tubio: they analyzed cancer genomes with a high burden of somatic L1 insertions using long-read WGS. They also uncovered that synchronous L1 lesions contribute to chromosomal rearrangements. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

💡HPRC research is reaching new heights. Hifiasm (UL) combines multiple sequencing technologies for efficient, population-wide, near-telomere-to-telomere assemblies. discover the revolutionary science behind it: pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC...

"these findings suggest L1 is a potent mutagenic force capable of driving genome evolution beyond simple insertions" 🚨

I had a lot of fun following the progress of this project thanks to @mariloumercedes.bsky.social. Anopheles diversity is quite something!

Genomic diversity of the African malaria vector Anopheles funestus https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.12.14.628470v1