Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Reposted by Pío Sierra

Artem Ilin @adc34.bsky.social · 17d

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...

Drosophila TE name origins, Part 1 – Postdoc Postpunk

artemilin.dev

9 13

Reposted by Pío Sierra

Rayan Chikhi @rayanchikhi.bsky.social · Sep 3

🌎👩‍🔬 For 15+ years biology has accumulated petabytes (million gigabytes) of🧬DNA sequencing data🧬 from the far reaches of our planet.🦠🍄🌵

Logan now democratizes efficient access to the world’s most comprehensive genetics dataset. Free and open.

doi.org/10.1101/2024...

3 120 220

Pío Sierra @piosierra.bsky.social · Aug 21

😢
Thanks for sharing it

1

Pío Sierra @piosierra.bsky.social · Jul 29

This is really cool!

Flora Gaudilliere @fgaudilliere.bsky.social · Jul 28

The preprint of my first article is available on bioRxiv! We use a transposon ecology framework to analyze the distribution of insertion sequences within prokaryotic genomes. We characterize their ecological niche and show evidence of niche construction 🧪🧬💻

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

Unwelcome guests: characterizing the ecological niche of insertion sequences within prokaryotic genomes

Insertion sequences (ISs) are widespread prokaryotic transposable elements, often regarded as genomic parasites that primarily cause deleterious mutations. However, they can also promote adaptive chan...

www.biorxiv.org

1

Pío Sierra @piosierra.bsky.social · Jul 24

So true.

Christophe Dessimoz @dessimoz.bsky.social · Jul 24

Really important points by @alexbateman1.bsky.social on the importance of curation, addressing some of the myths out there.

Deeply resonates with the commentary Paul Thomas and I wrote last year www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Reposted by Pío Sierra

Department of Genetics, University of Cambridge @geneticscam.bsky.social · Jun 17

Ever wonder how nature got so diverse? The secret might lie in these colorful cichlid fish 🐠

Cambridge scientists discovered that ‘flipped’ segments of DNA act like evolutionary turbo boosts — helping species adapt fast and evolve into new ones. 👇
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adr9961

4 5

Pío Sierra @piosierra.bsky.social · Jun 3

Thanks for sharing Rayan!

Is that Gene on slide 15? 🤔😉

1

Reposted by Pío Sierra

Kevin Stevens @neohibolites.bsky.social · May 27

What do we know about the earliest history of cichlid fishes? Here’s an extended and updated English version of my article on the biogeography and early evolution of cichlids, which I originally published in German in 2020. 🐟 🧪 #cichlid #biogeography #paleontology
cichlidae.com/article.php?...

Biogeography, evolution, and ecology of the ancestral cichlids

This article examines the early evolution and biogeography of cichlids, discussing fossil evidence and the hypotheses regarding their origins. It reviews the debate between Gondwanan vicariance and ma...

cichlidae.com

7 24

Pío Sierra @piosierra.bsky.social · May 19

Indeed! 😬

1

Reposted by Pío Sierra

Corina Brussaard @brussaard7.bsky.social · Apr 12

Latest findings on cryptic infection of giant viruses published in @ScienceMagazine. We discovered a large virus hiding within a green algal genome producing virions.
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Cryptic infection of a giant virus in a unicellular green alga

Latency is a common strategy in a wide range of viral lineages, but its prevalence in giant viruses remains unknown. Here we describe a 617 kbp integrated giant viral element in the model green alga C...

www.science.org

1 37 69

Reposted by Pío Sierra

Sternberg Lab @sternberglab.bsky.social · May 15

1/10 Today in @science.org in collaboration with
the Liu group we report the development of a laboratory-evolved CRISPR-associated transposase (evoCAST) that supports therapeutically relevant levels of RNA-programmable gene insertion in human cells. drive.google.com/file/d/1I-Ub...

2 59 130

Pío Sierra @piosierra.bsky.social · May 16

🚨 🐟🐠 🚨

bioRxiv Evolutionary Biology @biorxiv-evobio.bsky.social · May 15

African Cichlid Lake Radiations Recapitulate Riverine Axial Morphologies Through Repeated Exploration of Morphospace https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.05.13.653847v1

2

Pío Sierra @piosierra.bsky.social · May 14

🤩
Green of envy!

1

Reposted by Pío Sierra

Human Pangenome Reference Consortium @humanpangenome.bsky.social · May 12

📢 HPRC Release 2 is here!

Now with phased genomes from 200+ individuals, a 5x increase from Release 1.

Explore sequencing data, assemblies, annotations & alignments in our interactive data explorer ⬇️:

humanpangenome.org/hprc-data-re...

