Dr. Tyler A. Elliott

The contribution of transposable element insertions to genetic diversity in Aedes aegypti populations https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.10.31.685655v1

GitHub - vibhachand/slim-TE-demography-simulation-project Contribute to vibhachand/slim-TE-demography-simulation-project development by creating an account on GitHub.

Writing a letter for a great undergrad researcher in the lab. Check out their awesome GitHub repo on the transposable element simulations they wrote in slim! github.com/vibhachand/s...

Wilkinson Lab We discover and study reverse transcriptases

The Wilkinson Lab is open for science! @mskcancercenter.bsky.social

🧬We'll be finding funky new RNA biology, mainly by looking at reverse transcriptases (i.e. the Best Enzymes In The World)🧬

annnd: I'm hiring - come join! Especially postdocs and PhD students - please get in touch (NYC is great)

Recent horizontal transfer of transposable elements in Drosophila Transposable elements (TEs) are genetic elements also known as "jumping genes" that increase their copy numbers within a host through various mechanisms of transposition. TEs can also move between spe...

My awesome grad student Shashank and I wrote this paper trying to look at broader patterns of HT in TEs. HT is happening everywhere! DNA transposons jump further than other classes! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

YouTube video by The Nature of Things You’ve never seen bats like this

A fantastic experience working with the CBC as they produced a documentary for "The Nature of Things" on our annual large field research trip to study #bats. Now available to stream on CBC Gem or YouTube. Tune in for "Empire of bats" #WomeninSTEM, #academicSky 🧪 youtu.be/GhWKT2gUcks?...

Screenshot of the abstract. It reads In biology, individuals can be identified at various levels of organization, ranging from the molecular and cellular—e.g., viruses and protists—to the organismal and societal—e.g., termites and termite colonies. This nested biological hierarchy results from evolutionary transitions in individuality, in which lower-lying entities (particles) come together to form higher-level entities (collectives). These collectives are then taken to be individuals in their own right, capable of being the units on which selection acts and where adaptations may reside. Challenges arise, however, when we recognize the possibility for internal conflict, for example from selfish genetic elements within organisms. Here we develop a quantitative approach to biological individuality, in which collectives qualify as individuals to the extent that their particles possess a unity of purpose—i.e., that they possess aligned fitness interests. We propose a mathematical framework that measures the degree of individuality exhibited by organisms and other biological collectives in the presence of internal conflicts. This framework not only helps pinpoint where in the hierarchy biological individuality sits, but also identifies the level at which adaptation may reside. We develop two metrics: fitness unity, which measures the threat posed by internal conflicts to a collective individual’s status as an optimizing agent; and trait unity, which measures differences in optimal strategies among its particles. Finally, we consider cases where internal conflicts become so disruptive to individualized biological collectives so that it no longer makes sense to think of them as individuals, but instead as compromises of multiple competing particles.

*NEW PAPER*

How much of a threat are within-organism conflicts, really?

In Biology & Philosophy, @martijnschenkel.bsky.social, Manus Patten, and I present a mathematical framework to measure evolutionary individuality in the face of internal conflicts. link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Does anyone have a good academic resource for citation counting best practices? I'm trying to include some counts for a project but numbers between e.g., Google Scholar and Web of Science are wildly different (can't access Scopus through my institution).

when I worked in community services in the US, I helped fill out SNAP applications for people who'd once had successful careers as lawyers, healthcare professionals, bankers. The jaws of poverty can snap shut on anyone.

Recent horizontal transfer of transposable elements in Drosophila https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.10.30.685650v1

Yes, Halloween is the deadliest day of the year for child pedestrians—great advice from @mcbazacophd.bsky.social

(It’s also our kid’s birthday)

Do duplication-inducing elements ‘cooperate’ with genes in evolutionary arms races? A case study on cereal crop pathogenesis - BMC Plant Biology Crop improvement depends on the human ability to harness naturally- or artificially-occurring gene variants. Genomic segmental duplication can create redundant gene copies that can more freely ‘explor...

#TEsky Do duplication-inducing elements ‘cooperate’ with genes in evolutionary arms races? A case study on cereal crop pathogenesis doi.org/10.1186/s128...

Internship position open at INRAE-URGI for 2026, more details available here www.sfbi.fr/emplois/offr...

FlyBase Homepage FlyBase: a database for drosophila genetics and molecular biology

🪰 folks! Despite Harvard lawsuit outcome, FlyBase NIH grant was not released. FlyBase now runs on the public, like NPR, PBS etc. If we don't step up, it can go away! Donations site on flybase.org homepage. Note: it links to IU stock center, but its for FlyBase, see instructions. pls give+share! 2/2

1/ Ever needed to annotate TEs in a fungal genome, but didn't know where to start?

We have released #MycoMobilome, a community-focused non-redundant database of transposable element consensus sequences for the fungal kingdom, constructed from >4,000 fungal genomes!

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

Molecular mechanisms of selfish elements and strategies Certain genes, chromosomes, organelles, or entire sets of chromosomes can bias their transmission to the next generation, propagating themselves at the expense of the rest of the genome. Referred to …

(1/9) Join us in Bern, Switzerland (8–11 Feb 2026) for our EMBO Workshop on Molecular Mechanisms of Selfish Elements and Strategies!

