@robinburns.bsky.social
Broodbank Fellow. PDRA Caius College. Plant evolutionary genomics, centromeres, polyploidy.
Reposted
New paper! Work led by @p-bourguet.bsky.social and Frédéric Berger at the GMI of the @oeaw.bsky.social and @esasaki007.bsky.social identified how protein CDCA7 helps plants stably maintain epigenetic modifications across generations.
Read more: www.oeaw.ac.at/gmi/detail/n...
Read more: www.oeaw.ac.at/gmi/detail/n...
November 7, 2025 at 10:33 AM
New paper! Work led by @p-bourguet.bsky.social and Frédéric Berger at the GMI of the @oeaw.bsky.social and @esasaki007.bsky.social identified how protein CDCA7 helps plants stably maintain epigenetic modifications across generations.
Read more: www.oeaw.ac.at/gmi/detail/n...
Read more: www.oeaw.ac.at/gmi/detail/n...
Reposted
Diploid origins and early genome stabilization in the allotetraploid Arabidopsis suecica
Burns et al. robinburns@bsky.social alisondawnscott@bsky.social
nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
Burns et al. robinburns@bsky.social alisondawnscott@bsky.social
nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
November 6, 2025 at 3:35 PM
Diploid origins and early genome stabilization in the allotetraploid Arabidopsis suecica
Burns et al. robinburns@bsky.social alisondawnscott@bsky.social
nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
Burns et al. robinburns@bsky.social alisondawnscott@bsky.social
nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
Reposted
Very excited to share our work published in Nature Comms last week! Here we describe a range of cool things that can be done once you have the power to control deposition of H3K4me3…
rdcu.be/eNEf4
A short thread:
rdcu.be/eNEf4
A short thread:
CRISPR targeting of H3K4me3 activates gene expression and unlocks centromere-proximal crossover recombination in Arabidopsis
Nature Communications - Binenbaum et al. demonstrate that precise CRISPR-based targeting of a key chromatin mark (H3K4me3) can switch on genes, boost disease resistance, and unlock meiotic...
rdcu.be
November 5, 2025 at 9:30 PM
Very excited to share our work published in Nature Comms last week! Here we describe a range of cool things that can be done once you have the power to control deposition of H3K4me3…
rdcu.be/eNEf4
A short thread:
rdcu.be/eNEf4
A short thread:
Reposted
1/10 Genome maintenance by telomerase is a fundamental process in nearly all eukaryotes. But where does it come from?
Today, we report the discovery of telomerase homologs in a family of antiviral RTs, revealing an unexpected evolutionary origin in bacteria.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Today, we report the discovery of telomerase homologs in a family of antiviral RTs, revealing an unexpected evolutionary origin in bacteria.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Antiviral reverse transcriptases reveal the evolutionary origin of telomerase
Defense-associated reverse transcriptases (DRTs) employ diverse and distinctive mechanisms of cDNA synthesis to protect bacteria against viral infection. However, much of DRT family diversity remains ...
www.biorxiv.org
October 17, 2025 at 5:22 PM
1/10 Genome maintenance by telomerase is a fundamental process in nearly all eukaryotes. But where does it come from?
Today, we report the discovery of telomerase homologs in a family of antiviral RTs, revealing an unexpected evolutionary origin in bacteria.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Today, we report the discovery of telomerase homologs in a family of antiviral RTs, revealing an unexpected evolutionary origin in bacteria.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Reposted
Incredible new paper from @schacherer.bsky.social et al rdcu.be/eLcTH
From genotype to phenotype with 1,086 near telomere-to-telomere yeast genomes
Nature - A newly compiled atlas of species-wide structural variants and gene-based and graph pangenomes derived from highly complete assemblies of genomes from 1,086 natural isolates enable...
rdcu.be
October 15, 2025 at 9:06 PM
Incredible new paper from @schacherer.bsky.social et al rdcu.be/eLcTH
Reposted
How To Reproduce As A Plant
#Plants #Botany #Angiosperms #Evolution #Reproduction
https://sciencehumor.io/biology-memes/how-to-reproduce-as-a-plant-zfkw
#Plants #Botany #Angiosperms #Evolution #Reproduction
https://sciencehumor.io/biology-memes/how-to-reproduce-as-a-plant-zfkw
October 11, 2025 at 6:18 PM
How To Reproduce As A Plant
#Plants #Botany #Angiosperms #Evolution #Reproduction
https://sciencehumor.io/biology-memes/how-to-reproduce-as-a-plant-zfkw
#Plants #Botany #Angiosperms #Evolution #Reproduction
https://sciencehumor.io/biology-memes/how-to-reproduce-as-a-plant-zfkw
Reposted
Reposted
In these dark times, it comes as a rare pleasure to highlight @natanaels.bsky.social & @marcdemanuel.bsky.social's work on germline and somatic mutations in humans. 1/n
www.biorxiv.org/cgi/content/...
www.biorxiv.org/cgi/content/...
