✨ Paper spotlight ✨ #Lithium in plants nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... (🧵 1/6) This #TansleyReview presents emerging insights into lithium’s role in #plants. Once thought to mimic sodium, lithium is now known to use distinct transport mechanisms and uniquely affect enzymes and DNA.

Excited to share a new paper! "Sorting of ancestral polymorphism and its impact on morphological phylogenetics and macroevolution". Part of some work I've been doing on modelling the evolution of polymorphic traits in fossil echinoderms. academic.oup.com/evolut/advan...

I cannot fully put into words what publishing this Review has meant to me, so I leave you with how we closed the paper. "The humble bacterium is still a relevant tool for the study of the underlying mechanisms that are conserved throughout life." 🧪🧫🧬📚 doi.org/10.1093/gene...

👉 my.corehr.com/pls/uoxrecru... Join us and be part of shaping the future of #plantscience at Oxford as we move to the new Life and Mind Building lifeandmind.web.ox.ac.uk/home (recognised for its potential to change the World edition.cnn.com/2025/01/01/s...) @biology.ox.ac.uk www.biology.ox.ac.uk

Delighted to share the peer-reviewed version of our study led by @tomlewin.bsky.social now out in Genome Biology @bmc.springernature.com! We analyzed 64 chromosome-level genomes across 15 animal phyla and found that extensive genome rearrangements are the norm in bilaterians. doi.org/10.1186/s130...

C. Zhang, R. Nielsen and S. Mirarab integrate all ASTRAL-like methods into a single package called ASTER, comprising several tools that collectively enhance the scalability, accuracy, and versatility of species tree inference. 🔗 doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msaf172 #evobio #molbio #compbio

Gregarious behaviour in butterfly larvae has evolved multiple times - Cicconardi, @ebablab.bsky.social et al. use genome data of 60 Heliconiini species, identifying signatures of convergent molecular evolution, on both coding and noncoding loci. 🔗 doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msaf179 #evobio #molbio

Congrats to (newly graduated) Dr. Ellen Weinheimer for her new publication in @theplantjournal.bsky.social on drought responses in the iconic umbrella acacia of the African savannas using a "differential gene reaction" analysis developed for this project onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/....

📣Online NOW! 📄Estimation of demography and mutation rates from one million haploid genomes 🧑‍🤝‍🧑 @jgschraiber.bsky.social @jeffspence.github.io @docedge.bsky.social

1/13 In a new preprint, we (with @xliaoyi.bsky.social‬ in the ‪@arbelharpak.bsky.social‬ lab) find that expression from the “inactivated” X (Xi) is consequential for both female-male differences in gene expression and variation among females in disease and physiology: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Check out our new special feature: Monitoring and Restoring Gene Flow in the Increasingly Fragmented Ecosystems of the Anthropocene www.pnas.org/topic/574 #biodiversity #evolution #ecology #popgen #ClimateEmergency

Parasite extinctions in threatened species may be far more prevalent than previous estimates suggest. Our new study of kākāpō dung spanning from ~1,500 years ago to present, finds >80% of parasite species were lost as the host species declined.

Nice work by @maxhaase.bsky.social about the strange history of yeast centromeres - got to see him present it at #yeast2025

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...

Telomere-to-telomere DNA sequencing is set to transform the field of human genetics in coming years. For a flavour of what's coming, see this exciting work on nearly complete genomes of 65 individuals from diverse populations, out today in @nature.com by @glennislogsdon.bsky.social & colleagues. 👇🧬🧪

We are hiring! If you have experience in plant genomics + AI, or promoter engineering + synthetic biology, check out our two open postdoc positions (computational + wetlab): www.vandepoelelab.be/Jobs please re-share RT #ERC

Enzymatic epimerization of monoterpene indole alkaloids in kratom by @oconnorlab.bsky.social From: www.nature.com/articles/s41... #PlantScience #SecMet

New accepted paper from @thibault-durieux.bsky.social's PhD reporting various fungal remains within the stem of a fossil plant from the Permian of France 🌿🍄⛏️ #paleobotany #paleomycology #fossil #botany www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

some thoughts on new methods to root a phylogenomic tree: the smart, the symbiotic, the violent sishuowang2022.wordpress.com/2025/06/19/n... #phylo @tweethinking.bsky.social @andrewjroger.bsky.social

The paper is now online. The paper explains how even the simplest population genetic model can improve statistical power and explain the properties of admixed GWAS. genomebiology.biomedcentral.com/articles/10....

Extremely happy to see our withanolide biosynthesis paper out in @natcomms.nature.com‬ rdcu.be/evHOF Fantastic team effort with the Pucker group @bpucker.bsky.social‬ @puckerlab.bsky.social‬ at @unibonn.bsky.social and Heretsch, Herde and Witte groups at @unihannover.bsky.social. Funded by @dfg.de

I have a Postdoctoral Research Fellow position starting in January to study the evolution of seed gene networks using the fern Ceratopteris! Interested? More info here: www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DNU179/r... Closing date 31st July. 🙂 #PlantScience #PlantSciencejobs

Re-upping given the moa deëxtinction nonsense from #ColossalBio and it’s cofounder Ben Lamm, it’s nominally about dire wolf “deëxtinction” but applies just as well to moas substack.com/inbox/post/1...

