The Nelson lab is presenting at #Dros26 today!
Stop by Daisy's poster to learn about rDNA instability in somatic aging (680F), and Caroline's poster about the role of an mRNA binding protein in regulating germline rDNA expansion (777F)!
If you’re at #dros26 and you like transposons don’t miss Peiwei’s talk! 🔥🪰 We’re really excited about his findings!
A lot of exciting things have been happing in the @rothenberglab.bsky.social so we have been keeping really busy. A few of us are at #Dros26 to share our science. Come by one of our posters to say hi!
If you are at #Dros26 and want to see what our lab has been up to, check out @rafaelperezvicente.bsky.social’s poster on sexual dimorphism during heart development (611, Fri 2-4pm) and @qeenyra.bsky.social’s talk on the effects of confinement on cardiac progenitor migration (Cell bio, Sat 8am). 🧪🪰
Now that the cat’s out of the bag: Excited to announce I will be starting a research group as a Sandler Fellow this August at UCSF! We will study the evolution of protein toxins at the host-pathogen interface across scales of biological organization. Learn more here:
www.tarnopollab.org
Our story on the evolution of colistin resistance is just out on @plosbiology.org (journals.plos.org/plosbiology/... Evolution doesn’t happen in isolation. We show that competing fungi can rewire the evolutionary trajectory of colistin resistance in P. aeruginosa. Great teamwork with the Ernst lab
Proud of Dr @tarnopol.bsky.social who received the Sandler Award for “Outstanding Drosophila Thesis” at the fly meeting #Dros26 in Chicago this evening! @genetics-gsa.bsky.social
Rebecca Tarnopol @tarnopol.bsky.social receives the 2026 Larry Sandler award for best Drosophila PhD thesis
So excited to B repping the Hanlon Lab at #Dros26 in Chicago!!!
B-wildered by the B chromosomes? Come see my talk on the meiotic drive of the B chromosomes Friday morning in the Evolution I section!
Join us at the EMBO Workshop “RNA-guided genome protection” 🇨🇭 June 16–20. Transposon silencing • stem cell biology • RNA-guided immunity. Keynotes: Déborah Bourc’his + Ian MacRae. Register now + submit your abstract! meetings.embo.org/event/26-gen...
What happens if the germline goes on without (most of the) piRNAs for 45 generations?
Come find out at my talk at the evolution session on Saturday at #dros26 @genetics-gsa.bsky.social
🪰🔬🔎⁉️🤔
Annual Drosophila Research Conference 2026 Friday, March 6 8 to 10 PM Workshop - Superior, Level 2 Everything You Ever Wanted to Know ...
#Dros26 community — we’d love to see you at our workshop this Friday! [1/8]
Organizers: @ritamgraze.bsky.social @marbeitman.bsky.social @lydiagrmai.bsky.social @gavinrrice.bsky.social @brhopkins92.bsky.social Artyom Kopp
MBE | The evolutionary genomics of meiotic drive Meiotic drivers gain transmission advantages by distorting equal, Mendelian segregation. This review discusses the evolutionary genomics of meiotic drive. The figure highlights the interactions of meiotic drive elements with other classes of selfish genetic elements including: direct interactions between drivers and transposable elements (TEs) (A) or satellites (C) that can facilitate the spread of drivers; other drive systems that cause the mutual destruction of all gametes (B; e.g. the presence of multiple toxin-antidote systems); indirect interactions where the host machinery responsible for silencing TEs are recruited to silence drivers (D); dosage-sensitive interactions involving sex-linked drivers that result in gene amplifications (E); and tradeoffs between suppressing drive and TEs (F).
For a new MBE Review, Presgraves et al. argue that many features of genome evolution, content, and organization seemingly inexplicable by adaptation or nearly neutral processes are instead best accounted for by meiotic drive.
🔗 academic.oup.com/mbe/article/...
#evobio #molbio
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
Yay!!! 🙌 🎉
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.
🔬 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.
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...
Congrats Takashi!!
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...