Collateral mutagenesis funnels multiple sources of DNA damage into a ubiquitous mutational signature
Mutations reflect the net effects of myriad types of damage, replication errors, and repair mechanisms, and thus are expected to differ across cell types with distinct exposures to mutagens, division ...
www.biorxiv.org
September 2, 2025 at 11:44 AM
In these dark times, it comes as a rare pleasure to highlight @natanaels.bsky.social & @marcdemanuel.bsky.social's work on germline and somatic mutations in humans. 1/n
www.biorxiv.org/cgi/content/...
www.biorxiv.org/cgi/content/...
Reposted
Out after peer review, collaborative study from Nordborg & Weigel labs with help from many others. Not the largest collection of new Arabidopsis thaliana genomes, but we hopefully put forward some good ideas for how to think about pangenomes and their analysis!
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
August 20, 2025 at 6:23 AM
Out after peer review, collaborative study from Nordborg & Weigel labs with help from many others. Not the largest collection of new Arabidopsis thaliana genomes, but we hopefully put forward some good ideas for how to think about pangenomes and their analysis!
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Reposted
How can England possibly be running out of water? | Water | The Guardian share.google/M8qhPxIx3zIg...
How can England possibly be running out of water?
While famously rainswept, climate crisis, population growth and profligacy mean the once unthinkable could be possible
share.google
August 17, 2025 at 11:18 AM
How can England possibly be running out of water? | Water | The Guardian share.google/M8qhPxIx3zIg...
Reposted
1/ How do animals develop immunity against a newly encountered transposable element from scratch? Our study reveals that the mobility of TEs is their Achilles heel, allowing hosts to develop a powerful small RNA-mediated silencing response.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
August 14, 2025 at 5:09 PM
1/ How do animals develop immunity against a newly encountered transposable element from scratch? Our study reveals that the mobility of TEs is their Achilles heel, allowing hosts to develop a powerful small RNA-mediated silencing response.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Reposted
Just out in Science: we demonstrate a micro-evolutionary shift in a single generation, involving thousands of genomic loci, giving younger ash trees more resistance to ash dieback, on average, than their parents
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adp2990
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adp2990
Rapid polygenic adaptation in a wild population of ash trees under a novel fungal epidemic
Rapid evolution through small shifts in allele frequencies at thousands of loci is a long-standing neo-Darwinian prediction but is hard to characterize in the wild. European ash tree (Fraxinus excelsi...
www.science.org
June 27, 2025 at 10:46 AM
Just out in Science: we demonstrate a micro-evolutionary shift in a single generation, involving thousands of genomic loci, giving younger ash trees more resistance to ash dieback, on average, than their parents
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adp2990
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adp2990
Reposted
1/7
I am very excited to announce our🌹NEW PAPER OUT IN 𝑁𝐴𝑇𝑈𝑅𝐸!🌹
𝐃𝐑𝐈𝐕𝐄 𝐓𝐎 𝐒𝐔𝐑𝐕𝐈𝐕𝐄: Bimodal centromeres in pentaploid dogroses shed light on their unique meiosis
With the Ritz and Kovařík labs we show a potential role for centromeres on 𝘙𝘰𝘴𝘢 𝘤𝘢𝘯𝘪𝘯𝘢 bizarre reproduction!
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
I am very excited to announce our🌹NEW PAPER OUT IN 𝑁𝐴𝑇𝑈𝑅𝐸!🌹
𝐃𝐑𝐈𝐕𝐄 𝐓𝐎 𝐒𝐔𝐑𝐕𝐈𝐕𝐄: Bimodal centromeres in pentaploid dogroses shed light on their unique meiosis
With the Ritz and Kovařík labs we show a potential role for centromeres on 𝘙𝘰𝘴𝘢 𝘤𝘢𝘯𝘪𝘯𝘢 bizarre reproduction!
