Hajk-Georg Drost
@hajkdrost.bsky.social
Associate Professor of Digital Biology, @royalsociety.org Wolfson Fellow at Faculty of Life Sciences @dundee.ac.uk, Fellow of @camphilsoc.bsky.social. Former Group Leader at @mpi-bio-fml.bsky.social and PostDoc at @cam.ac.uk & Trinity College Cambridge.
Postdoc opportunity in my group! Please share! 🔁 Investigate the epigenetic mechanisms underlying stress memory in plants 🧬🌱 Looking for someone excited about computational genomics + plant molecular biology. 📍 Dundee, Scotland | 3 years 📅 Apply by 21 Sept www.dundee.ac.uk/work-for-us/...
Postdoctoral Research Assistant - UOD2369
Closing date: Monday 21 September 2026, 23:59
dundee.ac.uk
EMERALD-UI is now officially published in Bioinformatics 🎉 👉 EMERALD-UI Paper: lnkd.in/eAzPMunF 👉 Web-Interface: lnkd.in/edFmUPYu 👉 EMERALD Command Line Tool: lnkd.in/eUNMfEtK EMERALD-UI is an interactive platform to explore what we call the alternative alignment space of (divergent) proteins.
Hajk-Georg Drost@hajkdrost.bsky.social · 7mo agoDoes hidden protein biology live in the suboptimal alignment space? When we align two divergent proteins, we usually trust a single optimal alignment. 🧬 But what if the real structural signal lies in the space of near-optimal solutions? With EMERALD-UI you can unfold this perspective.
Congratulations to @caroleduchene.bsky.social and all the authors on this beautiful work exploring the inheritance of endogenous viral insertions in algae. It was a pleasure to contribute to this study and I am sure this is only the beginning of many exciting discoveries! 🌿 @mpi-bio-fml.bsky.social
Nature Microbiology@natmicrobiol.nature.com · 4mo agoOut Now! Latent endogenous giant viruses drive active infection and inheritance in a multicellular algal host #MicroSky
New Pre-Print Alert! Evolving initial conditions: an alternative developmental route to morphological diversity with Shannon Taylor and @jamesehammond.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
DIAMOND DeepClust: an ultrafast clustering method for organizing the protein universe of life. www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Clustering the protein universe of life using DIAMOND DeepClust - Nature Methods
DIAMOND DeepClust provides an ultra-fast clustering method for organizing the protein universe of life at low sequence identity, enabling large-scale dimensionality reduction and improving downstream ...
nature.com
🌱 We’re excited to launch the BBSRC-funded UK Plant Epigenetics Network (UK-PEN) with our inaugural workshop (free!): “Plant Epigenetics: From Model to Crop Species” 📅 11–12 June 2026 📍 Uni of Dundee (hybrid) We look forward to welcoming you! Feel free to repost to help us reach the community
Sara Lopez-Gomollon@gomollonsara.bsky.social · 6mo agoWe are pleased to announce the launch of the BBSRC-funded UK Plant Epigenetics Network (UK-PEN) with our inaugural meeting (it is free!): 🌱 “Plant Epigenetics: From Model to Crop Species” 📅 11–12 June 2026 University of Dundee (hybrid event) We look forward to welcoming you!
How much protein diversity can Life on Earth actually generate? With DIAMOND DeepClust, we show how billions of proteins across the tree of life can be clustered at low-identity for downstream analytics tasks. 📚Paper: www.nature.com/articles/s41... 💻Code: github.com/bbuchfink/di...
I am extremely grateful to receive a Research Leadership Award from the Leverhulme Trust to study the epigenetic mechanisms underlying environmental stress memory in crops @dundee.ac.uk and @hutton.ac.uk 🍓🍅🌱 I’ll be advertising positions in our group soon - stay tuned! buff.ly/pI5Bqoo
Does hidden protein biology live in the suboptimal alignment space? When we align two divergent proteins, we usually trust a single optimal alignment. 🧬 But what if the real structural signal lies in the space of near-optimal solutions? With EMERALD-UI you can unfold this perspective.
