Professor Mary J O'Connell

En Route to ESEB. @eseb2025.bsky.social .. Looking forward to a week chocka block with wonderful people and science ! Dont be shy - just come say hi !;-)

I have arrived in Barcelona for ESEB 2025!

I will be talking about microRNA and the evolution of the mammalian placenta on Tuesday at 14:30 in Meeting Room 113
@eseb2025.bsky.social

A checklist for designing and improving the visualization of scientific data - Nature Cell Biology Creating clear and engaging scientific figures is crucial to communicate complex data. In this Comment, I condense principles from design, visual perception and data visualization research in a checkl...

Lots of invaluable advice here for both early stage researchers and well established folk. Well thought out impactful figures are key to getting your points across, and it's all too common to see poor practice 🧪🧬🖥️🌍 #datavis #bioinformatics
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

This is figure 1, which gives an overview of the methods used to generate artificial mimetic stimuli.

Birds have an excellent ability to learn to discriminate harmless insects from those that they mimic on the basis of subtle differences in appearance, according to a study in Nature. go.nature.com/44yj4M5 🧪

Take a look at our work on miRNAs and their involvement with placental phenotypes. It's great to see this work finally see the light of day - huge thanks to everyone involved with the manuscript.

Mammal placental phenotypes are predictable from microRNA repertoires. Despite >100 million years of mammal diversification, similar placental morphologies have independently evolved multiple times, presenting a long-standing evolutionary puzzle: what genetic mechanisms ...

When you see convergent phenotypes do u wonder about their genetic basis? Did they re-invent some genetic element to construct the phenotype? The mammal placenta-a pretty important organ-has a lot of convergent phenotypes & this paper helps explain how they come about www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Happy to have contributed to this paper!!! Convergent placental phenotypes are mechanistically shaped by the same regulators

Mammal placental phenotypes are predictable from microRNA repertoires. Despite >100 million years of mammal diversification, similar placental morphologies have independently evolved multiple times, presenting a long-standing evolutionary puzzle: what genetic mechanisms ...

How did mammal placental diversity evolve? miRNAs play a significant role - indeed their repertoire is predictive of phenotype. Congrats to all: esp 1st author @jfennbio.bsky.social & all in @niamhforde.bsky.social group. Thanks to @ukri.org and @leverhulme.ac.uk. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Mammal placental phenotypes are predictable from microRNA repertoires. Despite >100 million years of mammal diversification, similar placental morphologies have independently evolved multiple times, presenting a long-standing evolutionary puzzle: what genetic mechanisms ...

How did mammal placental diversity evolve? miRNAs play a significant role - indeed their repertoire is predictive of phenotype. Congrats to all: esp 1st author @jfennbio.bsky.social & @niamhforde.bsky.social group. Thanks to funders @BBSRC and @LeverhulmeTrust. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Antarctic seal numbers falling drastically due to melting sea ice, research shows British Antarctic Survey finds one breed of seal has declined by 54% since 1977

Antarctic seal numbers falling drastically due to melting sea ice, research shows

White writing against a black background with gold swirls: Twenty-five Emeritus Fellowships awarded to senior academics to complete their research. Leverhulme Trust logo, URL leverhulme.ac.uk/news.

The Trust is proud to support twenty-five retired academics to complete their research. Topics covered this year include the role of salience in cognitive control and aggression, and marginal Nepali Dalit literature. www.leverhulme.ac.uk/news/twenty-...

Ted Goslow | 1939 - 2025 | Online-Tribute.com George Edward Goslow Jr. (AKA Ted Goslow) passed away peacefully at home with his son by his side on May 5, 2025, in Flagstaff, AZ, at the age of 85. Ted was born in Tacoma, WA on May 16, 1939, to lov...

R.I.P. Ted Goslow, a great functional morphologist. He contributed quite a bit to our understanding of how birds coordinate flying-- scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=e...

www.online-tribute.com/TedGoslow

Divergent paths, convergent heads: morphological adaptation of head shape to ecological niches in snakes. https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.05.17.654544v1

Sepia-tinted black and white photo of Inge Lehmann. She is looking directly at the camera, with a neutral expression.

Geophysicist and seismologist Inge Lehmann was born #OTD in 1888.

