"The selfish ribosome" paper is now published in @plosbiology.org . Have a look! Many thanks to the editors and reviewers!
doi.org/10.1371/jour...

Meet Renato Alves, Senior Bioinformatics Community Manager at EMBL Heidelberg.

Renato helps scientists with their computational analysis by providing training & maintaining the research infrastructure.

He also enjoys night hikes & stargazing 🔭🌠, a hobby that led to creating EMBL's Astronomy Club.

Day 2 of the EMBO U-ExM Workshop at EMBL Heidelberg #EMBOExM. Gels are ready and expanding nicely! We also had a lively poster session and inspiring talks from @sabsalon.bsky.social and @gautamdey.bsky.social. A very engaged group, great to see such thoughtful discussions around expansion microscopy

Cell Bio 2023-An ASCB|EMBO Meeting Network, learn, and collaborate with top cell biologists from around the globe.

🚨Hear, hear, fellow microbial cell biologists!🚨
🦠 Bacterial and Archaeal Cell Biology will be represented again at this year’s CELL BIO (ASCB-EMBO) meeting! The deadline to be considered for a talk in our Minisymposium is June 9. Help us spread the word!
www.ascb.org/cellbio2026/

Our #UExM efforts with @gautamdey.bsky.social & @moorefound.bsky.social featured in @nature.com this month.

Beyond the #science, every image is a thing of beauty.

I think a world-tour exhibition has to happen at one point.

#Expansion #Microscopy

(as always XD)

Gorgeous images 🤩🤩

See the intricate worlds of parasites and algae — March’s best science images The month’s sharpest science shots, selected by Nature’s photo team.

Our ExM Atlas of eukaryotes is moving along with more and more images coming in - some featured in nature last month!
Culture we’re provided by @ccapoban.bsky.social & Julius Lukeš during visits last year

www.nature.com/immersive/d4...

“Here, we generated a comprehensive transcriptomic atlas of early embryogenesis from 61 animal species, spanning 13 phyla. By applying a unified computational framework, we systematically inferred the timing of ZGA across species.”

This is a big one from @mirimiam.bsky.social et al. 🔥🧪

Feels like this paper on protein-templated DNA synthesis by a natural enzyme warrants some comment.
So here's a 🧵. /1
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

I suspect we only get so invested in whether the Central Dogma is broken or not because Crick called it that. If it had been "the principle of protein synthesis" or the "rules of transcription & translation" or something, it would seem less of a big deal. Remember, it's not a "dogma" at all.

Call for Proposals: 2028 SMBE Regional Meetings, Europe

SMBE Call for 2028 Regional Meeting
🌍 European proposals

SMBE is calling for proposals for meetings and actions to be held Jan 1 - Dec 31 2028, in Europe.

🗓️ Deadline: May 15, 2026
📨 Proposal submission: members.smbe.org/membersurvey/Fill/P3R69Cbp
ℹ️ More information: smbe@am.kwglobal.com

#society

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...

BioSyst.EU 2026 A three-day conference celebrating European systematics and biodiversity research at its origin

Join us and our fellow European systematics associations in Uppsala, Sweden for the 4th BioSyst.EU meeting!

Dates: August 17-19, 2026

Abstract submission and early bird deadline: May 31st

Registration deadline: July 17th

Details: www.trippus.net/BioSyst2026

We hope to see there!

#BioSystEU2026

Repurposing of a DNA segregation machinery into a cytoskeletal system controlling cell shape Bacteria, like eukaryotes, use conserved cytoskeletal systems for intracellular organization. The plasmid-encoded ParMRC system forms actin-like filaments that segregate low–copy number plasmids. In m...

Out now in @science.org
Repurposing of a DNA segregation machinery into a cytoskeletal system controlling cell shape | Science www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Biologists Confirm Not Much Evolution Happened Today STANFORD, CA—Calling it a “pretty slow one” as far as natural selection and genetic drift were concerned, biologists from Stanford University confirmed Tuesday that not much evolution happened today. ...

Biologists Confirm Not Much Evolution Happened Today — theonion.com/biologists-c...

Now out in its final form! www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

I'm looking for #NewPIs (<3 years as lab heads) in the gene regulation/functional genomics space. If you are one or know one, please comment below! 🧪

Early Career Faculty Program | Freeman Hrabowski Scholars | HHMI The Freeman Hrabowski Scholars Program offers comprehensive support to outstanding early career faculty committed to scientific excellence in their own research, and to fostering labs that expand the ...

@hhmi-science.bsky.social's
#FreemanHrabowski Scholars Program offers early career faculty up to $10M over 10 yrs, plus salary & benefits

Stable, sustained support can transform your career:

Senior Postdoc? This year's competition has a program for you too. Applications open 11/3! bit.ly/4vhC0LA

The reproducibility crisis in phylogenetic analyses Published in Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology (Ahead of Print, 2026)

Godoy et al. (2026-04, Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology)（オープンアクセス open access）
「系統解析における再現性の危機」
The reproducibility crisis in phylogenetic analyses
doi.org/10.1080/0272...

After several trials (aka delays from my end), this article on EMBL's efforts at public outreach is public 🎉

I has a lot of fun interviewing @samuelhorsfield.bsky.social for this piece! I learnt a lot about #scicomm and how fulfilling it is to talk to curious kids about biology.

Pls read & share 🙇‍♂️

On the computability of biological machines In the book Natural Theology (1802), the English philosopher and theologian William Paley argued that the complexity of an organism, similar to that of a watch, implied the handiwork of a designer.1 H...

I reviewed On the Future of Species by Adrian Woolfson for @thelancet.com. Adrian has now responded to my review here.
www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...

So you are using IQ-TREE to estimate a tree for "deep time" phylogenetics using amino acid alignments. There is a lot of confusion about how to test model fit. Here are some suggestions.

What’s better than seeing your paper in print? Sharing the table of contents with @thibautbrunet.bsky.social @maxhaase.bsky.social @pontus-skoglund.bsky.social 🤩

@nature.com @helsenjana.bsky.social @gsherloc.bsky.social @kausthubh.bsky.social

Cover of The Lancet:

@thelancet.com
www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...

Does hidden protein biology live in the suboptimal alignment space?

When we align two divergent proteins, we usually trust a single optimal alignment. 🧬

But what if the real structural signal lies in the space of near-optimal solutions?

With EMERALD-UI you can unfold this perspective.

Our eLetter github.com/caseywdunn/s... responding to a recent Science paper was just posted. The paper found more genes with consistent support for sponge-sister than ctenophore-sister. We found several technical issues that, when corrected, reverse the conclusions and recover ctenophore-sister.

Just uploaded our new preprint to @ecoevorxiv.bsky.social

Multinucleate life really is everywhere...from deep sea forams to slime molds, intracellular parasites, and beyond. 🚀

We explore how scaling, ecology, & evolution intersect when many nuclei share a single cytoplasm.
doi.org/10.32942/X2M...

Counting Chromosomes: The Simple Idea That Unlocked the Rules Behind Centromere Evolution

Curious about how this story came to be (we never planned to study centromeres!)? Here’s a glimpse behind the scenes of how a naive method to count chromosomes unlocked the rules behind centromere evolution.

P.S. There are cartoons!

👉 tinyurl.com/4rz4ve6u

PCAn, our point centromere annotation tool 🔍 was also updated! Try it out with your own genome assemblies and let us know what you think!

👉 github.com/JHelsen/point-centromere-detection