Victor A. Albert
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plantgenomes.bsky.social
Victor A. Albert
@plantgenomes.bsky.social
670 followers 250 following 59 posts

Professor, University at Buffalo | plant genomes, polyploidy, organismal radiations, phylo/population genomics, carnivorous plants, holocentric chromosomes, evolution of biosynthetic gene clusters; https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=dLniyH0AAAAJ& .. more

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Agriculture 34%
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plantgenomes.bsky.social
Victor A. Albert @plantgenomes.bsky.social · Feb 20
Sea sandwort (Honckenya peploides) genome update - first Nanopore flow cell looking pretty good. Dormant shoots were collected from under beach sand in Denmark. A salt tolerant species that was the first plant to appear on the volcanic island Surtsey (Iceland), which erupted out of the sea in 1963.

Reposted by Michael D. Petraglia, Victor A. Albert

Chris Stringer @chrisbstringer.bsky.social · Jan 1
Archaeologists Stunned by 115,000-Year-Old Human Footprint Discovery in the Most Unexpected Place
dailygalaxy.com/2024/12/1150...
Archaeologists Stunned by 115,000-Year-Old Human Footprint Discovery in the Most Unexpected Place
Deep in the sands of the Arabian Peninsula, scientists unearthed an ancient lakebed harboring a secret that could transform our understanding of human history. Human footprints, preserved for over 115...
dailygalaxy.com

Reposted by Victor A. Albert

barkerms.bsky.social
Mike Barker @barkerms.bsky.social · May 11
Looking forward to the Jacques Monod Conference on polyploidy this September in Roscoff, France! Registration is open until May 19! #polyploidy

cjm.sb-roscoff.fr/en/conferenc...
Evolutionary and ecological genomics of polyploidy in plants: temporal dynamics across scales of biological organization from molecules to ecosystems | CNRS - Conférences Jacques Monod (CJM)
cjm.sb-roscoff.fr

plantgenomes.bsky.social
Victor A. Albert @plantgenomes.bsky.social · May 10
See Derek Taylor’s and my eLetter in #Science critiquing the #proteomic evidence ostensibly supporting the Penghu 1 mandible as a #Denisovan - at the end of www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Reposted by Victor A. Albert

Jonathan Wendel @jonathanfwendel.bsky.social · May 7
Polyploidy Conference: www.insb.cnrs.fr/fr/evolution...
Registration deadline is fast approaching! (May 19th)
Evolutionary and ecological genomics of polyploidy in plants: temporal dynamics across scales of biological organization from molecules to ecosystems
Roscoff (Bretagne), France, September 15-19, 2025Deadline for application: May 5, 2025
www.insb.cnrs.fr

plantgenomes.bsky.social
Victor A. Albert @plantgenomes.bsky.social · Apr 7
Our paper on a chromosome-level genome of the carnivorous #butterwort plant #Pinguicula gigantea and other species is now published on bioRxiv ! Exciting to get this project close to done 😀 See the preprint here: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Reposted by Victor A. Albert

stairwaytokevin.bsky.social
Kevin Bird @stairwaytokevin.bsky.social · Mar 22
Cool new work! Some lineages experiencing ancient whole-genome duplications seem to hold on to their duplicate genes for a really long time & keep accumulating homoeologous exchange events! Runs counter to early models where gene loss is expected to be rapid post-WGD academic.oup.com/gbe/advance-...
A class of allopolyploidy showing high duplicate retention and continued homoeologous exchanges
Abstract. We describe four ancient polyploidy events where the descendant taxa retain many more duplicated gene copies than has been seen in other paleopol
academic.oup.com

Reposted by Victor A. Albert

npr.org
NPR @npr.org · Feb 26
The plant, formally known as Ovicula biradiata, is especially notable for being the simultaneous discovery of a new species and genus. It was found with help from the community science app iNaturalist. By @jamesdoubek.bsky.social
Meet the 'wooly devil,' a new plant species discovered in Big Bend National Park
The plant, formally known as Ovicula biradiata, is especially notable for being the simultaneous discovery of a new species and genus. It was found with help from the community science app iNaturalist...
www.npr.org

