Margarita Takou

Check out our Taxus baccata genome assemblies: doi.org/10.64898/202.... The 12 chromosomes add up to 10 Gb, with the largest inversion alone being almost the size of an entire Arabidopsis genome!

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.

Was seed color in early crops really chosen for aesthetics?
White seeds evolved repeatedly-not because humans preferred them, but because losing pigmentation reduced seed dormancy. Ecology, not intention, may have driven domestication. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
#PlantScience #Domestication

SMBE 2029 | Call for proposals

👥 SMBE is accepting proposals to host its 2029 International meeting; expressions of interest from a prospective local organizing committee headed by an SMBE member should be sent ASAP

🗓️ Aug 30 2026
✉️ secretary.smbe@gmail.com

Please consult our Conference Guidelines: smbe.org/conference-guidelines

Full professor for plant ecology in Regensburg. #plantscience #plantscijobs

jobs.zeit.de/jobs/w3-prof...

Publishing in our Society Journals is already a proof of great achievements. Take this opportunity, however, to make your students even more visible!
Call for Best Grad Student Paper is now out!

Directors

The Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology in Plön, Germany, seeks expressions of interest for open Max Planck Director positions. For details: http://www.evolbio.mpg.de/3856225/Directors. #job

Empseb is simply the best. If you're a PhD student of evolutionary biology, do go there!

10 more days to apply for this postdoc position.

Variation in responses to temperature in admixed Populus genotypes predicts geographic shifts in regions where hybrids are favored Plastic responses of plants to their environment vary as a result of genetic differentiation within and among species. To accurately predict rangewide responses to climate change, it is necessary to...

doi.org/10.1111/nph....

Please apply for this, and/or encourage your mentees and peers to do so!

Domestication shaped the chromatin landscape of grain amaranth - Nature Communications The interplay between the chromatin landscape and plant domestication remains unclear. Here, the authors report the genome assembly and chromatin landscape map of amaranth and reveal the association b...

Now out in its final version: 'Domestication shaped the chromatin landscape of grain amaranth'
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Population genomic structure of sorghum landraces across landscape, environment and culture https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.11.02.686151v1

We left the US and moved to France Hello readers, I got big updates! Some of you already know this, but it’s getting more real and more official every month: my family and I have left the US and moved to France! A few months ago I q…

I started a new job in Montpellier, France!
Happy about new opportunities, sad about the state of things in the US.

abetterscientist.wordpress.com/2025/10/26/w...

GitHub - RILAB/statements: Successful Job Applications and Grants Successful Job Applications and Grants. Contribute to RILAB/statements development by creating an account on GitHub.

Lunch today halfway around the world in Hangzhou and met a new asst professor who was very thankful for this resource. Please help out folks like them and other early career scientists with examples of job apps. Submit yours!
github.com/RILAB/statem...

Heat‐Induced Secondary Dormancy Contributes to Local Adaptation in Arabidopsis thaliana Seeds should not germinate in conditions unsuitable for seedling growth. Dormancy, which allows seeds to remain inactive in an environment that would otherwise enable germination, helps optimise the ....

Happy to share that our study on heat-induced secondary dormancy is now published! 🌱

Here we studied how natural populations differ in their dormancy response to heat, and how this natural variation can shape local adaptation and future range shifts.🌦️

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Very happy to announce that the next POPGROUP meeting will take place in Lille on 7-9 January !

Follow ‪@popgroup2026.bsky.social for all updates.

📢 Please share widely ! 📢‬

Regulation of heterosis-associated gene expression complementation in maize hybrids - Genome Biology Background Classical genetic concepts to explain heterosis attribute the superiority of F1-hybrids over their homozygous parents to the complementation of unfavorable by beneficial alleles (dominance) or to heterozygote advantage (overdominance). Here we analyze 112 intermated B73xMo17 recombinant inbred lines of maize and their backcrosses to their original parents B73 and Mo17 to obtain hybrids with an average heterozygosity of ~ 50%. This genetic architecture allows studying the influence of homozygous and heterozygous genomic regions on gene expression in hybrids. Results We demonstrate that single parent expression (SPE) complementation explains between − 8% and 29% of the mid-parent heterotic variance in these hybrids. In this expression pattern, consistent with dominance, genes are active in only one parent and in the hybrid, thus increasing the number of expressed genes in hybrids. Furthermore, we establish that eQTL regulating SPE genes are predominantly located in heterozygous regions of the genome. Finally, we identify an SPE gene that regulates lateral root density in hybrids. Remarkably, the activity of this gene depends on the presence of a Mo17 allele in an eQTL that regulates this gene. Conclusions Here we show that dominance of SPE genes influences the number of active genes in hybrids, while heterozygosity is instrumental for the regulation of these genes. This finding supports the notion that the genetic constitution of distant regulatory elements is instrumental for the activity of heterosis-associated genes. In summary, our results connect genetic variation at regulatory loci and the degree of heterozygosity with phenotypic variation of heterosis via SPE complementation.

