mara lawniczak

@marakat.bsky.social

senior group leader @sangerinstitute. evolutionary geneticist malaria & biodiversity. lifetime member of darwin's posse. obsessive tidepooler. hearts cephalopods. our lab leads the Malaria Cell Atlas, UK BIOSCAN, and ANOSPP projects.

🩸🩸🩸TODAY WE SHARE TWO MAJOR DISCOVERIES🩸🩸🩸 1. We peered into genomes and brains of the rare mosquitoes that QUIT feeding on blood and found what biting is built from 2. Humans got rid of isoleucine in their blood, malaria suffers from it, and mosquito proteomes budget for it THREADS>

If you are interested in collecting specimens for chromosomal genomes and/or generating chromosomal reference genomes from specimens that were not cold-chain preserved, please read on and share this thread.

new reference genomes for Plasmodium ovale wallikeri and Plasmodium malariae (& Pf too) direct from blood taken from children carrying these parasites -- this was done with as little as 2 ng of DNA. all sorts of craziness going on in the subtelomeric regions ...

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bioRxiv Genomics@biorxiv-genomic.bsky.social · 8mo ago

High quality chromosomal genome assemblies of three human Plasmodium species directly from natural infections https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.02.16.706136v1

new publication by @amjadkhalaf.bsky.social who mined arthropod reference genome data for hidden microsporidia reads and then did a whole lot of assembling and sleuthing! great job @amjadkhalaf.bsky.social !

Amjad Khalaf 🇵🇸@amjadkhalaf.bsky.social · last yr.

Really, really happy that our work on microsporidian genomes is now out in @plosbiology.org! A huge thank you to my coauthors, my supervisors @mblaxter.bsky.social & @marakat.bsky.social, the editors @roliroberts.bsky.social & Joseph Heitman, and the reviewers ❤️ plos.io/48HsAQJ