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Bimodal centromeres in pentaploid dogroses shed light on their unique meiosis - Nature
Insights into the dogrose genome and centromeres explain their ability to achieve stable sexual reproduction.
www.nature.com
June 18, 2025 at 3:34 PM
1/7
I am very excited to announce our🌹NEW PAPER OUT IN 𝑁𝐴𝑇𝑈𝑅𝐸!🌹
𝐃𝐑𝐈𝐕𝐄 𝐓𝐎 𝐒𝐔𝐑𝐕𝐈𝐕𝐄: Bimodal centromeres in pentaploid dogroses shed light on their unique meiosis
With the Ritz and Kovařík labs we show a potential role for centromeres on 𝘙𝘰𝘴𝘢 𝘤𝘢𝘯𝘪𝘯𝘢 bizarre reproduction!
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
I am very excited to announce our🌹NEW PAPER OUT IN 𝑁𝐴𝑇𝑈𝑅𝐸!🌹
𝐃𝐑𝐈𝐕𝐄 𝐓𝐎 𝐒𝐔𝐑𝐕𝐈𝐕𝐄: Bimodal centromeres in pentaploid dogroses shed light on their unique meiosis
With the Ritz and Kovařík labs we show a potential role for centromeres on 𝘙𝘰𝘴𝘢 𝘤𝘢𝘯𝘪𝘯𝘢 bizarre reproduction!
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Reposted
Thrilled to share our new paper in @science.org describing our discovery that bacteria can switch from competitors to bonafide predators when resources run dry—arming nanoscale “spears” (T6SS) to stab & consume neighbours.
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
#MicroSKy #Microbiology
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
#MicroSKy #Microbiology
Antagonism as a foraging strategy in microbial communities
In natural habitats, nutrient availability limits bacterial growth. We discovered that bacteria can overcome this limitation by acquiring nutrients by lysing neighboring cells through contact-dependen...
www.science.org
June 13, 2025 at 5:39 AM
Thrilled to share our new paper in @science.org describing our discovery that bacteria can switch from competitors to bonafide predators when resources run dry—arming nanoscale “spears” (T6SS) to stab & consume neighbours.
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
#MicroSKy #Microbiology
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
#MicroSKy #Microbiology
Reposted
Life-history trade-offs explain local adaptation in Arabidopsis thaliana https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.05.18.654693v1
May 23, 2025 at 3:33 PM
Life-history trade-offs explain local adaptation in Arabidopsis thaliana https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.05.18.654693v1
Reposted
Excited to share our work on using pathway-specific polygenic scores to discover gene-environment interactions www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...
May 22, 2025 at 3:09 PM
Excited to share our work on using pathway-specific polygenic scores to discover gene-environment interactions www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...
Reposted
. @pnas.org just published the final version of our manuscript on how generation time and effective population size interact to shape vertebrate germline mutation rates, led by Luke Zhu and Annabel Beichman: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
PNAS
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), a peer reviewed journal of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) - an authoritative source of high-impact, original research that broadly spans...
www.pnas.org
May 21, 2025 at 7:33 PM
. @pnas.org just published the final version of our manuscript on how generation time and effective population size interact to shape vertebrate germline mutation rates, led by Luke Zhu and Annabel Beichman: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
Reposted
New research by @egonzalezduran.bsky.social shows that DSB repair suppresses gene transfer from chloroplasts to nucleus. With DSB repair impaired, transfer rates jump 20× — revealing how plants protect genome stability, with lessons beyond plant biology. Read: nature.com/articles/s41477-025-02005-w
Suppression of plastid-to-nucleus gene transfer by DNA double-strand break repair - Nature Plants
Inactivation of double-strand break repair pathways greatly increases the integration of plastid DNA into the nuclear genome of tobacco plants, highlighting the mutagenic potential of organellar DNA a...
