Our vole preprint is officially published in Cell Genomics @cellpress.bsky.social as part of the T2T special issue! www.cell.com/cell-genomic... Lead author @mabuelanin.bsky.social also built this amazing website that we hope will be a useful resource to the vole community: voles.dennislab.org 🐭

Single-library chromosome-scale diploid assemblies of vole genomes resolve a species-specific duplication implicated in pair bonding

Abuelanin et al. combine PacBio HiFi with low-coverage CiFi proximity-ligation reads in a single library and sequencing run to generate contiguous, near-telomere-to-telomere, accurately phased diploid...

cell.com

Megan Dennis@mydennis.bsky.social · 5mo ago

Excited so share our newest study using a single-library HiFi-CiFi approach to generate chromosome-scale diploid assemblies of two vole genomes, identifying putative drivers of divergent pair-bonding behavior, namely a prairie-vole-specific duplication of Avpr1a gene, led by @mabuelanin.bsky.social

For the past 30 years, “whole-genome sequencing” has been a misnomer. Today the T2T Consortium publishes a dozen papers heralding a future of truly complete genomes for humans and nearly any vertebrate 👨‍🔬🐒🐦🐀🦒🐎🫏🐹🐟 (sorry, no salamanders): www.cell.com/consortium/t... 🧵[1/15]

UC Davis Ecology & Evolution Grad Preview Program is accepting applications until July 20th! It's a fully virtual program where you are paired with a grad student mentor and learn about what grad school entails, how to apply, and what student life is like! Please share widely!

Our previously preprinted study "Influence of cis-regulatory elements on expression divergence in human segmental duplications" is now published in @genomeresearch.bsky.social! Please check it out: genome.cshlp.org/content/earl...

Megan Dennis@mydennis.bsky.social · 11mo ago

Happy to share work spearheaded by former grad student Colin Shew testing shared duplicated cis regulatory elements (CREs) using an MPRA. While we find some high effect CREs, collectively paralog differences represent modest effects accounting for observed gene expression divergence.

Summarizing Davis youth soccer drama from Nextdoor as a comic adaptation is a totally justified use of ChatGPT (and my evening) ⚽

Both a lion and a bear spotted this week... it’s getting wild in Davis! #OhMy 🦁🐻🐾

Introducing our third set of invited speakers at #ZDM19! Please join Rashmi Priya, Paul Riley, Caroline Wee & the rest of the #ZDMS community in Oxford 🐟 We hope to see you there! Don't forget to submit an abstract! Extended deadline ends May 15th ⌛ To submit: www.zdmsociety.org/zdm19-abstra... ✨

Happy AAPI month and belated Mother's Day to all the second generation tiger moms doing the work figuring out which parts to carry forward versus leave behind. I know it's a trip, but so so worth it.

Don't miss the ASHG annual meeting abstract submission deadline, just one week away! This year's meeting will be held in Montreal, October 20–24. The deadline is earlier than in previous years, so be sure to submit and share your research: ashgmeeting.ashg.org/programs/abs... #ASHG26 #ASHG2026

Science advocacy in action! 🧬 ASHG Board members met w/ lawmakers on Capitol Hill to push for $51.303B NIH base budget + key policies impacting research. With proposed cuts to NIH/NSF/ARPA-H, you can add your voice from your state: complete the ASHG Action Alert 👉 https://bit.ly/4u9YrBe

On the Hill with @geneticssociety.bsky.social advocating for NIH funding. 🧬 Genetics research drives better diagnoses & treatments, trains the next generation of scientists, and keeps the U.S. competitive in biomedical innovation. Thanks to the lawmakers who engaged with us today! 🇺🇸

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

Diedre Reitz ( @diedrereitz.bsky.social ), PhD, a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics at UC Davis, will be giving a seminar on Monday, March 23rd at 4:00pm in Kollros Auditorium. We hope to see you there!

Everyone could use a little purple cat in their life - happy Thursday from my 5yo 🐾

Whoa! Looking forward to checking this one out

bioRxiv Genomics@biorxiv-genomic.bsky.social · 5mo ago

A Denisovan-derived Alu insertion in OCA2 contributes to pigmentation diversity in present-day Melanesians https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.03.18.712481v1

I had a blast working on this paper! This was the first mammalian assembly paper using the new CiFi tech, and we combined multiple lines of evidence to verify a prairie-vole-specific duplication of Avpr1a. All methods will be open source and reproducible, enabling the community to build on them.

