Gal Ofir

Deltaviruses spread through a viral Trojan Horse Hepatitis D-like satellite viruses, known as deltaviruses, have been recently discovered in a wide range of animals. These viruses are thought to expr…

We found a viral Trojan Horse: a virus can hide inside another virus.This one surprised us: deltaviruses don’t just borrow a helper virus. They can travel inside it.
A literal Trojan Horse “virus-in-a-virus” route into cells. 🤯 Kudos to 1st author @viroscope.bsky.social and co-authors !

"novel transformer-based model, Popformer, for learning encodings of general patterns of genetic variation...includes site-wise and haplotype-wise attention.... The model is pre-trained with an analog of the masked language modeling objective across a range of real human genomic data"

Do you know bulk transcriptome deconvolution? 🤔
In our preprint we introduce GrooD (GradientBoostedDeconvolution), which employs a holistic view to the deconvolution problem to deconvolve bulk transcriptomes into the underlying cell type proportions.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Last week we recommended the first combined mRNA #vaccine against COVID-19 and seasonal influenza for people over the age of 50.

Find out more: www.ema.europa.eu/en/news/firs...

#PublicHealth #COVID #MedSky 🧪

Our group’s inaugural PhD 🎉🍾

Toasting the successful & excellent defense of Dr. Garcia-Lozano 🎈

Congratulations, @marlenygarcial.bsky.social!!

Very excited to see this work out today!

Discovering viral immune antagonists directly from predicted protein structures. 🤩 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Huge thanks to the amazing collaborators! 🤗

A phylogenetic tree of insects is shown annotating the presence or absence of a an antimicrobial peptide gene across winged insects

Various phylogenetic secondary loss events are mapped to a tree of insects to explain the parsimony calculations necessary to explain the diversity of insect Drosomycin antimicrobial peptide genes

Antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) are key defence molecules of the innate immune system of plants and animals. Understanding the evolutionary origins of AMPs can help to explain how immune systems acquire novelty and vary in their defensive capabilities. However, AMPs evolve rapidly, and so the origins of similar AMPs across organisms is often unclear. Furthermore, false negatives due to low search sensitivity are common and can hinder confident annotations about true absences. Due to these difficulties, understanding whether similar AMP genes found in diverse organisms represent ancestral molecules or evolutionary novelties has been challenging. In this report, we present evidence of horizontal gene transfer (HGT) of the antifungal peptide gene Drosomycin across insects. We show that in Diptera, the presence of Drosomycin is restricted to the Melanogaster group and additionally the distant relative Drosophila busckii. We go on to recover Drosomycin genes in cockroaches (Blattodea), mantises (Mantodea), one katydid (Orthoptera), various beetles (Coleoptera), and a recently acquired pseudogenized Drosomycin locus in Liposcelis booklice (Psocodea), but no other insects. Explaining this diversity through shared ancestry requires at least 50 independent loss events, or just seven HGT events. Previous studies have suggested that similar AMPs found across divergent species reflect conservation from a common ancestor, or due to their small size, that they arose via convergent evolution resulting from pathogen-imposed selection. Our findings suggest horizontal gene transfer can be responsible for the presence of some AMP genes found scattered across the tree of life. By presenting a mechanism through which immune systems can acquire novelty, our study also suggests a possible explanation for certain lineage-specific competencies for defence against infectious disease. While loss of AMP genes is common in certain lineages, here we suggest gain of AMPs can occur just as suddenly.

Pleased to finally share this fun collab that began at #Ento23

@cedricaumont.bsky.social presented & I had seen NCBI annotated some cockroach genomes as "contaminated." Turns out NCBI & I were wrong (much more fun).

Horizontal transfer of an #AntimicrobialPeptide across insects
bit.ly/DrsHGT

1/🧵

An unconventional Rubisco small subunit underpins the CO2-concentrating organelle in land plants In many algae, photosynthesis is boosted by biophysical CO2-concentrating mechanisms, which pack the CO2-fixing enzyme Rubisco into liquid-like organelles called pyrenoids. Engineering C3 crops with a...

