Marie traveled to the beautiful Hamburg to attend this year’s Graduate Meeting of the Evolutionary Biology Section of the DZG. Many thanks to the organizers for putting together such a nice meeting, featuring great talks and networking opportunities! 🧬☀️
This year, our group traveled to Diever for our retreat.
Alongside a series of great talks focused on selection, we enjoyed fun activities like an escape room 👽🧪 and axe throwing 🪓.
We also made use of the sunny weather with hikes through the beautiful nature surrounding Diever. ☀️🌳
New paper! 📢
The authors used droplet microfluidics to study aryl sulfatases and their ancestors. They show higher mutation rates gave a wider distribution of active variants but fewer improved variants overall and highlight the need to test diverse mutagenesis regimes.
doi.org/10.1039/D5AN00865D
🚨 New paper in GBE! 🚨
This study analyzes two high-quality Cryptocercus genomes, the sister group to all termites, to investigate the transition to subsociality and wood-feeding (xylophagy) in Blattodea. 🪳
Check it out here:
doi.org/10.1093/gbe/...
Check out our new review in Nature Reviews Genetics on de novo emerged genes and proteins. How they emerge, are lost and persist - and how de novo emerged proteins relate to randomized proteins! @bornberglab.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/s41...
New review out in Nat Rev Genet: Emergence & evolution of protein-coding de novo genes by Erich and Lars Eicholt @lacholt.bsky.social. How non-coding DNA becomes translated, persists or is lost in populations, and can yield structured/functional proteins—plus methods & open questions! rdcu.be/e09SM
🧬 What does the starting material from which genes could emerge #denovo look like?
🌱 We used #RiboSeq to investigate the landscape of translated de novo ORFs in 3 #Arabidopsis species, and how they might be linked to gene birth!
📝 Check out our preprint here:
doi.org/10.1101/2025...
📢🪳 New paper alert!
Former group members Alina and Mark contributed to a new study just published in Nature Communications. The team generated 47 new high-quality genomes from termites and cockroaches, filling a major gap in available data.
Check out the paper here: www.nature.com/articles/s41...
The symposium concluded on a festive note with our annual IEB Christmas party.🎄🎉 (2/2)
The IEB turned 20!🎉 We celebrated with an anniversary symposium with talks from many alumni, including several alumni from our group: @january3.github.io , Mark Harrison,
@ahuylmans.bsky.social , Bertrand Fouks, and
@sgrath.bsky.social . It was great to reconnect with many familiar faces. (1/2)😊
Berndjan and Alina both successfully defended their PhDs this week. Berndjan worked on “Probing the evolvability of ancestral and extant sulfatases using fluorescence-activated droplet sorting (FADS)”. Alina looked at the “Genomic basis of sociality in order Blattodea”. Big congrats!🥳🎓🧫🪳
Last week, we wrapped up our Volkswagen Foundation–funded project with a wonderful final meeting in Uppsala, hosted by Ylva Ivarsson’s group. The photo shows members of our lab together with colleagues from the groups of @ivarssonlab.bsky.social , @hlouchova-lab.bsky.social and Florian Hollfelder.
Erich traveled to Berlin for the Schering Prize award ceremony, where he delivered the laudatio for Agnes Toth-Petroczy, this year’s recipient of the Schering Young Investigator Award. Warm congratulations to her!
Photo credits: Schering Stiftung/Michael Setzpfandt
Postdoctoral Research Associates are sought for the GEvol project on evolutionary genomics. Candidates should have programming and data analysis skills. More info: https://g-evol.uni-muenster.de/open-positions/ #postdoc
📢 Job alert: Post-Doc Position in the project "Functional annotation of genomic🧬 innovations in a densely populated clade🪰 with deep learning 💻" Join the GEvol community in a collaborative project between @bornberglab.bsky.social and @katharinahoff.bsky.social lab.
👉 bornberglab.org/post-doc-pos...
🧩 Thrilled to share our new paper in @genomebiolevol.bsky.social !
We present a comprehensive review of de novo gene emergence — providing a classification of current detection methods and a roadmap for addressing major challenges in the field of gene birth from non-genic sequences.
🚀We’re excited to share our new paper in Bioinformatics!
We introduce a user-friendly toolkit that implements our novel DeNoFo file-format for standardised annotation of de novo gene detection workflows — enabling reproducible methodology descriptions and easier dataset comparison across studies.
🎉We are happy to announce that our wonderful GEvol SPP will be funded by @dfg.de for another 3 years. Included are 17 great projects all over Germany with amazing people. You want to be part of this fantastic community? Soon you can find new PhD/Post-Doc positions here & on our website. Stay tuned🎉
The DeNoFo format & toolkit for annotating, assessing and comparing the tools and tresholds used in studies of de novo evolved genes is out now in Bioinformatics! Great effort led by @drdomain.bsky.social and Anna Grandchamp!
academic.oup.com/bioinformati...
We are in Bluesky and we are happy to share our two last consortium publications: the DrosEU expanded DEST dataset and a Continent-wide study of phenotypic differentiation among European #Drosophila melanogaster populations (1/7)
The next Protein Structure Evolution Seminar will be given by Stephen Fried (JHU):
Title: “Who Cares About Protein Refolding Anyway?: Why Some Microbes Do and Others Don’t”
Date: October 14th, 5 pm CET
Registration link: tinyurl.com/prose-seminar2
molecules that might help fight African Sleeping sickness by targeting the ERK8 protein, looking for molecules that were preferentially bound by the human or parasite ortholog. Sildenafil, aka viagra, showed some selectivity (among others). (2/2)
New Paper Alert! Our group member Matthew Merski published a paper about new potential therapeutic leads against the parasite Trypanosoma brucei, causing the African Sleeping sickness. They used molecular docking on known, approved (FDA) drugs to find (1/2)
journals.plos.org/plosntds/art...
We had a great time at the Long Night of Insects at the LWL Museum of Natural History in Münster! From watching a cockroach race to exploring and ant farm and info booths there was much to discover. Marie even joined the science slam. What a great way to wrap up our @gevol.bsky.social meeting!🐜✨🪰🪳
Many thanks to all GEvol members for a truly wonderful annual meeting. It was really great to catch up with you all again.
Erich and Marie travelled to Barcelona for #ESEB2025. Erich gave two talks: one exploring de novo and random proteins, and another discussing gene family losses in slave-maker ants. Marie presented her work on neORF emergence in Drosophila at Symposium 29, organised by @gevol.bsky.social. 🧬🪰🐜
Lots of inspiring talks & posters at our GEvol symposium at #ESEB2025 yesterday!
Thanks to everyone who presented, especially our invited speakers @ahuylmans.bsky.social & @rmwaterhouse.bsky.social. From GEvol, Marie Lebherz, Elisa Israel and Barbara Feldmeyer gave talks about their work. (1/2)
Erich travelled to Marseilles this week and visited former postdocs, now PIs, Anna Grandchamp and Nicolas Terrapon. Great to catch up with both of them! ☀️
