Diving into evolutionary biology! What is the origin of the most abundant class of insect transcription factors, ZAD-ZnFs? We suggest that they evolved from ancestral insulator-binding proteins that control 3D genome topology.
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
Nature News on the tantalising possibility of the first documented sex-ratio distorter in humans.
www.nature.com/articles/d41...
So excited to share this manuscript led by the inimitable Cara Brand, who discovered that Topoisomerase II evolution causes hybrid female lethality in Drosophila.
Congrats to Cara, @nickbr0wn.bsky.social, Anirban, and
@buszczaklab.bsky.social!
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
Adaptive evolution of Topoisomerase II triggers reproductive isolation in Drosophila https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.02.20.707007v1
22.02.2026 01:33 — 👍 12 🔁 6 💬 0 📌 0Yay!!! 🙌 🎉
22.02.2026 01:21 — 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
Very honored to receive this award from GSA! I have immense gratitude for my advisor @nkwhiteman.bsky.social, labmates, collaborators, mentees, and the fly community, who in many ways potentiated my graduate research.
Looking forward to sharing my work at my favorite meeting in my favorite city!
Our paper is now out in Nature:
“Ancient co-option of LTR retrotransposons as yeast centromeres”
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
A short thread on how retrotransposons helped give rise to yeast point centromeres.
1/14
We’re excited to announce @tarnopol.bsky.social as the recipient of the 2026 Larry Sandler Award! 🎉 She’ll present the Larry Sandler Memorial Lecture during the #Dros26 opening session on March 4—she'll share how her research explores how protein toxins evolve to shape host–parasite interactions.
19.02.2026 17:01 — 👍 17 🔁 8 💬 1 📌 1
🔬 Recruiting a Postdoc!!!!
I’m looking for a motivated postdoc to join my lab and work on characterizing the role of a heterochromatin protein involved in a sex-ratio meiotic drive system in Drosophila.
If you know someone who might be interested, please share widely!
my first termite queen extracted from a mature colony in the field 🤩
thanks @tatsuyainagaki.bsky.social
How does the piRNA pathway solve the self vs. non-self problem? 🧬
Since piRNAs come from single-stranded RNA, how does the cell choose the right ones? For years, "piRNA clusters" were seen as THE privileged source. But are they really special and earmarked for biogenesis? (1/19)
The demystification of piRNA clusters
if you wonder how cells generate piRNAs specifically against transposons & you are looking for a weekend read
check out @86dominik.bsky.social's opus magna (or Dominik's great thread)
a shared project with the one and only Rippei Hayashi, lab alumnus & friend
If Bad Bunny can cover the history of Puerto Rico, colonialism, transatlantic slavery, hemispheric consciousness, as well as contemporary life and politics in under 14 minutes, you can do your 15- or 20-minute conference presentation with time to spare.
09.02.2026 23:56 — 👍 3012 🔁 612 💬 51 📌 86
Another announcement! 📣 Our work on hybrid incompatibility in cohesin protection in 🐭oocytes is published!! Congrats Warif El Yakoubi and Eddie Pan!!🎉 We found hybrids with cohesion errors in two distinct genus.
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
Holy shit: it's an RFP for the NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biology (PRFB). Hello old friend www.nsf.gov/funding/oppo...
05.02.2026 23:41 — 👍 125 🔁 74 💬 6 📌 24Congrats Takashi!!
05.02.2026 19:56 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
New preprint from the lab! We identify the ZnF protein Mulberry as a condensation-dependent structural regulator of genome topology that organizes “multi-way regulatory hubs” in early Drosophila embryos.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
Very excited to share the work by Alice Gadau. We found that D. suzukii (the invasive pest that loves ripe fruit) doesn’t hate CO₂, while classic lab flies avoid it. That tiny sensory shift helps explain a big ecological transition.
journals.plos.org/plosgenetics...
Greetings! I decided to make a YouTube video of my AlphaFold workshop that I've given a few times in the past year. Caveats aside, people seem to find this useful for thinking about how to model protein interactions and how to interpret various AF outputs 1/2
www.youtube.com/watch?v=u63o...
ANTSR seems to be the ancient master sex determining gene in Hymenoptera (as suggested by Pan et al. 2024)! So rad that a lncRNA is doing this!
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
Intrigued by a long-standing conundrum in small RNA biology—how nuclear Argonaute proteins silence transposons when they *need* target transcription for their own recruitment—we studied the piRNA pathway.
And found a hidden RNA-decay axis from Piwi to the RNA exosome.
So excited to finally share my recent work on sex differences in crossing over using mice from diverse genetic backgrounds!
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
We won the @trogersresearch.bsky.social TBEP door decoration contest … by a landslide … @willowp.bsky.social @qeenyra.bsky.social Ji @anamcarmo.bsky.social @negberry.bsky.social Veronica & Rafa.
13.12.2025 16:51 — 👍 8 🔁 4 💬 0 📌 1
@pravrutharaman.bsky.social got super intrigued about EZHIP/CATACOMB, previously identified as a histone H3K27M mimic of PRC2. You can read about her efforts here: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... We hope these analyses will help spur more analyses in this very cool gene! 1/
13.12.2025 22:08 — 👍 82 🔁 37 💬 3 📌 1
Dear Mark, Only three days left to nominate for the Larry Sandler Award! The award recognizes excellent recent graduates who have completed a PhD in Drosophila research. The awardee will receive a fantastic opportunity to present the Larry Sandler Memorial Lecture at the 67th Annual Drosophila Research Conference in Chicago, IL! The deadline to nominate is Monday, December 15, 2025. Nominate Here For more information visit the website.
Fly Friends: The Larry Sandler Award recognizes the PhD student with the most amazing these using Drosophila as a model. Just three days left to nominate someone. For more info on the process and the link to nominations, see:
genetics-gsa.org/drosophila-2...
Have you ever wondered how new DNA methylation patterns are established?
Paradigm shift ahead! We discovered a new mode of DNA methylation targeting in plants that relies on transcription factors and sequence motifs rather than chromatin modifications to regulate the methylome. rdcu.be/eQ6L5
1/8
so cool!! congrats!!
11.12.2025 05:37 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
Phages are full of genes of unknown function that are likely adaptive in specific conditions.
New preprint: Phage TnSeq identifies essential genes rapidly and knocks all non-essentials. We would like to send a pool of phiKZ mutants to anyone wanting it! Reach out
tinyurl.com/bdcfrejh
Systematic analysis of noncanonical ribosomal protein paralogs does not provide evidence for specialized functions in Drosophila
So excited to finally be able to share my first paper and the culmination of my PhD work with @felipekteixeira.bsky.social 🪰🔬
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
How to keep in step when your (protein) partner speeds up…
Here we investigated the adaptive remodeling of a protein-protein interaction surface essential for telomere protection.
Congrats to whole team!
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
