The idea is to decouple the journals from the review step. They’ll still exist, but they’ll need to add other value. They’ll highlight, curate, add new perspectives. If they do a good job they can still be prestigious (like Scientific American or Wired) (1.2) 👇

(1/9) Join us in Bern, Switzerland (8–11 Feb 2026) for our EMBO Workshop on Molecular Mechanisms of Selfish Elements and Strategies! Organized with Tanja Schwander, Laura Ross (@laurarossevo.bsky.social) and Axel Imhof. meetings.embo.org/event/26-sel... #EMBOselfishElements #EMBOevents

super cool - I am constantly wondering about the effects of recent TE invasions? lethal mutations seems to be one striking effect www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

We are in Bluesky and we are happy to share our two last consortium publications: the DrosEU expanded DEST dataset and a Continent-wide study of phenotypic differentiation among European #Drosophila melanogaster populations (1/7)

@kuhlwilm.bsky.social from #HEASVienna introducing @rokofler.bsky.social for the #HEASSeminar in #AncientGenomics taking place now online and in-person at the #UBB @univie.ac.at

We are looking forward to welcoming @rokofler.bsky.social to #HEASVienna as part of the #HEASSeminar in #AncientGenomics. Please note the slightly earlier start time of 10:00 CEST. More information and registration on our website 👇🔗

I'm wondering if this is not a unique, once in a lifetime opportunity, to study the spread and silencing of an iERV in a natural population. last time we checked it was not yet in Vienna

Another preprint from @pankajd.bsky.social ! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

SINGER, our ARG inference method, is finally published and freely available online: doi.org/10.1038/s415... It was a long journey – 16 months from initial submission to acceptance. Is it just me, or has peer review gotten more arduous lately? 4+ rounds of review isn't so unusual these days...

In all my obsession with RNA silencing, I realized I became blind to the significance of autoregulation of DNA transposons. Which is funny, because it was characterized in many ways by my Ph.D. advisor. From 2013: elifesciences.org/articles/00668

Germline defence from TEs largely relies on piRNAs. Yet, @divyaselvaraju.bsky.social and I monitored a P-element invasion in Drosophila that was stopped by an internally deleted copy, no host intervention required! doi.org/10.1371/jour... Many thanks to @rpianezza.bsky.social & @rokofler.bsky.social

@shashankpritam.bsky.social first research paper on the effect of insertion bias on transposon fitness!! With @almoroscarpa.bsky.social and @rokofler.bsky.social link.springer.com/article/10.1...

piRNAs are essential for transposon silencing in the animal germline. But how do hosts trap transposon sequences in genomic loci that help establish a piRNA response? Looking at a natural transposon invasion, Baptiste Rafanel and Kirsten Senti made some remarkable observations.

Adaptive P-element insertions in a long non-coding RNA are associated with unique silencing properties www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

@rokofler.bsky.social uncovered a treasure cove in Drosophila populations here. Remarkable and highly relevant findings on horizontal transfer of all kinds of TEs, irrespective of their transposition type.

@rokofler.bsky.social talks about the spread of TEs in drosophila over time - are humans responsible?? #smbe2025

@rpianezza.bsky.social @almoroscarpa.bsky.social, A. Haidar, @signor-molevol.bsky.social ‪& @rokofler.bsky.social investigated 11 TEs in D. melanogaster that added ~1 Mbp via horizontal transfer, likely from other Drosophila spp. 🔗 doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msaf143 #evobio #drosophila #TEsky

Talks by: @gonzalezlabbcn.bsky.social Yalong Guo Axel Meyer Emmanuelle Lerat Cheng Sun Qiheng Xu Jie Cui Ilia Kirov Chengyi Song Li Wang Jing Wang @rokofler.bsky.social Ying Liu Shengjun Tan

super-happy, three TE invasions in Dmel during the last 30 years; the crazy thing - Transib1 spread in just 2-3years in global populations academic.oup.com/mbe/advance-... great work everyone @rpianezza.bsky.social @almoroscarpa.bsky.social @signor-molevol.bsky.social Anna Haider

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

Flybase lost all of the NIH support overnight - it is a disaster for the community. Please consider donating. I just did! www.philanthropy.cam.ac.uk/give-to-camb...

great work of Riccardo tracing the origin of D.melanogaster transposons

this is fantastic news - congrats Philipp :)

Our #PhD student Almorò Scarpa @almoroscarpa.bsky.social looks forward to #PopGen meeting tomorrow! He will tell us about "Two centuries of transposable element invasions in Drosophila melanogaster" Full schedule and streaming details at www.popgen-vienna.at/news/seminars/

Super proud of amazing PhD student Sarah Saadain winning the Carl von Schreibers prize with her cockroach project; Vetmeduni Wien and @nhmwien.bsky.social www.nhm-wien.ac.at/presse/press...

