Holy shit: it's an RFP for the NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biology (PRFB). Hello old friend www.nsf.gov/funding/oppo...

Crushed to hear of Mark Batzer’s passing. He was the Boyd Professor at Louisiana State University. His influential research revealed how mobile elements shape the genomes of humans & other mammals. Mark’s personality, generosity & positivity were larger than life. He lifted everyone up. HUGE loss 💔

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!🧵

Born #OnThisDay in 1922, Esther Lederberg was the first to isolate the lambda phage in 1951. She characterised the lysogenic phase, whereby the phage are able to integrate into the bacterial genome, staying dormant. This discovery made them a model tool of study, leading to many more breakthroughs.

Four days of great science, fun interactions, and breathtaking views at #EMBOevoChromo25 in San Feliu 🇪🇸 BIG THX to organizers @arnausebe.bsky.social @tobiaswarnecke.bsky.social & co @levine-lab.bsky.social @sandraduharcourt.bsky.social Nick Irwin 🙏👌

Room with a view 😍 #EMBOevoChromo25 San Feliu de Guixols 🇪🇸 Stunning!

How do new centromeres evolve while staying compatible with the division machinery? Discover it in our new Nature paper! We show centromeres transition gradually via a mix of drift, selection, and sex, reaching new states that still work with the kinetochore. 👉 doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-09779-1

Couldn’t be more proud of @smleddy.bsky.social who defended her PhD with flying colors this week! In less than 4 years Sabrina spearheaded several projects revealing the fascinating interplay of KRAB-Zinc Finger Proteins with Endogenous AND Exogenous Viruses! 🦀⚔️🦠 Congrats Dr. Leddy!!

TE x ZFP = Evolution! Writing this with Olga @orpsf.bsky.social & Didier @trono-lab.bsky.social was a major highlight of my 🇨🇭sabbatical. Such a treat! 🍫Hope you enjoy it as much as we enjoy piecing it together.

Our NY area population genetics meeting is back and "upgraded", as Simons Foundation @simonsfoundation.org generously agreed to host. Please save the date: March 9, 2026. Look forward to seeing many of you from NY and beyond.

As we mourn Jane Goodall, this @nature.com article explores three ways in which she changed science: 1. Altering the way we view both other primates and ourselves 2. Inspiring generations of women scientists 3. Communicating science in a way that engaged the public www.nature.com/articles/d41...

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 share what we learned from re-annotating the mobilome of the brown algae model [Ectocarpus] 🌊🌿🏖️ genomebiology.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.... A wonderful collaboration with @ericadinatale.bsky.social, @cssmartinho.bsky.social, @rorycraig.bsky.social, and Susana Coelho! 🎉

1/8 Our new paper w/ Drs. Caixia Gao & Gogo Liu groups reveals how #CRISPR-Cas12 systems evolved from transposon-encoded TnpB nucleases through RNA splitting by analyzing “TranC” systems (evolutionary intermediates bridging selfish elements and adaptive immunity). #Evolution

Enchanted by the serene beauty of the Princeton campus and inspired by the creativity and generosity of the scientists I’ve met throughout this visit. Such a privilege to visit all these amazing places to present our science! Thanks Ricardo Mallarino for hosting me!

📣 Our department is hiring an Assistant Professor in Evolutionary Cell and Molecular Biology to join the @weillinstitute.bsky.social PLS spread the word! academicjobsonline.org/ajo/jobs/30607

Please re-post: Interested in chromatin and its evolution? Good news! There's still time to join us in beautiful Catalonia (9-12 Dec) to discuss eukaryotic, bacterial, archaeal, and viral chromatin and how it all hangs together meetings.embo.org/event/24-evo... Abstract deadline: 30 September

In these dark times, it comes as a rare pleasure to highlight @natanaels.bsky.social ‬ & @marcdemanuel.bsky.social's work on germline and somatic mutations in humans. 1/n www.biorxiv.org/cgi/content/...

Kathy Burns kicks off #MGEMBL25 in beautiful Woods Hole, MA. It’s the 5th iteration of this meeting on mobile genetic elements devotedly spearheaded by Irina Arkhipova. Grateful and excited to be back here!

Our work "Aquarius helicase facilitates HIV-1 integration into R-loop enriched genomic regions" is out @natmicrobiol.nature.com, showing HIV-1 integration into R-loop genomic regions upon their resolution by cellular splicing helicase Aquarius (AQR) of the Intron Binding Complex (IBC)🧵.

#zebrafish genome update, our T2T assembly of the inbred strain of AB (M-AB) generated by my buddy Nori Sakai has now been released at NCBI and will be a second reference genome for zebrafish (GRCz12ab):

1/ How do animals develop immunity against a newly encountered transposable element from scratch? Our study reveals that the mobility of TEs is their Achilles heel, allowing hosts to develop a powerful small RNA-mediated silencing response. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

One of my all-time faves

Smart! A Raven doing Raven things.

Wonderful (and humble) essay on mentorship by Brandon Gaut, on occasion of Brandon receiving the inaugural Mentorship Award of @genetics-gsa.bsky.social. I hope this will be widely read! academic.oup.com/genetics/art...

My team has updated our free database of POSTDOC fellowships. This database contains 286 entries. For each entry, we provide a link, short description, deadline, amount, and eligibility criteria. Download this updated and expanded database here: research.jhu.edu/rdt/funding-...