Reposted by Victor A. Albert

biorxiv-plants.bsky.social
bioRxiv Plant Bio @biorxiv-plants.bsky.social · Feb 23
Triploidy is prominent in the duckweed Lemna minor complex https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.02.18.638736v1

Reposted by Victor A. Albert

johnhawks.net
John Hawks @johnhawks.net · Feb 21
Looking at new criticism and response of an argument for selection in ancient DNA data, I reflected on the huge extent that immunity now matters in our understanding of human evolution.

johnhawks.net/weblog/anoth...
Another look at selection and the Black Death
An exchange of comments probes the story of the EPAS2 gene, balancing selection, and resistance to Yersinia pestis.
johnhawks.net

Reposted by Victor A. Albert

Chris Stringer @chrisbstringer.bsky.social · Feb 19
Tracing human ancestors back a million years www.newscientist.com/video/246925...
Chris Stringer is tracing human ancestors back a million years
Chris Stringer is tracing human ancestors back a million years, but pinpointing when exactly Homo sapiens emerged is even more complex
www.newscientist.com

plantgenomes.bsky.social
Victor A. Albert @plantgenomes.bsky.social · Feb 14
FYI, we run PSMCs against self-Masurca assemblies of Illumina reads, as well as against our reference genome. Clermontia spp. are rather poorly divergent which makes the reference genome approach OK, so long as coverage OK. Mapping Cyanea, Delissea and Brighamia to Clermontia not advisable ;)

plantgenomes.bsky.social
Victor A. Albert @plantgenomes.bsky.social · Feb 14
Will be happy to talk shop w you about other findings we have .. trees, PCAs, F3 analyses, NeighborNet (all of these just complementary w each other and ADMIXTURE) .. but also PSMCs

plantgenomes.bsky.social
Victor A. Albert @plantgenomes.bsky.social · Feb 14
Here’s the other - needs some manual adjustments tho. This work done by expert PhD student Michaela Richter 😀

plantgenomes.bsky.social
Victor A. Albert @plantgenomes.bsky.social · Feb 14
Here’s one haplotype .. 14 chrs

plantgenomes.bsky.social
Victor A. Albert @plantgenomes.bsky.social · Feb 14
Still working on it! We just generated two new assemblies - phased haplotypes - using HifiAsm with the ONT flag plus our HiC reads. Such a big step means we need to re-call our SNPs .. on both haplotypes, independently

Reposted by Victor A. Albert

andrewlhipp.bsky.social
Andrew Hipp @andrewlhipp.bsky.social · Feb 12
Here, a celebration of Apocynaceae (dogbanes, milkweeds, swallow-worts etc.) fruits and flowers tucked into a phylogenetic study. Remarkable diversity.

www.frontiersin.org/journals/eco...

Reposted by Victor A. Albert

Chris Stringer @chrisbstringer.bsky.social · Feb 12
Rapid evolution of prehistoric dogs from wolves by natural and sexual selection emerges from an agent-based model | Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...
Rapid evolution of prehistoric dogs from wolves by natural and sexual selection emerges from an agent-based model | Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
Wolves are among the earliest animals to be domesticated. However, the mechanism by which ancient wolves were domesticated into modern dogs is unknown. Most of the prevailing domestication hypotheses ...
royalsocietypublishing.org

Reposted by Victor A. Albert

nature.com
Nature @nature.com · Feb 12
Giant ground sloths? Armadillos?

Who - or what - cut these ancient sandstone tunnels in Brazil?

Read the full story: www.nature.com/articles/d41...
A man wearing a hard hat shines a torch at the inner wall of a sandstone tunnel. The tunnel is covered in scratches Three people face away from the camera, shining torches on the inside of tunnel walls. One of the people points towards something on the wall Two people crouch inside a sandstone tunnel, one of them points towards the inner wall. They are both wearing hard hats. A photograph taken from the inside of the mouth of a tunnel. Outside the tunnel, we see green foliage.

Reposted by Victor A. Albert

3rdreviewer.bsky.social
Matthew Hahn @3rdreviewer.bsky.social · Feb 10
New paper led by @glom.bsky.social!

