Drosophila Genetic Database The Drosophila Genetic Database, FlyBase, is on the brink of collapse due to the sudden termination of the FlyBase NIH grant, which includes salaries for 5 literature curators based at the University ...

#drosophila @flybase.bsky.social request emergency funding:
"As it stands, by the end of July, 2025, there will be no future updates to FlyBase, and in the worst case scenario access to the website will also be lost" => please donate!

www.philanthropy.cam.ac.uk/give-to-camb...

The kids were really into it ( and found Arabidopsis beautiful) …really worth doing !

Super outreach of En Quête de Bio this morning, with a group of 18 volunteers coming to amaze kids with developmental biology!
Since June, 2022: 4280 kids , 64 volunteers, and 15 cities!

Go on www.eqd-bio.org for more info
@sfbd.bsky.social
@bardinlab.bsky.social‬

Diagram of somatic TE insertions across the A. thaliana genome

In our latest @biorxiv-genomic.bsky.social preprint, we describe our approach to use PacBio HiFi reads to detect somatic TE transposition -- good enough to detect rare events that are present in only single cells. Led by Andrea Movilli.
#plantscience
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Big congrats to all authors and many thanks to our precious collaborators for their help on this study!

In sum, we document an alternative control of TEs by H3K27me3 which is more plastic than DNA methylation, and that a TE can change epigenetic silencing state throughout its lifespan. This challenges the dogma that Arabidopsis TEs are solely targeted by DNA methylation in nature.

We show i) that some TEs are targeted by H3K27me3 (Polycomb) instead of DNA methylation in wildtype Arabidopsis ii) H3K27me3 can be deposited on newly inserted TE sequences iii) the existence of “bifrons” TEs that are marked by DNA methylation or H3K27me3 depending on the ecotype

Our paper on Alternative epigenetic states of Arabidopsis Transposable Elements is finally out in Genome Biology !

rdcu.be/d6Yly

Big congrats Maud and to all authors!

An endogenous retroviral element co-opts an upstream regulatory sequence to achieve somatic expression and mobility Retrotransposons, multi-copy sequences that propagate via copy-and-paste mechanisms involving an RNA intermediate, occupy large portions of all eukaryotic genomes. A great majority of their manifold c...

To kick start the New Year, I'm delighted to share the lab's first preprint - now online:
biorxiv.org/cgi/content/...

See below for a couple of highlights👇
Any feedback is welcome!
"TEsky"

HAPPY NEW YEAR to everyone! 🥂

Congratulations Kasia and the team for this really interesting work!

Congratulations Antoine !

Great keynote yesterday , thank you!

Congrats to Joaquin Roca for a massive amount of work reviewing the littérature since 1982!!

Epigenetic control of T-DNA during transgenesis and pathogenesis A review of the mechanisms that silence the T-DNA in transgenic plants and during Agrobacterium infection and the crosstalk between the T-DNA and genome-wi

For my first post on Bluesky I am happy to share our recently accepted review in Plant Physiology on the epigenetic control of a fascinating mobile DNA : the Agrobacterium TDNA, during plant transgenesis and pathogenesis track.smtpsendmail.com/9032119/c?p=...