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Claudia Alvarez Carreño @claudiaalcar.bsky.social · 3d

The next Protein Structure Evolution Seminar will be given by Stephen Fried (JHU):

Title: “Who Cares About Protein Refolding Anyway?: Why Some Microbes Do and Others Don’t”
Date: October 14th, 5 pm CET
Registration link: tinyurl.com/prose-seminar2

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Bornberglab @bornberglab.bsky.social · 22d

molecules that might help fight African Sleeping sickness by targeting the ERK8 protein, looking for molecules that were preferentially bound by the human or parasite ortholog. Sildenafil, aka viagra, showed some selectivity (among others). (2/2)

Bornberglab @bornberglab.bsky.social · 22d

New Paper Alert! Our group member Matthew Merski published a paper about new potential therapeutic leads against the parasite Trypanosoma brucei, causing the African Sleeping sickness. They used molecular docking on known, approved (FDA) drugs to find (1/2)
journals.plos.org/plosntds/art...

Molecular docking to homology models of human and Trypanosoma brucei ERK8 that identified ortholog-specific inhibitors

Author summary The discovery and production of safe and effective therapeutics for treating people suffering from neglected tropical diseases, such as sleeping sickness caused by the pathogen Trypanos...

journals.plos.org

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Bornberglab @bornberglab.bsky.social · Sep 9

We had a great time at the Long Night of Insects at the LWL Museum of Natural History in Münster! From watching a cockroach race to exploring and ant farm and info booths there was much to discover. Marie even joined the science slam. What a great way to wrap up our @gevol.bsky.social meeting!🐜✨🪰🪳

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SPP 2349 Gevol @gevol.bsky.social · Sep 5

Many thanks to all GEvol members for a truly wonderful annual meeting. It was really great to catch up with you all again.

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Bornberglab @bornberglab.bsky.social · Aug 25

Erich and Marie travelled to Barcelona for #ESEB2025. Erich gave two talks: one exploring de novo and random proteins, and another discussing gene family losses in slave-maker ants. Marie presented her work on neORF emergence in Drosophila at Symposium 29, organised by @gevol.bsky.social. 🧬🪰🐜

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SPP 2349 Gevol @gevol.bsky.social · Aug 20

Lots of inspiring talks & posters at our GEvol symposium at #ESEB2025 yesterday!
Thanks to everyone who presented, especially our invited speakers @ahuylmans.bsky.social & @rmwaterhouse.bsky.social. From GEvol, Marie Lebherz, Elisa Israel and Barbara Feldmeyer gave talks about their work. (1/2)

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Bornberglab @bornberglab.bsky.social · Aug 17

Erich travelled to Marseilles this week and visited former postdocs, now PIs, Anna Grandchamp and Nicolas Terrapon. Great to catch up with both of them! ☀️

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SPP 2349 Gevol @gevol.bsky.social · Aug 13

A night full of fun, science and insects: We invite you to join our “Lange Nacht der Insekten” on Sept. 5th, 6pm until midnight, at LWL Museum of Natural History in Münster. Bring your family and friends and explore an ant farm, watch a science slam and visit the planetarium! Entrance is free.

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Bornberglab @bornberglab.bsky.social · Jul 22

Her project aimed to understand ancient enzymes that may have helped the origin of life by catalyzing the conversion of NMPs to NTPs. Now she is off to new adventures, doing her master thesis at the German Aerospace Center (DLR). 🚀(2/2)

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Bornberglab @bornberglab.bsky.social · Jul 22

We are proud of our master student Brenda who did a research module at the Earth-Life Science Institute (ELSI) in Tokyo, working on enzymatic nucleotide phosphorylation focusing on the PPK2 Class III enzyme MAN (1/2).

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Bornberglab @bornberglab.bsky.social · Jul 16

Excited for the upcoming @gevol.bsky.social symposium at @eseb2025.bsky.social ! ☀️Marie give a talk there, while Erich will give two talks at symposium 46 on synthetic biology, evolution, and the origin of life and symposium 25 on gene content across genomes. Hope to see you there! 🙌

SPP 2349 Gevol @gevol.bsky.social · Jul 16

@eseb2025.bsky.social We are looking forward to welcome four GEvol members presenting Tuesday 19.8. in S29 "Genomic Basis of evolutionary innovation": Invited Speaker @ahuylmans.bsky.social, Marie Lebherz @bornberglab.bsky.social, Elisa Israel (Prohaska Lab) and Barbara Feldmeyer @sgn.one. 🌞

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Bornberglab @bornberglab.bsky.social · Jun 12

Looking to detect newly expressed ORFs (neORFs) in your transcriptomes? Check out the DESwoMAN preprint, authored by former group/ @gevol.bsky.social member Anna Grandchamp, alongside Marie and Elias.

Elias Dohmen @drdomain.bsky.social · Jun 12

🚨 New preprint alert! 🚨

🔬 Ever wondered how new genes emerge from scratch? Meet DESwoMAN, a fully automated pipeline to detect and analyze newly expressed ORFs (neORFs) from transcriptome data — giving us a window into the earliest stages of de novo gene emergence!

