Thrilled to present our comparative study on the evolution of zygotic genome activation (ZGA)!! 🥚🧬

Amazing PhD work of @campobes.bsky.social together with @fedemantica.bsky.social and many collaborators! @melisupf.bsky.social @crg.eu. Thread below 1/15

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

📢 Call for papers - Symbiotic relationships 📢
#BMCBiology

Guest Editors:
@yjluo.bsky.social
@schwarzergnoto.bsky.social
Thomas Bosch Dr rer nat, Kiel University
Anil Kumar PhD, Chandigarh University
Michael Sinvula Lukubwe BA, MSc, University of Namibia

link.springer.com/collections/...

Final version @nature.com of our paper describing unconventional multicellular development in a choanoflagellate inhabiting an extreme environment. A ton of new data since the first @biorxivpreprint.bsky.social preprint (which we've kept updating).

A brief 🧵 (carried over from the old place)

Genomic Perplexity and the Evolution of Context-Dependent Function Abstract. The fundamental principle that selection acts on a gene’s function often assumes implicitly that this function is fixed and intrinsic. However, e

New paper out in MBE! 🧵
"Genomic Perplexity and the Evolution of Context-Dependent Function"
The big idea: genes don't have fixed functions. Function emerges from context - genomic, cellular, environmental. And we can quantify this. academic.oup.com/mbe/article/...

Registration now open for @embo.org workshop on the evolution of biological interactions on April 24 - 27, 2026! Come join us in Taipei, Taiwan to see how interactions shaped the genomes of various organisms and meeting people from across the globe. Info: meetings.embo.org/event/26-bio...

Happy New Year! あけましておめでとうございます！新年快樂！Feliz Año Nuevo! Manigong Bagong Taon!

The SymGenoEvo Lab wishes everyone a wonderful New Year!

HAPPY HOLIDAYS TO ALL OF YOU!🎄✨

watercolor of DNA gel

#ArtAdventCalendar Gel Electrophoresis in Green and Blue, watercolor, 2023 #sciart

Molecular basis for de novo thymus regeneration in a vertebrate, the axolotl The molecular, cellular, and functional restoration of the axolotl thymus after de novo regeneration is described.

Can't believe my postdoc paper is finally out. Christmas came early this year, holy moly 🎄

Molecular basis for de novo thymus regeneration in a vertebrate, the axolotl | Science Immunology www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

A global coral phylogeny reveals resilience and vulnerability through deep time - Nature The most recent common ancestor of the stony coral Scleractinia dates to about 460 million years ago and was probably a solitary, heterotrophic and free-living organism.

This is an INCREDIBLE advance in our understanding of coral diversification. 🪸🎉 Fantastic new work led by @claudiavaga.bsky.social

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Very happy to announce that our article in multimodal single cell analyses in planaria is out in Nature Communications @natcomms.nature.com ! Thank you very much to everyone that made this work possible. I am very happy to see it out (: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Congratulations!!! Wonderful news!

Top: The phylogenetic position of Nematostella and localization of Vasa2 +/Piwi1+ cells within the juvenile polyp body plan. (A) Simplified phylogenetic tree highlighting the phylogenetic position of the sea anemone Nematostella vectensis and other animal taxa relevant for this study. All animal silhouettes are licensed under CC0,1.0 Universal Public domain and taken from https://www.phylopic.org. (B–D) Schematics showing the localization of Vasa2+/Piwi1+ cells in a juvenile polyp, depicted in longitudinal (B) or cross-section (C, D). (E) Schematic representation of the multipotent, Vasa2+/Piwi1+ stem/progenitor cell population and a simplified summary of their germinal and somatic progeny. (F) Schematics of cell cycle phases, highlighting the incorporation of EdU during S-phase (black line) and the phosphorylation of Histone H3 (pH3+) during metaphase. Bottom: Confocal image of two Vasa+/Piwi+ stem-like cells in the inner epithelial folds of the sea anemone Nematostella vectensis. Immunolabelling of mOrange2-Piwi1 fusion protein (yellow) in a transgenic knock-in line combined with nuclear stain (white). Image credit: Paula Miramón-Puértolas.

How do animals with lifelong growth modulate cell #proliferation? @eudaldpascual.bsky.social @ktgarschall.bsky.social @prhsteinmetz.bsky.social show that starvation induces G1/G0 #CellCycle arrest in Vasa2+/Piwi1+ #SeaAnemone cells; cycle re-entry is TOR-dependent @plosbiology.org 🧪 plos.io/48J2o6P

Honor to join the EMBO Young Investigator Network as a Global Investigator! Very grateful to @embo.org for the support in promoting international exchanges. Excited to strengthen collaborations with colleagues across Europe and beyond.

www.embo.org/press-releas...

Twelve scientists from Chile, India, Nigeria, Singapore and Taiwan have been selected as new EMBO Global Investigators – Congratulations to the new cohort! 🧪

Read the press release:
www.embo.org/press-releases/twelve-sc...
#funding #training

Cover image for the December issue of Nature Ecology & Evolution. The image shows a male Korean seahorse and its young. The cover line reads "Role reversals"

Our December issue is now live: www.nature.com/natecolevol/...

