Miya Qiaowei Pan

Have you ever wondered 🤔... Does phenotypic variance respond to environmental perturbation? Does it have a genetic basis? Are mean and variance regulating loci exposed to different selection pressures? These and more questions are explored in our new preprint 🔥

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Our most recent work on the “function and evolution” of #nuclear-speckles is now online at Cell @cp-cell.bsky.social
doi.org/10.1016/j.ce...
Read the thread👇 for the highlights of our findings.

Beyond Mendel: a call to revisit the genotype–phenotype map through new experimental paradigms Abstract. The long-standing notion that genotypes map to phenotypes through simple one gene–one trait relationships continues to shape both research in the

New Perspective!🔥It's fascinating how scientists from different fields but interested in the same question [e.g. genotype-phenoytpe relationship] can have such different perspectives. Here we put in our 2 cents wrt genetic effects being context-dependent, and pheno variation being mostly polygenic

For starters, there's not "one weird trick to ditch your X." There are multiple paths to sex determination turnover.

To read more about it, including what genes were gained or lost and how the genome looks in X chromosome scales, check out our preprint:
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

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A small polymerase ribozyme that can synthesize itself and its complementary strand The emergence of a chemical system capable of self-replication and evolution is a critical event in the origin of life. RNA polymerase ribozymes can replicate RNA, but their large size and structural ...

How could a simple self-replicating system emerge at the origins of life? RNA polymerase ribozymes can replicate RNA, but existing ones are so large that their self-replication seems impossible. Could they be smaller?

Excited to share our latest work in @science.org on a new small polymerase.
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🚨Hiring a postdoc!

Are you interested in #evolutionarygenomics, #sexchromosomes, #transposableelements & #Sexspecific #recombination in 🐸🧬?

Join my lab @vubrussel.bsky.social
🔹 @fwovlaanderen.bsky.social funded up to 3y
🔹 Deadline 10/3/2026
🔹 Start ~1/6/2026

Apply 👉: jobs.vub.be/job/Elsene-P...

For once an article about the "how to get to Rome" and not "Rome" itself. Collaboration with my "partner-in-crime" @felibas.bsky.social has been a key ingredient of my research over the years. Sara Miller at Molecular Cell spoke with us of how we got there and what we think about collaborations.

Thanks Luisa 😃

A member of the Hymenoptera order, Colletes cunicularius, has an evolutionarily conserved sex-determination mechanism. CREDIT: NJ Vereecken

A sex-determining gene region in ants, bees, and wasps has maintained its function for over 150 million years through its chromosomal position rather than its DNA sequence, as evidenced by the lack of sequence homology among lineages. In PNAS: https://ow.ly/n9eU50XWipU

🐜 4-year #postdoc position in the @socialfluids.bsky.social lab @camzoology.bsky.social investigating metabolic cooperation between bodies in a BBSRC-funded project.

www.cam.ac.uk/jobs/postdoc...

#ants #socialtransfers #sociallytransferredmaterials #autophagy #socialinsects #aging #job (🧵1/n)

Thanks Yuko!! It was cool to discuss this project with your group one year ago!

Link to the paper: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
Open access thanks to the Max Planck Digital Library!

Great new paper!

Many stinging wasps, bees, and ants have controlled the sex of their developing eggs for millions of year using an ancient segment of their genome- always the same segment- but what's weird is, *the exact DNA sequence of that segment doesn't seem to matter*.

Many thanks goes to our wonderful collaborators, the team of @kellervalsecchi.bsky.social , @hibernogruppe.bsky.social and Eric Darrouzet !

So happy to see this paper out! Not only important for evolution that we have a conserved essential locus without sequence similarity 🫨but hopefully also a tool also for conservation for the numerous Hymenopteran species that share this sex locus 🐝 🐜

🚨New paper from our team on our favorite sex locus ANTSR! 🚨New collaboration with @hugodarras.bsky.social , led by our talented @chuanxinyu.bsky.social, we show that ants, bees and stinging wasps share an ancient sex locus, a suspicion we had when we first found the locus in the Argentine ants!

