Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Anna A Monaco @annaamonaco.bsky.social · 3d

I’d like to distract you from The Horrors™️ with what I’m pretty sure is a spotted sea hare (Aplysia dactylomela). I found this beauty and 6 of their friends while staring into tide pools like the goblin I am.

A beige sea slug with black rings decorating its mantle, in a tide pool on a bed of sea grass

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Anna A Monaco @annaamonaco.bsky.social · 13d

I usually write about what fascinates me, but this time it had to be about my concerns. This took a long time to write, I had a lot of thoughts, feelings, and literature to work through. There is still much more I’d like to say, but for now I leave you with this read.

tinyurl.com/y6hx838y

The smoke and mirrors of de-extinction

Jurassic Park’s warnings about scientific ambition echo today as biotech companies pursue de-extinction. However, these efforts often overlook ecological realities and distract from pressing conser…

tinyurl.com

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Alyssa Long @measuredandslow.bsky.social · 15d

Hey a thing I really don’t want to get lost here is that while Tylenol doesn’t cause autism, IT’S FINE TO BE AUTISTIC. Let’s not grant them the premise that autism should be eradicated in our way to correct the science, okay? Okay.

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Emily Troyer @fishfetisher.bsky.social · Sep 7

It's Wacky Hat Day

Sea urchin sporting a 3d printed traffic cone hat.

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Anna A Monaco @annaamonaco.bsky.social · Sep 7

A bit late, but I finally got around to writing an accessible piece about @julianeg.bsky.social 's cover article from July. In case you needed something else to worry about in this day and age! 🦠

tinyurl.com/mrx5tfre
#scicomm #devbio #transposons

Awakening monsters in the dark (genome)

Hidden in our DNA are “jumping genes” that usually stay silent. But sometimes they wake up, reshaping bodies in dramatic ways. A strange mutation in mice showed how one rogue element near a key lim…

tinyurl.com

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Anna A Monaco @annaamonaco.bsky.social · Sep 3

Such cool work as always Brent!

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Anna A Monaco @annaamonaco.bsky.social · Sep 3

I can’t believe I missed this! Yet another amazing work by Brent on deep regulatory homology in vertebrates and the fin-to-limb transition. An absolute must read 🐠🐟🐡

M. Brent Hawkins @homeobox.bsky.social · Jul 7

We take for granted that our hands have two sides and can articulate in an endless number of ways. But what about a fish’s fin? Can a fish know something “like the back of its fin,” or have its future told with a fin palm reading? Check out this bluetorial to find out 👇🧪🧬🐟 doi.org/10.1101/2025...

Schematics depicting the dorsal and ventral sides of fins and limbs

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Cecilia Baldoni @cecibaldoni.bsky.social · Sep 1

The secret to shrew brain shrinkage? 🤔
Not cell loss, but water loss!
Our new paper shows that brain cells shrink by losing water, a wild feat of brain plasticity 🤯

Check the paper!
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

@mpi-animalbehav.bsky.social @labdavalos.bsky.social @batichica.bsky.social

Programmed seasonal brain shrinkage in the common shrew via water loss without cell death

Brain plasticity, the brain’s inherent ability to adapt its structure and function, is crucial for responding to environmental challenges but is usual…

www.sciencedirect.com

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Society for Developmental Biology @socdevbio.bsky.social · Sep 2

Axolotl (Ambystoma mexicanum)🦎 can regrow limbs, tail, spinal cord, heart, and even parts of its brain. Axolotls are champions of regeneration and also shed light on limb patterning, wound healing, and developmental plasticity. Image from Prayag Murawala #ModelMonday #DevBio

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Anna A Monaco @annaamonaco.bsky.social · Aug 21

The peppered moth is a textbook example of natural selection, its colours shifting with the soot-darkened trees of the Industrial Revolution. But the genetic secret behind its “dark” form took 150 years to uncover: a new “jumping gene” that rapidly took over the population.

🦋 tinyurl.com/4zrc4e93

The “dark” secret of industrial moths

The peppered moth has long been a textbook example of natural selection, its colours shifting with the soot-darkened trees of the Industrial Revolution. But the genetic secret behind its “dark” for…

tinyurl.com

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The Royal Society @royalsociety.org · Aug 20

#OnThisDay in 1858, a seminal journal article comprised of papers by Alfred Russel Wallace FRS and Charles Darwin FRS on the theory of evolution by natural selection was published by the Linnean Society, the first public announcement of the theory of evolution. bit.ly/3k8fq4u

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Ana Marie Cox @anamariecox.bsky.social · Aug 19

The biggest trick the devil ever pulled is to call LLMs “artificial intelligence.”