Polymorphic transposable elements contribute to variation in recombination landscapes (drosohila 🪰) www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.... #TEsky

1/ Transposable elements are often called "jumping genes" because they mobilize within genomes. 🧬 But did you know they can also jump 𝘣𝘦𝘵𝘸𝘦𝘦𝘯 cells? 🤯 Our new study reveals how retrotransposons invade the germline directly from somatic cells. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... A short thread 🧵👇

The truth is that the scientific process is horribly inefficient and wasteful. But the solution is NOT cutting funds and it’s NOT top down guidance of what should be studied. Instead, we should revolutionize how we publish and improve peer review.

Did you know that some bacteria have linear chromosomes? Not only that, but as in certain eukaryotes (most famously 🪰) bacterial telomeres can be capped by specialized transposons!! Exciting 🤯 work by fellow transposon lovers in the Peters lab @ Cornell - congrats to all!

Viva Vienna!

In this new Feature Review, Yukihide Tomari and colleagues examine repression mechanisms that silence transposons and discuss the dynamic coevolution of transposons and host defenses in animals. Read for FREE till April 11th: authors.elsevier.com/a/1keCScQbJF...

Our new paper on the P-element invasion in D.simulans mobilednajournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10....

Feels awkward but necessary to celebrate scientific progress in this imperiled time for US biomedical research. Proud of our latest paper out today exploring the role of transposable elements in antiviral resistance to HIV 🦠 genomebiology.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.... 🧵1/n

Very promising approach to characterize the mobilome in pangenomes from ! I wonder how this compares/complements to Pantera (@piosierra.bsky.social) and GraffiTE www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... #TESky #SV #Pangenomes

@tbadet.bsky.social and I have a preprint out on transposon silencing in fungi! Genome size evolution is fascinating and showcases the dynamic nature of transposon activation. What we understand less are the dynamics of transposon defense systems encoded by the genomes. doi.org/10.1101/2025...

New Bergman Lab paper now online at GBE: "Horizontal transfer and recombination fuel Ty4 retrotransposon evolution in Saccharomyces"

This collaboration was such a pleasure. Our new paper on cascades of HT after introduction of two TEs to human commensals www.nature.com/articles/s41...

It’s often assumed that the horizontal transfer of transposons btw animals is rare (Myr scale). But recent detective work by Kofler lab & others suggest HT must be very frequent, so that a single transposon can successfully invade multiple species around the world in just a few decades! Wild!

super proud - our new work about the invasions triggered by two troublesome TEs in Nat. Comm. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Announcing a curated collection of long-read genomes for Arabidopsis thaliana: The 1001 Genomes Plus Project. Currently 453 unique accessions/almost 600 assemblies. Interested in contributing? Please contact us! #plantscience www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Phylogenetic relatedness rather than aquatic habitat fosters horizontal transfer of transposable elements in animals http://biorxiv.org/cgi/content/short/2024.12.18.629015v1

Good news: Deadline exend for Genome Biology collection on transposable elements in genome evolution: March 21. www.biomedcentral.com/collections/...

Our novel tool for finding recent TE invasions without repeat library - great work by amazing student Riccardo (not yet on bsky) genomebiology.biomedcentral.com/articles/10....

Pianezza, R., Scarpa, A., Narayanan, P., Signor, S., Kofler, R. (2024). Spoink, a LTR retrotransposon, invaded #Drosophila melanogaster populations in the 1990s. PLoS Genet, 20(3):e1011201 journals.plos.org/plosgenetics...

My graduate student shashank and I wrote this cool review on the evolution of transposon defense. Come for pirna cluster evolution stay for wild theories!

Want to perform HIGH EFFICIENCY Homology Directed Repair in Drosophila spp? Try Atalanta plasmids. About 10X higher efficiency than other methods! Tag or delete genes, invert chromosome regions, make scarless site-specific modifications. All with easy cloning. This paper is proudly bioRxiv only!

Interesting findings about one of my favorite Transposons called ÉVADÉ: PTGS is dispensable for the initiation of epigenetic silencing of an active transposon in Arabidopsis. www.embopress.org/doi/full/10....

Very proud to be a part of this incredible effort! "Footprints of worldwide adaptation in structured populations of D. melanogaster through the expanded DEST 2.0 genomic resource" www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...