Andy Baxevanis
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baxevanislab.bsky.social
Andy Baxevanis
@baxevanislab.bsky.social
Exploring hydrozoan genomes that might tell us a thing or two about ourselves.
Posts are my own.
A wonderful piece on @christyschnitz.bsky.social's scientific journey and research accomplishments!

integrativeandcomparativebiology.wordpress.com/2025/04/22/d...
May 2, 2025 at 1:24 PM
Christy Schnitzler from the Whitney Labs presenting a comprehensive overview of Hydractinia, describing how single-cell studies of this organism are providing new insights into the evolution of cnidarian sensory systems during a special session at #SICB2025. A big and exciting leap forward indeed!
January 9, 2025 at 1:14 PM
Sue Xu from Christy Schnitzler's group at the Whitney Labs sharing her studies of the Hippo pathway in Hydractinia, providing us with a better understanding of polyp head regeneration and juvenile colony growth in this highly regenerative (and very cool) emerging model organism. Very nice work!
January 9, 2025 at 12:44 PM
Mike Connelly from our group sharing his hot-off-the-10X Podocoryna single-cell data @SICB2025, establishing a really solid foundation for future work on this very interesting and informative regenerative cnidarian. Stay tuned... more to follow!
January 9, 2025 at 12:31 PM
Alberto Rivera from our group sharing his work characterizing the allorecognition complex in Podocoryna - and, looking through a longer lens, establishing the foundation for determining whether there is a throughline between the cnidarian ARC and the vertebrate MHC. Cool evolutionary story indeed!
January 5, 2025 at 1:29 PM
Alicia Boyd from Elaine Seaver’s lab at the Whitney Labs sharing some really cool work on the mechanisms underlying regeneration in one of our favorite model organisms, Capitella, @SICB2025. Very nice talk!
January 4, 2025 at 4:18 PM
Zach Lane from Christy Schnitzler’s group at the Whitney Labs presenting his work on isolating Hydractinia’s stem cells using FACS @SICB2025. Great talk!
January 4, 2025 at 4:12 PM
Congratulations to Justin Waletich on his beautiful dissertation work and for earning his doctoral degree! Well done, Justin – and congrats to Christy as well for being an amazing mentor to Justin and the folks in her research group!

www.whitney.ufl.edu/news--events...
December 18, 2024 at 5:51 PM
Alberto Rivera from our group presenting his work on deducing the evolution of allorecognition in both cnidarians and early vertebrates at this year's NHGRI's Symposium – a very well-received lightning talk that garnered a lot of interest from people across the wide spectrum of genomic research!
November 20, 2024 at 5:12 PM
Jonah Petty, a member of our group who's currently doing his undergrad at UMBC, was just awarded the Best Poster Award in the Computational and Systems Biology category at #ABRCMS '24 in Pittsburgh! We're all very proud of you, Jonah – Congratulations!!!
November 18, 2024 at 5:43 PM
Ctenophores, meet AlphaFold... taking advantage of our access to NIH's Biowulf supercomputing resource, our paper in Proteomics describing our proteome-scale structure predictions for #Mnemiopsis: 15,333 structures consuming 58,000 GPU hr! bit.ly/4bGQESX
August 9, 2024 at 1:24 PM
Our summer student Jonah Petty presesnting his work using structural approaches to better-understand cnidarian allorecognition at the NIH Summer Student Poster Extravaganza. Go Jonah!
August 5, 2024 at 3:57 PM
Alberto Rivera from our group presenting his work on the early evolution of allorecognition proteins at #Evo2024 to a full house!
July 30, 2024 at 9:04 PM
Our paper providing the first comprehensive analysis of the #Hydractinia genome is out! The big take-home message: our orthology analyses have revealed that there is shared ancestry with other animals in the form of a conserved toolkit for regeneration. Cool stuff!
genome.cshlp.org/content/34/3...
May 1, 2024 at 1:37 PM
Sunday's Keyword puzzle in the Washington Post. What are the chances?
February 7, 2024 at 2:17 AM
We were quite honored to host Scott Edwards from Harvard this past week as part of our NHGRI Intramural Seminar Series and his lecture on the evolutionary biology of birds was absolutely fascinating. Check it out!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSnx...
January 25, 2024 at 10:03 PM
Mike Connelly, the newest member of our group, presenting his work during his time at the Smithsonian on resolving #Pocillopora species diversity and population differentiation through genome skimming @sicb-dedb.bsky.social @sicbjournals.bsky.social

We’re very happy to welcome Mike to NHGRI!
January 6, 2024 at 4:10 PM
Alberto Rivera from our group presenting his work on the evolution of the allorecognition system in cnidarians @sicb-dedb.bsky.social @sicbjournals.bsky.social. Good stuff!
January 6, 2024 at 3:58 PM
Everyone ready for SICB 2024? Looking forward to catching up with everyone! @sicb-dedb.bsky.social @sicbjournals.bsky.social
January 2, 2024 at 5:14 PM
Alberto Rivera from our research group presenting his work on allorecognition in cnidarians at NHGRI's annual symposium, work that he'll be presenting in a talk at @sicb-dedb.bsky.social in Seattle in January. Very cool stuff!
November 16, 2023 at 4:50 PM