Exciting work led by Giulia Zancolli on the venomless Uloboridae spiders. They lost their venom glands and venom injecting duct, but wrap their prey in toxic digestive fluids.
The paper: https://bmcbiol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12915-025-02248-1
The press release (in 🇫🇷) https://www.unil.ch/news/1749727639234 #Venom #Spiders #EvoDevo #MolecularEvolution

Nice highlight of our recent work on the evolution of venom production in marine predatory snails
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-025-02763-y
#EvoDevo #MolecularEvolution #Venom

You can still apply: Postdoc job opportunity! We're looking for early career researcher in evolutionary genomics to study the relation between intra-specific gene expression variability, polymorphism, and macro-evolutionary rates. We have all of the data in 3 fishes and amphioxus, just waiting for your expertise and enthusiasm!
https://tinyurl.com/3aewk286
#EvoDevo #MolecularEvolution #bioinformatics #PopulationGenomics #RNAseq #PostDoc

Postdoc job opportunity! We're looking for early career researcher in evolutionary genomics to study the relation between intra-specific gene expression variability, polymorphism, and macro-evolutionary rates. We have all of the data in 3 fishes and amphioxus, just waiting for your expertise and enthusiasm!
https://tinyurl.com/3aewk286
#EvoDevo #MolecularEvolution #bioinformatics #PopulationGenomics #RNAseq #PostDoc

Nice RNAseq atlas of small but important crustacean Daphnia pulex, and study of "selection operating on genes expressed in different tissues" https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.05.01.651673v1 #EvoDevo #MolecularEvolution #RNAseq #Daphnia #Crustacean

Great to see this out in society journal @molbioevol @officialSMBE!
Cone snails are venomous 🐚🍽️🐟 and have evolved from non venomous marine snails. We show how their venom gland evolved from homologous glands, and how this affected the evolution of their digestive system.
https://doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msaf095 #MolecularEvolution #EvoDevo #Venom

This is the best explanation I've ever seen for lungfish genome sizes
https://xkcd.com/3064/
#XKCD #Genomes #MolecularEvolution #lungfish

Ah now for something lighter: a horseshoe crab genome, whole genome duplications, and a cartoon:
https://doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msaf021
https://tapas.io/episode/3123425
#EvoDevo #MolecularEvolution #Genomics

Like sex chromosomes and supergenes, the non-recombining region accumulates transposable elements, nonsynonymous substitutions, and gene presence/absence polymorphisms—a hallmark of recombination suppression. #MolecularEvolution
5/5

Intriguing: modeling and empirical data support that after whole genome duplication (autotetraploids) genetic variation rises, and mutation load increases because deleterious mutations are masked by additional chromosome copies
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.01.12.632621v1
#WholeGenomeDuplication #paralog #MolecularEvolution #PopulationGenetics #Arabidopsis

#AnyaPlutynski - #Evolution and the Nature of #Chance

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCyvfhPsasM

#Philosophy #PhilosophyOfScience #Science #PhilosophyOfBiology #Biology #Probability #Indeterminism #Darwin #Darwinism #NaturalSelection #DNA #MolecularEvolution #MolecularBiology #Phenotype #CloserToTruth #RobertKuhn

Nice perspective preprint following @officialSMBE symposium, led by Marina Braso Vives @dee_unil:
Unlocking the hidden dimensions of genomic diversity within species
https://ecoevorxiv.org/repository/view/8225/ #EvolutionaryBiology #MolecularEvolution

Very interesting preprint by @jkpritch lab on non monotonous relation between phenotype and gene expression, relevant to #MolecularEvolution and #EvoDevo (and human medicine I suppose 😉)
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.11.11.24317065v1

New lab preprint! I'll write a thread about it as soon as I have time, but we show that gene expression variability between outbred fish is under organ-specific selection
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.11.11.623020v1
@dee_unil #EvoDevo #MolecularEvolution

Very nice preprint on most-diverged vs. less-diverged ortholog among paralog pairs: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.10.29.620890v1 @dessimoz #ortholog #paralog #MolecularEvolution

Our latest paper https://elifesciences.org/articles/87335
directly measures the #EffectivePopulationSize that matters to #NearlyNeutralTheory / #DriftBarrier theory, as the degree to which #CodonBias differs from expectations from GC content. Surprisingly, stronger #NaturalSelection -> higher #IntrinsicStructuralDisorder proteins
#MolecularEvolution #PopulationGenetics #EvolgenPaper 1/

Nice paper by @duret_lbbe lab on (lack of) selection of codon usage in animals https://ecoevo.social/@biorxiv_genomics/112837342471976546 #MolecularEvolution #Neutralism

Nice work on functional evolution of proteins after duplication by @Landrychristian lab https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.ado5719 #duplication #GeneDuplication #MolecularEvolution

Updated preprint of work by Tina Begum et al showing that paralogs from small-scale duplications have jumps in expression phenotype, much more than orthologs or whole genome duplication paralogs
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.12.29.571877v2 #ortholog #paralog #phylogenetics #GeneExpression #MolecularEvolution #FishEvolution

Registrations open to our @SIB course for PhD students in Lausanne 🇨🇭 with @rmwaterhouse and @dessimoz :
Biodiversity bioinformatics: from large-scale phylogenomics to gene families and functions
with @bgeedb, OMA and BUSCO inside
https://www.sib.swiss/training/course/20240828_COMGE #BiodiversityGenomics #MolecularEvolution #ortholog #paralog #bioinformatics