We’re looking for curious, innovative science leaders at EMBL Heidelberg! 🔬🧬🦠 Join a vibrant, interdisciplinary community where collaboration and innovation are nurtured at all levels. Take a look at these four open positions 👇

🥳 CONGRATS 🍾 Dr. Satyam Srivastav who defended brilliantly his PhD thesis: “Function and Evolution of the PIWI-piRNA Pathway: Insights from Fish and Flies”. Andy Clark & I are proud of you @kerogens101.bsky.social & can’t wait to see what u discover next as a postdoc with @marymullins.bsky.social!

Every reputable expert I know considers mRNA vaccine technology to be one of the most revolutionary advances in medicine in our lifetimes. Its inventors won the Nobel Prize in 2023. Shutting it down now is pointless self-harm to humanity.

To have this paper appear the same day that RFK Jr is canceling all mRNA vaccine funding is further indication that irony is not dead, even though we might all be soon.

Looking forward to this new installment of the Woods Hole Mobile DNA Meeting! Fantastic program, laid-back atmosphere, and gorgeous setting at the Marine Biological Laboratory ⛵️🪼🐋 Abstract submission closes Aug 7 but registration after that date is possible. www.eventsquid.com/event.cfm?ev...

Last day of sabbatical in 🇨🇭🥹… What an amazing experience! 💯🙏 to Trono lab & EPFL for welcoming me so warmly & fostering a bounty of stimulating interactions all year long. Feeling immensely privileged, deeply inspired, and eternally grateful! 💫

Me not wanting to let go of my sabbatical in 🇨🇭🥲

Exactly two weeks left to submit your abstract to the EMBO Mobile Genome Workshop. ☝️this year we will select from abstracts 2 “long” talks to highlight last minute breakthrough from early career scientists. Apply! July 29th

A little late to share, but still thrilled 🤗! What started as two independent stories, one in Clermont-Ferrand (@igred.fr) and one in Cambridge (Hannon’s group @cruk-mi.bsky.social ), turned into a joint adventure to decode how Rhino picks its favorite piRNA clusters. When forces unite… 👇👇👇

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

Novel insights into the silencing of an understudied transposable element - check out our latest preprint by @jakobschnabl.bsky.social and colleagues

Today, the @fwf-at.bsky.social honors Elly Tanaka, IMBA's Scientific Director, with the Wittgenstein Award – the premier research award of Austria - for her groundbreaking discoveries in the field of regenerative biology. Congratulations, Elly! More on the award: imba.science/43Y93sC

Vertebrate retrotransposons are the future of gene therapy. But how do they insert their genes? 🔥🔥 Thrilled to share our new work now published with Kathy Collins, @nogaleslab.bsky.social @berkeleymcb.bsky.social where we investigate this with #cryoEM & biochemistry in 🧪 and cells! #RNAsky #TEsky

Happy that our preprint from early this year, uncovering the regulation a somatically "hot" endogenous retroelement locus, has now found its home in @narjournal.bsky.social. "TEsky" doi.org/10.1093/nar/...

#TransposonDay2025 New manuscript from our center to which we contributed. Great work led by @chdouse.bsky.social ! Provides a mechanistic explanation for how L1s are silenced during early human development. doi.org/10.1101/2025...

🚨 Check out the latest from @trono-lab.bsky.social showing how evolutionarily young transcription factors contribute to human cell cycle regulation! Brilliant work led by Romain Forey and Cyril Pulver, now published in Cell Genomics. Check it out ! www.cell.com/cell-genomic...

📢 PROGRAM AVAILABLE The list of keynote speeches and talks for the #SMBE2025 symposia is now available on the conference website. In the coming days, we will also be posting more details on the program and speakers. Stay tuned! More information: smbe2025.scimeeting.cn/en/web/progr...

The fascinating work spearheaded by Kirsten Senti on the diversification and adaptation of endogenous retroviruses in the host gonad 'ecosystem'' is officially published.

The work on TE invasions in D. melanogaster continues! We found three more recent invasions, one of which occurred in ~3 years worldwide. Another great collaboration with @rpianezza.bsky.social @rokofler.bsky.social and others

🚨 Our new preprint! In collaboration with @saramaciasrna.bsky.social and @heick.bsky.social labs 🧬 Control of retrotransposon-driven activation of the interferon response by the double-stranded RNA binding protein DGCR8 and its implications in 22q11.2 deletion syndrome. #22q11 #TEsky #RNAsky

Here's why I think there is reason to be bullish on U.S. STEM education. doi.org/10.1093/gene... #STEM #STEMEducation

URGENT: FlyBase has lost practically all its funding overnight; even user fees are tied up in denied grant funding. 🤬🤯 Any lab using @flybase.bsky.social please donate using the link in post below. This incredible community, on whose backs our #Drosophila labs depend, can't be left out to dry.

New preprint from the lab led by former masters student AJ Roussel in collaboration with Alexander Suh and @fjruizruano.bsky.social. We found a ~4-fold accumulation of a Neptune #transposon in asexually reproducing "F1" fish hybrids. An unexpected and fascinating finding! #TEsky

We're thrilled to share the published version of our DRT9 story, online today @nature.com! Congratulations to all authors! www.nature.com/articles/s41...