Our paper by Marion Pitz and Jutta Baldauf on the regulation of gene expression complementation in maize hybrids has now been published in Genome Biology. 1/7
genomebiology.biomedcentral.com/articles/10....

Penn State approves raise for president making her second highest paid in USA (headline)

Penn state is closing its public radio and television stations (headline)

Congrats to @ehlawrence-paul.bsky.social a stellar postdoc in my group
bsky.app/profile/kenc...

Hybridization and introgression are major evolutionary processes. Since the 1940s, the prevailing view has been that they shape plants far more than animals. In our new study (www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
), we find the opposite: animals exchange genes more, and for longer, than plants

About 10 years ago, we set up lots of experimental beetle populations, censused monthly. Expecting extinction, I said the workload would drop soon. But they all rescued themselves! 😱 So Vrinda & co kept counting. Many hundreds of thousands of beetles later, we have some neat outcomes. Enjoy!

EU-Millionenförderung: Drei Kölner Forschende erhalten ERC Starting Grants Wissenschaftler*innen der Universität zu Köln haben eine der begehrtesten europäischen Förderungen für Nachwuchsforscher*innen eingeworben / Insgesamt bis zu 4,5 Millionen Euro über fünf Jahre

🎉 Drei ERC Starting Grants für Kölner Forscher*innen:
Dr. Sabina Hillebrandt, Dr. Isabel Saur und Prof. Dr. Johannes Wohlfart. Sie werden für fünf Jahre mit jeweils bis zu 1,5 Millionen Euro gefördert. Herzlichen Glückwunsch🥳

Mehr dazu 👇
uni.koeln/K4PCH

We still need >60 plant submissions for the Botany & Dragons Bestiary! Please share the flyer with your students! #iamabotanist #plantsci #ttrpg forms.office.com/Pages/Respon...

Please share broadly: I am looking for a postdoctoral fellow to work on a collaborative project on the temporal population genomics of invasive Capeweed (using contemporary and herbarium genomics), with ‪‪@shaky-dingo.bsky.social‬ and colleagues

Aurelien Tellier presenting the details of #eseb2027 which will be a hub meeting, with connected and local sessions in 4 hubs (Gothenburg, Munich, London, Istanbul) eseb2027.org #eseb2025

Photo of the talk, showing 3+4 ERC logos crossed out and two Wallenberg foundation logos crossed out

At the end of his #ESEB2025 plenary on deep-time palaeogenomes, Love Dalén shared his history of trying to obtain a big grant for his work. It eventually worked out!

Sad to miss #ESEB2025, but check out work from our lab. The poster of Tom Winkler (P01.272) on repeated evolution under ecological selection during domestication tonight. And the talk of Margarita Takou on the detection of polygenic selection from time series data on Tuesday 15:30.

Gene Expression Divergence Between Locally Adapted Inland Annual and Coastal Perennial Ecotypes of Mimulus guttatus Across Developmental Stages The action of natural selection across heterogeneous natural landscapes drives local adaptation and the formation of plant ecotypes, the precursors to new species. Plant ecotypes typically differ sig...

New paper out of the lab today: “Gene Expression Divergence Between Locally Adapted Inland Annual and Coastal Perennial Ecotypes of Mimulus guttatus Across Developmental Stages” onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

map of european samples, showing bar plots for 5 regions with admixture clusters within each region changing little over a 100-200 year period (depending on region)

New paper from Lua Lopez et al on Arabidopsis population genomics in museum specimens.

At a very coarse grain, populations have not changed much in ~100 years.

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...