Artem Ilin
LightNews LightNews
banner
adc34.bsky.social
Artem Ilin
@adc34.bsky.social
600 followers 250 following 240 posts
Postdoc at Stockholm University. TEs, epigenetics, bioinformatics, small RNA and Drosophila 🪰!
artemilin.dev
Posts Replies Media Videos
Reposted by Artem Ilin
bwjones.bsky.social
Entire creation of new data that has no bearing upon any histological relevance. Remember LLM models are not open and we have no understanding of what NeuN, GFAP, or DAPI means in biological space within the LLM.

This is nonsense. But it looks at first blush as "real" to the uninformed.

Scary.
rachaelott.bsky.social Rachael Ott @rachaelott.bsky.social · 1d
Gemini 3 created this figure in under 30 seconds from a couple reference images and a one sentence prompt

So I’m at a loss for words, honestly #MicroscopyMonday
November 24, 2025 at 7:51 PM
Reposted by Artem Ilin
mads100tist.bsky.social
Another AI cover art. Sigh
emboreports.org EMBO Reports @emboreports.org · 5d
The second November issue is online.

-> www.embopress.org/toc/14693178...

The cover features work by Tina Mukherjee and co-workers showing that #macrophage metabolic #reprogramming during dietary stress influences adult body size in #Drosophila.

www.embopress.org/doi/full/10....
November 22, 2025 at 9:40 AM
Reposted by Artem Ilin
posnienlab.bsky.social
🧬 PhD Position: Evolutionary & Comparative Genomics 🕷️
Join us at @uni-goettingen.de for a 3-year PhD (65% TV-L E13).
We will investigate the genomic & phenotypic impact of gene duplication across 233 arthropod genomes!
More infos 👇 and s.gwdg.de/eDrAAY
#Evolution #Genomics #Bioinformatics
Posnien - Georg-August-Universität Göttingen
Webseiten der Georg-August-Universität Göttingen
s.gwdg.de
November 18, 2025 at 7:04 AM
Reposted by Artem Ilin
scottishwaddell.bsky.social
Why are some reviewers so confidently nasty? Is it necessary to be like that?! Don’t they understand how much work goes into each manuscript and how damaging it can be for some people to read the vitriol? Or even consider that they might be wrong?!
November 18, 2025 at 10:51 AM
Reposted by Artem Ilin
the-node.bsky.social
A bittersweet acceptance: Between a manuscript and grief

Stefanie Williams @sillysciencelady.bsky.social shares the story behind her paper on the synaptonemal complex, including a tribute to her supervisor Scott Hawley, who passed away while Stefanie was completing the research.
A bittersweet acceptance: Between a manuscript and grief - the Node
I was so excited when I received notification that my first first-author research paper was accepted. My excitement quickly turned into sadness with the realization that my co-PI was not seeing our vi...
thenode.biologists.com
November 17, 2025 at 9:58 AM
Reposted by Artem Ilin
naolimit.bsky.social
Feed for posts about drosophila. Tag #Drosophila or #FruitFly to be included.
bsky.app/profile/did:...
November 17, 2025 at 5:44 AM
Reposted by Artem Ilin
hansonmark.bsky.social
WE ARE RECRUITING PHD STUDENTS!!!

We have three(!) funded PhD studentships advertising presently. If any of these are of interest, please reach out! Thread below with links to more information on each project.

#Drosophila #Evolution #Immunity #SelfishGene #Aphids

Thread with links below 🧵 1/4
November 15, 2025 at 3:35 PM
Reposted by Artem Ilin
uwmadisonrna.bsky.social
Awesome paper from Kathy Collins' lab

Different repair pathways support intact or truncated insertions by R2 retrotransposon protein | Science www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
Different repair pathways support intact or truncated insertions by R2 retrotransposon protein
Non-LTR retrotransposon proteins copy their RNA template into a genome via coordinated nicking and reverse transcriptase activities of target-primed reverse transcription. Mechanisms by which the firs...
www.science.org
November 13, 2025 at 8:05 PM
adc34.bsky.social
.DS_Store👻😘🥳
jtullock.bsky.social Janice Tullock @jtullock.bsky.social · 14d
No no no begs every archivist. You are never going to be able to find anything. Please don’t start using emojis in file names. Who asked for this? What fresh hell is next?
Screen grab from Dropbox saying Emojis in file names are finally here!
November 12, 2025 at 2:56 PM
Reposted by Artem Ilin
tobybarilbio.bsky.social
TEs aren’t just genomic parasites, they’re also engines of genomic novelty.

Our new study with ~2,000 Z. tritici genomes shows repeated TE mobilization waves during global expansion.