Organized with Tanja Schwander, Laura Ross (@laurarossevo.bsky.social) and Axel Imhof.

meetings.embo.org/event/26-sel...

#EMBOselfishElements #EMBOevents

Young Canadians accuse the Canada Pension Plan of mismanaging climate risks In lawsuit filed Monday, four young Canadians allege the Canada Pension Plan is mismanaging their retirement savings by underestimating climate-related financial risks — the first legal challenge of i...

In lawsuit filed Monday, four young Canadians allege the Canada Pension Plan is mismanaging their retirement savings by underestimating climate-related financial risks — the first legal challenge of its kind. www.nationalobserver.com/2025/10/27/n...

This is the second part of the work we covered here, highlighting that CO2 is the dominant forcer in temperature and sea level changes during ice age cycles.

(It's also a great chance for others to cover; this has not been widely reported. There's even an old ice core now that can test this!)

‘Garth Marenghi’s Skull Flusher’ ep 1 is now LIVE.

Horror Master GARTH MARENGHI flushes the creative skull of Fellow Horror Master MIKE FLANAGAN.

m.youtube.com/@TheGarthMar...

Rats filmed snatching bats from air for first time Stunning hunting behaviour captured in German cave

New - my first piece for @science.org !

Absolutely crazy footage of rat behaviour in Germany.

Rats filmed snatching bats from air for first time | Science | AAAS share.google/WAsAIQ8j0MKp...

The Palestine Exception in Science (opinion) A small act in recognition of Palestinian humanity during a scientific presentation should not have been met with a reprimand.

Thanks to @insidehighered.com for publishing my perspective about being reprimanded by the Gordon Research conference after my display of empathy for Palestinian victims of genocide.
www.insidehighered.com/opinion/view...

Nematode telomerase RNA hitchhikes on introns of germline–up-regulated genes Telomerase is a ribonucleoprotein complex that elongates telomeric DNA, ensuring germline immortality. In this study, we identified the Caenorhabditis elegans telomerase RNA component 1 (terc-1), as t...

"Our findings uncovered a species survival strategy in which telomerase RNA extends telomeres for the next generation by hitchhiking on introns of germline-expressed genes." 🤯
#Celegans 🧪

[2026] – Endogenous retroviruses in human embryogenesis

My lab is seeking two PhD candidates to investigate the function and regulation of endogenous retroviruses in the early stages of human development 🦠👩‍🔬. Apply through the International Max Planck Research School (IMPRS) program: www.molgen.mpg.de/IMPRS/applic.... www.molgen.mpg.de/5094682/Fuey...

A global coral phylogeny reveals resilience and vulnerability through deep time - Nature The most recent common ancestor of the stony coral Scleractinia dates to about 460 million years ago and was probably a solitary, heterotrophic and free-living organism.

This is an INCREDIBLE advance in our understanding of coral diversification. 🪸🎉 Fantastic new work led by @claudiavaga.bsky.social

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

#Microsky

How many plant species are buzz pollinated? After more than six years in the making, our paper on the convergent evolution of buzz pollinated flowers is out in @journal-evo.bsky.social. Thanks @draverbee.bsky.social @roszenil.bsky.social and all co-authors for your hard work! doi.org/10.1093/evol...

Mobile genetic elements shape the evolution of wild bacterial pangenomes in the face of biotic and abiotic selective pressures in the soil https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.10.22.684009v1

Transposable Element-Mediated Cis-Regulation Drives the Evolution of dmrt1 as a Candidate Master Sex-Determining Gene in Black Carp Abstract. Sex determination in vertebrates exhibits remarkable evolutionary plasticity, with diverse mechanisms and master sex-determining (MSD) genes aris

Guo et al. generated haplotype-resolved genome assemblies of black carp, identifying dmrt1 as the sex-determining locus, with a 13.4 kb insertion containing TEs functioning as cis-regulatory modules that mediate Y-specific activation.

🔗 doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msaf239

#evobio #molbio #TEsky

Source: Washington Post summary of YouGov survey data

Gonna keep tapping the 'nostalgia is a toxic drug' sign

60 million birds a year are killed by cats in Canada, UG study finds There’s a new study from the University of Guelph that tells us how many birds are dying each year because of cats. Jonathan Chu, a PhD candidate and lead author of the study, explains why it's import...

PhD candidate Jonathan Chu speaks to CBC News about #UofG research detailing how many birds are killed each year by cats.

@uofgresearch.bsky.social @integrativebiology.bsky.social @uofgcbs.bsky.social
www.cbc.ca/player/play/...

GBE | Hemoglobin-Gene Cluster Deletions in Antarctic White-Blooded Icefishes Facilitated by Transposable Elements Analyzing numerous genome assemblies of notothenioid fishes, Desvignes et al. demonstrated that in Antarctic white-blooded icefishes, the only vertebrates living without hemoglobin, the two hemoglobin gene clusters were lost independently from one another by different genomic mechanisms, although both mechanisms incriminate transposable and repeat-like elements.

@notothentoma.bsky.social @arcolon14.bsky.social & @jpostlethwait.bsky.social show how Antarctic white-blooded icefishes, the only vertebrates without hemoglobin, independently lost hemoglobin cluster genes, driven by TEs and repeats.

🔗 doi.org/10.1093/gbe/evaf184

#genome #evolution #TEsky