Susan Johnston

Are you a recombination researcher heading to #SMBE2026? Submit your abstract to our Symposium, organised by Marie Raynaud, Laurent Duret, and myself. We're excited to have Aurora Ruiz-Herrera from UAB Barcelona as our invited speaker.
🧬🦄🦠🌿🐝🐟🍄🪱
@aruizherrera.bsky.social @duret-lbbe.bsky.social

Joana, this is such shocking news. I am so sorry to hear this. David was such a lovely guy 😢🤍

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...

A must read for conservation geneticists on the utility (or not??) of using molecular diversity to predict adaptive potential 👇🏻

Honored to be part of this exciting symposium at #SMBE2026! Huge thanks to Marie Raynaud, @duret-lbbe.bsky.social, and @susanjohnston.bsky.social for the invitation. Looking forward to sharing insights on recombination and evolution with such an amazing community. See you in Copenhagen!!!

And here is the working link: jobs.helsinki.fi/job/Helsinki...

📣Plant Meiosis Meeting is back for its second edition‼️
Save the date: 9–11 September 2026, Poznań, Poland🌱

More details coming soon🤩

Congratulations @ebablab.bsky.social !

Danke Miriam, I truly 💖 sparrows now. It has defo been too long and we finally have some landscapes to compare!!

Thank you Luisa ❤️ it means a lot! I will try to spend 💶🥲

Not possible without incredible peer support 🥲

Dziekuje Mateusz 🙏 hope to see you soon!

Are you a recombination researcher heading to #SMBE2026? Submit your abstract to our Symposium, organised by Marie Raynaud, Laurent Duret, and myself. We're excited to have Aurora Ruiz-Herrera from UAB Barcelona as our invited speaker.
🧬🦄🦠🌿🐝🐟🍄🪱
@aruizherrera.bsky.social @duret-lbbe.bsky.social

Happy to not write another one of those for a while 💀

This was my second try after scoring a B in 2023! This journey was only possible with advice, examples, mentorship, feedback, and collaboration from many kind colleagues around the world. I am especially grateful to Henrik Jensen at NTNU and the sparrow project in Norway. Thank you so much 🙏 2/2

Female and male house sparrow perched on some wood. Photo by Peter S. Ranke.

View of the Helgeland archipelago from the top of a mountain. Photo by Hamish Burnett.

Happy to have been awarded an @erc.europa.eu grant RECOSEX to investigate molecular causes and evolutionary consequences of sex differences in recombination, using the wonderful Helgeland house sparrows as a model 🧬🐦 #ERCCoG 1/2

(Photos: Peter S. Ranke & Hamish Burnett)

Approach for population-wide single-pollen nuclei genotyping.

Population-wide single-pollen nuclei genotyping in #rye 🌾

Christina Waesch, et al.

📖 nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

#PlantScience #genomics

I ❤️ this - congratulations!! This is an amazing study (and a juicy puzzle to solve!!)

A mosaic of modular variation at a single gene underpins convergent plumage coloration The reshuffling of genomic variation from multiple origins is an important contributor to phenotypic diversification, yet insights into the evolutionary trajectories of this combinatorial process and ...

1/9 New in @science.org www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.ado8005
How does genetic architecture constrain evolutionary trajectories? To address this question, we inferred the genetic architecture of convergent plumage coloration and its evolutionary history in wheatears.

PhD OPPORTUNITY! 🔬🔖

Still one more day to apply for our fully-funded PhD position in Norway!

