What a nice feeling to come back from holidays and see the last paper of my PhD finally published in its final form in @natcomms.nature.com !! www.nature.com/articles/s41... Want to learn a bit more about the genomic basis of animal terrestrialization? A thread 🧵1/14

Convergent genomic trajectories shape adaptation to life on land across animal lineages - Nature Communications

Animals have moved from water to land many times, but whether they used the same genetic routes has remained unclear. This study shows that independent land transitions relied mostly on ancient, conse...

nature.com

Congratulations to Lukasz Niezabitowski, @roisinlong.bsky.social , @phylogenie.bsky.social & Aoife McLysaght on their paper “A comprehensive and accessible database of jawed-vertebrate ohnologs” 🐟🧪 Read here: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... Access the database here: ohnologs.com

A comprehensive and accessible database of jawed-vertebrate ohnologs

A reliable ohnolog database yields insights into vertebrate evolution.

science.org

The SMBE Community Service Award for 2026 goes to Aoife McLysaght @ucddublin.bsky.social, who has served our society in many roles throughout the years. Visit our website to learn more about the SMBE Faculty Awards 🔗 smbe.org/faculty-awards #society

Happy to see my illustration featured on the cover!

Trends in Genetics@cp-trendsgenetics.bsky.social · 11mo ago

TiG’s November issue is live! Huge thanks to Rosa Fernández (@rosafernandez.bsky.social) and colleagues for the cool cover image! Check out their Review on massive genome rearrangements in clitellates. The entire contents list with links to articles is at www.cell.com/trends/genet...

How did animals repeatedly conquer land? 🌊➡️⛰️ We analysed ~1,000 gene repertoires (24M genes!) from all animal phyla to uncover how this happened. Work led by @gemmaeling.bsky.social & Klara Eleftheriadi, both first coauthors of this titanic effort! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Independent genomic trajectories shape adaptation to life on land across animal lineages

How animals repeatedly adapted to life on land is a central question in evolutionary biology. While terrestrialisation occurred independently across animal phyla, it remains unclear whether shared gen...

biorxiv.org

#SciencePhoto_IN “Stained glass axons” Author: Patricia Ordoño Lab: @eloisaherrera.bsky.social "Retinal ganglion cell axons from mouse optic nerve. In this image, myelinated axons appear as colourful flowers on a green field of unmyelinated axons. With a @zeiss-microscopy.bsky.social Sigma 300 VP."

FANTASIA's paper is finally out! Check it out if you're interested in alternative methods to homology for functional annotation in nonmodel organisms 🦐🐙🪱🧬🐝🪲 @gemmaeling.bsky.social @amrojasm.bsky.social @ibe-barcelona.bsky.social @cabd-upo-csic.bsky.social @csic.es www.nature.com/articles/s42...

FANTASIA leverages language models to decode the functional dark proteome across the animal tree of life

Communications Biology - FANTASIA, a protein language model-based tool, enables large-scale functional annotation across ~1000 animal proteomes, revealing novel gene functions in both model and...

nature.com

If you‘re at #SMBE2025 and you still have a tiny little bit of energy left for the last day tomorrow, I‘d be happy to see you joining my talk at 10:20 tomorrow morning in Room 2, where I‘ll be talking about how TEs can reshape entire genome structures in ants! 🐜🧬👩🏽‍🔬

I can't post @gemmaeling.bsky.social's results, but she started her talk at #SMBE2025 with a great quote from Philippe Janvier about the ancient terrestrial environment being as alien to our marine ancestors as the surface of the moon is to us now.

This morning ended with the Graduate Student Excellence Symposium, where our eight awardees presented their great work. 👏 Congratulations to all GSEA recipients! #SMBE2025

@svalver.bsky.social et al. analyzed 15 years of Gene Ontology evolution, finding that GO changes not just incrementally, but also via major, curator-driven restructurings. 🔗 doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msaf148 #evobio #geneontology

A new paper in Nature Ecol & Evol by @rosafernandez.bsky.social et al. shows a #punctuated burst of genome evolution in #annelids as they transitioned from marine to land and freshwater habitats.

