Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Marie Monniaux @mariemonniaux.bsky.social · 10h

Hum intriguant...!

Reposted by Marie Monniaux

Nick Desnoyer @nickdesnoyer.bsky.social · 1d

Friday Flower 007: Petunia 💮✨

Petunias carry the active transposon dTph1, which powers mutant screens and paints stripey patterns as it jumps.

Their five petals are fused, with diverse color designs tracing the corolla’s fusion seam.

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Reposted by Marie Monniaux

Lorenzo Penone @lorenzopenone.bsky.social · 22d

Does population size shape protein coevolution?
I explored this in my talk today at the MPI for Evolutionary Biology.
Our work in mammals suggests the answer is yes - genetic drift is a major determinant of compensatory mutations.

#evolution #genomics #proteinevolution @mpi-evolbio.bsky.social

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Marie Monniaux @mariemonniaux.bsky.social · 7d

I'd love to know if it increases transfo rate!

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Marie Monniaux @mariemonniaux.bsky.social · 9d

Wow this is quite amazing - I know almost nothing on recombination, but always assumed that the more similar the sequences were, the more likely they would recombine, turns out it's the opposite!

Chloe Girard, PhD @chloegirard.bsky.social · 10d

🚨 First pre-print from my team !!

TL;DR: presence of polymorphism (sequence differences between the homologous chromosomes) can *increase* the local rate of recombination in Arabidopsis thaliana, turning cold regions of the genome hot (purple v. grey) !

The recombination frequency (cM/Mb) along chromosome 4 of A. thaliana (female meiosis).

In full hybrids (grey), where polymorphism is distributed all along chromosomes, most crossovers occur in the regions surrounding the Centromere (Cen), and very few at chromosome ends (Tel: telomeres).

In lines where polymorphism is restricted to chromosome ends (purple), the local recombination rate increases drastically, at the expense of the non-polymorphic regions (yellow).

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Reposted by Marie Monniaux

The New York Times @nytimes.com · 9d

Breaking News: Jane Goodall, one of the world’s most revered conservationists, died at 91. Her discoveries in the 1960s about how chimpanzees behaved in the wild broke new ground and represented what was called “one of the Western world’s great scientific achievements.” nyti.ms/42kpGxt

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Reposted by Marie Monniaux

Mario Vallejo-Marin @nicrodemo.bsky.social · 11d

Very nice video of self pollination in a tiny Veronica flower. www.nikonsmallworld.com/galleries/20...

Self-pollination in a flower of thymeleaf speedwell (Veronica serpyllifolia) | 2025 Small World in Motion Competition

Jay McClellan - Self-pollination in a flower of thymeleaf speedwell (Veronica serpyllifolia)

www.nikonsmallworld.com

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Marie Monniaux @mariemonniaux.bsky.social · 22d

Bah voilà, vous saurez tout sur moi ici 👇
Merci à Florent Brun de la délégation régionale du CNRS pour l'entretien !

CNRS Hauts-de-France @cnrs-hautsdefrance.bsky.social · 25d

#PortraitdeScience 👩‍🔬
Découvrez le Portrait de @mariemonniaux.bsky.social, chargée de recherche #EvoEcoPaleo !
Marie Monniaux consacre ses recherches à un phénomène fascinant : l’auto-incompatibilité chez les fleurs🌷

➡️ www.hauts-de-france.cnrs.fr/fr/cnrsinfo/...

👋 @cnrsecologie.bsky.social

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Marie Monniaux @mariemonniaux.bsky.social · 22d

Congratulations Pierre!!! 🥳

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Reposted by Marie Monniaux

Pierre Baduel @pierrebaduel.bsky.social · 22d

Happy to share the results of a long-haul post-doc project, now online @science.org, aiming at understanding the rules of transgeneration epigenetic inheritance over TEs in plants and its extent and impact in nature. More below!
doi.org/10.1126/scie...

Transposable elements are vectors of recurrent transgenerational epigenetic inheritance

DNA methylation loss at transposable elements (TEs) can affect neighboring genes and be epigenetically inherited in plants, yet the determinants and significance of this additional system of inheritan...

doi.org

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Reposted by Marie Monniaux

Camille Roux @crouxevo.bsky.social · 29d

Hybridization and introgression are major evolutionary processes. Since the 1940s, the prevailing view has been that they shape plants far more than animals. In our new study (www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
), we find the opposite: animals exchange genes more, and for longer, than plants

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Marie Monniaux @mariemonniaux.bsky.social · 29d

Check out this cool work from @crouxevo.bsky.social and others, congrats!!! 🥳
Rapid establishment of species barriers in plants compared with that in animals | Science www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Rapid establishment of species barriers in plants compared with that in animals

Speciation, the process by which new reproductively isolated species emerge from ancestral populations, results from the gradual accumulation of barriers to gene flow within genomes. To date, the noti...

www.science.org

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Reposted by Marie Monniaux

Wayne Maddison @waynemaddison.bsky.social · Sep 5

Confused writing is usually a symptom of confused thinking. As we struggle to clarify writing, we clarify our thoughts. AI writing aids rob us of that struggle, leaving clean-looking text and thoughts still confused for lack of inspection. Writing is not just a product; it is a diagnostic tool.

