Exhilarated to share a 2nd @science.org cover article this month from our lab @ucberkeleyofficial.bsky.social! A collaboration with US & Mexico colleagues on the role of a Mexican biogeographic holding pen in shaping the Great American Biotic Interchange (GABI)(1/11) www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

So proud of this manuscript- lead by the fantastic @henryarenas.bsky.social with two undergraduates (Cage Cochran and Quinn Evans) each doing a Herculean effort during their honors theses, and Hongfei Chen helping out tremendously with lab work. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Maintenance of phenotypic divergence in two sympatric monkeyflowers with weak reproductive isolation

Sympatric species often exhibit permeable reproductive barriers, yet many of them coexist as phenotypically distinct entities. One way to account for this apparent paradox is that selection on loci th...

biorxiv.org

We (@rileyshultz.bsky.social) tracked a recessive mutation from birth to death in honey bees. It causes ivory eyes. We collaborated across the continent to identify the mutation and it's downstream effects. Ultimately it is purified through selection on drones. We think Hamilton would be pleased!

Molecular Biology and Evolution@molbioevol.bsky.social · 6d ago

Shultz @beeharpur.bsky.social et al. documented the trajectory of a spontaneous deleterious mutation from its origin in a single queen to its extinction, directly observing how haplodiploidy exposes recessive alleles to immediate purifying selection 🔗 doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msag156 #societyjournal

The centromere performs an essential function during cell division, yet its DNA sequence can evolve remarkably rapidly—a puzzle known as the centromere paradox. How can function remain conserved when sequence does not? 🧵 1/4

Our new preprint, led by Joanna Feehan, reveals that extreme physiological leaf cooling is key to survival at the upper thermal limit of eukaryotic life in the Death Valley desert plant Tidestromia oblongifolia. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Extreme cooling enables survival in extreme heat

Complex, multicellular extremophiles face intense challenges in coordinating their cells, tissues, and organs to function in harsh environments. Tidestromia oblongifolia is a desert plant that thrives...

biorxiv.org

Avocados come in 2 varieties - A-types start each day female and switch to male midday. B-types do the reverse. In work just published from the last chapter of my PhD, we show this system evolved 40+million yrs ago and is regulated by alleles of 1 transcription factor www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Balanced polymorphism in a floral transcription factor underlies the ancient rhythm of daily sex alternation in avocado | PNAS

In avocado and certain wild relatives in Lauraceae, a highly synchronized daily rhythm of floral sex timing promotes cross-pollination between two ...

pnas.org

Ghost Pipe (Love love this flower) #nativeplants #nature #photography

Delighted to share our paper on neo-chromosomes! We induced centromere fission using CRISPR in Arabidopsis and increased the chromosome count from n=5 to n=6. The broken chromosomes ends quickly “healed” by adding telomeres de novo and the new karyotype is stable through mitosis and meiosis! 1/3

Ian Henderson@hendersi.bsky.social · 2w ago

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

Excited to share the SNPstar! preprint! 🌿 SNPstar helps researchers explore how natural variation in Arabidopsis thaliana affects protein structure and function by integrating SNP data, AlphaFold3 models, stability predictions, population context, and more. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

SNPstar: A Web Server Linking Allelic Variation to Protein Structure and Function in Arabidopsis thaliana

Understanding how natural genetic variants affect protein structure and function is central to plant biology. The 1001 Genomes Project has catalogued millions of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs)...

biorxiv.org

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

Our new paper is out! Congrats to all involved. Dosage compensation and meiotic sex chromosome inactivation are maintained under relaxed selection | PNAS www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Dosage compensation and meiotic sex chromosome inactivation are maintained under relaxed selection | PNAS

Dosage compensation and meiotic sex chromosome inactivation (MSCI) are key mechanisms regulating gene expression from the X chromosome in male-hete...

pnas.org

I had so much fun working on this perspective piece with Annabelle, Emily, David and John! I am looking forward to incorporating the things we learned into ongoing and future research efforts

New Phytologist@newphyt.bsky.social · 3w ago

The incredible vulnerability that reproduction poses for plant species in a warming world Denney et al. @derekdenney.bsky.social @emjo.bsky.social @davidlowry.bsky.social @msupri.bsky.social nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

