The Rokas Lab at Vanderbilt University
@rokaslab.bsky.social
The Laboratory of Antonis Rokas at Vanderbilt University. Tweets should be interpreted as bookmarks, not as endorsements. All opinions are Antonis'. http://www.rokaslab.org
📣 New preprint! 🧵 Fantastic work led by @antonkraege.bsky.social Fact: Cerato-platanins are everywhere in fungi. Found across the fungal kingdom, implicated in everything from development to virulence to immune activation. But what do they *actually* do? We finally found the answer 👇
New work from our lab. Play around with it! It started as a need to quickly and easily visualize pairwise synteny. A few months later here we are!
bioRxiv Bioinfo@biorxiv-bioinfo.bsky.social · last wk.SyntenyPair Explorer: an installation-free, browser-based tool for interactive pairwise genome synteny visualization https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.07.23.740353v1
🚨🚨 Faculty search! Spread the word! 🚨🚨 The Pathology, Microbiology, and Immunology Department at Vanderbilt is hiring! Special consideration will be given to faculty working with Risk Group 3 pathogens (so you can join us in our brand new state-of-the-art BSL3!) apply.interfolio.com/188545
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Our paper on how better amino acid substitution matrices trained on cleaned alignments improve gene tree inference, and on best practice for cleaning MSAs more broadly, is now out academic.oup.com/mbe/advance-.... New options in both IQTree and Muscle5. @phylowheeler.bsky.social
Improved gene tree inference from removing alignment errors both from focal genes and when training substitution models
Abstract. Multiple Sequence Alignment (MSA) is a key step in phylogenetic analysis and is prone to error. Unfortunately, algorithms that remove likely alig
academic.oup.com
Joanna Masel@joannamasel.bsky.social · 8mo agoSequence alignments are notoriously prone to error. Our latest preprint offers a new tool for filtering errors out, assesses it and other filtering tools, and recommends new best practice. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... @phylowheeler.bsky.social 1/10
Excited to announce that this fall I'm starting my lab at the University of South Carolina! Our hybrid wet/dry lab will explore fundamental topics in animal evolution, looking at how different evolutionary processes combine quantitatively [pleiotropic conflicts, mutation bias, etc.].
Applications for the 2027 summer school on Computational Molecular Evolution on Crete are now open at: meetings.embo.org/event/27-com...
🌍 We're excited to welcome back ESI alum Brandt Gibson (UT Martin) to this year's Evolutionary Studies Retreat! His research explores Earth's earliest animals and the environments that shaped the evolution of complex life. #Evolution
We are excited to announce our 2026 Friend of Darwin and Friend of the Planet award recipients! These awards are presented annually to a select few whose efforts to support NCSE's goal of defending the teaching of evolution and climate science have been truly outstanding. ncse.ngo/friend-darwi...
Did you know Vanderbilt once had its own Natural History Museum? Among its most impressive displays was a 23-foot plesiosaur cast bringing prehistoric life to campus. Today, we're working to preserve and share this fascinating history. #ThrowbackThursday #TBT #Evolution
Come join the Horianopoulos Lab! I am recruiting a graduate student to join my research group focused on the genetic determinants of yeast stress responses. How to apply: Email lhoriano@uoguelph.ca by July 15, 2026 with a CV and cover letter. Subject line: “Horianopoulos lab graduate position”
If you weren't at the Cellular and Molecular Fungal Biology Gordon Research Conference, I hope this helps you decide to go next time. It's such a great community! starring @grantnickles.bsky.social cinematography by @emmascales.bsky.social
Only a few days left to submit an abstract for the #EMBOEvoEco Workshop at @events.embl.org in beautiful Heidelberg, Germany (6-9 October 2026)!
The Rokas Lab at Vanderbilt University@rokaslab.bsky.social · 2mo agoWant to gain mechanistic insights on major outstanding questions in #ecology and #evolution? Join us 6-9 October 2026 for the #EMBOEvoEco Workshop at @events.embl.org in beautiful Heidelberg, Germany Abstract submission deadline is June 30 - submit one now! www.embl.org/about/info/c...
A new study out with @linder-surprise.bsky.social and @rokaslab.bsky.social in iScience across ~300 yeast species confirms the correlation between glucose uptake rate and cell surface-to-volume (SA:V) ratio, but suggests a link to other traits (growth rates and genome size). doi.org/10.1016/j.is...
A trait syndrome ties cell morphology to glycolysis across the yeast subphylum
Co-variation of traits provides fundamental insights into constraints governing their evolution. An inverse correlation between glucose uptake rates (…
sciencedirect.com
Our new paper was, by definition, an adventure: stepping outside of our comfort zone, embracing the unknown, and engaging in activities where the outcome is uncertain. Includes discovery of a new species and working with a Native American tribe to name it… 🧵👇 onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...