Megan Dennis@mydennis.bsky.social · 5mo ago

Excited so share our newest study using a single-library HiFi-CiFi approach to generate chromosome-scale diploid assemblies of two vole genomes, identifying putative drivers of divergent pair-bonding behavior, namely a prairie-vole-specific duplication of Avpr1a gene, led by @mabuelanin.bsky.social

Excited so share our newest study using a single-library HiFi-CiFi approach to generate chromosome-scale diploid assemblies of two vole genomes, identifying putative drivers of divergent pair-bonding behavior, namely a prairie-vole-specific duplication of Avpr1a gene, led by @mabuelanin.bsky.social

bioRxiv Genomics@biorxiv-genomic.bsky.social · 5mo ago

Single-library chromosome-scale diploid assemblies of vole genomes resolve a species-specific duplication implicated in pair bonding https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.03.13.711624v1

BenchDrop-seq: a microfluidics-free platform for benchtop single-cell long-read RNA sequencing https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.03.12.706999v1

parents in davis this morning waiting for summer camp registration to open

a close up of a monkey 's face with ndnbc written on the bottom right

ALT: a close up of a monkey 's face with ndnbc written on the bottom right

media.tenor.com

GENETICS: @mydennis.bsky.social from University of California Davis discussed the querying complex genomic regions important in human disease and evolution at the 2026 AGBT General Meeting. #AGBTGM26

JAX Long-Read Sequencing Workshop Keynotes by @aphillippy.bsky.social & @mydennis.bsky.social Co-organized by @olgaanczukow.bsky.social, @christinebeck.bsky.social & Mark Adams ✈️ Trainee travel awards 📝 Abstracts due March 3 🥼 Optional wet-lab training session 🔗 www.jax.org/education-an...

Long-Read Sequencing Workshop

The program will involve sessions on Genome Evolution, Genome Regulation, Transcriptomics, Rare Diseases, Common Diseases, and Viral and Microbial Genomes. Committed speakers include Adam Phillipy (NH...

jax.org

Please check out these amazing women! They are fantastic scientists, committed mentors, supportive friends and honestly super stars! 🤩@bradylabs.bsky.social @mydennis.bsky.social @ucdavis.bsky.social www.ucdavis.edu/news/podcast...

2 First-Gen Scientists on Curiosity, Community and Discovery

Megan Dennis, associate professor in Biochemistry and Molecular Medicine, and Siobhan Brady, professor in the Department of Plant Biology and the Genome Center, are more than an just office neighbors ...

ucdavis.edu

Anyone in the U.S. got an ERK biosensor zebrafish line they'd be willing to share/ship to VA? vascular specific would be preferred, but I'll take global too. @zebrafishrock.bsky.social

Recently learned that I will be promoted to FULL PROFESSOR(!) this coming summer. So happy and thankful for those that have supported me along the way, including collaborators, mentors, colleagues, friends, family, trainees, and letter writers. #bighugs #youdabest #firstgen

Please repost and share widely - winter break is a perfect time to assemble application materials 😅

Megan Dennis@mydennis.bsky.social · 8mo ago

Consider applying for the Robert E. Chason Endowed Chair in Translational Research at the UC Davis MIND Institute! Join a vibrant community of colleagues studying neurodevelopment conditions like autism. UC Davis is an excellent place to work and live. Find more details here: lnkd.in/gZRyViNa

Did you know the last common ancestor of #zebrafish and humans was ~450 million years ago? A whole genome duplication event (3R) occurred early in the teleost fish phylogeny. Despite this event, zebrafish and humans have about the same number of chromosomes. #ZebrafishFunFacts 🧪

Absolutely thrilled to share the latest work from my lab focused on the variation and evolution of human centromeres among global populations! We assembled 2,110 human centromeres, identifying 226 new major haplotypes and 1,870 α-satellite HOR variants. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

CiFi: accurate long-read chromosome conformation capture with low-input requirements. #HiFi #LongRead #Sequencing @natcomms.nature.com 🧪🧬 🖥️ www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Consider applying for the Robert E. Chason Endowed Chair in Translational Research at the UC Davis MIND Institute! Join a vibrant community of colleagues studying neurodevelopment conditions like autism. UC Davis is an excellent place to work and live. Find more details here: lnkd.in/gZRyViNa

Robert E. Chason Endowed Chair in Translational Research, MIND Institute

University of California, Davis is hiring. Apply now!

lnkd.in

Excited to share our final accepted version of the CiFi method out today: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Megan Dennis@mydennis.bsky.social · 2y ago

Check out our new preprint describing CiFi - a method that couples 3C and PacBio HiFi sequencing with low input requirements. We apply it to human GM12878 to better characterize chromatin across repetitive regions, as well as single insect samples (a mosquito and a Mediterranean fruit fly).