New paper out in PLOS Genetics! doi.org/10.1371/jour... Written with my dad (Prof. emeritus D de Vienne), we revisit genetic risk estimation for relatives of C9orf72 repeat expansion carriers. This variant is the most common genetic cause of ALS and FTD, two major neurodegenerative disorders. 1/3

Age-based risk estimates for C9orf72RE-related diseases: Theoretical developments and added value for genetic counseling

Author summary Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and frontotemporal dementia are often linked to a mutation called C9orf72 repeat expansion. Relatives of mutation carriers are usually informed of a 50% (c...

doi.org

First slide ready for my talk tomorrow (fr) in a "Large Scales" webinar series #FRBioEEnVIS. Tree of Life is a large-scale object: biodiversity × deep time. Visualizing it ( #Lifemap) helps us grasp its scale and identify biases in its analysis (ghosts). Let's see if I can make that case tomorrow. 🙂

Giving a talk this afternoon at the 2nd Workshop on Phylogeny and Cophylogeny (*TREE FOR A TANGO*): bioinf.isel.pt/tree-for-a-t... At least, the first slide is ready👇. Let’s see how it goes for the rest 😄! #treeforatango2026

#MCEB2026 Conference in Heraklion!

📖 Published📖 Introducing pylifemap, a Python package that allows users to map their own data directly on the interactive taxonomic tree proposed by Lifemap🖥️ 🌍 🔎

🎉ÇA Y EST !! Le programme #pint26 est en ligne dans (presque) toutes les villes. 👉 pintofscience.fr 🎫 Ouverture de la billetterie lundi 13 avril à 8h, vous avez deux semaines pour repérer vos soirées préférées ! 📅 Festival du 18 au 20 mai 2026. 👓🧠 Alors, quelle soirée vous tente le plus?

Le saviez-vous ? 😜🤩😅 (repéré par @virhostnet.bsky.social)

🦨 Animal #917 🦓 I figured it out in 10 guesses! 🟧🟨🟨🟨🟨🟨🟩🟩🟩🟩 🔥 1 | Avg. Guesses: 10 metazooa.com #metazooa

Metazooa

Become an evolutionary detective to find the Mystery Animal!

metazooa.com

The abstract submission deadline for the 2026 Mathematical and Computational Evolutionary Biology Meeting on Crete mceb2026.sciencesconf.org has been extended until February 6

Lifemap is now installable as an app on your desktop (PWA). 🖥️ Just one click from your browser! lifemap.cnrs.fr #Lifemap #CNRS #LBBE

We are recruting an assistant engineer for 18 months at LBBE (Lyon, France) in molecular biology of Drosophila. The project is to study the interactions between response to viral infections and control of transposable elements. emploi.cnrs.fr/Offres/CDD/U...

Our tool **pylifemap** for mapping data onto the complete Tree of Life is ready !! Explore YOUR datasets (metagenomics, ecology, genomics, outreach...) in a FULL taxonomy-aware context with a few lines of code ! The doc: lifemap-tol.github.io/pylifemap/ The draft: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

📢 Following many requests, we prepare translation in Chinese for Lifemap (lifemap.cnrs.fr). - For taxa name, we will use @inaturalist.bsky.social 👌 - For the interface, we look for a chinese-speaking 🇨🇳colleague to check that the automatic translation is correct. Just 1 small file! CAN YOU HELP!? 🙏

Finally! Thrilled to share our new work on ghosts and horizontal gene flow! After showing that ghost lineages (extinct, unknown, unsampled) can distort gene flow detection, we now show that gene flow signals can be used to detect, quantify, and place ghost species in the Tree of Life!(1/2)

Evolutionary Journal of the Linnean Society@evojlinnsoc.bsky.social · 11mo ago

Who you gonna call? EVOLUTIONARY SCIENTISTS! Ghost species (no, not species of ghost) are extinct, unknown & unsampled taxa...and they vastly outnumber those included in phylogenetics. This hidden diversity can complicate phylogenetic signals of horizontal gene flow, impacting their study...(1/2)🧪

TODAY is my Last day at LBBE in Lyon (for a while)!! From September, I’ll be in Heraklion 🇬🇷 for a year-long stay in Alexis Stamatakis’ lab @stamatak.bsky.social at FORTH @forth-ite.bsky.social . Can’t wait for this new adventure 🏖️ ☀️🖥️👻

Our new work on the overlooked impact of ghosts for HGT detection and simulation has just been published in MBE @molbioevol.bsky.social !

