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/...

TAD boundaries and gene activity are uncoupled Single-cell analysis fails to find a functional link between the organization of chromatin domain organization and gene activity.

"We find that while TAD boundaries pair more frequently than non-boundary regions, these interactions are infrequent and are uncorrelated with transcriptional activity of genes within the TAD"

elifesciences.org/articles/110...

Genome expansions and regulatory contact entanglement help preserve ancestral metazoan synteny www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.04...

Novel cell and tissue dynamics drive the unusual biology of the catch tentacle, an inducible organ of aggression found in the sea anemone Metridium senile www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.04...

What is the PhD actually for? A response to Prachee’s “Free the PhD”, and a critique of my own work

What is the PhD actually for, especially now that AI can do increasingly more of what we train scientists to do? compbiologist.substack.com/p/what-is-th...

A response to @pracheeac.bsky.social's thought-provoking essay "Free the PhD".

Epithelial cell extrusion was first described by Jody Rosenblatt in 2001 as a key mechanism removing cells from epithelia while preserving barrier integrity and homeostasis 🗝

🔗 bsky.app/profile/epim...

Earlier thread for more:
bsky.app/profile/epim...

🧵2/9

Two Post-doctoral Positions Available: Lobsters & Biofouling Post-doctoral Position #1: Foraging behaviour of American Lobster and development of alternative baits for the fishery This project aims to better understand foraging responses of the American lobs…

Join the Wyeth lab as a postdoc. He’s a wonderful guy! #lobster #biofouling @stfx-university.bsky.social

wyethlab.ca/2026/02/11/t...

Gladys Mae West obituary: mathematician who pioneered GPS technology She made key contributions to US cold-war science despite facing huge barriers as a Black woman.

No joke: I got angry hate mail today for writing an obituary of a Black woman scientist—because the person felt she did didn’t deserve the recognition.

Which just makes me want to share it again: www.nature.com/articles/d41...

a daring approach: looking at LUCA's ancestors, i.e. pre-darwinian evolution. but not surprising it's coming from @kacarlab.bsky.social 👏
glad to see Iwabe et al. (1989) among the references (blew my mind when it came out >30 y ago)

Computer science needs more biologists. They are used to:
- study systems that are mindbogglingly complex and complicated,
- use reductionism to study and describe such systems, using famously clumsy and fiddly tools to collect noisy and incomplete data,

(1/2)

“The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.”

— Bertrand Russell

How Vaccines Actually Work Vaccines prevent disease, not infection, no matter how the word "vaccine" is defined

How Vaccines Actually Work
Vaccines prevent disease, not infection, no matter how the word "vaccine" is defined
rasmussenretorts.substack.com/p/how-vaccin...

Maybe we should revise policies that push postdocs out of academic research too early. It selects for early achievers that remain in one field and risks losing the highest impact people

Thrilled to share the preprint from my PhD! 🥳 Where I characterised epithelial cell extrusion in a sea anemone
🔗 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
Big thanks to my supervisor @prhsteinmetz.bsky.social and coauthors @noahbruderer.bsky.social @lionlchristiaen.bsky.social at🇳🇴 @msarscentre.bsky.social ⬇️🧵

Beautiful work Inés!

Congrats to Nadja and the @tessmarraiblelabs.bsky.social. Check out their cool new work (featuring a small sketch I made)!

NEW pub in @science.org 🥳

Is it sponges (panels A & B) or comb jellies (C & D) that root the animal tree of life?

For over 15 years, #phylogenomic studies have been divided.

We provide new evidence suggesting that...

🔗: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Beautiful work Periklis!

My introductory spiel for newcomers to scTranscriptomics is now part of the public domain: link.springer.com/content/pdf/...

You still have one week to apply to this position! Take your chance to do your postdoc on alien critters 🐙🦑 in a vibrant yet cosy - walkable!- town in Europe. Pls RT

Becoming a scientist in the US just got a lot harder Unbeknownst to the general public, a generation of scientists is being sheared away as the Trump administration takes a chainsaw to federal…

In the span of just three months, the US has ceded our leadership in science and innovation that took generations to build. As a result, we are less prepared to meet emerging challenges and leverage science to solve society’s most pressing problems.
500womenscientists.medium.com/becoming-a-s...

Ultimate paths of least resistance: Intrinsically disordered links as developmental resets in regulatory protein networks www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.03....

Diversity and evolution of chromatin regulatory states across eukaryotes www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.03....

Sea anemone development challenges long-held views on the evolution of germ layer and body axis formation For over twenty years, scientists thought they had understood the role of β-catenin in early animal development. β-Catenin, a key molecular signal, was believed to have the same fundamental function a...

Sea anemone development challenges long-held views on the evolution of germ layer and body axis formation
A study by researchers at the Uni Vienna published in @naturecomms.bsky.social has uncovered a surprising difference in how β-catenin functions in sea anemones compared to other animals. #evosky

We offer three new positions to join BCA Phase 0:
1. A full-stack developer to work on the BCA database with @ebi.embl.org
2. A senior research technician to develop sc methods
3. A bioinformatician to analyze new atlases with @sangerinstitute.bsky.social

Details below.

Please, share and repost.

Ectopic head regeneration after nervous system ablation in a sea anemone Some animals are able to regenerate all missing cell types and large body parts after bisection, a phenomenon called whole-body regeneration. Many of these animals regenerate the correct tissues and s...

We posted our surprising finding that removal of the nervous system in Nematostella always leads to the regeneration of a second head.

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Fantastic! Great work you guys

1/4 🚨 a brand new @biorxiv preprint from the lab! We charcterized both transcriptionally, morphologically and functionally (phagocytosis) immune cells from #Nematostella! We are convinced that our data supports the existence of such specialized cells! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
🧵

Banner for the SY-Stem meeting in Vienna, Austria, March 12-14, 2025

#SYStem2025 :: Vienna, March 12-14 :: #StemCell niches | Deterministic v. stochastic decisions | Germline | Stem cell model systems | #Epigenetics & imprinting | Cell biology of Stem Cells | Transitioning Stem Cells into the clinic; For oral presentations, register by Jan 15! www.sy-stem.org

A phylogenetic approach to comparative genomics Nature Reviews Genetics - Controlling for phylogeny is essential in comparative genomics studies, because species, genomes and genes are not independent data points within statistical tests. The...

Our review is out in Nature Reviews Genetics! rdcu.be/d5AY2

We show how phylogeny-based methods can resolve the problem of non-independence in genomic datasets.

These methods must be considered an essential part of the comparative genomics toolkit.

@lauriebelch.bsky.social @stuwest.bsky.social