C. elegans is a real animal and we set out to understand how it comes to have its distinctive biogeography. Its ancestral center of diversity is in the higher elevation forests of Hawaii. Its closest relatives are spread across east Asia. Did they travel from Asia? [Preprint 🧵]

Come be our head of bioinformatics at @mrc-lms.bsky.social !

Our bioinformatics team are closely involved with lots of interesting science and we love working with them. Topics inc. development, cancer, metabolism, aging, TEs (my favourite of course 😜) #TEsky lms.mrc.ac.uk/work/vacanci...

Kicked off a series on #Drosophila TE discovery and naming. The first post covers elements that predate the term "mobile element", and more. artemilin.dev/posts/te_nam...

I share this picture of a printed out genome every once in while.

It just occurred to me: it's got to be cheaper to acquire a finished copy of your genome (high accuracy, phased, SV-resolved) than to print it as a collection of bound books.

(back-of-envelope checks out - anyone done the math?)

We are all super happy and proud to see our work on the function and evolution of the #cephalic #furrow published in @nature.com. Let me say a few things about the background and history of this work on the #Evolution_of_Morphogenesis (1/12)

Pangene, an innovative computational tool, maps gene orientation, order & copy-number changes across genomes. Applied to the human pangenome, it reveals both known variation & complex haplotypes.

Read more:
academic.oup.com/bioinformati...

An interesting editorial by @judithmank.bsky.social, with thoughts on the use and misuse of AI in academic publishing at @evolletters.bsky.social (and elsewhere).

~ 5 and 1/2 years ago, my then postdoc advisor @plantevolution.bsky.social gave me complete freedom to assemble a team and interrogate NLR diversity in pangenomic context. We used @pacbio.bsky.social CCS and Iso-Seq, to annotate genomes with pathogen-challenged transcriptome. We then manually.....

Very impressive demonstration of the rise of China as a scientific superpower in crop research!

All papers on #crop genetics and genomics in the latest issue of Nature Genetics were produced by scientists working at Chinese research institutes.

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

New Paper! In 2019, my first dissertation chapter revealed complicated polyploidies in the cotton family (Malvaceae) but we lacked the tools and genomes to truly understand it. Now with better genomes and improved methods, it's much more complicated than we thought. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

“In the heart of Illinois, while researching wildlife disease, I made a discovery that stunned me: More than half of the raccoons I sampled were infected with Trypanosoma cruzi, the parasite that causes Chagas’ disease… It’s here, in the United States, spreading silently in wildlife.”

Looking forward to this new installment of the Woods Hole Mobile DNA Meeting! Fantastic program, laid-back atmosphere, and gorgeous setting at the Marine Biological Laboratory ⛵️🪼🐋
Abstract submission closes Aug 7 but registration after that date is possible. www.eventsquid.com/event.cfm?ev...

I don’t know of anyone who tried firsthand, but that’s the problem with big result/no follow up results. It’s impossible to know who (if anyone) tried. Until I see a published follow up, I will continue to treat “mites as HTT vectors in insects” as a tentative hypothesis.

This work is intuitively appealing, but as you say there has been no follow-up in decades, which makes me skeptical of the findings. If it was a robust result, others would have shown the same in a variety of systems. YMMV. bsky.app/profile/case...

Postdoc position opening in my group! Research projects: pangenomes for diverse organisms, genome evolution, biocomputing, language models. Please reach out if interested!

My colleague David Garfinkel is looking for a postdoc to join our NIH-funded project on the “Evolution of Retrotransposon Control Mechanisms”

More info here: reporter.nih.gov/search/u7dKr....

The official job listing can be found here: www.ugajobsearch.com/postings/437...

Please repost! #TEsky

Pls. share widely

Calling all transposon fans & lovers of genetic innovation

MOBILE GENOME welcomes you in Heidelberg, Nov. 4–7 2025

→ Vibrant & friendly community
→ Cutting-edge talks from mechanisms to physiology
→ Plenty of surprises (TEs never stop innovating)

submit abstract by July 29

My colleague David Garfinkel is looking for a postdoc to join our NIH-funded project on the “Evolution of Retrotransposon Control Mechanisms”

More info here: reporter.nih.gov/search/u7dKr....

The official job listing can be found here: www.ugajobsearch.com/postings/437...

Please repost! #TEsky

🦟 Bioinformatics Research Scientist position open in my lab in Nice (FR) to study Aedes mosquito retrotransposons & their interactions with arboviruses collab w/ @salehlabparis.bsky.social & @lambrechtslab.bsky.social
Apply: euraxess.ec.europa.eu/jobs/359830
Please boost! #ArboRetro #Bioinformatics

@brunolemaitre.bsky.social once told me not to trust big claims from papers with no follow-up work. People have likely tried and failed to replicate, but not published negative results. One of the best pieces of scientific advice I’ve ever received.

The "reproducibility crisis" in science constantly makes headlines. Repro efforts are often limited. What if you could assess reproducibility of an entire field?

That's what @brunolemaitre.bsky.social et al. have done. Fly immunity is highly replicable & offers lessons for #metascience

A 🧵 1/n

So what are you to do when you find that some random website like @dailyimagesde, or @dailypicturesn, or @DailyFramesnet is infringing on your copyrights? 8/n

Update! I challenged @dailyimagesde’s spurious infringement claim with their domain registrar and won. I can’t prove @colossal, @BenLamm, or anyone else was responsible for this obvious harassment. But let's use this opportunity to learn how to seize back our copyrights. 1/n