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Nature @nature.com · Aug 13

The Max Planck Society is good at attracting international postdocs but struggles to retain them, survey finds

go.nature.com/4fFENHi

Postdoc depression and anxiety rates are rising, finds survey of 872 researchers

The Max Planck Society is good at attracting international postdocs but struggles to retain them, survey finds.

go.nature.com

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Reposted by Anna A Monaco

Mark A. Hanson @hansonmark.bsky.social · Aug 14

A reminder you/your lab can support FlyBase at Cambridge through the following link. Every bit helps. Please share if you yourself can't donate.

www.philanthropy.cam.ac.uk/give-to-camb...

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Anna A Monaco @annaamonaco.bsky.social · Aug 8

Latte AI-art

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Anna A Monaco @annaamonaco.bsky.social · Jul 29

🦇🦇🦇

darkgenomevo.wordpress.com/2025/07/29/t...

The molecular remix of bat wing evolution

How do you build a wing from a hand? In bats, it’s all about remixing the molecular beat. The core gene circuitry is shared with other mammals, the innovation lies in timing and context.

darkgenomevo.wordpress.com

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Anna A Monaco @annaamonaco.bsky.social · Jul 23

Pretty surreal to see my artwork on the cover of Nature Genetics! Big congrats to @julianeg.bsky.social, @stemundi.bsky.social and the others, and thank you Juliane for letting me help bring your research to life visually.

www.nature.com/ng/volumes/5...

The cover of Nature Genetics July 2025 issue. Digital art of a mouse paw skeletal prep on dark background, digits I to IV disintegrating into viral particles. A caption says “An endogenous retrovirus causes limb malformation”.

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Anna A Monaco @annaamonaco.bsky.social · Jul 17

The only part I don’t agree with is that having journals cover this is a cost that benefits only NoNES. There are plenty of native speakers incapable of stringing together a well written sentence, let alone paper.

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Max Delbrück Center @mdc-berlin.bsky.social · Jul 11

🏳️‍🌈 Resilience in Times of Change: Join #mdcBerlin’s LGBTQI+ community for the 4th Pride Symposium on July 18 at #mdcBIMSB.

Talks, panel discussion, bake sale, and a Pride After Hour – amplifying queer voices in science.

Info and registration:
👉 www.mdc-berlin.de/news/news/me... 👈

Graphic with photo and text: The top half features a photo of a speaker addressing a seated audience in a modern room, with a rainbow Pride flag on the wall and a screen displaying speaker info. The background is framed with a vibrant rainbow-colored marbled design. Overlaid white sans-serif text appears in dark green and magenta text boxes in the lower half, reading “PRIDE SYMPOSIUM” and “JULI 18, 2025 MDC-BIMSB.”

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Max Planck Institute of Immunobiology and Epigenetics @mpi-ie.bsky.social · Jun 25

We are excited to officially welcome a new group leader at the MPI-IE in #Freiburg. 🎉

Dr Juliane Glaser 🥳 – she studies epigenetic mechanisms of embryonic development, with a focus on transposable elements. 👉 Interview: www.ie-freiburg.mpg.de/6043545/2025...

Welcome, @julianeg.bsky.social!

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Anna A Monaco @annaamonaco.bsky.social · Jun 23

Mustering the courage to share my latest scicomm endeavour: I channelled my love for writing into a blog where I can hopefully bring the marvels of evolutionary biology and non-coding DNA to all Science lovers!

darkgenomevo.wordpress.com/2025/06/22/i...

It just takes one change

Here, I run though three examples of evolutionary novelty driven by single non-coding DNA changes: limb loss in snakes, gliding in sugar gliders, and coat coloration in African striped mice. These …

darkgenomevo.wordpress.com

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George Conway 👊🇺🇸🔥 @gtconway.bsky.social · Jun 22

Much as I would not dare to predict the consequences of this war, I do think we can summarize it thusly so far:

A smart and evil man manipulated a stupid and evil man into a war against a fanatical and evil regime.

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Anna A Monaco @annaamonaco.bsky.social · May 20

Talking at @pintofscience.de was really scary and really fun. Thank you everyone for the sold out event ✨
#pint25

A person dressed in black in on a stage with a microphone. There is some burlesque imagery, and a Pint of Science banner.

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Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics @molgen.mpg.de · May 16

❗Don’t miss: Dr. Anna Alessandra Monaco, postdoc in the lab of Stefan Mundlos, will give a talk at the Pint of Science Festival about her research project entitled “Junk that shapes us: the Dark Genome's role in Evolution.”

👉 pintofscience.de

@annaamonaco.bsky.social @stemundi.bsky.social

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Sarah McAnulty, Ph.D. @sarahmackattack.bsky.social · May 12

You *can't* call yourself a good scientist and write off complexity that is a natural part of the system by declaring it an aberration or abnormality. You can not toss it out of your understanding of the system. Western science has historically been really bad about doing this. It cannot continue.

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