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
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
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. 🧬💻
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 🧪
📢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
📝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
Image of Dr. Anthony Redmond
📢Meet the team!
Dr. Anthony Redmond is a #WGDip project partner from the University College Dublin. His research focuses on the immune system, devising phylogenomic approaches to resolve the tree of life, & defining the role of gene & genome duplication in evolution
Read more:🧬
shorturl.at/d3brV
Image of Molly Carter
📢Meet the team!
Molly Carter is the Project Manager of the Darwin Tree of Life project. She’ll support the delivery of chromosomal-level assemblies of the giant genomes for the #WGDip project! She used to be a natural sciences museum curator and loves all manner of arthropods!🕷️🐛
Image of Dr. Manu Kumar Gundappa.
📢Meet the team!
Dr. Manu Kumar Gundappa is a #WGDip Project Partner from Wageningen University & Research. Using fish as a model system, his research focuses on developing comparative & functional genomic approaches to explore fundamental biological questions.
Find out more:🐟
shorturl.at/OC8OU
Image of Dr. Morgane Milin
📢Meet the team!
Dr. Morgane Milin is a post-doc at the University of Edinburgh. Her past research has focused on recurrent polyploidy and diploidization, looking to detect and date WGD events in grasses. As part of this work, she developed a bioinformatics tool called WGD_Tracker.🌾💻
#WGDip
Image of a presentation titled "Whole Genome Duplicatio, diploidisation and macroevolution in land plants". By Dr. James Clark.
Image of presentation "Rediplopidisation: Uncoding the evolutionary potential of whole genome duplication". By Prof. Aoife McLysaght
Crowd at Evolution after whole genome duplication: transformative advances and new directions symposium
The WGDip team had a great first day at #ESEB2025!
It was great to see everyone who attended our symposium yesterday on “Evolution after whole genome duplication: transformative advances and new directions” 💬🧬
Still an exciting week ahead for all!🤗
#WGDip @eseb2025.bsky.social
Team photo of WGDip consortium members.
We held the first (mostly) in person meeting of the WGDip project. It was a great opportunity to foster discourse across the consortium and align our goals for the project. We are all eager to get started and delve into whole genome duplication and rediploidisation in eukaryotic evolution!☀️ 🌍
#WGDip
Image of Dr. Emily Haley.
📢Meet the team!
Dr. Emily Haley is returning to the University of Edinburgh as a post-doctoral researcher at the School of Biological Sciences. She will be using bioinformatic analyses to explore the occurrence of rediploidisation, focussing on plants.🧬🪻
#WGDip
Taylor, @roseruizdaniels.bsky.social & Macqueen use single-nucleus RNAseq of salmon liver to show cell-specific expression divergence of thousands of gene duplicates, showing the diverse evolutionary pressures that followed whole-genome duplication.
🔗 doi.org/10.1093/gbe/evaf076
#genome #WGDip
📝 New Publication 🧪
Congratulations to team members Richard Taylor and Dan Macqueen for their paper exploring the functional and evolutionary outcomes of whole genome duplication using single cell transcriptomics!
@genomebiolevol.bsky.social
#WGDip
academic.oup.com/gbe/advance-...