With @danielcroll.bsky.social & @guidopuccetti.bsky.social

🧬 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

#TEworldwide
Historic transposon mobilisation waves create distinct pools of adaptive variants in a major crop pathogen - Nature Communications
In this study, the authors analysed a large genomic dataset to trace how jumping genes shaped the global spread of a major wheat pathogen and reveal bursts of activity over decades that drove adaptati...
www.nature.com
November 12, 2025 at 1:17 PM
adc34.bsky.social
Extremely important effort and call for action for researchers everywhere! Bravo, Mark and co!
hansonmark.bsky.social Mark A. Hanson @hansonmark.bsky.social · 15d
We wrote the Strain on scientific publishing to highlight the problems of time & trust. With a fantastic group of co-authors, we present The Drain of Scientific Publishing:

a 🧵 1/n

Drain: arxiv.org/abs/2511.04820
Strain: direct.mit.edu/qss/article/...
Oligopoly: direct.mit.edu/qss/article/...
A table showing profit margins of major publishers. A snippet of text related to this table is below. 1. The four-fold drain 1.1 Money Currently, academic publishing is dominated by profit-oriented, multinational companies for whom scientific knowledge is a commodity to be sold back to the academic community who created it. The dominant four are Elsevier, Springer Nature, Wiley and Taylor & Francis, which collectively generated over US$7.1 billion in revenue from journal publishing in 2024 alone, and over US$12 billion in profits between 2019 and 2024 (Table 1A). Their profit margins have always been over 30% in the last five years, and for the largest publisher (Elsevier) always over 37%. Against many comparators, across many sectors, scientific publishing is one of the most consistently profitable industries (Table S1). These financial arrangements make a substantial difference to science budgets. In 2024, 46% of Elsevier revenues and 53% of Taylor & Francis revenues were generated in North America, meaning that North American researchers were charged over US$2.27 billion by just two for-profit publishers. The Canadian research councils and the US National Science Foundation were allocated US$9.3 billion in that year. A figure detailing the drain on researcher time. 1. The four-fold drain 1.2 Time The number of papers published each year is growing faster than the scientific workforce, with the number of papers per researcher almost doubling between 1996 and 2022 (Figure 1A). This reflects the fact that publishers’ commercial desire to publish (sell) more material has aligned well with the competitive prestige culture in which publications help secure jobs, grants, promotions, and awards. To the extent that this growth is driven by a pressure for profit, rather than scholarly imperatives, it distorts the way researchers spend their time. The publishing system depends on unpaid reviewer labour, estimated to be over 130 million unpaid hours annually in 2020 alone (9). Researchers have complained about the demands of peer-review for decades, but the scale of the problem is now worse, with editors reporting widespread difficulties recruiting reviewers. The growth in publications involves not only the authors’ time, but that of academic editors and reviewers who are dealing with so many review demands. Even more seriously, the imperative to produce ever more articles reshapes the nature of scientific inquiry. Evidence across multiple fields shows that more papers result in ‘ossification’, not new ideas (10). It may seem paradoxical that more papers can slow progress until one considers how it affects researchers’ time. While rewards remain tied to volume, prestige, and impact of publications, researchers will be nudged away from riskier, local, interdisciplinary, and long-term work. The result is a treadmill of constant activity with limited progress whereas core scholarly practices – such as reading, reflecting and engaging with others’ contributions – is de-prioritized. What looks like productivity often masks intellectual exhaustion built on a demoralizing, narrowing scientific vision. A table of profit margins across industries. The section of text related to this table is below: 1. The four-fold drain 1.1 Money Currently, academic publishing is dominated by profit-oriented, multinational companies for whom scientific knowledge is a commodity to be sold back to the academic community who created it. The dominant four are Elsevier, Springer Nature, Wiley and Taylor & Francis, which collectively generated over US$7.1 billion in revenue from journal publishing in 2024 alone, and over US$12 billion in profits between 2019 and 2024 (Table 1A). Their profit margins have always been over 30% in the last five years, and for the largest publisher (Elsevier) always over 37%. Against many comparators, across many sectors, scientific publishing is one of the most consistently profitable industries (Table S1). These financial arrangements make a substantial difference to science budgets. In 2024, 46% of Elsevier revenues and 53% of Taylor & Francis revenues were generated in North America, meaning that North American researchers were charged over US$2.27 billion by just two for-profit publishers. The Canadian research councils and the US National Science Foundation were allocated US$9.3 billion in that year. The costs of inaction are plain: wasted public funds, lost researcher time, compromised scientific integrity and eroded public trust. Today, the system rewards commercial publishers first, and science second. Without bold action from the funders we risk continuing to pour resources into a system that prioritizes profit over the advancement of scientific knowledge.
November 11, 2025 at 12:49 PM
Reposted by Artem Ilin
sandraduharcourt.bsky.social
Excited to share our new preprint on BioRxiv!
A collaborative effort spanning many years and several labs to uncover what the germline chromosomes of Paramecium really look like. 🔗 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
1/5
The tiny germline chromosomes of Paramecium aurelia have an exceptionally high recombination rate and are capped by a new class of Helitrons
Background. Paramecia belong to the ciliate phylum of unicellular eukaryotes characterized by nuclear dimorphism. A diploid germline micronucleus (MIC) transmits genetic information across sexual gene...
www.biorxiv.org
November 10, 2025 at 9:21 AM
Reposted by Artem Ilin
notjustdna.bsky.social
2-factor authentication required ⬇️ 😊
elife.bsky.social eLife @elife.bsky.social · 17d
Two rainforest butterflies have evolved to look more alike, likely to confuse shared predators. But why don’t they get confused themselves?