Comparative Analysis of Stress Adaptation in the Yeast Microbiome of Cactus
Yeasts and related fungi isolated from cacti or nearby non-cactus plants were characterized phenotypically and genomically, revealing differences that hint at modes of adaptation to the cactus host.
onlinelibrary.wiley.com
Our paper on the evolution of cellular miniaturization is now out in PNAS! www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... A short recap 🧵
PNAS
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), a peer reviewed journal of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) - an authoritative source of high-impact, original research that broadly spans...
pnas.org
Marco Fumasoni@marcofumasoni.bsky.social · 8mo ago🗞️ New preprint from the lab, led by our postdoc Ana Garoña (not on here) in collab with @andreagiometto.bsky.social: “Experimental evolution of cellular miniaturization reveals a mechanism for cell size evolution”, aka: “honey, we shrank the yeasts!” 🎥 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
New paper from a project I started working on during my final few months of grad school (...6 years ago): doi.org/10.1371/jour.... Here, we estimate codon ribosome drop-off rates from ribo-seq in yeast, as well as quantify the impact of selection against drop-off on coding-sequence evolution.
The importance of nonsense errors: Estimating the rates and implications of ribosome drop-off during protein synthesis
Author summary The process of translating mRNA into a protein is both energetically expensive and relatively error-prone. As such, natural selection is thought to shape the evolution of protein-coding...
doi.org
Have a concise report for a genome assembly (or allied dataset) you'd like to publish? I am Senior Editor for the open access Genetics Society of America's G3: Genes|Genomes|Genetics @genetics-gsa.bsky.social and I handle Genome Reports. Our team of academic editors is superb. Consider submitting!
Reminder — UW #Microbiology has an open search for an Assistant Professor, focusing on fundamental problems in #bacteriology! If you or someone you know would be suitable, here's the ad: apply.interfolio.com/185622
🔔 Our synthesis on what’s going on in the field of TE control and RIP in the fungal world! Out now in Trends in Genetics!
Thomas Badet@tbadet.bsky.social · 2mo agoNearly a year after our symposium on Repeat-Induced Point (RIP) mutations, I’m happy to share the fruit of some of our discussions. The fungal RIP hypermutator mechanism has deep eukaryotic roots www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... We hope to spark interest in this underappreciated mechanism.
Interested in how #fungi came about on this planet? If so, take a look at my new article that just came out in @annualreviews.bsky.social. doi.org/10.1146/annu...
The Origin and Early Evolution of Fungi: Challenges, Inferences, and Principles
Fungi are widespread on our planet and essential for life as we know it, but how did they come about? Their last common ancestor lived hundreds of millions of years ago, but its characteristics, and t...
doi.org
Want to gain mechanistic insights on major outstanding questions in #ecology and #evolution? Join us 6-9 October 2026 for the #EMBOEvoEco Workshop at @events.embl.org in beautiful Heidelberg, Germany Abstract submission deadline is June 30 - submit one now! www.embl.org/about/info/c...
Congratulations to our 2026-2027 CoEvoD Fellows! 🧬 Claire Cheng, bacterial DNA methylation (Behringer). Joshua Eis, how birds evolved long lifespans (Castiglione). Mia Elbon, human aging and life history, (Herculano-Houzel) Three fellows. Three labs. One mission. #Evolution
The Department of Biology at the University of Iowa is hiring an evolutionary ecologist at the assistant professor level for fall 2027. Come and be my colleague! jobs.uiowa.edu/faculty/view...
Faculty Requisition Details - Jobs@UIOWA: Search and Apply for Jobs at The University of Iowa
Jobs@UIOWA: The official place to search and apply for jobs at The University of Iowa.
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I shared on LinkedIn already, but I wanted to post here as well since I've got a different audience: I will be joining the Department of Plant Pathology at the @universityofga.bsky.social as an Assistant Professor on Aug 1!! I will keep studying #Aspergillus & #Fusarium that infect plants & humans 🥰
Looking for advice on the faculty job market? Our “Landing a faculty position” series features newly appointed faculty, including @morgancarterphd.bsky.social and Abigail Leavitt LaBella (@lablabella.bsky.social) from the University of North Carolina, Charlotte. 🔗Read more: buff.ly/ksnRtZp
Gautam Dey@gautamdey.bsky.social · 3mo agoMultinucleate cells challenge deeply-held assumptions about complexity, ecological success and evolution. Postdoc extraordinaire and gifted writer @mrosjac.bsky.social tackles this subject with aplomb - tell us what you think! www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... @currentbiology.bsky.social
I'm looking for postdoc opportunities for the 2026-2027 academic year. If you're looking for a postdoc with a broad skill set spanning evolutionary genetics, bioinformatics, and various omics methods, feel free to reach out. Some recent pubs: (1) doi.org/10.1126/scie... (2) doi.org/10.1073/pnas...
Macroevolutionary divergence of gene expression driven by selection on protein abundance
The regulation of messenger RNA (mRNA) and protein abundances is well-studied, but less is known about the evolutionary processes shaping their relationship. To address this, we derived a new phylogen...
doi.org
We are hiring @umichmicroimmuno.bsky.social ! Tenure-track assistant professor position in our Microbiology and Immunology department. We are especially looking for someone working in bacterial pathogenesis
Excited to drop our visual systems pre-print 10 years in the making. We hacked nature's cheat code to protect the eye from light damage. This unexpectedly also boosts rod sensitivity. Huge thanks to collabs Tonia Rex, @amandalea.bsky.social , Alex Bick, and their labs! @evolutionvu.bsky.social
bioRxiv Biochemistry@biorxiv-biochem.bsky.social · 3mo agoRhodopsin is a tunable capacitor buffering the toxic, desensitizing retinoids of the vertebrate eye https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.05.05.722510v1
