Thank you, Darren! You’re right, it is a TE. However, I’ve noticed that many papers refer to these TEs (gypsy/gypsy, with an envelope protein) as insect endogenous retroviruses. Do you think that terminology is inaccurate? Curious to hear your opinion on that

Thanks to all of my co-authors for their invaluable help @rokofler.bsky.social @mbeaum.bsky.social @signor-molevol.bsky.social

We discovered an endogenous retrovirus that's still spreading in natural D. melanogaster populations! It was horizontally transferred from D. erecta in Central Africa, so we named it "Kuruka", which means "jump" in Swahili. Read its cool story here: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Germline defence from TEs largely relies on piRNAs. Yet, @divyaselvaraju.bsky.social and I monitored a P-element invasion in Drosophila that was stopped by an internally deleted copy, no host intervention required!
doi.org/10.1371/jour...
Many thanks to @rpianezza.bsky.social & @rokofler.bsky.social

The work on TE invasions in D. melanogaster continues! We found three more recent invasions, one of which occurred in ~3 years worldwide. Another great collaboration with @rpianezza.bsky.social @rokofler.bsky.social and others

super-happy, three TE invasions in Dmel during the last 30 years; the crazy thing - Transib1 spread in just 2-3years in global populations academic.oup.com/mbe/advance-... great work everyone @rpianezza.bsky.social @almoroscarpa.bsky.social @signor-molevol.bsky.social Anna Haider

Our new preprint is out! We explored the biogeographic origins of TEs in the D. melanogaster genome.

Most TEs were recently acquired via horizontal transfer, mainly from Afrotropical Drosophila species. Surprisingly, all African drosophilids share some of these TEs!

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