Roman Stetsenko

⚡️ IOC banned Vladyslav Heraskevych, a Ukrainian skeletonist, from using a custom helmet featuring images of Ukrainian athletes killed by Russia at the 2026 Olympics.

📷: DW

In #GENETICS, @hildeschneemann.bsky.social and John Welch introduce a simple fitness landscape model to predict hybrid fitness with arbitrary ploidy and an arbitrary number of hybridizing lineages using data from #maize and rye. buff.ly/E24fZsM

Determinants of mutation load in birds Abstract. Many mutations have detrimental effects. The mutation load in a population depends on the efficacy of purifying selection in removing deleterious

@jochenwolflab.bsky.social
Where do potentially harmful mutations accumulate? We have an answer in birds. Congratulations Fidel for wonderful paper!

doi.org/10.1093/gene...

Preprint finally out! I show that eco-evo feedback can drive a tipping point where genetic drift overwhelms adaptation. This can result in a contraction of a species' range border or range fragmentation. Fragmentation is abrupt and arises readily under rapid temporal change. doi.org/10.1101/2025...

🎙️🔊📻 New Heredity podcast!

From PopGroup 59 in Lille.

Plenary speaker Florencia Camus talks about:
1. The conference
2. Conflict and coadaptation between the mitochondrial and nuclear genomes

Listen here: shows.acast.com/heredity-pod...

Pleasure giving a recap of a wonderful PopGroup conference, and the opportunity to talk about my research.
🔥

Plasmid mutation rates scale with copy number | PNAS Plasmids are extrachromosomal DNA molecules that spread by horizontal transfer and shape bacterial evolution. Plasmids are typically present at mul...

New paper out in PNAS!!! 🎉

Do more plasmid copies mean faster evolution?

🧵 Dive into the story

www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Pan-family pollen signals control an interspecific stigma barrier across Brassicaceae species Prezygotic interspecific incompatibility prevents hybridization between species, which limits interbreeding strategies for crop improvement using wild relatives. The Brassica rapa female self-incompat...

Out in @science.org this week: SIPS binds to a conserved region of SRK to control interspecies incompatibility in Brassicaceae. This contrasts with SRK's variable region, which is involved in self-incompatibility interactions.

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

#plantscience

L'Ukraine fait face à une vague combinée de froid glacial et de bombardements russes. L'inaction de la "coalition des volontaires" devient chaque jour plus insupportable. L'Europe rate une fois encore son rendez-vous avec l'Histoire. #SkyShieldNow @fpetit.bsky.social @nicolastenzer.bsky.social

Well Europe, Do You Get It Finally? Standing Up To Trump Works Better Than Prostrating Yourself Now, do the same about Ukraine

The last few days have provided Europeans with an important lesson on how to handle Trump. Don't beg, don't bluster, but do use the leverage you have to impose costs of him for his reckless behavior. European Greenland actions should inform their Ukraine policy. open.substack.com/pub/phillips...

Common variation in meiosis genes shapes human recombination and aneuploidy - Nature Analysis of data from pre-implantation genetic testing sheds light on the genetic basis of meiotic-origin aneuploidy, the leading cause of human pregnancy loss, identifying common genetic variants ass...

Pregnancy loss is common in humans, and chromosomal abnormalities are the leading cause. Using genetic data from ~140,000 IVF embryos, we show that maternal variation in meiosis genes influences recombination and aneuploidy risk.

First authors: @saracarioscia.bsky.social & @aabiddanda.github.io

A new preprint from the lab, with postdoc @deboraycb.bsky.social and collaborators @aidaandres.bsky.social and Tim Connallon:

“Characterising the detectable and invisible fractions of genomic loci under balancing selection”
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Balancing selection alert!! 🧬🧪

New preprint where we try to quantify how likely (or rather, unlikely) it is for balancing selection to maintain stable polymorphism, and how easy (or rather, challenging) it is to identify its signatures in genomes.

#Popgen #MolecularEvolution #EvoBio #Science

🧬 What does the starting material from which genes could emerge #denovo look like?
🌱 We used #RiboSeq to investigate the landscape of translated de novo ORFs in 3 #Arabidopsis species, and how they might be linked to gene birth!

📝 Check out our preprint here:
doi.org/10.1101/2025...

Cow Tools!

We have lived alongside cows for nearly 10,000 years.
We breed them and exploit them

It is now, only now, that we have discovered THEY CAN USE TOOLS

Here I describe our study

(paper) www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... in @currentbiology.bsky.social
with @auersperga.bsky.social

Characterising the detectable and invisible fractions of genomic loci under balancing selection https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.01.13.698512v1

The rights and wrongs of rescaling in population genetics simulations Computer simulations of complex population genetic models are an essential tool for making sense of the large-scale datasets of multiple genome sequences from a single species that are becoming increa...

We (with Fanny Pouyet and Brian Charlesworth) provide a theoretical perspective on rescaling forward simulations in population genetics, along with some guidelines:

arxiv.org/abs/2601.05367

Back in Toulouse, but very happy with my first PopGroup @popgroup2026.bsky.social. Every time I come to Lille, I remember how pleasant the city is (here it was even better with the snow) and how much I enjoy good times with my friendly collaborators there.

Always inspiring to start the year at @popgroup2026.bsky.social !
If you were there and want to learn more about pangenomes, there’s still time to register for our meeting in Edinburgh in June, co-organised with @charlottewright.bsky.social & @joanameier.bsky.social royalsociety.org/science-even...

It was an honour to talk at PopGroup!

Thanks to the organisers for making it a very memorable event 🥳

My first PopGroup—it was great! Thanks to all the organizers, especially.

Flo Camus delivering her plenary at Popgroup/Alphy meeting

Last plenary of #PGG59 by Flo Camus on the fascinating evolution of mitochondria and their intricate interactions with the nuclear genome !

Super great time at @popgroup2026.bsky.social in Lille 👉 presenting lab postdoc work, reconnecting with colleagues worldwide & exchanging inspiring ideas!

Huge thanks to organizers @vincentcastric.bsky.social, @crouxevo.bsky.social, Diala Abu Awad @thomaslesaffre.bsky.social, @romanstet.bsky.social

Avoiding dead ends: the experimental evolution of constraint as adaptation to environmental variation Abstract. Environmental unpredictability can result in the evolution of bet-hedging traits, which maximize long-term fitness but are, by definition, subopt

Excited to share my first first-author paper from my master’s work at @carleton.ca , with @andrew-m-simons.bsky.social and Myron Smith!

We explored how constraints on adaptation can aid the persistence of bet-hedging traits in the short term.

royalsocietypublishing.org/rspb/article...

Second plenary of #PGG59 by Claire Mérot on the importance and relevance of structural variations !

First plenary by Denis Roze !

Excited to visit Lille France for @popgroup2026.bsky.social ! Looking forward to present about butterfly wing colour polymorphism on Thursday at 11.30am in Salle D 🦋

We have arrived in snowy Lille for the 59th PopGroup conference! Come to the MEE stand and have a chat! 😀

@popgroup2026.bsky.social

Nucleotide diversity is a poor predictor of short-term adaptive potential A capacity to adapt is essential for a population to avoid extinction in a changing world and is recognised as a global conservation priority. Adaptation requires additive (heritable) genetic variatio...

I'm excited to share that our preprint is now available on bioRxiv! Our study challenges the widespread use of molecular genetic diversity as a predictor adaptive potential, with important implications for how genetic data is used to inform conservation decisions.

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

beers are on their ways !

... current status...