Molecular Biology and Evolution@molbioevol.bsky.social · last yr.

Tannier, @damdevienne.bsky.social et al. simulated horizontal gene transfer (HGT) with ghost lineages, finding that, when only 1% of potential donors are sampled, ca. 50% of SPR-inferred HGTs misidentify donors. 🔗 doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msaf128 #evobio #HGT

Hi, tonight I will give my conference on "Exploring the tree of Life", a special type of immersive experience with animations projected under the dome of the planetarium!!

CNRS Rhône Auvergne@cnrs-rhoneauvergne.bsky.social · last yr.

#Évènement🎟️| Ce soir on se pose au ciné ou on se pose des questions❓ En compagnie de @damdevienne.bsky.social du #LBBE visionner les 5️⃣ grandes crises biologiques : le tout assis confortablement sous la voute du planétarium😎 #ÉchappéesInattendues ➕d'info 👇 echappeesinattendues.cnrs.fr/event/voyage...

#Évènement🎟️| Les #ÉchappéesInattendues du @cnrs.fr reviennent ‪au planétarium de @vaulx-en-velin.bsky.social avec la conférence immersive de @damdevienne.bsky.social "Voyage au cœur de l’arbre du vivant "🦠🍄 📅le 3 juin 🕢à 19h30 🤩gratuit SANS inscription 👇 echappeesinattendues.cnrs.fr/event/voyage...

March was the first complete month since the update of Lifemap (lifemap.cnrs.fr). Time for some statistics! In March we had 17,880 (unique) visitors, who spent on average 4 min 49s on the website. France and USA were the top visitor countries. Let's continue to talk about Lifemap! 🙏THANKS🙏

The new Lifemap is out: explore the full Tree of Life with an interactive interface à la Google Maps! lifemap.cnrs.fr Give it a try!

🪧 My Lab (LBBE) is looking for a communication officer (1 year contract)! Deadline March 7th. Apply here: emploi.cnrs.fr/Offres/CDD/U...

Do you think marine evolution #MarEvol is cool? Maybe you were at the 2018 Marine Evolution meeting in Strömstad, Sweden? And surely you'd like us to do it again and organise MarEvol2? Why not in the South of France? Then fill in this questionnaire and spread the word: framaforms.org/my-interest-...

📢 A new version of Lifemap will soon be available at a new URL. Automatic redirection will be implemented, but if you develop or use tools or applications that could be affected, please contact me to ensure a smooth transition: damien.de-vienne@univ-lyon1.fr. 🚀

Just out! Ooooold collaboration finally led to a (nice!) publication! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

multistrap: boosting phylogenetic analyses with structural information - Nature Communications

Phylogenetic trees provide key information to elucidate basic aspects of functional genomics. This method, multistrap, offers a way to combine sequence and structural protein information that improves...

nature.com

LAST DAY to send an abstract to ALPHY-AIEM! alphy-aiem-2025.sciencesconf.org

New preprint to (finaly) present the proof of concept that detection of HGTs can help reveal invisible (ghost) lineages along the branches of a species tree. More work on that coming soon! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Gene flow can reveal ghost lineages

Ghost species, encompassing extinct, unknown, and unsampled taxa, vastly outnumber those typically included in phylogenetic analyses. This hidden diversity has been shown to influence the study of hor...

biorxiv.org

New preprint on a funny obvservation: treating horizontal gene transfers (HGTs) as Subtree Pruning and Regrafting (SPRs) operations (as is commonly done) assumes that no ghost lineages are around... which is unlikely! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

HGTs are not SPRs: In the presence of ghost lineages, series of Horizontal Gene Transfers do not result in series of Subtree Pruning and Regrafting

When a gene is horizontally transferred (HGT), under the “replacement” model where the transferred gene replaces its homolog in the recipient genome, the corresponding gene phylogeny departs from the ...

biorxiv.org

Hi everybody! Just landed here! My goal is to post and read information regarding science, mostly evolutionary biology : articles, comments, ideas...