my first termite queen extracted from a mature colony in the field 🤩 thanks @tatsuyainagaki.bsky.social

How does the piRNA pathway solve the self vs. non-self problem? 🧬 Since piRNAs come from single-stranded RNA, how does the cell choose the right ones? For years, "piRNA clusters" were seen as THE privileged source. But are they really special and earmarked for biogenesis? (1/19)

The demystification of piRNA clusters if you wonder how cells generate piRNAs specifically against transposons & you are looking for a weekend read check out @86dominik.bsky.social's opus magna (or Dominik's great thread) a shared project with the one and only Rippei Hayashi, lab alumnus & friend

If Bad Bunny can cover the history of Puerto Rico, colonialism, transatlantic slavery, hemispheric consciousness, as well as contemporary life and politics in under 14 minutes, you can do your 15- or 20-minute conference presentation with time to spare.

Another announcement! 📣 Our work on hybrid incompatibility in cohesin protection in 🐭oocytes is published!! Congrats Warif El Yakoubi and Eddie Pan!!🎉 We found hybrids with cohesion errors in two distinct genus. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

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

New preprint from the lab! We identify the ZnF protein Mulberry as a condensation-dependent structural regulator of genome topology that organizes “multi-way regulatory hubs” in early Drosophila embryos. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Very excited to share the work by Alice Gadau. We found that D. suzukii (the invasive pest that loves ripe fruit) doesn’t hate CO₂, while classic lab flies avoid it. That tiny sensory shift helps explain a big ecological transition. journals.plos.org/plosgenetics...

Greetings! I decided to make a YouTube video of my AlphaFold workshop that I've given a few times in the past year. Caveats aside, people seem to find this useful for thinking about how to model protein interactions and how to interpret various AF outputs 1/2 www.youtube.com/watch?v=u63o...

ANTSR seems to be the ancient master sex determining gene in Hymenoptera (as suggested by Pan et al. 2024)! So rad that a lncRNA is doing this! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Intrigued by a long-standing conundrum in small RNA biology—how nuclear Argonaute proteins silence transposons when they *need* target transcription for their own recruitment—we studied the piRNA pathway. And found a hidden RNA-decay axis from Piwi to the RNA exosome.

So excited to finally share my recent work on sex differences in crossing over using mice from diverse genetic backgrounds! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

We won the @trogersresearch.bsky.social TBEP door decoration contest … by a landslide … @willowp.bsky.social @qeenyra.bsky.social Ji @anamcarmo.bsky.social @negberry.bsky.social Veronica & Rafa.

@pravrutharaman.bsky.social got super intrigued about EZHIP/CATACOMB, previously identified as a histone H3K27M mimic of PRC2. You can read about her efforts here: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... We hope these analyses will help spur more analyses in this very cool gene! 1/

Fly Friends: The Larry Sandler Award recognizes the PhD student with the most amazing these using Drosophila as a model. Just three days left to nominate someone. For more info on the process and the link to nominations, see: genetics-gsa.org/drosophila-2...

Have you ever wondered how new DNA methylation patterns are established? Paradigm shift ahead! We discovered a new mode of DNA methylation targeting in plants that relies on transcription factors and sequence motifs rather than chromatin modifications to regulate the methylome. rdcu.be/eQ6L5 1/8

Phages are full of genes of unknown function that are likely adaptive in specific conditions. New preprint: Phage TnSeq identifies essential genes rapidly and knocks all non-essentials. We would like to send a pool of phiKZ mutants to anyone wanting it! Reach out tinyurl.com/bdcfrejh

So excited to finally be able to share my first paper and the culmination of my PhD work with @felipekteixeira.bsky.social 🪰🔬 www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

How to keep in step when your (protein) partner speeds up… Here we investigated the adaptive remodeling of a protein-protein interaction surface essential for telomere protection. Congrats to whole team! www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

There are just two weeks left to nominate an outstanding early career scientist for the Larry Sandler Award! Help us celebrate emerging leaders in the field, plus they'll get to present at #Dros26. Learn more and submit a nomination: buff.ly/30jttAQ

❓Which company do people recommend (or have good experience with) for raising custom antibody against a peptide? context: working on a non-model organism and studying a poorly conserved protein, so need to raise an antibody 🙏

In one year, I genetically engineered the boring Arabidopsis into a beautiful ornamental flower 🧬🌹 Here is how and why I gave this model organism a visual upgrade 🧵(1/7)

Natural and artificial variations of the standard genetic code Great new review by Julius Lukes & colleagues 👇 www.cell.com/current-biol...

Happy to share that my PhD project is finally published!🪱✨ Selfish genes are found across the tree of life. They can disrupt inheritance patterns and at the same time act as units for molecular innovation. Here we tried to answer one big question: how do selfish genes emerge in the first place?

🪱 Selfish genes are everywhere and drive some of biology’s biggest innovations (CRISPR, antibody recombination, epigenetics). Yet almost no one asks the obvious question: how does a selfish gene begin? Our new manuscript uncovers how selfishness can emerge directly from the host genome.

