We show that:
- recombination rather than mutation is at the ❤️ of CI patterns diversity
- most toxins are truncated and play no role in CI
- there is polymorphism outside of toxin-antitoxin binding regions which likely results from horizontal gene transfer AND influences CI patterns.

Recombination, Truncation and Horizontal Transfer Shape the Diversity of Wolbachia-induced Cytoplasmic Incompatibility Patterns Abstract. Wolbachia are endosymbiotic bacteria inducing various reproductive manipulations of which cytoplasmic incompatibility is the most common. Cytopla

I forgot to mention it here, my last PhD chapter (Wolbachia in Culex) is now published in @molbioevol.bsky.social
I think it's a cool study, give it a try 😌
Includes: wPip cid repertoires from all around the world (Nanopore seq. of PCR products), crosses, stability + toxicity tests in cell lines.

‘Almost unimaginable’: these ants are different species but share a mother Ant queens of one species clone ants of another to create hybrid workers that do their bidding.

A common type of ant in Europe breaks a fundamental rule in biology: its queens can produce male offspring that are a whole different species

go.nature.com/4mOb5T9

Repeated loss of function at HD mating-type genes and of recombination in anther-smut fungi - Nature Communications Basidiomycete fungi typically have two mating-type loci located on different chromosomes. Here, Lucotte et al. report the convergent loss-of-function of mating-type genes across several species of phy...

Our new paper is out!
We observed a loss of function in mating compatibility for HD genes for the first time in basidiomycete fungi, and new evolutionary strata in the absence of sexually antagonistic selection!
@tatianagiraud.bsky.social
More details here 👉 www.nature.com/articles/s41...