Great talk last Friday at #CABDseminars by @ianakim.bsky.social! Iana gave an overview about the past, current and future research focused on the ‘Evolution of genome regulation at the dawn of animal multicellularity’. She was hosted by @dariloops.bsky.social. Thanks for coming Iana!

Wrote a short piece on Transposable Elements as catalysts of evolutionary innovation for a forthcoming special issue of @naturerevgenet.bsky.social on, duh, Evolutionary Innovation! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Transposable elements as catalysts of evolutionary innovation - Nature Reviews Genetics

In this Comment, Cedric Feschotte highlights evidence from diverse lineages showing that transposable elements are key drivers of evolutionary innovation, repeatedly introducing regulatory and coding ...

nature.com

Our eLetter github.com/caseywdunn/s... responding to a recent Science paper was just posted. The paper found more genes with consistent support for sponge-sister than ctenophore-sister. We found several technical issues that, when corrected, reverse the conclusions and recover ctenophore-sister.

Nature research paper: An expanded registry of candidate cis-regulatory elements go.nature.com/4pAbARf

An expanded registry of candidate cis-regulatory elements - Nature

The existing ENCODE registry of candidate human and mouse cis-regulatory elements is expanded with the addition of new ENCODE data, integrating new functional data as well as new cell and tissue types.

go.nature.com

Check out this beautiful work from our lab and discover how some corals adapted to live without symbionts 🪸https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-09623-6 !!! Huge congratulations to Shani Levy and @xgrau.bsky.social. It was a privilege for me to contribute to your project 🙏

Xavier Grau-Bové 🌾@xgrau.bsky.social · 10mo ago

This project was devised by Shani Levy and carried out in @arnausebe.bsky.social lab at @crg.eu by her and yours truly, with the inestimable help from @ianakim.bsky.social, @sebasn1.bsky.social, Ewa Księżopolska, Laia Montes-Espuña, @aelek.bsky.social, @seanamontgomery.bsky.social & Tali Mass. Ta ❤️!

Really grateful to see our work featured by @quantamagazine.bsky.social in this piece on the evolution of genome regulation. Huge thanks to @philipcball.bsky.social for such a beautifully written article.

Philip Ball@philipcball.bsky.social · 10mo ago

I adored writing this piece. It brings together several of the things preoccupying me right now, like chromatin organization and gene regulation. There's so much more to be said on that. Also, these marine critters look gorgeous. www.quantamagazine.org/loops-of-dna...

A thoughtful and beautifully written @quantamagazine.bsky.social article about genome regulatory innovation at the origin of animals. Featuring some of our work and highlighting key open questions. Thanks to @philipcball.bsky.social for this fantastic piece.

Philip Ball@philipcball.bsky.social · 10mo ago

I adored writing this piece. It brings together several of the things preoccupying me right now, like chromatin organization and gene regulation. There's so much more to be said on that. Also, these marine critters look gorgeous. www.quantamagazine.org/loops-of-dna...

🧵5 Top Free Alternatives to BioRender for Scientific Illustrations! These five websites offer free scientific illustrations for biologists. Great for presentations, research papers and other research communication needs. Save and share the post!

After nearly twenty years in the making, our attempt at understanding what makes the chaetognath phylum so unique has finally been published! www.nature.com/articles/s41... with #LauraPiovani @dariagavr.bsky.social @alexdemendoza.bsky.social @chemamd.bsky.social and others /1

The genomic origin of the unique chaetognath body plan - Nature

Genomic, single-cell transcriptomic and epigenetic analyses show that chaetognaths, following extensive gene loss in the gnathiferan lineage, relied on newly evolved genes and lineage-specific tandem ...

nature.com

Updating my intro slides with this fantastic figure now! (And maybe I'll add an extra dashed line for my beloved bryophytes)

Jürgen Strassert@strassert.bsky.social · last yr.

Happy to have contributed to this great article: #Protist genomics: key to understanding eukaryotic evolution. Congrats Alexandra Schoenle et al. #ProtistsOnSky authors.elsevier.com/sd/article/S...

How to find Evolutionary Conserved Enhancers in 2025? 🐣-🐭 Check out our paper - fresh off the press!!! We find widespread functional conservation of enhancers in absence of sequence homology Including: a bioinformatic tool to map sequence-diverged enhancers! rdcu.be/enVDN github.com/tobiaszehnde...