Our work on #hornwort #pyrenoids is finally out in @science.org! 🎉 We uncovered how hornworts pack their Rubisco into pyrenoids and successfully recreated them in Arabidopsis. A key step toward engineering more efficient photosynthesis in crops @btiscience.bsky.social www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

An unconventional Rubisco small subunit underpins the CO2-concentrating organelle in land plants In many algae, photosynthesis is boosted by biophysical CO2-concentrating mechanisms, which pack the CO2-fixing enzyme Rubisco into liquid-like organelles called pyrenoids. Engineering C3 crops with a...

An unconventional Rubisco small subunit underpins the CO2-concentrating organelle in land plants www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... @science.org

The results are finally in! 🏆💻🧬

I'm thrilled to announce that the manuscript for the Bits to Binders protein design competition is out on bioRxiv! Here's a summary of our findings, including some simple criteria that nearly *double* success rates when applied as a filter 🧵

Excited to share our latest preprint. Arabidopsis thaliana has been the leading model for plant genetics - but most of what we know comes from growth chambers.
Can this model also help us understand how climate shapes plants in the wild and reveal gene functions under real environmental variability?

I am happy to announce the launch of a new Arabidopsis genomics resource! Check out arabidopsislyrata.org Now you can easily look at the natural genetic variation across the entire species range of A. lyrata and A. arenosa.

1/ ✨ New preprint alert ✨

It is my pleasure to share:
"Stepwise evolution of the developmental and symbiotic functions of DELLA in land plants"

Here we investigated the role of the single GRAS transcription factor DELLA in #MyMarchantia

doi.org/10.64898/202...

#PlantScience
A thread...

Join @berasymbionts.bsky.social , @tatsuyanobori.bsky.social and us for a postdoc on the remarkable developmental biology of symbiosis!

Applications are due March 25th 🪲🦠

@johninnescentre.bsky.social @thesainsburylab.bsky.social

VACANCY - We’re searching for a Postdoctoral Researcher to join the newly appointed group of Dr @hassansalem.bsky.social, to explore the developmental biology of host-microbe symbiosis

www.jic.ac.uk/vacancies/po...

Deadline - 25 March 2026
Salary - £37,500 - £45,350
Contract - 3 years, full-time

There is a week left to apply for two available positions in my lab @ipbhalle.bsky.social

- PhD: ipb-halle.mhm.jobs/12-phd-posit...

- Postdoc: ipb-halle.mhm.jobs/13-postdocto...
Earliest start date: 01/05/2026.

We are interested in plant immune receptor biochemistry and evolution. Please share!

As a forest researcher, I very often (far too often) encounter questions such as: What does a forest researcher do in Spain? Do you even have forests there? The international image of Spain as a mostly desert-like country, and mainly associated with sun and beach,has contributed to this stereotype.

Join us at the #SEBconference Florence 2026 to discuss #Plant Robustness! 🌱🔥

@kaspervangelderen.bsky.social and I are organising the P12 session "Plant robustness from molecules to ecosystems" with the support of @greenrobust.de

Check the program and submit your abstract by March 6th! 👇

Immune activation suppresses reproductive growth in Arabidopsis through cytokinin signaling Johnston et al. report that defense hormones suppress cytokinin signaling, causing yield penalties. Restoring cytokinin in autoimmune plants relieves reproductive defects, confers broad pathogen resis...

Our beautiful work is out in Current Biology! @currentbiology.bsky.social

Immune activation suppresses reproductive growth in Arabidopsis through cytokinin signaling: Current Biology www.cell.com/current-biol...

Cell death is a fundamental mechanism of antiviral immunity across diverse organisms, including bacteria. As my final PhD project with @jbdsf.bsky.social, I was curious whether cell death is required for successful immunity with the ancient cGAS pathway known as ‘CBASS.’

Spoiler – the answer is no!

