mara lawniczak

Ancient origin of an urban underground mosquito Understanding how life is adapting to urban environments represents an important challenge in evolutionary biology. In this work, we investigate a widely cited example of urban adaptation, Culex pipie...

How does life evolve to adapt to modern cities?

Out now in Science, my PhD work with @lindymcbr.bsky.social uncovers the ancient origin of the “London Underground mosquito” – one of the most iconic examples of urban adaptation.

🧵(1/n)
@science.org
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.ady4515

Top: Prevalence of Microsporidia in DToL insect genomes. Microsporidian genomes recovered from insect hosts, split by taxonomic order. F: female, M: male, U: unspecified sex. Bottom: Simplified proposed generalized lifecycle for Microsporidia. This proposed model posits that each nucleus is a diploid, and that microsporidian reproduction mirrors reproduction in Fungi with stages similar to karyogamy, plasmogamy, and a stable “heterokaryon” (known as a diplokaryon in Microsporidia). Importantly, both the diplokaryotic and monokaryotic phases are parasitic, and species may spend most of their lifecycle in one or the other phase, giving rise to “diploid” and “tetraploid” lineages.

#Microsporidia are #parasites of growing importance. @amjadkhalaf.bsky.social @mblaxter.bsky.social @marakat.bsky.social &co present 40 new genomes from #DarwinTreeofLife sequencing of their arthropod hosts, revealing insights into #tetraploidy & #reproduction @plosbiology.org 🧪 plos.io/48HsAQJ

new publication by @amjadkhalaf.bsky.social who mined arthropod reference genome data for hidden microsporidia reads and then did a whole lot of assembling and sleuthing! great job @amjadkhalaf.bsky.social !

Science for Biodiversity Synthetic biology: Hope for conservation requires keeping all options on the table.

The fight against #malaria is at a crossroads.

Together with colleagues worldwide, I’ve signed an Open Letter urging #IUCN members to keep the door open to responsible research and new tools that could help reverse stalled progress and save lives.

Add your voice here scienceforbiodiversity.org

Happy to share the Biodiversity Cell Atlas white paper, out today in @nature.com. We look at the possibilities, challenges, and potential impacts of molecularly mapping cells across the tree of life.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Genetic study of malaria-carrying mosquitoes tracks evolution of insecticide resistance | Natural History Museum It crucially also reveals promising genetic targets for potential control.

www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/new...

Mosquitoes that have been in the collection for nearly a hundred years are helping us in dealing with an even older but also current problem - malaria

@sangerinstitute.bsky.social @nhm-london.bsky.social

Genomic evolution of major malaria-transmitting mosquito species uncovered Sequencing hundreds of Anopheles funestus mosquitoes provides new insights into the evolutionary patterns of this important human malaria-transmitting species.

One of the most dangerous malaria-carrying mosquitoes is rapidly evolving in response to control efforts, genetics has revealed.

Findings could inform smarter tools to monitor for and fight malaria. 🦟

Read more here ⤵️
http://bit.ly/4pwQKDv

Our paper Genomic diversity of the African malaria vector Anopheles funestus was published in Science today! It features inversions, selection in action, museum specimens and putative new ecotypes. doi.org/10.1126/scie...

Constraints on chromosome evolution revealed by the 229 chromosome pairs of the Atlas blue butterfly The genome of the Atlas blue butterfly contains ten times more chromosomes than most butterflies, and more than any other known diploid animal. Wright et al. show that this extraordinary karyotype is ...

How many chromosomes can an animal have?

In our paper out now in @currentbiology.bsky.social we show that the Atlas blue butterfly has 229 chromosome pairs- the highest in diploid Metazoa! These arose by rapid autosome fragmentation while sex chromosomes stayed intact.
www.cell.com/current-biol...

🚀🧬🔥 Hot off the press — 2025!
Don’t miss this must-read publication: bit.ly/4mJwFb7

This groundbreaking paper sets the stage for Earth BioGenome Project Phase II — where EBP is gearing up to scale genome sequencing 10× faster than ever before! 🌍✨

Malaria ‘back with a vengeance’ in Zimbabwe as number of deaths from the disease triple Withdrawal of USAID funds threatens decades of progress, say experts, with cuts to research and shortage of mosquito nets putting thousands at risk across the country

Malaria cases surge in Zimbabwe largely due to abrupt cut in USAID that affected mosquito net provision and surveillance measures. The Zimbabwean government trying to step up but can’t make up for the damage the sudden cessation. Climate change further increases mosquito burden too

Postdoc position opening in my group! Research projects: pangenomes for diverse organisms, genome evolution, biocomputing, language models. Please reach out if interested!