Please share widely 🙏

A comprehensive analysis of Atlantic salmon gonad and pituitary transcriptomes identifies novel players in sexual maturation - BMC Genomics Sexual maturation is a key developmental process important for reproductive success. Understanding the molecular mechanisms behind variation in sexual maturation can provide insights into reproductive biology and how life history variation is encoded in the genome. Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) has become an excellent sexual maturation research model due to its diversity of life history strategies and its ecological and economic importance. A major challenge has been the lack of a comprehensive transcriptional investigation of reproductive tissues that captures the dynamic transcriptional changes across individuals, tissues, and developmental stages. Long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) also play crucial roles in maturation, yet their functions in salmon maturation remain underexplored. In this study, we sequenced 98 transcriptomes and found substantial transcriptomic complexity in the gonad and pituitary tissues of Atlantic salmon. We identified transcripts corresponding to 2,364 putative newly characterized protein-coding genes and 4,421 putative long intergenic non-coding RNAs (lincRNAs), many with tissue-specific expression. Gene co-expression network analysis (WGCNA) revealed tissue-specific gene network modules, linked to GO terms including Wnt signaling in immature testis, lipid metabolism, and cilia assembly in mature testis, ribosome biogenesis and DNA repair in the ovary, and hormone activity in pituitary. We identified new copies of known genes, such as gh1, pou3f2, and ier5 associated with the regulation of gonadal and pituitary functions. Some lncRNAs and their nearest genes showed correlated expression within modules, suggesting potential regulatory roles. Candidate lincRNAs indicated cis-acting regulatory potential on genes like tnfrsf11b and fgl1, which are implicated in immune privilege during gonadal development and sperm quality control. Our study provides a comprehensive transcriptomic analysis of Atlantic salmon gonad and pituitary tissues, significantly improving the functional annotation of the Atlantic salmon genome. These findings reveal key regulatory pathways and novel molecular players involved in sexual maturation, particularly in the testis. Importantly, our study highlights the regulatory potential of lncRNAs in reproductive biology and maturation age variation, advancing our understanding of the molecular mechanisms governing sexual maturation. They further unlock future gene expression analyses and regulatory network reconstruction for dissecting the roles of lncRNAs in Atlantic salmon life history variation.

Surprise 🤗 So many uncharacterized transcripts in Atlantic salmon, including super interesting long non-coding RNAs!

Proud to share the 1st publication of Xindi Huang:

link.springer.com/article/10.1...

With @fishcongen.bsky.social

🖥️🧬🦑

🚀 We’re hiring a Postdoc!

Join our group in Poznan, Poland to study meiotic crossover recombination in plants 🌱 Highly motivated & enthusiastic candidates are welcome!
📅 Deadline: Nov 1, 2025

🔗 ibmib.web.amu.edu.pl/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Postdoc_position-2025-Ziolkowskis-Lab.pdf

Now published in Cell! We found that ~15% of SNPs from divergent refs did not liftover as SNPs in the gray fox ref—half mapped to monomorphic sites, half failed to map. Co-authored with Matthew Genchev, @elliecat.bsky.social, and @jazlynmooney.bsky.social

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

I am removing microsatellites and QTL mapping from our lectures this year 🥺🪦

microsats 🥰

Charlesworth & Charlesworth

@needhibhalla.bsky.social 💅🏅

Interested in simulating the kind of data that you might commonly find in evolutionary and ecological studies?

Then we have the R package for you - squidSim!!

Check our new preprint:
ecoevorxiv.org/repository/v...

This looks really interesting Marta!

Legacy effects of religion, politics and war on urban evolutionary biology - Nature Cities Cities affect biological evolution, but traditionally researchers focus on the biophysical influence of urban environments. Instead, this Review explores how the social processes of religion, politics...

Thrilled to share our Perspective published in 𝘕𝘢𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘦 𝘊𝘪𝘵𝘪𝘦𝘴: 𝗟𝗲𝗴𝗮𝗰𝘆 𝗲𝗳𝗳𝗲𝗰𝘁𝘀 𝗼𝗳 𝗿𝗲𝗹𝗶𝗴𝗶𝗼𝗻, #𝗽𝗼𝗹𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗰𝘀 𝗮𝗻𝗱 #𝘄𝗮𝗿 𝗼𝗻 #𝘂𝗿𝗯𝗮𝗻 𝗲𝘃𝗼𝗹𝘂𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝗮𝗿𝘆 𝗯𝗶𝗼𝗹𝗼𝗴𝘆.

It also elevates Eastern European perspectives - underrepresented in #urban #evolution narratives.

www.nature.com/articles/s44...