Thrilled to share my PhD work showing dopamine and serotonin form a gas-brake system for reward has won Stanford's Sammy Kuo Paper of the Year Award! I'm at #sfn25 presenting new work that uncovers a key circuit mechanism underlying this opponency. Stop by poster AA3 Monday morning to learn more!

Talmo Lab is at @sfn.org! Come check out our latest work! #neuroskyence #neurosky #SfN2025 #SfN25

Genomic features underlying the origin of sociality and the diversification of caste systems in termites academic.oup.com/mbe/advance-...

The Leading Edge Fellows gathered this week to celebrate Zara Weinberg, a beloved member of our community. Our 7th cohort of Leading Edge Fellows (2026) will be named in her honor. The Zara Weinberg Leading Edge Cohort application is now open! Due Feb 2. www.leadingedgesymposium.org/apply/

New article from the lab out today, in which we discuss how social behavior evolves at the molecular level. From parenting across the animal tree of life to caste systems in social insects, it’s all connected (and, therefore, slowly starts to make sense)…

Spoke recently to the great folks at the science foundation on their efforts to fund curiosity-driven science. They have a new RFA out for catalytic awards (up to $10K). Take a look if you’re itching to expand or try out a new idea. science-foundation.org

My awesome grad student Shashank and I wrote this paper trying to look at broader patterns of HT in TEs. HT is happening everywhere! DNA transposons jump further than other classes! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

1/12 Excited to share our new paper. Many essential functions, like DNA packaging and chromosome integrity, are encoded in highly repetitive, "recalcitrant" parts of the genome. But these regions have been incredibly hard to study. Until now. genome.cshlp.org/content/35/9...

🪰 folks! Despite Harvard lawsuit outcome, FlyBase NIH grant was not released. FlyBase now runs on the public, like NPR, PBS etc. If we don't step up, it can go away! Donations site on flybase.org homepage. Note: it links to IU stock center, but its for FlyBase, see instructions. pls give+share! 2/2

Why curiosity-driven research is so fundamental & important, and requires sufficient funding. It's a corner stone of scientific discovery, which has always been and will always be inherently unpredictable!!

Come be our colleague! The University of Rochester is hiring a TT Assistant Professor in evolutionary genetics and genomics: apply.interfolio.com/173431.

I'm thrilled to announce that I’m opening my own research team in the Department of Genome Biology at I2BC @i2bcparissaclay.bsky.social ! #ATIP-Avenir Very excited to start this new adventure! www.i2bc.paris-saclay.fr/equipe-intra...

Guo et al. generated haplotype-resolved genome assemblies of black carp, identifying dmrt1 as the sex-determining locus, with a 13.4 kb insertion containing TEs functioning as cis-regulatory modules that mediate Y-specific activation. 🔗 doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msaf239 #evobio #molbio #TEsky

Our department @ucdavisvetmed.bsky.social @ucdavis.bsky.social is hiring! We welcome research that diversifies or complements existing strengths in gastrointestinal, neuroimmune, musculoskeletal, cardiorespiratory systems and/or developmental biology. @socdevbio.bsky.social @ascbiology.bsky.social

Horizontal gene transfer - a typical source of a major innovation in evolution or a positive publication bias? In the latest preprint from Bourguignon Lab, termite genomes provide a story less frequently told. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

When transposons jump, genomes diverge - even in cultured cells. I am happy to share our new preprint: a chromosome-scale genome assembly for Drosophila OSC cells, one of the key model systems in the piRNA field, especially for nuclear piRNA biology. 🧬🧵 (1/12)

🚨🚨 1 week left to apply to our department's faculty search! We are an interactive and interdisciplinary department for biochemistry, genetics, cell, developmental, and molecular biology. If your work addresses aging or infectious disease, you should especially apply! 🚨🚨 apply.interfolio.com/171941

The Weintraub Award is seeking nominations for 2026! The award recognizes the outstanding achievements of grad students in biology and was established to honor the bold, creative, pioneering spirit embodied by Dr. Hal Weintraub. www.fredhutch.org/en/research/...

Cooperation and conflict in termite societies -- Judith Korb www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Which journal would publish such a fragmented mess? www.cell.com/current-biol...

Having personally sworn for years that insects don’t use GPCRs for odour detection, Suguru Takagi (@sugurutakagi.bsky.social) discovers that, in fact, they sometimes do … www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Visiting UT Austin in Integrative Biology and came across this fantastic opportunity for senior grad students in the life sciences.

#Wolbachia has puzzled scientists with its power to rewire insect reproduction. What if I tell you that we found one of the keys Wolbachia use to rewire its host AND a small molecule inhibitor uses this key to mimic what this microbe has mastered for millions of years. www.cell.com/cell-reports...

Check out this new Levine-Lampson collaboration, led by the talented Hyuk-Joon Jeon. We explored the consequences of inheriting long telomeres from dad and short telomeres from mom. Or the reciprocal. Turns out, parent-of-origin matters (in mice, at least). authors.elsevier.com/c/1loW-3QW8S...

Just a few days left to apply! If you do cool molecular/cell biology things and want to start a lab in a supportive department in New England please check out our ad.