🚨🧬🚨

We're looking for a specialized Research Assistant to spearhead a project aimed at exploring new RNA therapeutics in diabetes and other metabolic disorders.

Junior or Senior, we're hoping to recruit a highly motivated and self-driven scientist interested in both basic and applied science. 🦄

New preprint!! 🚨 Did you know that many vertebrate species determine sex based on environmental conditions rather than chromosomes? Some turtles, like Trachemys scripta, rely on temperature. We learned more about how this happen molecularly.👇
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Huge congrats Rafa!!

🚨 1/ Preprint Alert!

Sex determination outcome is conserved across vertebrates (i.e. generating 2 compatible sexes) ♀️♂️

But are the cell types and gene programs behind them conserved too? 🧬

Spoiler: not really 👀

Find out in our new preprint ⬇️

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

The Earliest Known Vertebrates Had Four Eyes—and They Worked a Lot Like Ours Do, New Research Suggests Two of those eyes may have evolved into a part of the brain called the pineal gland

Dorks

📣 Call for Abstracts!
Working on sex chromosomes? Join us at SMBE 2026 in Copenhagen (28 June–2 July). All taxa, systems, and approaches welcome!
⏰ Deadline: 3 Feb 2026
👉 smbe2026.org/abstracts/

Back from the amazing #sesbe2026 meeting, congrats to @paucarazo.bsky.social & the other organizers!
Excellent science, meeting colleagues & sharing our work with a great talk by @biomanu1998.bsky.social
SESBE is the place to be!
@irbio-ub.bsky.social @sesbe-org.bsky.social @geneticsub.bsky.social

Back in BCN after an great week in Valencia, 1st meeting of #EvoDevOmics network with @mirimiam.bsky.social @anariesgo.bsky.social @evodevogenomeub.bsky.social @patrialvarezcam.bsky.social @jpascualanaya.bsky.social @phylobrain.bsky.social @fany-real.bsky.social @imaeso.bsky.social & Nuria Flames

1st #EvoDevOmics meeting🍊
What a terrific team
@isabelalmudi.bsky.social @mirimiam.bsky.social @anariesgo.bsky.social @patrialvarezcam.bsky.social @jpascualanaya.bsky.social @phylobrain.bsky.social @fany-real.bsky.social Núria🔥 Nacho and more.
What great hosts🥘 @hector-escriva.bsky.social & Steph

Ayer estuvimos presentando el primer Poster del laboratorio en el X congreso de la sociedad española de Biologia Evolutiva. #SESBE2026 @sesbe-org.bsky.social

Congratulations to @paucarazo.bsky.social and the other organizers of the #sesbe2026 meeting of the @sesbe-org.bsky.social . It has been a wonderful conference with nice talks, posters and networking, I the wonderful city of Valencia, my home town.

Great talk on venom evolution by Aida Verdes at #SESBE2026. @sesbe-org.bsky.social

huge congrats!

Congrats Roberto!

congrats!!

Thanks Alex!

Immune cell response to spinal cord injury in a zebrafish larva. Credit to @beckergroup.bsky.social. #ZebrafishZunday 🧪

🚨 We are hiring!
🧬 PhD Position – Genomic Architecture & Evolution
Join our team at UAB (Barcelona) in an international project
🔬 4-year FPI contract
🎓 Biology/Genetics background + Master’s + English
📅 Apply by Sept 30, 2025
📧 aurora.ruizherrera@uab.cat
🔗 grupsderecerca.uab.cat/evolgenom

Spanish EvoDevo at its best. Congrats to the team on this cool work 🥂🍾

Turns out that “deep conservation of CREs across hundreds of millions of years is far more widespread than previously recognized”

Check it out👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻

#ArticleIRBio
📄Deep conservation of cis-regulatory elements and chromatin organization in echinoderms uncover ancestral regulatory features of animal genomes

👥Magri, Marta S. @imaeso.bsky.social et al.

📕Nature Ecology & Evolution @nature_the_journal

A recent study published in Nature Ecology & Evolution shows new findings on genomic regulation mechanisms throughout evolution, project led by @imaeso.bsky.social @geneticsub.bsky.social, M Arnone, JL Gómez-Skarmeta and V Hinman.
web.ub.edu/web/actualit...

Deep conservation of cis-regulatory elements and chromatin organization in echinoderms uncover ancestral regulatory features of animal genomes - Nature Ecology & Evolution Analysis of the 3D chromatin architecture and cis-regulatory elements in a sea urchin and a sea star reveals mechanisms of 3D chromatin organization in echinoderms and the long-term evolutionary dynam...

Great news after the Christmas break! The work on the evolution of cis-regulation in echinoderms by the great Marta Magri, a PhD sibling of mine, is out in Nature Ecology and Evolution! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

The Biodiversity Cell Atlas initiative keeps growing! We're looking for a Bioinformatician to join the BCA team in Hinxton (UK).

www.linkedin.com/posts/wellco...

Independent origins of spicules reconcile paleontological and molecular evidence of sponge evolutionary history Sponges have a cryptic Ediacaran history because ancestral sponges were soft-bodied and had low fossilization potential.

Our latest: Independent origins of spicules reconcile paleontological and molecular evidence of sponge evolutionary history, led by @meleonora-rossi.bsky.social with help from friends @bristolpalaeo.bsky.social including @anariesgo.bsky.social @evopalaeo.bsky.social Davide Pisani and many others

Echinoderms as a paradigm to understand how genome organization shapes body plans and their evolution Animal morphology is dependent on where, when and which genes are turned on in the body and to what extent. In order to find out how species build their distinct body plans one needs to look genome an...

If you want to read more, take also a look at our blog on @springernature.com Research Communities: go.nature.com/45BwBUi

Exciting news to start the new year! We’re thrilled to see this work finally out in @natecoevo.nature.com, the result of a major collaboration between my lab and the labs of Veronica Hinman and Nacho Maeso, began many years ago with the dear José Luis Gómez-Skarmeta.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Deep conservation of cis-regulatory elements and chromatin organization in echinoderms uncover ancestral regulatory features of animal genomes - Nature Ecology & Evolution Analysis of the 3D chromatin architecture and cis-regulatory elements in a sea urchin and a sea star reveals mechanisms of 3D chromatin organization in echinoderms and the long-term evolutionary dynam...

I am extremely proud and happy to announce that another paper from my PhD days has just been published in @natecoevo.nature.com on evolution of genome and gene regulation thanks to all the amazing people involved.

Check the paper out at:
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

I would like to thank to all the other co-authors, this has been a long project that could have not been possible without their fantastic work!

We also found thousands of deeply conserved cis regulatory elements in echinoderms, some of them shared across different animal phyla and dating back to the Cambrian, suggesting that this type of extreme regulatory conservation is much more common than previously thought

Similar to other animals, sea star and sea urchin genomes are also organized into TAD-like structures. But these TADs do not have the CTCF motif orientation pattern typically found in vertebrates, suggesting that CTCF-mediated loop formation could be a novelty of the vertebrate or chordate lineage