Are you passionate about computational biology and the evolution of specialized plant metabolism? We invite highly motivated and experienced students and early-career researchers to join our group in Bonn for a visiting research stay. This is a great opportunity to gain hands-on experience, exchange ideas, and work in a collaborative and supportive scientific environment with excellent computational resources. We especially welcome colleagues with prior research experience in bioinformatics, phylogeny, evolutionary biology, or comparative genomics, and a strong interest in plant metabolism. Master’s students and candidates looking to strengthen their research profile are strongly encouraged to reach out. If you are proactive, curious, and eager to conduct your own research project, we would love to hear from you. More details and contact information: https://www.izmb.uni-bonn.de/en/pbb/contact#EBPCM #ComputationalBiology #Bioinformatics #EvolutionaryBiology #ComparativeGenomics #ResearchOpportunity #EarlyCareerResearchers #PhDOpportunity #ScientificCollaboration #ResearchInGermany

Are you passionate about computational biology and the evolution of specialized plant metabolism?

More details and contact information:
www.izmb.uni-bonn.de/en/pbb/conta...

#Bioinformatics #Genomics #ResearchInGermany @puckerlab.bsky.social

🌾 We have an open postdoc position in Plant Genomics in our group at HHU Düsseldorf!

If you enjoy computational biology, asking big questions, and the satisfaction of code working on the first try, check out schneebergerlab.org/career/

Apply by Mar. 31 | 3-year postdoc | German skills required

Structure-guided discovery of protein functions in plants Protein structure-based searches enable the functional annotation of many plant proteins for which sequence-based methods fall short.

BREAKTHROUGH REPORT: Structure-guided discovery of protein functions in plants (Jiarong Chen , Yanlei Feng , Yuchan Zhang , Jucan Gao , et al) doi.org/10.1093/plce... #PlantScience @aspbofficial

Have you ever wondered 🤔... Does phenotypic variance respond to environmental perturbation? Does it have a genetic basis? Are mean and variance regulating loci exposed to different selection pressures? These and more questions are explored in our new preprint 🔥

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

Trait discovery is one of the most difficult parts of our work here at @kwsgroup.bsky.social. Thus, we need help:

We are looking for a Scientist in #QuantitativeGenetics & #Biostatistics for Trait Discovery.

This is a full time, permanent position here in Einbeck.

#PlantScience #PlantSciJobs

Heya science peeps, my first first-author paper is on Biorxiv! We show how transcriptome-wide expression variability in outbred animals responds massively to an environmental stressor and is underpinned by cryptic variability- (not just mean-) controlling alleles. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

RNA splicing generates a functionally specialized Rep protein isoform in geminiviruses — enabling timely control of the viral cycle. Strikingly, similar strategies might have evolved in DNA viruses infecting different kingdoms: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... Spearheaded by @delphinem-p.bsky.social!

Announcing the publication of TAIR12: Consult the fully reannotated genome on the European Nucleotide Archive - Phoenix Bioinformatics TAIR (The Arabidopsis Information Resource), together with our nonprofit host Phoenix Bioinformatics, is pleased to announce the public release of TAIR12

🎉📣 #TAIR12, the latest reannotation of the Arabidopsis thaliana genome, is now available under accession number PRJEB100887 on ENA and NCBI!

Thank you all the volunteer researchers whose hard work has made this possible!

#plantscience #plantbiology 🧪

bit.ly/3ZHtneT

Beyond Mendel: a call to revisit the genotype–phenotype map through new experimental paradigms Abstract. The long-standing notion that genotypes map to phenotypes through simple one gene–one trait relationships continues to shape both research in the

New Perspective!🔥It's fascinating how scientists from different fields but interested in the same question [e.g. genotype-phenoytpe relationship] can have such different perspectives. Here we put in our 2 cents wrt genetic effects being context-dependent, and pheno variation being mostly polygenic

Does hidden protein biology live in the suboptimal alignment space?

When we align two divergent proteins, we usually trust a single optimal alignment. 🧬

But what if the real structural signal lies in the space of near-optimal solutions?

With EMERALD-UI you can unfold this perspective.