Image of MRes Student Annabelle Knutson.
This parasitic plant, Lathraea clandestina, is being studied by MRes student Annabelle Knutson, as part of our work on genome duplication in #WGDip.
Lathraea experienced a genome duplication🧬 & this may have facilitated its parasitic adaptations!
#wildflower #parasiticplant #WildflowerHour 🧪
Image of Lathraea clandestina (Purple Toothwort). A small purple plant with no leaves.
Image of Lathraea clandestina (Purple Toothwort). A large cluster of small purple plants with no leaves at the base of a tree.
Can you identify this unusual purple-flowered plant in bloom at the @thebotanics.bsky.social?🔎🪻
This plant has no leaves & cannot photosynthesise. It's an important early spring flower, especially for bees🐝. Its nectar is high in ammonia, making it unsavoury for other pollinators & nectar robbers.
This time last year marked the beginning of the #WGDip project! 🥳
Are you interested in eukaryotic evolution & whole genome duplication? So are we!
Find out more about who we are and what we are doing on our website: www.rediploidisation.org
🧪🧬 @ukri.org #BBSRC #sLoLa
Want to hear more from the #WGDip team members?
Head over to our website to watch the full video series. 🎥🗣️💬
www.rediploidisation.org/video-files
@ukri.org #BBSRC #sLoLa
Hmmm... perhaps a Hazel? 🔍👀
Either way, very cool, thank you for sharing!
...paper production📃, & medicine💊. Ecologically, they’re powerful allies in environmental restoration, helping absorb pollutants & stabilise riverbanks.
From practical uses to protecting ecosystems, willows show how vital woodlands are to both people & the environment.
🌱🧪#InternationalDayofForests
🌳🌲Today we celebrate #InternationalForestDay & their incredible diversity!🌲🌳
Willows (Salicaceae) are a remarkable family - with a well-documented ancestral WGD event - that includes trees with huge value for people & the planet. For centuries, willows have been used in basket weaving🧺, ...
Hear from Jack, a Science Engagement Manager at the Wellcome Sanger Institute. He hopes that #WGDip will engage the public with the DNA data revolution & explain why large-scale datasets are key to answering some of science’s toughest questions! 🧬🌍
@sangerinstitute.bsky.social
Hear what impact Peter hopes #WGDip will have on the science community and on our understanding of what happens following a whole genome duplication!
@peterhox.bsky.social
Hear why Aoife is excited to be working as part of the #WGDip team. Aoife is a project partner lead from Trinity College Dublin.
🌟Tell us what excites you about your work!🌟
@tcddublin.bsky.social
Hear what impact Ilia hopes #WGDip will have on the science community and on our understanding of evolution! She is a project co-lead from the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.
🌟How do you see WGDip impacting your research?🌟
@biggenomes.bsky.social
@rbgkew.bsky.social
🧪A recent article in Science Advances revisits long-debated WGD events during early seed plant evolution. Using dosage-sensitive genes as markers of WGD, the authors found little support for an angiosperm-specific WGD, and strong evidence for a single WGD shared by all seed plants.
buff.ly/W0hQYno
Hear about Dearbhaile's role in #WGDip, a Post-doc from the University of Oxford.
🌟Tell us what your typical day looks like!🌟
@dervc.bsky.social
@ox.ac.uk
Image showing the WGDip logo being projected from a film camera. With the title Vied Files below.
The #WGDip team has created videos spotlighting our amazing researchers and team members. We asked about their roles, what excites them, and the impact they hope WGDip will have. Stay tuned over the coming weeks and check in regularly to hear their stories!
This image shows 7 photos taken on during WGDip's tour of Wellcome Genome Institution campus. Photos include images of the team walking around campus (just before it rained!), looking at the public engagement room, reading part of the printed human genome, as well at looking at previous methods for sequencing.
As part of our sLoLa project meeting, the #WGDip team got a tour of the beautiful Wellcome Sanger Campus 🌿🧬Great science, great company, and an inspiring place to talk all things whole-genome duplication!