Conservation of regulatory elements with highly diverged sequences across large evolutionary distances

Nature Genetics - Combining functional genomic data from mouse and chicken with a synteny-based strategy identifies positionally conserved cis-regulatory elements in the absence of direct sequence...

rdcu.be

Our new paper is out@ScienceAdvances👇 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... 🧬Our Repli-Histo labeling marks nucleosomes in euchromatin and heterochromatin in live human cells. 🔍 @katsuminami.bsky.social et al. have developed a chromatin behavior atlas within the nucleus. 1/2

I’m very excited to share our work on the early evolution of animal regulatory genome architecture - the main project of my postdoc, carried out across two wonderful and inspirational labs of @arnausebe.bsky.social and @mamartirenom.bsky.social. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Chromatin loops are an ancestral hallmark of the animal regulatory genome - Nature

The physical organization of the genome in non-bilaterian animals and their closest unicellular relatives is characterized; comparative analysis shows chromatin looping is a conserved feature of ...

nature.com

💥🥳 At long last, our latest paper is out! Gag proteins of endogenous retroviruses are required for zebrafish development www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... Led heroically by Sylvia Chang & @jonowells.bsky.social A study which has changed the way I think of #transposons! No less! 🧵 1/n

Gag proteins encoded by endogenous retroviruses are required for zebrafish development | PNAS

Transposable elements (TEs) make up the bulk of eukaryotic genomes and examples abound of TE-derived sequences repurposed for organismal function. ...

pnas.org

wow, telomeric transposons in bacteria with linear chromosomes! (of course this was first figured out in flies, inc by Bob Levis, who i was happy to see few days ago at the fly meeting). 🪰 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Telomeric transposons are pervasive in linear bacterial genomes

Eukaryotes have linear DNA, and their telomeres are hotspots for transposons, which in some cases took over telomere maintenance. We identified several families of independently evolved telomeric tran...

science.org

Have you ever wondered😰 which antibodies work best for profiling histone modifications, especially if you don't work with 🐁🪰? Thanks to the incredible effort of @crisnava.bsky.social and @seanamontgomery.bsky.social , who tested dozens of antibodies, we now have the answer. This and much more 👇

Sean Montgomery@seanamontgomery.bsky.social · last yr.

Excited to share this story from the “Chromatin Dream Team” in the @arnausebe.bsky.social lab on chromatin evo across eukaryotes! 12 histone mark profiles from 12 species, including rhizarians, discobans, and cryptomonads. Read on to see what we found! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... 1/n

Organizing the Symposium #CRGBIpostdocs with you all was such a great experience!live long and prosper, friends🖖

Chiara Azzi@azzichia.bsky.social · last yr.

♥️ Huge thanks to my co-organizers Hanane, Yoon Hee, Jaya, Dev, Misha, @dpyunc.bsky.social @vpapadog.bsky.social @ianakim.bsky.social @aidaronu.bsky.social @joebowness.bsky.social for sharing this journey—your support, dedication, and friendship made all the difference! Our network is expanded 😎

It was a truly engaging and incredible event 🎊! I feel like the "for postdocs by postdocs" format played a lot of role in bringing us together and making it such an unforgettable conference!Chiara @azzichia.bsky.social , thank you for writing such a great wrap up!!! I couldn't agree more!

Chiara Azzi@azzichia.bsky.social · last yr.

🎉 That’s a wrap! The International CRG-BI Postdoc Symposium has come to an end after three incredible days of inspiring talks, engaging discussions, and valuable connections. I have to say I couldn’t be happier! #CRGBIpostdocs A 🧵 below 👇🏼

Such an inspiring discussion on how to disseminate science. It's all about making your research seen, heard and felt! Huge thanks to the panel members #CRGBIpostdocs @crg.eu @babrahaminst.bsky.social

Wonderful first session at #CRGBIpostdocs Huge thank you to our keynote speaker @mariekeoudelaar.bsky.social (@mpi-nat.bsky.social) and short talk presenters Alex Whale (@babrahaminst.bsky.social) , @ianakim.bsky.social (crg.eu) and Raj Sewduth (@viblifesciences.bsky.social, @eu-life.bsky.social) 👩‍🔬👨‍🔬

We often speak about chromatin as being accessible or inaccessible, but what does it mean? We wrote a short review on this, 🔬 focused: sciencedirect.com/science/arti... A big thank you to Tom Fillot for his efforts on this and to @hansen_lab @marcelonollmann for their help as editors.

We have two open PhD positions in my group at @crg.eu. We are seeking candidates with a background in computational and/or molecular biology, and with a broad interest in evolutionary biology, gene regulation, and comparative genomics. 📅Apply before January 12 here: www.crg.eu/en/content/t...

Tracking transposable element (TE) activity in genomics data can be a pain, but there are solutions! Our lab built TEtranscripts -- which we've updated to work for small RNAs (TEsmall), bulk RNA at the locus level (TElocal), and in single-cell data (TEsingle). Check it out! www.mghlab.org/software

Leonid Mirny and I wrote this for all interested in chromosomes: "The chromosome folding problem and how cells solve it" www.cell.com/action/showP...