Rebecca Chen

📢 Call for registrations - Science:TBD
📍 Leipzig | 3–4 March 2026

Join us for an inspiring lineup of keynotes:
⭐Sheena F. Bartscherer
⭐Alice Hughes @achughes.bsky.social
⭐Wolfgang Forstmeier
⭐Ulrich Dirnagl
⭐Dietram A. Scheufele @dietram.bsky.social

Register now: www.idiv.de/science-tbd

The third chapter of my PhD is now published in Current Biology! 🥳 We predicted deleterious mutations to understand their effects on survival, and found that viability selection predominantly targets evolutionarily conserved mutations in exons. Read all about it here! doi.org/10.1016/j.cu...

ESEB 2025 Four of our lab members presented their work at the Congress of the European Society for Evolutionary Biology (ESEB 2025) in Barcelona in August. Beril presented a pilot study linked to her multi-p…

DNA as street decoration? Of course! Our very own @k-hench.bsky.social made some beautiful pictures of the @eseb2025.bsky.social street decorations at the “Festes de Gràcia”.

Check out some of his pictures and read more about why we were there: thehoffmanlab.com/2025/09/05/e...

The genome and epigenome are not independent, so why analyse them separately? 🤔 Come and discuss our hypotheses on the interplay between deleterious mutations and epigenetic mechanisms today with @rebeccachen.bsky.social at #ESEB2025 poster number 85! 🧪🧬

Getting excited for @eseb2025.bsky.social next week! Come listen to my talk on mutation load published earlier this week in NEE (Tues 2 pm, meeting room 131), and/or chat with me about the interplay between deleterious mutations and epigenetics at poster session 3 (Thurs 5-7 pm, P03.085) 🔬🧬🐥

Thanks for sharing! 🙌

Schädliche Gene mindern den Paarungserfolg bei Birkhühnern Die Studie eines Forschungsteams unter der Leitung der Biologin Rebecca Chen wurde im Fachjournal Nature Ecology & Evolution veröffentlicht.

Check out the press release on the University Bielefeld website here! aktuell.uni-bielefeld.de/2025/08/11/s...

Thank you! 😊

Predicted deleterious mutations reveal the genetic architecture of male reproductive success in a lekking bird Nature Ecology & Evolution - Analysis of whole genomes and life-history data of male black grouse shows that deleterious mutations, especially those in promotors, reduce lifetime reproductive...

The core chapter of my PhD has now been published in Nature E&E! 🧬🥳

In this paper, we investigate whether predicted deleterious mutations reduce fitness and if so, how? Do heterozygous mutations also contribute? And are non-coding mutations more deleterious?

Read all about it here: rdcu.be/eAcM5

Do you work on mutation load? 🔬🧬 Check out our new manuscript where we show that early-life viability selection primarily targets exonic mutations, in contrast to sexual selection which acts on mutations in promoters! 🧑‍🔬

Pre-print is available now: dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn... 🧪 #evolution #popgen

👏👏

EvoBio Crash Course 2025 | Registration Form The fourth edition of the EvoBio Crash Course has opened registration and we are very happy to have you! We are focusing on delivering a rich course on the basics of evolutionary biology so that stude...

There is still lots of time to sign up for our 2025 edition of the #EvoBioCC 🥳💚✨

It is a FREE, online course in Evolutionary Biology, made by students and for students! Please share widely and don't forget to register! 💚💚💚

docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

You can read the full article here! onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/... Our article is published as part of the "Academic practice in ecology and evolution" series - an inspirational category of papers to advance scientific practice [4/4]

Additionally, we found that people less comfortable speaking English, those that rate their expertise lower, and women and non-binary participants have a significantly different conference experiences. We make recommendations for organising more inclusive conferences for future hosts [3/4]

We found that women asked less questions because they raised their hands less often, not because they were chosen less often by the session host. Experiments showed that session hosts cannot mitigate this gender disparity by actively selecting perceived women to start the Q&A session [2/4]

Publication alert! ✨ Our recent paper in Ecology & Evolution addresses how to make conferences more inclusive. We collected observational and experimental data during Q&A sessions at the Behaviour 2023 congress hosted by Bielefeld University, and circulated a survey among conference attendees [1/4]

@anelivb.bsky.social & @rebeccachen.bsky.social emphasise the pre-publication error correction potential of open data in our latest #SORTEEjournal club post:
https://sortee.org/blog/2025/01/23/2025_on_open_science_error_correction_and_the_imperfect_scientist/

Our preprint is out! We predicted deleterious mutations and reveal the genomic mechanisms underlying fitness variation in black grouse, a classic lekking bird. Check it out doi.org/10.21203/rs....

#genomics #popgen #genetics