"Unprecedented female female bias in the aye-aye, a highly unusual lemur from Madagascar"

1/
journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...
Photo of an aye-aye

Reposted by Victor A. Albert

plosbiology.org
PLOS Biology @plosbiology.org · Feb 10
Aye-ayes are clearly unusual, but @glom.bsky.social @3rdreviewer.bsky.social &co show that they also have an unusual pattern of #MutationBias; older females transmit more mutations than males. This is a first for mammals, raising questions about other #lemurs 🧪 @plosbiology.org plos.io/40SR4kj
Top: A picture of the aye-aye named Elphaba. Image credit: David Haring, Duke Lemur Center. Bottom: Pedigree structure of the aye-ayes used in this study. The 18 individuals sequenced in this study are shown: males as squares and females as circles. Two individuals (IDs 100937 and 100935) appear multiple places in the pedigree, each time connected by a dashed line. Elphaba is at the bottom right.

Reposted by Victor A. Albert

johnhawks.net
John Hawks @johnhawks.net · Feb 9
The discovery that Africa is the birthplace of human evolution: Marking 100 years since Australopithecus africanus transformed our understanding.

www.nature.com/articles/d44...
The discovery that Africa is the birthplace of human evolution
Marking 100 years since Australopithecus Africanus transformed our understanding.
www.nature.com

Reposted by Victor A. Albert

Chris Stringer @chrisbstringer.bsky.social · Feb 9
The Archaeology of Cannibalism: a Review of the Taphonomic Traits Associated with Survival and Ritualistic Cannibalism link.springer.com/article/10.1...
The Archaeology of Cannibalism: a Review of the Taphonomic Traits Associated with Survival and Ritualistic Cannibalism - Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory
Taphonomic studies of osteoarchaeological human assemblages have mainly focused on establishing recognisable markers that allow us to discriminate between humanly induced modifications from natural ca...
link.springer.com

Reposted by Victor A. Albert

annbot.bsky.social
Annals of Botany @annbot.bsky.social · Feb 9
🎉🆕📰🎉: Phylogenomic analysis of target enrichment and transcriptome data uncovers rapid radiation and extensive hybridization in the slipper orchid genus Cypripedium
doi.org

plantgenomes.bsky.social
Victor A. Albert @plantgenomes.bsky.social · Jan 18
The Droseraceae issue arises if one wants a monophyletic Drosera

plantgenomes.bsky.social
Victor A. Albert @plantgenomes.bsky.social · Jan 18
The NeighborNet doesn’t help much to discern admixture vs other sources of homoplasy; it’s a summary of all splits that may imply any source incongruence. It does reflect the admixture graph in this case. Also in the Stachys/Hawaiian mint case I posted

plantgenomes.bsky.social
Victor A. Albert @plantgenomes.bsky.social · Jan 18
Oops, I meant is Nepenthes a monophyletic taxon sister to Droso/Triphyo+Ancistro or is it paraphyletic to Droso/Triphyo+Ancistro .. both. Sorry 😬

plantgenomes.bsky.social
Victor A. Albert @plantgenomes.bsky.social · Jan 16
For example, in this study I’ll be publishing soon, what is the monophyletic taxon to which Nepenthes belongs? Nepenthes itself is monophyletic - but does it form a clade with Drosophyllum/Triphyophyllum+Ancistrocladus, or a clade with “Droseraceae”? Neither. A NeighborNet reveals the same

plantgenomes.bsky.social
Victor A. Albert @plantgenomes.bsky.social · Jan 16
Panel (a) here shows why the NeighborNet in panel (e) is the way it is - tree-defying allopolyploidies. In fact, any new phylogenomics study (e.g., based on Angiosperm353 loci) that includes allopolyploids .. and that publishes only trees… is, sadly, immediately “wrong”

plantgenomes.bsky.social
Victor A. Albert @plantgenomes.bsky.social · Jan 16
Please don’t 100% ignore this paper because of its NeighborNet 🥹😅 www.nature.com/articles/s41...