🚨NEW PAPER 🚨 "Deconstructing empirical fitness seascapes across scales of granularity" published in #G3 (@genetics-gsa.bsky.social) 1/2 The fitness landscape has been among the most influential instruments in evolutionary theory for nearly a century. But we often treat them as fixed and static.

CRISPR-mediated centromere fission generates neochromosomes with distorted meiotic inheritance in Arabidopsis biorxiv.org/content/10.6... new preprint from us - includes changing the Arabidopsis karyotype from 5 -> 6 chromosomes using Cas9 & outcomes of 5/6 chromosome hybrid meiosis

mtDNA deletions cause incurable diseases. Our CRISPR screen found a fix: deleting MTERF1 restores mitochondrial function, not by clearing bad genomes, but by making the healthy ones work harder. Simple Biology! New preprint 👇 @tatakavlashvili.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

MTERF1 loss buffers against pathogenic mtDNA deletions through transcriptional regulation

Large-scale mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) deletions cripple oxidative phosphorylation once they exceed a critical heteroplasmy threshold, causing incurable mitochondrial pathologies. Using a genome-wide C...

biorxiv.org

Hello World ! We have another postdoc position open in the lab! Are you a freshly minted Ph.D. with a passion for chromatin and evolution ? Come join our ERC project #EvoEpi ! Inclusive environment + cool people + great science = success details 👉 tinyurl.com/3r6zk54n Repost are always appreciated

How do transposons jump when they’re released from host control? I babysat two chromosomes for 2 years, making sure they are ok without most piRNAs. Here’s what we found & excited to share my 1st postdoc paper: “piRNA loss unleashes episodic transposition bursts” www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

piRNA loss unleashes episodic transposition bursts

In Metazoa, transposon expression is suppressed by the piRNA pathway, and disruption of this pathway leads to rampant transposon expression. However, it remains unclear whether increased transposon ex...

biorxiv.org

I know it seems like a heretical idea, but one way to figure out if a preprint is really interesting (to you) is... to read the preprint. Then, in the spirit of sharing, send a note to authors: a simple kudos or a more detailed question. I do this a dozen times a year. It's awesome. Try it.

After some good funding news, we are hiring! Looking for a postdoc to join our team and lead our explorations into transposon repression by the nuclear lamina. Check out the full ad on our lab website at buchwalter-lab.github.io/postdoc-ad.pdf + contact me to learn more!

1/n Check out our new paper, spearheaded by @fborne.bsky.social, just out in PLoS Genetics doi.org/10.1371/jour....

Epistasis among clustered lineage-specific amino acid substitutions in the Drosophila Trio protein

Author summary Proteins fold into three-dimensional structures that are essential for their function. Because these structures depend on interactions among amino acids, the fitness effect of a mutatio...

doi.org

#SMBE2026 S24: Molecular mechanisms of selfish elements and strategies 🗓️ Mon Jun 29, 10:20am 🔗 smbe2026.org/programme Talks by: @levine-lab.bsky.social Yu Hua @cecilecourret.bsky.social @eleanoreritter.bsky.social Elli Cryan @alexand-kwak.bsky.social Steve Perlman @antisense.bsky.social

Exciting new work from the lab led by @lagiven.bsky.social & co-advised by @tododge.bsky.social mapping pigmentation variation in the swordtail X. nezahualcoyotl! Spotting variation is linked to xmrk but embedded in complex genomic regions that Tris & Lyle tackled with UL nanopore: shorturl.at/Ljw1z

Two melanic pigment patterns are associated with a sex chromosome-linked oncogene in the mountain swordtail Xiphophorus nezahualcoyotl

Sex-linked traits are widespread, but their genetic architecture has been challenging to characterize, due in part to the repetitive and structurally complex nature of sex chromosomes. In swordtails a...

shorturl.at

Very happy to announce a big new paper from the lab, led by grad students @smishra677.bsky.social and Laia Pomar-Pallarès (in collaboration with @roblanfear.bsky.social). We introduce a new way to study introgression, with accompanying software (DAFT) 1/n 🧵 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

📣 POSTDOC position available in the Feschotte Lab at Cornell to work on #TRANSPOSONS! More details below. Pls send informal application or inquiry ASAP by DM or email to cf458_at_cornell.edu. Pls spread the word 🙏 #TEsky www.thefeschottelabatcornell.com

🧬 New research from the Burga lab! We took a closer look at a rogue selfish protein and caught evolution in the act of turning something old into something radically new 💡 (a.k.a. neofunctionalization) @imbavienna.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... Curious? Here’s a breakdown:

Host-transposable element coexistence: a matter of resistance, tolerance and trade-off Read this new review by Séverine Chambeyron, Charlotte Grimaud, Mikiko Siomi et al link.springer.com/article/10.1...

