Comparative analysis of transposable elements in jellyfish and hydroid species (Cnidaria: Medusozoa) www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.04...

✨ Excited to host invited speaker Leslie Babonis at #2026SDB in Las Vegas! 🎰🃏 Her research uncovers how evolutionary innovations shape developmental biology, with a focus on cell type diversity and the origins of complex traits. 🧬🌊🔬✨ #devbio

Repetitive landscape graphs showing recent and ancient repetitive element expansions. Results show variable curves.

The most interesting finding was the amount of variation in the repetitive landscape graphs. There was variation between groups, within genus, and even within species!

Figure with 3 panels. A is a cladogram of medusozoa. B has a bar graph of total genome size with dark gray denoting TE content. C. Proportion of repetitive elements belonging to the major families.

There was no obvious TE expansions by clade, but many DNA transposons

This project began as an idea for a review paper on repetitive elements in cnidarians. I asked Ayanna to find a representative of some of the major groups to see if there were any signals by group, but she took the project and expanded it. She incorporated a new technique to identify many “unknown”

🚨New PrePrint🚨
I am excited to share this comparative analysis of transposable elements in medusozoa genomes led by graduate student Ayanna Mays 🧬🧪

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

This week's #MicroscopyMonday shows the early pupal optic lobe in the fruit fly. 🪰 Some newborn #neurons had key developmental signals altered to understand the effect on the type of neurons they become. 🧠 (Özel Lab)

I am hiring a postdoc for scRNA-seq research in Lund, Sweden on the visual systems of non-model inverts as part of an ERC project on the evolution and ecology of advanced color and polarization vision. Apply here or share the link with someone who may be interested! 🧪

lu.varbi.com/en/what:job/...

Still accepting applicants for a postdoc! Here's the evoldir link if you're interested:
evol.mcmaster.ca/brian/evoldi...

Please reach out! Share with a friend!

Early Career Faculty Program | Freeman Hrabowski Scholars | HHMI The Freeman Hrabowski Scholars Program offers comprehensive support to outstanding early career faculty committed to scientific excellence in their own research, and to fostering labs that expand the ...

@hhmi-science.bsky.social's
#FreemanHrabowski Scholars Program offers early career faculty up to $10M over 10 yrs, plus salary & benefits

Stable, sustained support can transform your career:

Senior Postdoc? This year's competition has a program for you too. Applications open 11/3! bit.ly/4vhC0LA

These images show live embryos of animals (jellyfish, crustacean, worm, sea urchin, sea squirt, beetle) and one of animals closest single-celled relatives. They were captured taking advantage of fluorescent proteins localised on the outer membrane of cells, allowing us to observe cell outlines. 1/9

Spatial, temporal and Notch determination of terminal selector expression controls neuronal cell fate in the Drosophila optic lobe - Nature Neuroscience The authors characterized the spatial origin of Drosophila medulla neurons, completing their previous characterization of the temporal and Notch origins of these neurons and allowing them to correlate...

Félix Simon's paper is out in its final form 😍
When we got into (extreme) detail in the temporal and spatial patterning of neuroblasts, Félix asked a simple question "sure, but how does this translate into neuronal cell fate?". www.nature.com/articles/s41...

One of the hard things about being a PI is when you have possible good news to share and celebrate with the lab but you have to wait until it’s official #chismosa #bureaucracy

Happening today at 12pm EST - join us for an exciting Zone 3 (Americas) webinar focused on Hydroid regeneration! More information and zoom links can be found at: isrbio.org/webinars

We know many fish and amphibians can regenerate the heart. How about reptiles? A landmark paper from @vickaryouslab.bsky.social to fill this gap. Glad to be a part of this study. @isrbio.bsky.social @evodevopanam.bsky.social @socdevbio.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Before the East African Radiation: Sex Chromosome Systems in Basal Haplotilapiine Cichlids Abstract. Cichlid fishes have undergone an extraordinary diversification in East Africa. They also have a high rate of sex chromosome turnover. This clade

Behrens et al. investigate the evolution of sex chromosomes in the ancestors of the lacustrine radiations of East African cichlids, showing slower sex chromosome turnover than in the rapidly diversifying haplochromines.

🔗 doi.org/10.1093/gbe/evaf191

#genome #evolution #cichlids

I am excited to share these results that are now published. Lab researcher Kelso Cochran solved a big problem in the field and optimized a protocol to increase Hydra egg yield in the lab.

www.frontiersin.org/journals/eco...

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...

😱 Super excited to be named as a Guggenheim Fellow!! 😱

I am using it to organize my R code. A reviewer recommended it for transparency and reproducibility. To be honest my R scripts are a mess and the ## notes are not very helpful to other. But Quarto has the notes and the executable block of code plus the figures. an alternative to RMarkdown

I just discovered Quarto (genuine thanks to reviewer 2) and I LOVE IT so much. Anyone who is analyzing data and is not using it should be using it. I sent a general slack message to my lab to start using it immediately. #science #data #bioinformatics

Genomic rearrangement of the Hox cluster in a dung beetle species with derived cephalic horn morphology

#DBfeature #InHoxWeTrust 🪲

Divergent Hox cluster arrangement in horned beetles retain conserved embryonic and adult expression patterns.

by Erica Nadolski, Isabel Manley, Sukhmani Gill, Armin Moczek @ericanadolski.bsky.social

tinyurl.com/ycxabrh5

Evolution Conference Information Where to find the link to submit your in-person talk, virtual talk, or poster.  --------------> Note: You must register and pay for the meeting before these links will show up on your personal...

Have you registered for #Evol2026? Talk submission for both in person and virtual talks closes on Wednesday! Already registered? Learn how to submit your talk here: www.evolutionmeetings.org/instructions...

Look at the women at NASA.

They are the ones pushing the boundaries of science, solving problems most people can’t even understand, and carrying this country forward, while our politicians right now posture and stumble through talking points.

And they are doing it all with joy.👇

CREsted is finally out! You can find the article, together with a summarizing Research Briefing, in thread. 🦎

This approach increased egg yield from ~7 to 35%
This paves the way for working towards optimizing transgenic techniques

She began to notice that in this egg-capable (KSO) dishes many more eggs appeared regularly. Exciting and promising so we designed an experiment after many months of her trialing different feeding techniques to test whether this strain resulted in more egg production and it did!

Once Kelso saw the first egg I asked her to isolate the “female” to see if similar to its close relative Hydra oligactis this polyp would age. Surprisingly, we found that the polyp seemed healthy and began to reproduce asexually by budding. Kelso then established a population o“females”

When I hired Kelso her first task was to figure out how to keep our Hydra polyps alive and then to try different stimuli to trigger oogenesis in a predictable manner. The literature about how to do this was vague and many Hydra labs were seeing mostly masculinization.