Earthworms reveal an evolutionary mechanism which could defy Darwin🪱🧬 📕A new #IBE-led comparative genomics study of earthworms and their marine relatives shows that worms colonised land through evolutionary jumps.🧵 #UnravellingEvolution 👉https://shorturl.at/IyWqH

Can the structure of knowledge evolve like life itself? In our new MBE paper, we show that the Gene Ontology evolves through mechanisms shared with cultural and technological systems—reuse, modularity, and curator-driven restructuring. Here’s what we found: 🧵

Congratulations to this year's Hamilton Award finalists! 🎉 Join us Thursday, May 29 to hear these outstanding student talks. See the full schedule on the meeting website: www.evolutionmeetings.org/program-over... @evolmtg.bsky.social

📣 Congratulations to Gemma Martínez, PhD student at @ibe-barcelona.bsky.social, on winning the @official-smbe.bsky.social Graduate Student Excellence Award! 🏆🎉 A fantastic recognition of her work in #UnravellingEvolution 🌍🧬

Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution@official-smbe.bsky.social · last yr.

🐜 Today's GSEA focus is on Gemma Martínez Redondo, PhD candidate @ub.edu Gemma's research combines traditional phylogenetics, phylogenomics, and machine learning to understand the genomic basis of terrestrialization across animals More on Gemma ⬇️ and follow her: @gemmaeling.bsky.social

Our latest GSEA winner is Alba Nieto Heredia, PhD student @psl-univ.bsky.social Alba's popgen and computational biology research focuses on population structure and its critical role in demographic inference. More on Alba ⬇️ and follow her: @albanietoh.bsky.social

👋 For the next two weeks, we will highlight our GSEA recipients - we start with Hannah Verdonk, Bioinformatics PhD student at @temple.edu Hannah works on improving bioinformatic tools to account for weak selection on synonymous codon usage. 💻 More on Hannah ⬇️ and follow her: @hverdonk.bsky.social

Meet Jacky Kaiyuan Li, Ph.D. student @ucberkeleyofficial.bsky.social, and winner of the Graduate Student Excellence Award. Jacky's research interests lie in statistical modeling for evolutionary biology and population genetics. 📊 Follow Jacky on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/jacky-kai...

Huangyi He from Zhejiang University is on today! Huangyi's research focuses on the evolutionary and developmental mechanisms behind sperm heteromorphism and sex chromosome evolution in Drosophila. 🪰 More ⬇️ and follow Huangyi on social media X: @HuangyiH92641

🪰 GSEA winner Philipp Hummer - PhD student @popgenviennaphd.bsky.social - is on today! Philipp is working at the intersection of genomics, museum collections, insect evolution, and transposable elements. More on Philipp ⬇️ and follow him: @philipphummer.bsky.social

🧬 Today, we present GSEA winner Dylan Sosa, PhD candidate at the University of Chicago. Dylan investigates the rate, pattern, and mechanisms of transfer RNA gene duplication to understand its propagation and maintenance in D. melanogaster. More on Dylan ⬇️ and follow him: @dylansosa.bsky.social

🌸 Today's Graduate Student Excellence Award highlight is Aidan Short, NSF Postdoctoral Fellow @sc.edu Aidan studies how divergent pollinator adaptation contributes to genome divergence and speciation. More on Aidan ⬇️ and follow him: @aidanwshort.bsky.social

Honored to receive this award — thank you! Excited to present my research at #SMBE2025 in Beijing!

Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution@official-smbe.bsky.social · last yr.

🐜 Today's GSEA focus is on Gemma Martínez Redondo, PhD candidate @ub.edu Gemma's research combines traditional phylogenetics, phylogenomics, and machine learning to understand the genomic basis of terrestrialization across animals More on Gemma ⬇️ and follow her: @gemmaeling.bsky.social