The Flame Robin Males perch in high, open spots to sing, showing off their vibrant orange chest. Despite its subtlety, the song effectively communicates with rivals and potential partners. 12-14cm found: Australia and Tasmania

Australian pink robin live in cool temperate rainforest Tasmania, Victoria, and new South Wales tiny at 13.5 cm consume only insects Monogamous pairs share, raising and feeding their chicks

While reproductive evolution of flowering plants (angiosperms) is traditionally linked to the end-Cretaceous biotic crisis, new research in Science suggests angiosperm dispersal ecologies had already diversified by that time. Learn more: https://scim.ag/3SzbrTo

A whale graveyard millions of years old and over a thousand kilometers long has been discovered. Not only could it tell us more about the evolution of a mysterious deep-sea denizen, but it’s a prime site for discovering brand new species, too.

How do you turn a purple flower white? Another from lab, led by @damianmicroeco.bsky.social and Emily Glasgow, with big contributions from Martin Henry, Margaret Li, and Amanda Peake. Mendelian Polymorphisms for the Win! #evolbio #plantscience

bioRxiv Evolutionary Biology@biorxiv-evobio.bsky.social · 2mo ago

A rare deletion of BZ1 in the ivy-leaf morning glory eliminates anthocyanin-based pigmentation. https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.06.08.730875v1

Centromeric origin of Arabidopsis interstitial telomeric repeat domains https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.05.10.723265v1

Guten Morgen Bluesky 🌤 ☕️ 🍀 🕊 Hier ein paar Überlebende, die sich mit mir über die gestrige Rettungsaktion freuen. Das ist doch kein 'Unkraut' sondern das sind wunderschöne Wildblumen an denen sich hier jeder erfreut. Habt einen zauberhaften Tag.

Been training for this moment my whole life.

A rare albino humpback whale breaching, what a sight . 😍

We have a new paper out on one of evolution’s “classic” systems: Galápagos Scalesia plants! 🌿 How do you generate huge differences in leaf shape across species in <1 million years? We combined genomics + morphology + transcriptomics across the full radiation 👇

#TansleyReview: Recombination suppression in plant adaptation and speciation Zhang et al. 👇 📖 nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... #LatestIssue #PlantScience

Thrilled to share our recent publication in @nature.com. We discovered that snow carps experienced a relatively recent whole genome duplication #WGD, making this lineage an ideal lineage to study #rediploidization. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Chromosomal fusions trigger rediploidization of autopolyploid genomes - Nature

Genomic data from snow carps reveal that the fusion of chromosomes initiates rediploidization following whole-genome duplication.

nature.com

Thank you! 😀

Dorota Paczesniak@dorotdesigns.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Such an ingenious, informative and fun figure! From a new review on the origins of allopolyploids, where the origins are conceptualized as alternative routes through a maze, comprising a sequence of events🧪

🌱 When a root cell undergoes symmetric division, are the daughter cells actually identical? By combining live-cell imaging and scRNAseq we discovered a new cell state with uneven BR activity. Read our full paper in Cell: doi.org/10.1016/j.ce... @nvukas.bsky.social @trevormnolan.bsky.social

✨ Paper spotlight ✨ (🧵 1/6) Somatic genome-doubling is the most parsimonious route to allopolyploidy nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... @robinburns.bsky.social @alisondawnscott.bsky.social @pnovik.bsky.social

A short review from us on the easiest way to make an allopolyploid. It was a lot of fun writing with these two. We hope you will enjoy the Pac-Man inspired allopolyploidy maze!

New Phytologist@newphyt.bsky.social · 4mo ago

Somatic genome-doubling is the most parsimonious route to allopolyploidy #TansleyInsight by Burns et al. @robinburns.bsky.social @alisondawnscott.bsky.social @pnovik.bsky.social nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... #plantscience

Very proud to share our new work on General, orders-of-magnitude faster whole-genome analysis with genotype representation graphs (GRG). We topped ourselves in this one 🚀 and made GRG a practical foundation for biobank-scale population and statistical genetics. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

We have been cooking up this story for a while and we are excited to finally be able to share! Read on if you're interested in whole plant regeneration WITHOUT the application of hormones!