Does obligate asexuality necessarily lead to genomic decay? We found that ancient asexual lineages of oribatid mites have static genomes, frozen in time, whereas genomes of sexual lineages seem to be expanding.

Just got a what's app from a friend in the geosciences who had a collaborative grant proposal rejected with one reason being there were "too many women involved." Location: northern Europe. In case you were thinking "educated" scientists were necessarily less shitty about these sorts of things.

Earlier this month, Florence hosted the @embo.org Hands-on Course: genome sequencing, assembly, curation, & downstream analyses. 🧬 It was a great course & participants learned about ERGA's standards for producing high-quality #genomes www.erga-biodiversity.eu/post/erga-at... #EMBOgenomeSeq

🧪 Aureliano Bombarely from @ibmcp.bsky.social is now talking about Genome Annotation. An essential step to answer your biological questions once you have your genome assembled. Do not oversee this important step! #EMBOgenomeseq @embo.org @bombarelya.bsky.social

It's already the last of the #EMBOgenomeSeq course "Genome sequencing, assembly curation and downstream analysis" in Florence 🇮🇹! You can find the tutorials for genome assembly here github.com/nadegeguigli...

#ERGAReads | Clitellates - terrestrial & freshwater annelids - underwent dramatic #genome reshuffling, losing synteny with their marine relatives. This rare burst of genomic change reshaped chromosome structure in the group 🔗 rdcu.be/euNbT #genomics #evolution #Annelida @rosafernandez.bsky.social

@tank-silvia.bsky.social (from IRNASA) opens the first class of the #EMBO_course hands on genome assembly talking about experimental design and DNA extraction.

Crossing the Alps 🚅 on my way to Firenze for a 1-week course on genome sequencing, assembly, curation and downstream analyses meetings.embo.org/event/25-gen... #EMBOgenomeSeq

After ESEB Prague, is heavy rain at the conference dinner a mandatory thing ? #ESEB2025

When you love science and your science loves you back #ESEB2025 @brandgefahr.bsky.social

On Thursday at #ESEB2025 I will be giving a talk on "Cryptobiosis is associated with rapid chromosome restructuring in Panagrolaimus nematodes", and here is a little teaser of what to expect. For the rest, come to symposium S28.03 room 113 at 16:15. The last slide might make you fall off your chair!

This Tuesday at #ESEB2025 Karim Gueddach will be presenting a poster on the "Genomic impact of asexuality in oribatid mites". Stop by P02.196 to see a comparison of genomes of closely related sexual and asexual species of oribatid mites!

#ESEB2025 has started and we came with some cool science to show you! This Monday the new Dr Laura Villegas will present her poster on "Patterns of Soil Nematode Biodiversity in the Atacama Desert". What kind of nematodes live in this hyper-arid desert? Find out at P01.137!

Nothing in my bioinformatics training prepared me for the torture of having GeneMark regularly fail because of a missing gm_key or Perl package even though I did replace the gm_key and I did install the packages.

Very happy to see this work out, and done with a great team!

After a long time in the pipeline since the end of my PhD with @rkoszul.bsky.social and J-F Flot, this chromosome-level assembly of the chaetognath Flaccisagitta enflata, first one for this phylum (!), is available in NCBI/ENA and described in this genome note.