Plant Science Research Weekly -- Rapid shifts in the patterns of gene expression shapes flowering plant diversity (Cell) @hajkdrost.bsky.social (Summary by Kavita Joshi) buff.ly/8jc7R2T #PlantaePSRW
Rapid shifts in the patterns of gene expression shapes flowering plant diversity | Plantae
Flowering plants are the most widespread group of plants, occupying almost every environment on our planet. They play important roles in maintaining the earth’s biodiversity and have a remarkably…
buff.ly
One protein. One pathway. A whole germline fate. New paper from my postdoc @mpi-bio-fml.bsky.social out in PNAS: Germline fate determination by a single ARGONAUTE protein in Ectocarpus www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
Germline fate determination by a single ARGONAUTE protein in Ectocarpus | PNAS
ARGONAUTE (AGO) proteins are a highly conserved family of RNA-binding proteins that play central roles in gene regulation and developmental process...
pnas.org
#PlantSci Res Wkly Jan 30 (2/2) plantae.org/plant-scienc... Mechanoperception and defense signaling; Rapid evolutionary gene expression shifts shaped angiosperms; Intergenerational epigenetic acquired nematode resistance; That big, big fossilized organism that probably isn’t fungal after all
Explore gene expression evolution across organs in seven flowering plant species via our interactive atlas: 🖥️ DevSeq Plant WebApp 👉 www.devseqplant.org/index.php 📂 All datasets are openly available for reuse and reanalysis: 👉 github.com/schustischus...
Hajk-Georg Drost@hajkdrost.bsky.social · 8mo ago🧵 Just out in Cell after more than 10 years in the making! 🎓 www.cell.com/cell/fulltex... Plants and animals evolve radically different body plans. Do they also operate under fundamentally different molecular evolutionary constraints during organ formation? @cellpress.bsky.social
New paper on genome editing in brown algae by Dr. Claudia Martinho, former member of Susana Coelho's Algal Development and Evolution Department, in collaboration with Masakazu Hoshino, Morgane Raphalen, Viktoriia Bukhanets, Anagha Kerur, @kbogaert.bsky.social, Rémy Luthringer, and Susana Coelho
Claudia Martinho@cssmartinho.bsky.social · 8mo agoGenome editing in brown algae! 🧬🪸🌿 Now out in Cell Reports Methods! Excited to share this highly efficient, transgene-free CRISPR–Cas genome editing protocol for brown algae, requiring no cloning and no specialized equipment. doi.org/10.1016/j.cr... #CRISPR #BrownAlgae @mpi-bio-fml.bsky.social
Towards a quantitative view of NLR evolution in genome space -- check out where we think the field of #NLR #evolution research is heading in this review led by Luzie Wingen and Aurélien Tellier. ecoevorxiv.org/repository/v... #plantscience
🧵 Just out in Cell after more than 10 years in the making! 🎓 www.cell.com/cell/fulltex... Plants and animals evolve radically different body plans. Do they also operate under fundamentally different molecular evolutionary constraints during organ formation? @cellpress.bsky.social
Love this really cool method for gene editing briwn algae- greens or lycophytes next? www.cell.com/cell-reports...
Efficient CRISPR-Cas genome editing in brown algae
Brown algae, a key yet understudied lineage of multicellular eukaryotes, have long lacked tools for functional genomics. Martinho et al. introduce a high-efficiency, transgene-free CRISPR platform ena...
cell.com
Genome editing in brown algae! 🧬🪸🌿 Now out in Cell Reports Methods! Excited to share this highly efficient, transgene-free CRISPR–Cas genome editing protocol for brown algae, requiring no cloning and no specialized equipment. doi.org/10.1016/j.cr... #CRISPR #BrownAlgae @mpi-bio-fml.bsky.social
🎓If you are truly curious about the epigenetic mechanisms driving adaptive evolution. Here is your chance to join Thanvi's team as a PhD Student and study plant altitude adaptation through epigenetic genome regulation. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Thanvi Srikant@thanvisrikant.bsky.social · 9mo ago✨Call open for a fully-funded PhD position✨ Looking for an enthusiastic student to join my upcoming Ambizione research group (🌱 Epigenome Diversity Lab 🌱, www.epidiversitylab.org) at ETH Zürich, starting August 2026! Apply here ↘️ jobs.ethz.ch/job/view/JOP... Application deadline: January 31st, 2026
How can plants maintain their genomic identity while also responding to the environment? @hajkdrost.bsky.social and I propose an "epigenetic toolkit" – a suite of epigenetic regulators that mediate the physiology-epigenome-genome crosstalk for adaptation. Read more here: www.cell.com/trends/plant...