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Claudia Alvarez Carreño @claudiaalcar.bsky.social · Sep 2

The ProSE seminars are back after a summer break. The next speaker is Nir Ben-Tal on "Contrastive learning unites sequence and structure in a global representation of protein space".
Date: September 9
Time: 5pm CET
Register here: tinyurl.com/prose-seminar2

Please share!
🧪 #mevosky

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Reposted by Marie Monniaux

Gabriella Mosca @moscabiomeclab.bsky.social · Sep 7

The BM^2 Lab is hiring a Ph.D. student to work on a variety of problems connected to modeling of morphogenesis in plants (i.e. ovule curvature formation, fixed handedness establishment in certain plant organs and its link to cell wall mechanics).

Please share!

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Marie Monniaux @mariemonniaux.bsky.social · Sep 5

Congratulations, that is amazing!

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Reposted by Marie Monniaux

Josh Luke Davis 🏳️‍🌈 @joshlukedavis.com · Sep 3

woah this is genuinely, utterly WILD

Ant queens of one species produce males of another species, so she can then mate with them and produce hybrid workers!

This is so gloriously weird I can't quite compute it 🤯🧪🐜
www.nature.com/articles/d41...

‘Almost unimaginable’: these ants are different species but share a mother

Ant queens of one species clone ants of another to create hybrid workers that do their bidding.

www.nature.com

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Reposted by Marie Monniaux

Kaia Mattioli @kaiamattioli.bsky.social · Sep 3

out today: my labmate Shubham developed a super clever new technique to profile TF-DNA interactions with unprecedented resolution of low-affinity binding sites, revealing patterns in how these sites are organized in the genome to modulate TF occupancy:

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Multiple overlapping binding sites determine transcription factor occupancy - Nature

A new method enables comprehensive screening and identification of low-affinity DNA binding sites for transcription factors, and reveals that nucleotides flanking high-affinity binding sites create ov...

www.nature.com

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Reposted by Marie Monniaux

Tanja Slotte @tanjaslotte.bsky.social · Sep 2

*Postdoc in Evolutionary genomics at Stockholm University*
We are recruiting a postdoc for a large interdisciplinary project to investigate evolutionary drivers and genomic consequences of pollen evolution in response to pollination mode shifts in flowering plants. 1/5

su.varbi.com/what:job/job...

Purple pollen visible in a dissected flower of Linum grandiflorum, flowering flax, an insect-pollinated species.

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Reposted by Marie Monniaux

Timothy Fuqua 🏳‍🌈 @timothyfuqua.bsky.social · Aug 28

Excited / nervous to share the “magnum opus” of my postdoc in Andreas Wagner’s lab!

"De-novo promoters emerge more readily from random DNA than from genomic DNA"

This project is the accumulation of 4 years of work, and lays the foundation for my future group. In short, we… (1/4)

De-novo promoters emerge more readily from random DNA than from genomic DNA

Promoters are DNA sequences that help to initiate transcription. Point mutations can create de-novo promoters, which can consequently transcribe inactive genes or create novel transcripts. We know lit...

www.biorxiv.org

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Reposted by Marie Monniaux

Hugues Renault @huguesrenault.bsky.social · Aug 8

#plantscience

Hugues Renault @huguesrenault.bsky.social · Aug 7

Three #Master2 #internship topics are available in our team to study the #adaptations associated with #plant #terrestrialization 👇

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Reposted by Marie Monniaux

Hugues Renault @huguesrenault.bsky.social · Aug 7

Three #Master2 #internship topics are available in our team to study the #adaptations associated with #plant #terrestrialization 👇

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Reposted by Marie Monniaux

闵娅(Min Ya; Minya) PhD @minyaaa.bsky.social · Aug 7

I’m proud to present the main work from my postdoc, 3+ years in making from scratch, my ultimate #MimulusPropaganda up till now:

The Moment
That
Symmetry
Breaks.

#plantscience #development #imaging #microscopy 🧪🌸🔬
w. Captain Yaowu & @biancatash.bsky.social

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

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Reposted by Marie Monniaux

Andy Plackett @seedrevolutionlab.bsky.social · Jul 10

I have a Postdoctoral Research Fellow position starting in January to study the evolution of seed gene networks using the fern Ceratopteris! Interested? More info here:
www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DNU179/r...

Closing date 31st July. 🙂
#PlantScience
#PlantSciencejobs

Research Fellow (Postdoctoral) at University of Birmingham

An opportunity for an academic position as a Research Fellow (Postdoctoral) is available, as advertised on jobs.ac.uk. Apply now and explore other academic job openings.

www.jobs.ac.uk

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Reposted by Marie Monniaux

Leonie Moyle @speciationlab.bsky.social · Jul 28

Hello, I'm an evolutionary biologist in a film. I can identify any species from 30 base pairs of DNA, including human-alien hybrids. I quote Darwin and Gould ad libitum to compensate for my lack of emotional depth. Inexplicably, I'm unable to correctly pronounce 'genome' or 'drosophila'.

Greg Jenner @gregjenner.bsky.social · Jul 28

Hello, I’m a historian in a film. I can instantly decode ancient Near Eastern scripts, and am fluent in 23 dead languages, yet my primary field is 16th century European portraiture

Kevin M. Kruse @kevinmkruse.bsky.social · Jul 28

Hello, I'm a historian in a film. My office is a massive space filled with Persian rugs, leather couches and massive wooden bookcases. There's a Tiffany lamp on my desk and an original Gutenberg Bible on a stand next to it. I am wearing a tweed suit with five layers.

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