🌱 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
Fig. 1 Alternative routes to allopolyploid origin.
✨ 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!
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!
Phage receptor prediction from genome sequencing alone. Bacterial receptor (blue) interacting with phage proteins (purple) is shown here
📣Huge preprint 🔔
Today we share something our group has been working toward for a long time, led by @lucasmoriniere.bsky.social We asked can we predict which receptor a phage targets from its genome sequence alone? For most phages, we couldn’t. So Lucas set out to do something I had only dreamed of.
🐳🧬8 years in the making! 🐳🧬
Our new paper in Cell explores how bowhead whales responded to past climate change - and how commercial whaling reshaped their future.
Check it out here: doi.org/10.1016/j.ce...
#aDNA #PopGen
Undaria pinnatifida gametophyte
Our work on chromatin evolution in brown algae is now published in @natecoevo.nature.com! We show that developmentally complex brown algae evolved without epigenetic silencing pathways long thought universal, underscoring why non-model lineages are important to study. www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Excited to share our review on evolutionary genomics of meiotic drive!
We discuss how these genetic elements “cheat” Mendelian inheritance, their underlying molecular mechanisms, and their broader impacts on genome evolution, including effects on genetic diversity, recombination, and sex chromosome.
I’m excited to share our lab’s latest preprint, led by Joe Hutton. We take a deep look at monocytes in psoriatic arthritis (PsA), uncovering a population of circulating cells that are uniquely primed to become osteoclasts—cells responsible for breaking down bone. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
1/11 🔥 New preprint alert 🔥
We wanted to know what plants in the wild really care about. So we asked them 🎤.
Here is what we learned: “Biotic-response networks are an important organizer of the transcriptome in wild Arabidopsis thaliana populations”
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
Our dependency on fossil fuels makes us vulnerable. Wars across the world are pushing up prices for households in the UK.
Why keep waiting for the next crisis? We need to transition to clean power as fast as we can to protect people and our economy.
www.theguardian.com/environment/...
I am happy to announce the launch of a new Arabidopsis genomics resource! Check out arabidopsislyrata.org Now you can easily look at the natural genetic variation across the entire species range of A. lyrata and A. arenosa.
Our most recent work on the “function and evolution” of #nuclear-speckles is now online at Cell @cp-cell.bsky.social
doi.org/10.1016/j.ce...
Read the thread👇 for the highlights of our findings.
🐐🧬 New research has revealed that the Old Irish Goat shares a 3,000-year genetic link with goats living in Ireland during the Late Bronze Age.
The findings suggest the rare indigenous breed represents a continuous Irish lineage stretching back millennia.
@gingerhowley.bsky.social
In a new Science study, researchers report on transcriptional adaptation, a dual feedback and feedforward mechanism that uses genetic redundancy to compensate for mutations in protein-coding genes.
Learn more in a new #SciencePerspective: https://scim.ag/4ryeXtN
Amazing peppered moth story from Saccheri lab - same locus, but different structural variants, underly parallel evolution of industrial melanism in the UK and across continental Europe.
We've been working with @metoffice.gov.uk to analyse 10 years of #NewYearPlantHunt data.
The analysis provides the clearest evidence yet of how rising temperatures are impacting the British & Irish flora, with knock-on effects for all our wildlife.
www.theguardian.com/environment/...
Red and yellow columbine flower with swept back spurs
Aquilegia elegantula, our Western Red Columbine, blooming above the Conejos River #nativeplants
#FallbackFlowers #Fallback to June 27 🌿
Cycad plants use thermogenesis to warm their reproductive cones. A beetle dusted with pollen and fluorescent dyes lands on the warm cone of a cycad. High concentrations of dye have been deposited on the cone’s hottest regions during previous visits by other labeled beetles. Beetle pollinators use these thermal infrared patterns as a guide to locate host pollen and ovulate cones.
Long before flowers dazzled pollinators with brilliant colors and sweet scents, ancient plants used another feature to signal insects: heat. The findings in Science offer insights into what shaped the earliest eras of plant-animal coevolution.
Read more in this week's issue: https://scim.ag/4rVtArQ
Preprint alert! It is my great pleasure to announce the first manuscript from the lab, a story that started @gmivienna.bsky.social and was mainly accomplished by the intrepid @gesahoffmann.bsky.social at @mpi-mp-potsdam.bsky.social. A brief thread with our findings
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
How do new centromeres evolve while staying compatible with the division machinery?
Discover it in our new Nature paper! We show centromeres transition gradually via a mix of drift, selection, and sex, reaching new states that still work with the kinetochore.
👉 doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-09779-1
CRISPR-Cas–mediated heritable chromosome fusions in Arabidopsis | Science www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
Very nice work from Holger Puchta & colleagues
"What James Watson got wrong about DNA"
By the great Sohini Ramachandran (@sramach.bsky.social) and your boy for The Boston Globe (@bostonglobe.com).
www.bostonglobe.com/2025/11/14/o...
New paper! Work led by @p-bourguet.bsky.social and Frédéric Berger at the GMI of the @oeaw.bsky.social and @esasaki007.bsky.social identified how protein CDCA7 helps plants stably maintain epigenetic modifications across generations.
Read more: www.oeaw.ac.at/gmi/detail/n...
The genetic and geographic origin of Arabidopsis suecica.
Diploid origins and early genome stabilization in the allotetraploid Arabidopsis suecica
Burns et al. robinburns@bsky.social alisondawnscott@bsky.social
nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
Very excited to share our work published in Nature Comms last week! Here we describe a range of cool things that can be done once you have the power to control deposition of H3K4me3…
rdcu.be/eNEf4
A short thread:
1/10 Genome maintenance by telomerase is a fundamental process in nearly all eukaryotes. But where does it come from?
Today, we report the discovery of telomerase homologs in a family of antiviral RTs, revealing an unexpected evolutionary origin in bacteria.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