(Thread 🧵👇)

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Geoff Findlay @geofffindlay.bsky.social · May 8

We also just posted to @biorxiv-genetic.bsky.social a new manuscript led by our superb staff scientist Dr. Prajal Patel in collaboration with @lacholt.bsky.social from @bornberglab.bsky.social. We explored the functionality of orphan gene orthologs in D. melanogaster.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Orthologs of an essential orphan gene vary in their capacities for function and subcellular localization in Drosophila melanogaster

The rapidly evolving nature of orphan genes raises questions about whether their activities remain conserved or evolve uniquely across species. We explore this issue using goddard ( gdrd ), an orphan ...

www.biorxiv.org

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SPP 2349 Gevol @gevol.bsky.social · Apr 30

📢Last Chance: @eseb2025.bsky.social in Barcelona🏖️-->Abstract submission deadline Mai 5th. Please submit a abstract to our symposium #29 Genomic Basis of evolutionary Innovation eseb2025.com/list-of-symp.... With our invited speaker @rmwaterhouse.bsky.social and @ahuylmans.bsky.social.

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Antoine Hocher @ahocher.bsky.social · Apr 22

Excited to announce the EMBO Conference: Molecular Biology of Archaea (MBoA) 2026!
Join us in Cambridge, UK, from 6–10 July 2026 for the only international meeting dedicated entirely to Archaea.

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Bornberglab @bornberglab.bsky.social · Apr 22

We found that neORFs exhibit greater expression divergence between populations, but less sex-biased expression compared to protein-coding genes or ncRNAs. Notably, the majority of sex-biased neORFs were found in whole-body samples, possibly due to the presence of gonads. (2/2)

Bornberglab @bornberglab.bsky.social · Apr 22

New Paper Alert! Together with the Parsch lab, we investigated the expression of neORFs (newly evolved expressed open reading frames, identified in a previous study) in Drosophila populations using publicly available RNA-seq data. (1/2)

doi.org/10.1002/jez....

Expression of De Novo Open Reading Frames in Natural Populations of Drosophila melanogaster

We show that newly-evolved, expressed open reading frames (neORFs) identified in a set of inbred Drosophila melanogaster lines are also expressed in multiple tissues and developmental stages of poole...

doi.org

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Colin Jackson @cjjackson.bsky.social · Apr 15

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... why are protein fitness landscapes often very rugged and what does this mean for evolution and engineering? We have been interested in this for a while - in this paper (led by Matt Spence) we look at it quantitatively using eg spectral graph theory.

Fitness Landscape Ruggedness Arises from Biophysical Complexity

Epistasis, in which the effect of a mutation depends on the genetic background it is introduced into, drives protein evolution and design by shaping the fitness landscape. Quantifying how constrained ...

www.biorxiv.org

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Colin Jackson @cjjackson.bsky.social · Mar 26

biorxiv.org/content/10.1... Here’s a paper that was many years in the making. The idea that the climate can affect the thermodynamic mechanism of binding due to the temperature dependence of the entropy term is interesting- we see gradual shift in binding mode along evo trajectory…

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Kresten Lindorff-Larsen @lindorfflarsen.bsky.social · Mar 22

Gemma Solomon and I are looking for a postdoc to work across the two groups on modelling biological systems with a view to applications for quantum computing

More details about the project including how to apply in the link below. Deadline April 9 2025

candidate.hr-manager.net/ApplicationI...

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Bornberglab @bornberglab.bsky.social · Apr 3

Check out DeNoFo Toolkit to annotate, convert and compare the methodology used in studies on de novo emerged genes! @drdomain.bsky.social @margaubel.bsky.social @lacholt.bsky.social and more!

Elias Dohmen @drdomain.bsky.social · Apr 3

De novo genes research community 🧬 - please consider using for your future or past work our new methodology annotation format for better comparability of studies and higher reproducibility. (1/3)

bioRxiv Bioinfo @biorxiv-bioinfo.bsky.social · Apr 2

DeNoFo: a file format and toolkit for standardised, comparable de novo gene annotation https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.03.31.644673v1

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bioRxiv Bioinfo @biorxiv-bioinfo.bsky.social · Apr 2

DeNoFo: a file format and toolkit for standardised, comparable de novo gene annotation https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.03.31.644673v1

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SPP 2349 Gevol @gevol.bsky.social · Apr 2

Check out the recent "Genetics" paper by our Gevol members Pete Czuppon and Daniel Omole: "Maintenance of long-term transposable element activity through regulation by nonautonomous elements" doi.org/10.1093/gene...

Maintenance of long-term transposable element activity through regulation by nonautonomous elements

Abstract. Transposable elements are DNA sequences that can move and replicate within genomes. Broadly, there are 2 types: autonomous elements, which encode

doi.org

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Antoine Hocher @ahocher.bsky.social · Mar 22

The MIMIC lab is hiring a Postdoctoral Research Associate to join my team at @Cambridge_Uni!
Exploration and engineering DNA-mimicking proteins (wet-lab position.) 🧬
Details: www.jobs.cam.ac.uk/job/50652/
Please get in touch / circulate !

Research Associate (Fixed Term) - Job Opportunities - University of Cambridge

Research Associate (Fixed Term) in the Department of Genetics at the University of Cambridge.

www.jobs.cam.ac.uk

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