A million shades of green: understanding and harnessing plant metabolic diversity Rocky Payet, Anne Osbourn et al presents a step-by-step guide to starting a project that characterises plant secondary metabolites www.embopress.org/doi/full/10....

BEAST X v10.5.0 finally released – you can't just do beta releases forever. github.com/beast-dev/be... Details and instructions for installing on the BEAST website: beast.community

Useful paper: "The Transcriptional Architecture of Bacterial Biosynthetic Gene Clusters" #microsky #streptomyces pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1...

New Postdoc position (2yrs) available in our #EvoMPMI lab @JohnInnesCentre. Come and work with on harnessing the diversity of immune mechanisms to protect plants. jobs.jic.ac.uk/Details.asp?va…

These animals are not dire wolves, they’re gene edited gray wolves; don’t fall for the #ColossalBio #DisInformation de-extinction is science fiction not fact…

@shawn-anthony.bsky.social helped ~20 undergrads learn transcriptomics in this budget friendly investigation into the dogbane family. A fun way to investigate the molecular evolution of the group. Also, a chance to collaborate with @phylonatworks.bsky.social and Jarrad! doi.org/10.1101/2025...

What an amazing time to be a biomedical scientist. www.nejm.org/doi/abs/10.1...

Here's a tutorial I wrote on how I design detection and cloning primers using Primer3. Hopefully it's helpful for students. 💚 binomicalabs.notion.site/PCR-Primer-D...

A new paper in Nature Ecol & Evol by @rosafernandez.bsky.social et al. shows a #punctuated burst of genome evolution in #annelids as they transitioned from marine to land and freshwater habitats.

The FLC gene helps determine #FloweringTime variation in #Arabidopsis. Analysis of FLC mutants across 62 natural #genetic backgrounds by @plantevolution.bsky.social shows how #PanGenetics analysis of hub genes can reveal the extent of their broader genetic network @plosbiology.org 🧪 plos.io/3ZkZNvV

Long-term flowering-time data on Japanese mountain cherry (recorded since the 9th century!) shows a shift in full-flowering date beginning in the late 19th century. Fascinating new @newphyt.bsky.social paper by @jgpausas.bsky.social onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1...

Discovery of FoTO1 and Taxol genes enables biosynthesis of baccatin III www.nature.com/articles/s41... @nature.com

Today in Nature we report a systematic strategy to activate & identify gene sets in plants. We identify 8 new genes from the yew tree's Taxol biosynthetic pathway, enabling us to engineer tobacco with 17- & 20-gene pathways to Taxol precursors baccatin III & deBz-deoxy-Taxol #SingleCell #secmet 🧬🧪🌾

Excited to unveil Boltz-2, our new model capable not only of predicting structures but also binding affinities! Boltz-2 is the first AI model to approach the performance of FEP simulations while being more than 1000x faster! All open-sourced under MIT license! A thread… 🤗🚀

The mutational dynamics of the Arabidopsis centromeres www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... Absolutely stunning new preprint on centromere mutation from ‪@labschneeberger.bsky.social‬ @plantevolution.bsky.social ‪@jurriaanton.bsky.social‬ @lisasmith @plantylisasmith.bsky.social‬ & colleagues

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/

ICYMI: New online! Functional synonymous mutations and their evolutionary consequences

Now published in PNAS: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Pierre Barrat-Charlaix (Politecnico di Torino) will be speaking on "Reconstruction of ancestral protein sequences using autoregressive generative models" in 24 hours. Link: www.youtube.com/watch?v=-wqg...

When should adaptation arise from a polygenic response versus few large effect changes? https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.05.15.654234v1

I'm guessing this is probably very well worth the read! onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10....

RAxML-NG v2.0 beta is here github.com/amkozlov/rax... Features 1. Difficulty prediction academic.oup.com/mbe/article/... 2. Adaptive search academic.oup.com/mbe/article/... 3. Early Stop www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... 4. Model selection 5. Rapid bootstrapping academic.oup.com/mbe/article/...

It's out! We describe probable reptile tracks from the earliest Carboniferous of Australia. This pushes the amniote record back by some 35-40 million years and implies that the tetrapod crown group originated deep in the Late Devonian. The paper is Open Access. 🧪 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

A rearranged Amaranthus palmeri extrachromosomal circular DNA confers resistance to glyphosate and glufosinate (Pâmela Carvalho-Moore , Ednaldo A Borgato , Luan Cutti , Aimone Porri , Ingo Meiners , Jens Lerchl , Jason K Norsworthy , Eric L Patterson) doi.org/10.1093/plce... #PlantScience

It's all in the timing: vegetative phase change alters selection under drought and contributes to local adaptation https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.05.13.653704v1

The distribution of fitness effects varies phylogenetically across animals https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.05.13.653358v1