Featuring research on 🧪

🦏 rhinocerotid dispersal in the mid-Cenozoic
🐟 biodiversity responses to freshwater stressors
🦋 evolution of butterfly eyespots

Cover shows a Korean seahorse, from Meyer et al. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Congratulations to the new cohort of 28 EMBO Young Investigators! They are joining an international network of more than 800 life scientists – Welcome!

Read the press release here:
www.embo.org/press-releases/twenty-ei...

Project Psyche: reference genomes for all Lepidoptera in Europe Project Psyche is a transnational initiative to generate and study chromosome-level reference genomes of all ~11 000 species of Lepidoptera (butterflies and moths) found in Europe. Here, we describe t...

I'm very excited that our paper on Project Psyche is now published! 🦋🧬

Over the last two years we've built an incredible community & already made huge progress. Read about this & how @projectpsyche.bsky.social will drive exciting and collaborative science here:

www.cell.com/trends/ecolo...

Apply now for EMBO Workshop "Evolving together: From #genomics to biological interactions" in Taipei, Taiwan, 24–27 Apr 2026.

Abstract submission/Registration deadline: 20 Jan/28 Feb 2026

meetings.embo.org/event/26-bio...
#EMBOEvoGenBio #GeneSky #EvoSky #EcoSky #EMBOevents 🧪

Adenine DNA methylation associated with transcriptionally permissive chromatin is widespread across eukaryotes - Nature Genetics Long-read sequencing in 18 unicellular eukaryotes reveals that 6mA is widespread across eukaryotes and is enriched at transcriptionally permissive regions, which are also marked by H3K4me3.

Out today, our take on 6-methyladenine #6mA evolution in Eukaryotes @natgenet.nature.com. We asked a simple question, is really DNA 6mA common across the eukaryotes? The answer is "yes" if you're a unicellular eukaryote 🦠, not so if you're multicellular 🐝🌱🍄. www.nature.com/articles/s41... 1/9

Ectopic head regeneration after nervous system ablation in a sea anemone Via genetic ablation of neurons, Mazloumi Gavgani et al. show that the nervous system is essential for defining axial polarity during whole-body regeneration in the sea anemone Nematostella vectensis.

Our paper on the role of neurons in Nematostella head regeneration is now out at @currentbiology.bsky.social Big thank you to all collaborators, it was a pleasure!

Ectopic head regeneration after nervous system ablation in a sea anemone: Current Biology www.cell.com/current-biol...

On the cover: A phoronid (Phoronis australis) extending its crown-like feeding organ, the lophophore, from its tube on the seabed. These sedentary marine invertebrates belong to the spiralian branch of bilaterian animals. For over a century, their closest relatives have been debated, with competing hypotheses linking them to either brachiopods or bryozoans. In this issue, Lewin et al. present a chromosome-level genome of P. australis and reveal that it shares seven derived chromosome fusions with bryozoans. This provides rare, sequence-independent evidence supporting bryozoans as the closest relatives of phoronids and offers new insights into the evolution of genome structure and animal body plans. Photograph © Fred Bavendam; used with permission.

Lophophorates get way too little publicity...

Latest issue is out!
www.cell.com/issue/S0960-...

Thank you, Ryan! Our pleasure to be on your journal club reading list.

Glad to see our phoronid genome study featured on the cover of @currentbiology.bsky.social! It shows how genome structure can be used to test competing hypotheses of nested topology and how derived structural changes provide evidence for monophyly.

www.cell.com/current-biol...

Some synteny exists with choanoflagellates, but few orthologous genes remain, given the long evolutionary distance. This probably increases the likelihood of homoplasy. Genome structure may thus be more informative for testing nested relationships than for determining the root of the tree.

Really interesting study - thank you for this work. Genome structure can carry phylogenetic signals, but only when ingroup similarities are derived and the outgroup remains ancestral. In ctenophores, extensive early rearrangements likely made their genomes too derived for rooting purposes.

Happy to share Jialin's first publication. She did a great job exploring the transition to land in animals. Co-supervised by the great Jordi Paps and me and in collaboration with Davide Pisani and @phil-donoghue.bsky.social

A truly refreshing perspective on an age old debate. Big implications for animal evolution but also useful techniques to address many other remaining phylogenetic questions.
Congrats to you both on a wonderful piece of work!

NEW pub in @science.org 🥳

Is it sponges (panels A & B) or comb jellies (C & D) that root the animal tree of life?

For over 15 years, #phylogenomic studies have been divided.

We provide new evidence suggesting that...

🔗: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

We are happy to share our latest work in @nature.com . We study the genomic and cellular basis of facultative symbiosis in Oculina patagonica - a Mediterranean coral remarkable for its ability to survive long periods without algal symbionts. Led by Shani Levy and @xgrau.bsky.social
rdcu.be/eLbaZ