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...

Love this work! ♨️🔥 Tour-de-force blastoid models provide further evidence that endogenous retroviruses drove human-specific innovation in embryonic development! Congrats @fueyoraquel.bsky.social and all involved!!

We are thrilled to announce the 2025 Leading Edge Fellows! 40 outstanding postdoctoral fellows doing pioneering research in a wide range of biological and biomedical disciplines. Learn more about these exceptional scientists: www.leadingedgesymposium.org/fellows

Excited to return to Paris this week for a seminar at @institutcurie.bsky.social hosted by @deborahbourchis.bsky.social - I especially appreciate they allocated 13 hours and 59 minutes for my presentation. They know me well 😜

🫀heartbeat on 🔁 repeat Love this work! A KZFP-wired network of ancient retroelements orchestrates cardiac development. Congrats Dana!

Bad news (for me at least): Alcohol activates endogenous retroviruses and this aggravates liver disease 😲 www.jci.org/articles/vie...

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...

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/...

Stockholm 🇸🇪🤩 A fave of mine! Fun & stimulating to play opponent to PhD defendant Ivar Westerberg, i.e. chatting TEs for 3 hours! 💕Yay! Watch for Ivar’s upcoming work on coevolution of RIP, TE and gene duplication across fungal species, a dynamic genomic ecosystem!

Good times in Lund 🇸🇪 with @jakobssonlab.bsky.social. Beautiful campus, great food, and awesome science! Thanks Johan!

Excited to share our latest from my postdoc at @mskcancercenter.bsky.social in the Sfeir Lab, in collaboration with the Simon Powell Lab! We uncovered a novel genome repair mechanism in human cells: RNA-templated DNA double-strand break repair (RT-DSBR). (1/5)

📢The peer-reviewed version of our work on TEs driving innovation of F-box genes is out now on @molbioevol.bsky.social. 🎉 paper here: academic.oup.com/mbe/article/... Check my previous, but still up-to-date 🧵 to read the highlights. #TEsky #evosky #Celegans

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...

Congrats to @jasonwilliamsny.bsky.social of @cshlnews.bsky.social, 2025 Elizabeth W. Jones Award for Excellence in Education recipient! 👏 From NYC classrooms to labs around the world, he’s inspiring a new generation of scientists. Read more about his work and career: buff.ly/xzluCa8

Our review article on the recent progress in understanding the mechanism of LINE element propagation in eukaryotes is out! Please check it out. #TEsky #RNAsky #RT #cryoEM