nature.com
May 17, 2025 at 7:50 AM
New research by @egonzalezduran.bsky.social shows that DSB repair suppresses gene transfer from chloroplasts to nucleus. With DSB repair impaired, transfer rates jump 20× — revealing how plants protect genome stability, with lessons beyond plant biology. Read: nature.com/articles/s41477-025-02005-w
Reposted
I'm so very excited to see this out - a single cell and spatial transcriptomic analysis in the rice root reveals mechanisms by which roots can respond to different below-ground growth conditions - including compaction. Congratulations to everyone for persisting in difficult times. rdcu.be/ej8Ui
Single-cell transcriptomics reveal how root tissues adapt to soil stress
Nature - Single-cell RNA sequencing and spatial transcriptomic approaches reveal major expression changes in outer root cell types when grown in soil versus gel conditions, and also uncover how...
rdcu.be
April 30, 2025 at 8:43 PM
I'm so very excited to see this out - a single cell and spatial transcriptomic analysis in the rice root reveals mechanisms by which roots can respond to different below-ground growth conditions - including compaction. Congratulations to everyone for persisting in difficult times. rdcu.be/ej8Ui
Reposted
Awesome new paper by @lucalivraghi.bsky.social et al.
doi.org/10.1016/j.cu...
in @currentbiology.bsky.social
on the evo-devo of a butterfly color variation
enjoy the show!
doi.org/10.1016/j.cu...
in @currentbiology.bsky.social
on the evo-devo of a butterfly color variation
enjoy the show!
April 14, 2025 at 2:53 AM
Awesome new paper by @lucalivraghi.bsky.social et al.
doi.org/10.1016/j.cu...
in @currentbiology.bsky.social
on the evo-devo of a butterfly color variation
enjoy the show!
doi.org/10.1016/j.cu...
in @currentbiology.bsky.social
on the evo-devo of a butterfly color variation
enjoy the show!
Reposted
It’s 🌿International Plant Appreciation Day🌿, so here’s a Corydalis melanochlora from the Hengduan Mountains. I can’t stop praising my favorite alpine flora 🥰
#LetsGoPlants #IamaBotanist
#LetsGoPlants #IamaBotanist
April 14, 2025 at 3:54 AM
It’s 🌿International Plant Appreciation Day🌿, so here’s a Corydalis melanochlora from the Hengduan Mountains. I can’t stop praising my favorite alpine flora 🥰
#LetsGoPlants #IamaBotanist
#LetsGoPlants #IamaBotanist
Reposted
hungry hungry rhinos
April 10, 2025 at 10:32 PM
hungry hungry rhinos
Reposted
Our new paper on the rapid evolution of centromeres in Drosophila is out! 🚀 Discover how transposable elements and satellite DNAs shape centromere dynamics and drive karyotype evolution over short timescales. @amlarracuente.bsky.social 🌟 Check it out here: journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...
Turnover of retroelements and satellite DNA drives centromere reorganization over short evolutionary timescales in Drosophila
Centromeres reside in rapidly evolving, repeat-rich genomic regions, despite their essential function in chromosome segregation. This study of centromere evolution over short evolutionary timescales i...
journals.plos.org
November 21, 2024 at 10:02 PM
Our new paper on the rapid evolution of centromeres in Drosophila is out! 🚀 Discover how transposable elements and satellite DNAs shape centromere dynamics and drive karyotype evolution over short timescales. @amlarracuente.bsky.social 🌟 Check it out here: journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...
Reposted
Nature research paper: Haploid facultative parthenogenesis in sunflower sexual reproduction
https://go.nature.com/4hYpSY3
https://go.nature.com/4hYpSY3
Haploid facultative parthenogenesis in sunflower sexual reproduction - Nature
Spontaneous parthenogenesis in sunflower has been used to develop a scalable doubled haploid breeding system.
go.nature.com
April 3, 2025 at 2:14 PM
Nature research paper: Haploid facultative parthenogenesis in sunflower sexual reproduction
https://go.nature.com/4hYpSY3
https://go.nature.com/4hYpSY3
Reposted
Our paper on ancient human population structure is now published. We find that the ancestors of modern humans lived in multiple populations during the period when Homo sapiens evolved in Africa. www.nature.com/articles/s41...
A structured coalescent model reveals deep ancestral structure shared by all modern humans - Nature Genetics
The cobraa model extends the pairwise sequentially Markovian coalescent to identify structured population history by examination of the model transition matrix. Applied to human polymorphism data, cob...
www.nature.com
March 18, 2025 at 10:21 PM
Our paper on ancient human population structure is now published. We find that the ancestors of modern humans lived in multiple populations during the period when Homo sapiens evolved in Africa. www.nature.com/articles/s41...