👀"These results establish that naturally occurring copy-number variation within repetitive pericentromeric DNA is not merely noise, but a functional source of variation in chromosome segregation and gene regulation."

bioRxiv Genetics@biorxiv-genetic.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Pericentromeric repeat copy number tunes heterochromatin dosage to control chromosome segregation and gene expression in fission yeast https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.05.08.723760v1

👋 Transposon lovers: registration is now open for the CSHL TE meeting! We have a 🔥 lineup of invited speakers and many slots for short talks selected upon abstract across all areas of TE biology. 🧬➰🧬 #TEsky Abstract deadline: July 10 meetings.cshl.edu/meetings.asp...

I'm looking to hire a postdoc. Please share if you can!

Did you know that many organisms delete parts of their genome during development? To know more please join us at the Roscoff meeting on "Mechanistic and Evolutionary Basis of Programmed DNA Elimination" Sep21- 25, 2026. Please share!
cjm.sb-roscoff.fr/en/conferenc...

Please share widely! We will imminently be posting a technician position in our lab group since @rheasood.bsky.social is off to grad school 🙌! If you know of anyone excited about molecular biology, evolution, and functional genomics please have them reach out (schumer at stanford). Start date ~June

Love Drosophila genetics — this journal club was a great way to share that enthusiasm and pay tribute to the pioneers of transposons regulation 🪰 How classical genetics uncovered key determinants of TE silencing #transposon @igred.fr @igred.fr 👇👇

Nature Reviews Genetics@natrevgenet.nature.com · 4mo ago

New online! How classical genetics uncovered key determinants of TE silencing

Our latest publication is now out at Genome Biology! link.springer.com/article/10.1... We uncover a unique association between a H3K27me3 reader complex and active transcription. A thread with our key findings: (1/8) #TEsky #Polycomb #transcription #smallRNAs

A H3K27me3 reader complex couples H3K27me3 accumulation to nascent transcription of transposable elements in Paramecium - Genome Biology

Background The ability to deposit histone H3K27-trimethyl (me3) marks is essential for transcriptional repression by Polycomb Repressive Complex 2 (PRC2). This is largely attributed to Polycomb repres...

link.springer.com

Germ cells have their own versions of core transcription factors and fertility depends on them. We're hiring a PhD student to figure out how! 📢 Fly genetics + proteomics + genomics. Fully funded. Aarhus University 🇩🇰 Deadline May 1 👇 Please share with anyone who might be interested!

The special issue Functional and Adaptive Effects of Genomic Structural Variation is now out in Heredity. Many thanks to all contributors for their submissions, to the editorial team at @heredityjournal.bsky.social and to @ellenleffler.bsky.social, @mydennis.bsky.social & @gokcumenlab.bsky.social!

Special Issue: Functional and Adaptive Effects of Genomic Structural Variation

See more information on the new Heredity special issue on functional and adaptive effects of genomic structural variation.

nature.com

We wrote a review on using machine learning to study evolutionary genetics and molecular evolution in Trends in Genetics. It is open access—please take a look if you are interested in this topic www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... @cp-trendsgenetics.bsky.social

Machine learning for evolutionary genetics and molecular evolution

Over the past decade, the rapid expansion of large-scale data and advances in computational power have allowed machine learning (ML), especially deep …

sciencedirect.com

There is accumulating evidence that sperm miRNAs function to regulate embryonic gene expression and transmit inherited phenotypes to offspring but how does this work since sperm cargo is massively diluted in the egg upon fertilization. Here we directly address this ? www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Nice surprise this morning! A Dispatch on our paper on paralog interference now out in Current Biology! By Krishna Swamy and Jun-Yi Leu. www.cell.com/current-biol...

Evolution: Paralog interference stabilizes gene duplicates

Gene duplicates are traditionally viewed as evolutionarily unstable, as one copy can freely accumulate deleterious mutations and be lost. A new study reveals that paralog interference exposes certain ...

cell.com

New preprint from our lab! An H3.3 knockout does two things at once: it removes H3.3 from chromatin and destabilizes DAXX. We disentangle those functions and find that DAXX-mediated H3.3 deposition can be uncoupled from ERV silencing. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

One of my very favorite papers from the lab! Shows that individual cells can learn by forming memories. Amazing work by Jess Li!

Waggoner Lab@labwaggoner.bsky.social · 5mo ago

AP-1 mediates cellular adaptation and memory formation @natcomms.nature.com @pennmedicine.bsky.social @arjunraj.bsky.social @penngenetics.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/s41...

We are hiring POSTDOC now!🚨please repost! Fully-funded 5-year position 👩🏻‍🔬👨‍🔬🧬Looking forward to your application!✉️

Magnesium depletion by Candida albicans unleashes two unusual modes of colistin resistance in Pseudomonas aeruginosa with different fitness costs. @hsiehyp.bsky.social, Robert Ernst lab, @ajaidandekar.bsky.social, my lab. journals.plos.org/plosbiology/... ipmb.sinica.edu.tw/en/activitie...