The way to accelerate science is to SLOW it down. Fewer papers please! We’re drowning in meaningless text. One GREAT paper per lab per decade is more than enough. q.e.d 👇

Opposing Copy Number Variation Dynamics Shape Adaptation to Glucose and Galactose in Diploid Yeast https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.10.01.679718v1

When the cell needs to respond to the environment: A chromatin-splicing love affair

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

Please re-post: If you know (or are!) somebody who might fancy doing a PhD (Oct 2026 start) in my group @oxfordbiochemistry.bsky.social, working on chromatin evolution in prokaryotes (or other things we're interested in), please have a look at www.bioch.ox.ac.uk/supervisors-...

To know what WoodstockBio2 & Night Science was really like - you had to be there! As you read about it in @nature.com, be aware that none if this would have happened without the vision, hard work, leadership & passion of @svobodalab.bsky.social Who was there - knows! www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Finding causal structures behind correlations is a key task of science. In biology, we have to do that for evolved, highly connected homeostatic feedback systems. How? Moving from "pseudo steady state" assumptions to time series may be the only option.

Unpopular opinion: I love posters and find them underrated as a form of less linear science communication. There should be platforms to publish in poster format, with supporting online material. My latest one, I loved to present in the Bohemian woods #theconferencetoendallconferences #tcteac

So cool, a novel archaeon with a super small genome and no metabolic genes! "An unprecedented level of metabolic dependence on a host, a condition that challenges the functional distinctions between minimal cellular life and viruses." www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

We have several open postdoc positions! We do computational biology 🧬🖥️ and deep learning to understand the genomics of genome instability and (somatic) genome evolution in ageing and cancer. Interested? 👉🏻 more details: tu-dresden.de/cmcb/biotec/...

🧬🌽 Happy Transposon Day! 🌽🧬 Today we celebrate the birthday of Barbara McClintock - scientist extraordinaire and discoverer of jumping genes. Still the only woman to have an unshared Nobel Prize in the biomedical sciences #TransposonDay2025

Indeed Oded. Some Will think of #TCTeAC as escapism, but I think it was showing us how beautiful we can make this world if the guiding values are respect & trust, and if world leaders would adopt a vision that is based on hope instead of hatred. On collaboration instead of competition. 💚

This seems like a very solid DIY benchtop reactor design, including a jacketed vessel that allows for calorimetry: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

A very short summary of "Data Visualization against fascism": Fascism conceals truths, disregards evidence-based decision-making, and jeopardizes the education of the next generation. Standing up against means: MONITOR, EXPOSE, and EDUCATE. As scientists we are ready for this! #TCTeAC

How was your conference? Mine was #TCTeAC

Everybody is just talking about the fun #TCTeAC but the high quality of science, across a diverse range of fields, was equally impressive. Thanks to the organizers, such a unique event.

More support for the relevance of the twin-domain model of transcription by Sam Meyer's lab: gyrase binding is increased many kb downstream of highly expressed genes, topoI upstream. Context matters. academic.oup.com/nar/article/...

LTR transposons are really versatile mobile elements: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Psoralen's use in genomewide footprinting of torsional strain (TMP-seq) has been limited. It seems that beautiful data can be obtained with a good reference measurement. Now, we can start to study the twin domain model on a genome-wide scale. elifesciences.org/reviewed-pre...

A woman studies embryos for decades, struggles for funding and respect. She publishes under her husband’s name, until they divorce. A single mother, she moves across an ocean to continue her studies. It all sounds quite modern, until you learn that she also worried she’d be burned as a witch. 🧵 1/15

@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...

First #bluetorial. 🎉🎉 We’re very happy to share our latest biorxiv #preprint, just in time before the holiday season. We explored how transposable elements (TEs) diversify eukaryotic proteomes and found a cool case in nematode F-box genes. #TEsky #evosky #Celegans Short 🧵 with highlights.

Cool, elegant paper. Inverted repeat transposon near EFR affects chromatin organization and gene expression to fine-tune immune responses. #MPMI #plantimmunity www.nature.com/articles/s41...

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

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

Chromosomal inversions mediated by tandem insertions of transposable elements https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.01.09.631634v1

Transposable elements drive regulatory and functional innovation of F-box genes https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.12.17.628972v1

Re-upping this: I'm looking for PhD students (start October 2024) to join my lab in Oxford. If you're interested in molecular evolution, archaea, chromatin, or all of the above, get in touch!

Biology is slowly and rather silently moving from a genocentric to a ribocentric paradigm, where the translating ribosome takes center stage. "Omics" is like Brahe, Kepler, Galileo et al., meticulous and hopefully increasingly quantitative recording of trajectories.

Virologist Beata Halassy successfully treated her own breast cancer recurrence with viruses she grew in the lab: Measles virus followed by vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV) www.nature.com/articles/d41...

#FungiFriends 📷🍄