new from the lab -- we investigate 100% ethanol, DMSO salt solution (DESS), EDTA, RNAlater, and AllProtect as possible approaches for short term room temperature preservation of mosquito HMW DNA, nuclei for Hi-C, and RNA towards high quality reference genome creation. the key findings/tips are ....

need to avoid letting other organisms take over. e.g. suspect something like killing in ethanol to kill microbes too and then desiccating might be better than outright desiccation.

we did not study this in a controlled fashion but very limited experience with wild caught desiccated samples was not great -- the HMW DNA we saw was predominantly bacterial/fungal rather than insect in origin. think it will depend a lot on how specimens are killed and stored right after --

great work from team coauthors Fiona, @petrathepostdoc.bsky.social, @zoologistedel.bsky.social, and @amakunin.bsky.social -- hopefully some useful nuggets towards reaching @ebpgenome.bsky.social genomes for eukaryotic diversity, a huge amount of which is arthropods!

3. we left specimens for 1 week at room temperature, simulating a field collection trip and/or shipping. our advice is whatever you do, keep your specimens at the coldest temperature you have access to anytime cold chain is available.

1. whatever you preserve your insects in, make sure to compromise their cuticle e.g. with a light squish or cutting into pieces; 2. AllProtect does very well but is expensive -- if you are on a budget or collecting a very large number of specimens, 100% ethanol and RNAlater might be a better combo;

new from the lab -- we investigate 100% ethanol, DMSO salt solution (DESS), EDTA, RNAlater, and AllProtect as possible approaches for short term room temperature preservation of mosquito HMW DNA, nuclei for Hi-C, and RNA towards high quality reference genome creation. the key findings/tips are ....

thanks to all coauthors on that work! and finally, a shout out to the two hoodie winners Elena Hilario in New Zealand and Emily Hornett @bolinabug.bsky.social from the UK from a couple years ago and thanks to many of you who filled in that survey (via twitter before it went black). happy sequencing!

and that the @ebpgenome.bsky.social subcommittee has finally published our general guidance on collecting and processing for reference genomes at @gigascience.bsky.social, which you can find here academic.oup.com/gigascience/...

On the path to reference genomes for all biodiversity: lessons learned and laboratory protocols created in the Sanger Tree of Life core laboratory over the first 2000 species Since its inception in 2019, the Tree of Life programme at the Wellcome Sanger Institute has released high-quality, chromosomally-resolved reference genome assemblies for over 2000 species. Tree of Li...

tree of life core lab has put together such a manuscript, detailing a lot of information on the lab work needed for reference genomes for biodiversity which you can find here: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

winners of two tree of life hoodies. in the end, the survey helped us realise that what was needed was a more systematic view on extractions across the tree of life beyond what we could provide as a volunteer committee. however, i am pleased to say that the @sangerinstitute.bsky.social ...

several years ago, the @ebpgenome.bsky.social sample collection and processing subcommittee ran a survey to understand more about people's successes and failures with HMW DNA extractions across the tree of life -- we planned to publish the results of this survey alongside the randomly drawn ...

Cambridge-Africa ALBORADA research funding call is now open - great for getting new collaborations started www.cambridge-africa.cam.ac.uk

NIH grant cuts will axe clinical trials abroad — and could leave thousands without care US agency’s new policy could abruptly end studies of infectious diseases and cancer, leaving researchers scrambling for funds.

Researcher Amita Gupta has spent more than a decade planning and running a $70-million trial to study a new tuberculosis drug, enrolling ~6,000 participants in 13 countries. It might all have been for nothing.

That's because a new NIH policy has abruptly cut off billions to trials abroad. 🧪

Forty New Genomes Shed Light on Sexual Reproduction and the Origin of Tetraploidy in Microsporidia Microsporidia are single-celled, obligately intracellular parasites with growing public health, agricultural, and economic importance. Despite this, Microsporidia remain relatively enigmatic, with man...

New preprint! We generate 40 new high-quality microsporidian genomes from infected arthropod hosts that were sequenced to create reference genomes by the Darwin Tree of Life project. 8 of our genomes are chromosome-level, and we’re able to generate Hi-C data for 7! 🧬
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

My new deadline: 20 years to give away virtually all my wealth During the first 25 years of the Gates Foundation, we gave away more than $100 billion. Over the next two decades, we will double our giving.

a bit of light in dark times for infectious disease research and ultimately control www.gatesfoundation.org/ideas/articl...

if you are trying to get HMW DNA out of any species, have a look at the stellar progress from Sanger Tree of Life core lab who have now extracted DNA from 1000s of species. Paper showcasing things learned along the way now up on bioRxiv at www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

have you watched “the detectorists” yet? it’s great. and for all the questions on where to watch something, use justwatch.com - for movies and tv, tells you which streaming service in each country