To avoid mating with the wrong species, they’ve cleverly evolved distinct scents.
buff.ly/fxVrlCI
November 9, 2025 at 12:05 AM
Reposted by Artem Ilin
signor-molevol.bsky.social
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...
Recent horizontal transfer of transposable elements in Drosophila
Transposable elements (TEs) are genetic elements also known as "jumping genes" that increase their copy numbers within a host through various mechanisms of transposition. TEs can also move between spe...
www.biorxiv.org
October 31, 2025 at 3:58 PM
Reposted by Artem Ilin
scottpegan.bsky.social
Happy Halloween 🎃👻💀 from the crypt-keeper wasp, who lays its eggs into a crypt created by its host, then manipulates the host’s behavior for its own benefit, before devouring it from the inside out and emerging through its face!

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euderus...
Euderus set - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
October 31, 2025 at 4:31 PM
Reposted by Artem Ilin
alexr.bsky.social
I've been asked about this paper (www.nature.com/articles/s41...) enough times that I finally had to read it.

The basic claim is that mRNA vaccines had huge synergistic benefit with checkpoint blockade against lung cancer melanoma.

tl;dr it's glam-slop & everyone involved should be embarrassed
SARS-CoV-2 mRNA vaccines sensitize tumours to immune checkpoint blockade - Nature
mRNA vaccines targeting SARS-CoV-2 also sensitize tumours to immune checkpoint inhibitors.
www.nature.com
October 30, 2025 at 3:35 PM
adc34.bsky.social
Behold, my new favorite type of plot: roadkill
A graph from panel E of Fig. 1 from Bonnet et al., 2025 depicting H2AK118ub gene coverage differences between wild type and double mutant of two major proteins in canonical PRC1 complex Comic from Hedgeye.com website, depicting a squirrel killed by a car and two other squirrels one of which is commenting: he always followed a linear path
October 29, 2025 at 7:09 PM
Reposted by Artem Ilin
nature.com
Funders must recognise that great discoveries often come from studies that seeks to advance knowledge for its own sake

go.nature.com/47zrzYZ
From MRI to Ozempic: breakthroughs that show why fundamental research must be protected
In these financially straitened times, funders must recognize that great discoveries often arise from work that was looking for something completely different.
go.nature.com
October 29, 2025 at 12:11 PM
Reposted by Artem Ilin
dodonova-sveta.bsky.social
Lab’s first paper is out!! We show the first structures of #Asgard #chromatin by #cryo-EM 🧬❄️
Asgard histones form closed and open hypernucleosomes. Closed are conserved across #Archaea, while open resemble eukaryotic H3–H4 octasomes and are Asgard-specific. More here: www.cell.com/molecular-ce...
October 28, 2025 at 3:07 PM
Reposted by Artem Ilin
robertseaborne.bsky.social
🚨Hiring a 2yr postdoc in the lab work on muscle biology, genomics & ALS. Expertise in the above advantageous, but work ethic, desire to learn/develop and being a good scientist/person more important

Good collab with @droch.bsky.social so travel to CPH involved as well

www.kcl.ac.uk/jobs/126245-...
Postdoctoral Research Associate in Muscle Biology and Genomics | King's College London
www.kcl.ac.uk
September 25, 2025 at 5:01 PM
Reposted by Artem Ilin
bpavuk.neocities.org
if you see this post, your actions are:
- if you have a spare buck, give it to Wikipedia, then repost this
- if you don't have a spare buck, just repost

your action is mandatory for the world's best source of information to survive
joshuaholland.bsky.social Joshua Holland @joshuaholland.bsky.social · Dec 25
I’ve never donated to Wikipedia before but I set up a small monthly donation as a fuck you to the world’s richest psychopath.
Elon Musk takes aim at Wikipedia
Musk has denounced Wikipedia as "Wokepedia" on X and urged people not to donate to the platform.
www.newsweek.com
December 26, 2024 at 12:03 PM
Reposted by Artem Ilin
tdcapellini.bsky.social
Please share/repost widely: I have a postdoc position available. Please see ad below and reach out to apply.

academicpositions.harvard.edu/postings/15449
Postdoctoral Fellow in the Capellini Laboratory of Developmental and Evolutionary Genetics
The Department of Human Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University invites applications for a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Evolutionary and Developmental Genetics Laboratory of Dr. Terence D. Capellini....
academicpositions.harvard.edu
October 24, 2025 at 3:39 PM
Reposted by Artem Ilin
jlsteenwyk.bsky.social
Not today, parasitic #wasps!✋🚫

#Stinkbugs use a fungus-carrying organ on their hind legs to coat their eggs in #fungi🍄🦵

This provides a physical defense against #parasitic wasp oviposition🛡️

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
October 22, 2025 at 5:12 PM
Reposted by Artem Ilin
structplantbio.bsky.social
A lot of pressure on the different grant schemes, and pretty much independent of career stage.
October 17, 2025 at 10:20 AM