Apply for a PhD position in the Pan lab @miyapan.bsky.social at MPI Biology 🇩🇪 to study the molecular mechanisms and evolution of sex determination in haplodiploid insects 🐜🐝.

🚨Interested in selfish elements🧬? non-canonical patterns of inheritance🧬? Then don't miss out on this EMBO workshop in Bern! Amazing lineup of speakers, covering evolution, genomics, molecular mechanisms, and more! Deadline extended! Travel grants and registration fee waivers still available!

One week left to submit abstracts for the EMBO workshop on Molecular Mechanisms of Selfish Elements and Strategies!

In Bern (Switzerland), from 8 to 11 February 2026.

meetings.embo.org/event/26-sel...

#EMBOselfishElements #EMBOevents

Specialized signaling centers direct cell fate and spatial organization in a mesodermal organoid model Stem cell–derived mesodermal organoids reveal how signaling centers guide cell fate and tissue organization.

🎉 Our deconstructed, stem-cell–based approach to studying signaling centers and limb-development cell types is out! 🥳 So nice to see it in its final form after the preprint— and huge thanks to the community for all the enthusiasm and interest since then!
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Application details see: www.phd.tuebingen.mpg.de/3849/Apply-t...

Details of the projects see: www.phd.tuebingen.mpg.de/14722/phdpro...

Excited to share that I’m starting a research group at MPI for Biology Tübingen — and we’re recruiting PhD students!

We are offering two fully funded PhD positions on sex determination and development in Hymenoptera 🐜🐝.

Please share with prospective students who might be interested.

How do new centromeres evolve while staying compatible with the division machinery?

Discover it in our new Nature paper! We show centromeres transition gradually via a mix of drift, selection, and sex, reaching new states that still work with the kinetochore.

👉 doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-09779-1

***Super cool-project alert***⚠️ Come work with @dirkmetzler.bsky.social and me in trying to understand how transcriptional noise evolves in a phylogenetic context 🧬 Deadline 15th Dec 2025 (Project funded by @dfg.de @gevol.bsky.social)

Team fish - we need your help! We are trying to build a database of all the fish chromosome-scale genomes where sex chromosomes have been identified. Have you build one or some? Do you know someone who has? Can you post the link in the comments? Please spread the word and repost! Thank you!

Defensive fungal symbiosis on insect hindlegs Dinidorid stinkbugs were reported to possess a conspicuous tympanal organ on female hindlegs. In this study, we show that this organ is specialized to retain microbial symbionts rather than to perceiv...

"When the female bugs lay their eggs, they rub the cultivated hyphae across the egg mass. The hyphae grow to envelope the eggs and physically exclude attentive parasitoid wasps until the bugs hatch."

#fungi #symbiosis

Convergent evolution of a conserved molecular network underlies parenting and sociality - Nature Reviews Genetics Kay et al. review evidence that parental care, and more complex social behaviour based on parental care, evolved in multiple species through the repeated co-option of members of a pleiotropic molecula...

Parental care, and more complex cooperative systems of care, have independently evolved in hundreds of animal lineages. In an article published today, we explore how these behaviors evolve 𝘢𝘵 𝘢 𝘮𝘰𝘭𝘦𝘤𝘶𝘭𝘢𝘳 𝘭𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘭l shorturl.at/g5OPw /1

Job alert🚨📢! Join us as Director of the SIB Centre for Pathogen Bioinformatics, on a topic where global collaboration is particularly important, in a highly stimulating environment. This is a research infrastructure leadership position.

Apply or spread the word!

apply.refline.ch/499599/0346/...

Molecular mechanisms of selfish elements and strategies Certain genes, chromosomes, organelles, or entire sets of chromosomes can bias their transmission to the next generation, propagating themselves at the expense of the rest of the genome. Referred to …

(1/9) Join us in Bern, Switzerland (8–11 Feb 2026) for our EMBO Workshop on Molecular Mechanisms of Selfish Elements and Strategies!

Organized with Tanja Schwander, Laura Ross (@laurarossevo.bsky.social) and Axel Imhof.

meetings.embo.org/event/26-sel...

#EMBOselfishElements #EMBOevents