Defining the epigenetic toolkit as an evolvable trait #plantscience
Defining the epigenetic toolkit as an evolvable trait
Adaptation of multicellular organisms to new environments can leave distinct signatures in their genomic architecture. Although previous efforts have unveiled the dynamics of (epi)genome evolution, our understanding remains incomplete regarding how phenotypic innovation is achieved by relaxing or constraining the identity of a genome over generations while adjusting to dynamic environments. Using plants, we first compile a list of candidate epigenetic regulators which we refer to as 'epigenetic toolkit' proteins. We propose a new framework for examining the epigenetic toolkit as an evolvable trait during plant adaptation. This could predict how feedback mechanisms between (a)biotic environmental factors and innate regulation of genome architecture can destabilize the homeostatic state of a plant and thereby inherently reshape the (epi)genetic landscapes for both short- and long-term habitat adaptation.
dlvr.it
Can we tune a plant’s epigenetic toolkit to disrupt plant homeostasis in ways that enable phenotypic innovation? 🌱Check out our new Opinion Paper with @thanvisrikant.bsky.social discussing this topic in @cp-trendsplantsci.bsky.social! www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
The detectCores() apocalypse is creeping up on us 👻🐛 As more people are getting access to 128+ CPU cores, code spinning up parallel cluster with detectCores() workers fails - not enough #RStats connections available Friends, do *not* default to detectCores(), bc www.jottr.org/2022/12/05/a...
Please Avoid detectCores() in your R Packages
The detectCores() function of the parallel package is probably one of the most used functions when it comes to setting the number of parallel workers to use in R. In this blog post, I’ll try to explai...
jottr.org
🚀 philentropy v0.10.0 is on CRAN! Now with long-awaited parallel distance computation & a full speed-optimized refactor thanks to Andrew Gene Brown. Compute 50+ distances/divergences in R faster than ever. 📦 CRAN: cran.r-project.org/web/packages... 💻 Code: github.com/drostlab/phi...
DIAMOND v2.1.15 now supports all taxonomy features for BLAST databases, and support for using BLAST databases has also been added to the Bioconda version github.com/bbuchfink/di...
GitHub - bbuchfink/diamond: Accelerated BLAST compatible local sequence aligner.
Accelerated BLAST compatible local sequence aligner. - bbuchfink/diamond
github.com
What are these? You are looking at embryos of a sea squirt. Each of the 'soap bubbles' is a living cell, about a fourtieth of a millimetre in size. The outlines of the cells are visible thanks to fluorescent markers identified by Hitoyoshi Yasuo @hitoyas.bsky.social see doi.org/10.1101/2024... 🧵
Tomorrow wednesday 22nd at 11am, lesson #2 of Neil Shubin, Guest Prof @college-de-france.fr ‘Discovering how fish evolved to walk’. Wonderful first lesson @ www.youtube.com/watch?v=0B6y... Fish friends in Paris, please RT🤘 Swim the Seine till St Michel, then get out and walk left. Free access
It has been a true honour and pleasure to be able to brainstorm about what it means to apply the comparative method to detect common patterns of multicellularity aggregation across the trees of life. This was a marvelous EMBO Workshop, excetionally well organised and held at a breathtaking venue! 😌
Marta Álvarez-Presas@martaalvarez.bsky.social · 11mo agoWe had also in session 10 Hajk-Georg Drost talking about How ancient genes convergently organise multicellularity across the tree of life. #Multicellverse @hajkdrost.bsky.social
Latest from ours: www.cell.com/cell-reports... This is two stories in one: a case study/cautionary tale on developing genetic tools in new organisms, and the first hint at a gene regulatory network for choanoflagellate multicellular development (which turn out to involve a Hippo/YAP/ECM loop!) A 🧵