In 1936 she discovered the existence of a solid core at the center of the Earth, based on a careful analysis of global seismic records from a 1929 earthquake near New Zealand. 🧪 👩‍🔬

Image: Royal Danish Library

Cell type resolved expression of duplicate genes retained from whole genome duplication in Atlantic salmon Abstract. The functional and evolutionary outcomes of whole genome duplication (WGD) events are driven by global remodelling of gene expression. Most inves

📝 New Publication 🧪

Congratulations to team members Richard Taylor and Dan Macqueen for their paper exploring the functional and evolutionary outcomes of whole genome duplication using single cell transcriptomics!

@genomebiolevol.bsky.social

#WGDip

academic.oup.com/gbe/advance-...

#DataViz on #DNA methylation and ageing patterns in native Tibetans! 🧬🧪 #science 🏺 #anthropology #biology

Distinct placental gene expression in males and females could shed light on pregnancy outcomes The genes of male and female placentas have marked differences in how they are expressed, according to a study by researchers at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and other institutions. These d...

“The genes of male and female placentas have marked differences in how they are expressed”
#placenta #ReproSky 🧪 #Development
medicalxpress.com/news/2025-05...

Beyond the standard: Unconventional vertebrate models in biomedicine The use of a handful of model organisms has proven essential for scientific discovery and to unlock new therapeutics to combat human disease. As society looks to the future, the gateway to new scient…

Learn about how unconventional models help to push #biomedicine at EMBO Workshop "Beyond the standard: Unconventional vertebrate models in biomedicine" in Edinburgh, United Kingdom, 9–13 June 2025

Registration deadline: 8 May

meetings.embo.org/event/25-ver...
#EMBOvertrebateModels #EMBOevents 🧪

Did you know that Molecular Biology and Evolution has an Article Processing Charge (APC) waiver policy that benefits scientists working in developing countries?

Check our website to read more about eligibility and other conditions for APC waiver: academic.oup.com/mbe/pages/Op...

Dates are now confirmed for the 2025 SMBE Satellite Meeting in Chile: Molecular Mechanisms of Adaptation and Experimental Evolution. Join us in Puerto Varas for the latest advances in evolutionary biology.

Check more details: smbechile2025.cl

📅: 6 – 8 th October 2025
📝 Deadline: July 31

The Dire Wolf Isn’t Back—But Here’s What ‘De-Extinction’ Tech Can Actually Do Colossal Bioscience says it has “de-extincted” the dire wolf, but other scientists disagree and say more important conservation science is being lost in all the hype

Amidst all the hoopla about "dire wolves" some potentially quite important developments for protecting endangered species is being a bit lost. Wrote about that and other aspects of this whole thing: 🧪

(Thanks to Beth Shapiro, Matt James & @jacquelyngill.bsky.social for speaking with me)

🧪⚒️ Happy Geologists Day from #geodog Pebble !! I wish you all amazing discoveries in the field and lab! @olakwiecien3.bsky.social @geohenning.bsky.social @britgeosurvey.bsky.social @geolsoc.bsky.social @geotdf.bsky.social @geologyjohnson.bsky.social

Sex and environment shape cochlear sensitivity in human populations worldwide - Scientific Reports Scientific Reports - Sex and environment shape cochlear sensitivity in human populations worldwide

👂Women hear more sensitively than men

A new global study found women consistently have more sensitive hearing than men – regardless of age, environment, or where they live. Environment still matters, but sex made the biggest difference.

🔗 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

#SciComm #Hearing 🧪

What a fantastic start to our @wellcometrust.bsky.social funded sample collection. Very lucky to be part of such a wonderful team #reprorocks @evol-molly.bsky.social @parisa-noohi.bsky.social @jessicacedge.bsky.social @haideetinning.bsky.social

Attention #HumanOrigins researchers!
🧪🦣🏺

The Amphibian Genomics Consortium: advancing genomic and genetic resources for amphibian research and conservation https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.06.27.601086v1 Amphibians represent a diverse group of tetrapods, marked by deep divergence times between their thr

The Amphibian Genomics Consortium: advancing genomic and genetic resources for amphibian research and conservation https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.06.27.601086v1

3-y postdoc position in (meta)Genomics of Population Declines elxw.fa.em3.oraclecloud.com/hcmUI/Candid.... If you have experience with low-coverage genomic data, care about biodiversity loss, want to understand host-microbiomes interactions, this post is for you! #museomics #ancientDNA #mammals

The vulnerable nature of our amphibia and climatic variability... "impacts of global warming will probably exceed our projections"

In this time of chaos - something good! We are excited to share our final (or near final) speaker list for the 3rd UCSF Full Circle Symposium 4/3-4/4 to highlight Native biologists! Please share the word and register to attend the webinar in person! More info: qbi.ucsf.edu/full-circle-...