@sangerinstitute.bsky.social
@ukri.org
The #WGDip team kicked off 2026 with an in-person meeting hosted at the Wellcome Genome Campus✨. We had a fun, science-packed two days that strongly advanced our plans to work together across both our research and science outreach plans - it's going to be an exciting year!
Image of Andrea Mazgaleva
📢Meet the team!
Andrea Mazgaleva is a Project Coordinator in the Tree of Life Programme. For the #WGDip project, Andrea will be overseeing the production of 15 chromosome-level reference genomes through the ToL pipeline. 🧬💻
🧪New preprint from WGDip lead Dan Macqueen with collaborators from the AQUA-FAANG project www.aqua-faang.eu, including WGDip team member Manu Kumar Gundappa. Exploring regulatory evolution following the autotetraploid WGD ancestral to salmonids (featuring rediploidization!) doi.org/10.64898/202...
We are 8 months into the sLoLa-funded #WGDip project!
Find out more about our project and the work we have been doing on our website:
www.rediploidisation.org
From all of us on the #WGDip team, we’re wishing you a joyful, restful, and cosy holiday season ❄️🎄
We can’t wait to see what the year ahead has in store! 🎉
Image of Finn McHale
📢Meet the team!
Finn McHale is a Research Assistant from the University of Oxford. His recent Master's project investigated WGD of snails and slugs!🐌 Now he's looking for signs of delayed rediploidisation in other invertebrate genomes with #WGDip
Read Finn's paper here:📝
doi.org/10.1002/jez....
Congratulations to team members @phil-donoghue.bsky.social, @tweethinking.bsky.social, & @ssolo.bsky.social for their newly published study on the process of eukaryogenesis.
We hope this framework will resolve historical events in individual gene families for the #WGDip project. 🧪🧬
Image of Dr. Andrew Lloyd
#WGDip hosted @andrewhmlloyd.bsky.social (U. of Aberystwyth), who discussed the evolution of meiotic stability after polyploidisation. Many cellular processes must coordinate so that each cell receives the proper chromosomes during division. Populations can evolve to get better at this over time!
Image of Dan Macqueen presenting at the EuroFAANG RI final conference.
WGDip project lead Dan Macqueen joined the #EuroFaang Research Infrastructure final conference (eurofaang.eu). He introduced #WGDip, explaining the importance of rediploidization in salmonids (and across the tree of life), and reflected on current opportunities and barriers in comparative genomics 🧪
Come and do a PhD on 'Genome duplication, extinction and diversification in the evolution of flowering plants' with myself @jameswclark.bsky.social and Ilia Leitch @bristolpalaeo.bsky.social and join the @wgdip.bsky.social studying rediploidisation. Apply: tinyurl.com/26pmfvvc by Jan 8
📢New Opportunity🧪
Are you interested in studying how whole genome duplication has shaped the evolution of grasses? Looking for a PhD? Then check out this great opportunity to join #WGDip with some of our fantastic researchers at the Universities of Bath & Bristol!
Image of Dr. Tom Lewin
📢Meet the team!
Dr. Tom Lewin is a post-doc from the University of Oxford. Recently returning from his research in Taiwan on marine invertebrates, @tomlewin.bsky.social will be focusing on understudied animal phyla as part of the #WGDip project
Find out more about his research 🪸:
shorturl.at/A5lHn
Genome duplication, innovation and macroevolution in grasses - with myself, @phil-donoghue.bsky.social and Tom Williams. bpb-eu-w2.wpmucdn.com/blogs.bristo...
A great chance to get involved with @wgdip.bsky.social via the SWBioDTP. Please apply here: www.swbio.ac.uk/programme/ho...
📝New Publication🧪
Congratulations to team member Alex Twyford for his review article with colleagues, exploring the concept of a "polyploid continuum" which expands upon the current binary classification of autopolyploids or allopolyploids!
doi.org/10.1002/ajb2...
#WGDip
@botsocamerica.bsky.social
Image of Róisín Long
📢Meet the team!
Róisín Long is a PhD student with Prof.Aoife McLysaght at Trinity College Dublin. This comes after completing an undergrad in Human Genetics at TCD. Her PhD research focuses on rediploidisation following WGD in vertebrates. She's excited to be involved in public engagement for #WGDip