27 36

Reposted by Pío Sierra

Nadav Ahituv @nadavahituv.bsky.social · May 9

Massively parallel jumping assay (MPJA) enables to test the jumping potential of thousands of transposons. Analysis of >160,000 Alu haplotypes identified transposition-asssociated domains. Amazing work by Navneet Matharu, Jingjing Zhao, Martin Kircher and many others.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Massively parallel jumping assay decodes Alu retrotransposition activity - Nature Communications

Here, the authors develop a high-throughput assay to measure the jumping potential of thousands of transposons in parallel.

www.nature.com

1 35 77

Pío Sierra @piosierra.bsky.social · May 2

A new result with Teratorns involved. 150Kb!

bioRxiv Genetics @biorxiv-genetic.bsky.social · May 2

The phenotypic variation of widefins medaka is due to the insertion of a giant transposon containing a viral genome within hoxca cluster https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.04.28.651082v1

1 2

Pío Sierra @piosierra.bsky.social · Apr 30

"Essential components of the genome", indeed.

Cedric Feschotte @cedricfeschotte.bsky.social · Apr 30

💥🥳 At long last, our latest paper is out!

Gag proteins of endogenous retroviruses are required for zebrafish development

www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Led heroically by Sylvia Chang & @jonowells.bsky.social

A study which has changed the way I think of #transposons! No less! 🧵 1/n

Gag proteins encoded by endogenous retroviruses are required for zebrafish development | PNAS

Transposable elements (TEs) make up the bulk of eukaryotic genomes and examples abound of TE-derived sequences repurposed for organismal function. ...

www.pnas.org

1

Pío Sierra @piosierra.bsky.social · Apr 25

😍
communities.springernature.com/posts/celebr...

Celebrating DNA Day with transposable elements

Each year on DNA Day, we celebrate the DNA double helix structure and the Human Genome Project's completion. Here we dive into a fascinating genomic component: transposable elements. Once seen as mere...

communities.springernature.com

2 3

Pío Sierra @piosierra.bsky.social · Apr 15

🤩

Pío Sierra @piosierra.bsky.social · Apr 10

This is a such a great work! So many things to find out now that we start having complete™ genomes.

Adam Phillippy @aphillippy.bsky.social · Apr 9

A project five years in the making, we've now published complete "T2T" genomes for six additional ape species! It turns out that finishing (and analyzing) six genomes is slightly more work than one... doi.org/10.1038/s415...

A phylogeny of the 7 ape genomes that have now been completed from "T2T", with Homer Simpson representing mankind.

Reposted by Pío Sierra

Marion Talbi @mariontalbi.bsky.social · Mar 14

I’m very proud and happy to share the first paper of my PhD with @millanek.bsky.social that is now published in the latest issue of the journal Evolution @journal-evo.bsky.social.

academic.oup.com/evolut/artic...

Rapid evolution of recombination landscapes during the divergence of cichlid ecotypes in Lake Masoko

Abstract. Variation of recombination rate along the genome is of crucial importance to rapid adaptation and organismal diversification. Many unknowns remai

academic.oup.com

1 17 50

Pío Sierra @piosierra.bsky.social · Mar 18

Pretty much sums up all my concerns, genetic and computational. 😅
xkcd.com

Lungfish

xkcd.com

1

Pío Sierra @piosierra.bsky.social · Mar 18

I was so much looking for this after I saw her presenting it last year. Great story!

Maya Voichek @mayavoichek.bsky.social · Mar 17

1/ Transposable elements are often called "jumping genes" because they mobilize within genomes. 🧬
But did you know they can also jump 𝘣𝘦𝘵𝘸𝘦𝘦𝘯 cells? 🤯
Our new study reveals how retrotransposons invade the germline directly from somatic cells.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
A short thread 🧵👇

Drosophila follicle showing retrotransposons (pink & yellow) expressed in somatic cells infecting the oocyte

1 2

Reposted by Pío Sierra

Alex Cagan @atjcagan.bsky.social · Mar 17

An excellent postdoc opportunity with Adrian Baez-Ortega at the University of Cambridge on the genomics of transmissible cancer.

Adrian is a brilliant scientist and mentor, this is a fantastic opportunity I strongly recommend.

3 8

Reposted by Pío Sierra

Vincent Burrus 🇨🇦💙💛 @vincentburrus.bsky.social · Mar 11

www.nature.com/articles/s41...
In collaboration with Andrew Lang and Alison Buchan, we just published a review on the complex and sometimes convoluted interactions and evolutionary relationships among bacterial mobile genetic elements.
#phage #plasmid #evolution #bacteria #plasmidbiology #MGE

Interactions and evolutionary relationships among bacterial mobile genetic elements - Nature Reviews Microbiology

In this Review, Lang and colleagues present an overview of the current knowledge landscape regarding mobile genetic elements in bacteria, with a focus on their evolutionary relationships and interacti...

www.nature.com

2 54 96