Peter Holland
peterhox.bsky.social
Peter Holland
@peterhox.bsky.social
Latest collaborative paper out this week - including work on my "favourite fly". Amazing bioinformatic work by Peter Mulhair, changing views on phylogeny and pushing back evolutionary origins of bicoid. Includes first ever in situs on Bombylius showing anterior bcd RNA.

bsky.app/profile/pete...
October 18, 2025 at 11:27 AM
Reposted by Peter Holland
Latest work out today in @currentbiology.bsky.social

We find the fly development gene bicoid is much older than previously thought (~20 million yrs older!) 🪰🧬

To pinpoint its origins we tackled the Diptera phylogeny, providing some resolution (many open questions remain).

🔗 tinyurl.com/2vyuevpy
Revised evolutionary relationships within Brachycera and the early origin of bicoid in flies
Mulhair et al. uncover a functional bicoid in non-cyclorrhaphan flies, pushing the gene's origin back by ∼20 million years. Reassessing the Diptera phylogeny using the largest dataset to date permits ...
www.cell.com
October 17, 2025 at 3:14 PM
Reposted by Peter Holland
Honouring the life of Sir John Gurdon, who died earlier this week: awarded the Nobel Laureate in Physiology or Medicine for seminal work carried out in Oxford Zoology (now @biology.ox.ac.uk) showing that mature cells could be reprogrammed to become pluripotent.

www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medic...
Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2012
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2012 was awarded jointly to Sir John B. Gurdon and Shinya Yamanaka "for the discovery that mature cells can be reprogrammed to become pluripotent"
www.nobelprize.org
October 10, 2025 at 12:23 PM
Reposted by Peter Holland
"Why sequence the #genome of every species? A view from evolutionary biology" Did you catch this amazing new review in our journal by @peterhox.bsky.social? REad it for FREE here now: www.cambridge.org/core/journal... @thembauk.bsky.social #dnasequencing #chromosome #mutation #evolution
September 26, 2025 at 4:26 PM
Latest paper - out today - my personal views on why and how sequencing 100,000s of animal genomes will revolutionize evolutionary biology (and much more besides): tinyurl.com/JMBAgenome - open access in @journalofthemba.bsky.social. @biology.ox.ac.uk
tinyurl.com
September 8, 2025 at 6:09 PM
Our latest paper - interesting patterns of gene loss in duplicated Hox clusters of snails and slugs - Masters project of Finn McHale who just graduated with an MBiol 1st Class. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...
Evolution of Duplicated Hox Gene Clusters in Land Snails and Slugs
Molluscs of the order Stylommatophora underwent an ancient genome duplication. We show that stylommatophoran snails and slugs have two broken and incomplete Hox gene clusters; HoxA generally has 9 ge...
onlinelibrary.wiley.com
August 7, 2025 at 8:20 AM
Reposted by Peter Holland
We are excited to announce the 'official' start of our BBSRC funded sLoLa project, where we aim to uncover the role of rediploidisation in shaping evolution after genome duplication events across the tree of life!

Find out more:
www.rediploidisation.org

vet.ed.ac.uk/roslin/news-...

#WGDip #BBSRC
Experts examine DNA changes that shaped life on Earth
Four-year collaborative project seeks to understand key process linked to evolution.
vet.ed.ac.uk
April 4, 2025 at 9:40 AM
Reposted by Peter Holland
👏 Of course, a big round of applause to the fantastic work put in by the Local Organizing Committee, conference staff, and volunteers, without whom none of this would have happened!
July 24, 2025 at 1:27 PM
Reposted by Peter Holland
"There are places in the world where science is under threat, and we need to make sure that we explain to non-scientists why our approach is important" @peterhox.bsky.social's parting shot at #SMBE2025
July 23, 2025 at 1:56 AM
Reposted by Peter Holland
It's day 4 of #SMBE2025!

We kickstart with the plenary talk of Peter Holland (@peterhox.bsky.social), who reminds us of the immense value of sequencing one, two, and many more genomes.

The day goes on...
July 23, 2025 at 2:46 AM