Andrea Movilli

Blinded by the lights? Re-examining the adaptive role of transposable elements in plants with population genomics Transposable elements (TEs) are ubiquitous components of the genome whose mobility can be triggered by environmental stress and influenced by genotype…

Have we been overstating the role of transposable elements in adaptation to local or rapidly changing environmental conditions? Happy to share my (somewhat unpopular?) opinion paper on this matter: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Thanks to those who already shared the link!

🧪🌱 Sooo… our paper on how SPOROCYTELESS/NOZZLE controls the onset of megasporogenesis is finally out in @natcomms.nature.com 🎉🎉! This is one of the major projects of my postdoc at #LuciaColombo’s lab at #UniMI. www.nature.com/articles/s41... 🧶 1/7

PhD position to study epigenomic diversity and altitude adaptation in Arabis alpina

✨Call open for a fully-funded PhD position✨
Looking for an enthusiastic student to join my upcoming Ambizione research group (🌱 Epigenome Diversity Lab 🌱, www.epidiversitylab.org) at ETH Zürich, starting August 2026! Apply here ↘️
jobs.ethz.ch/job/view/JOP...
Application deadline: January 31st, 2026

Historic transposon mobilisation waves create distinct pools of adaptive variants in a major crop pathogen - Nature Communications In this study, the authors analysed a large genomic dataset to trace how jumping genes shaped the global spread of a major wheat pathogen and reveal bursts of activity over decades that drove adaptati...

TEs aren’t just genomic parasites, they’re also engines of genomic novelty.

Our new study with ~2,000 Z. tritici genomes shows repeated TE mobilization waves during global expansion.

With @danielcroll.bsky.social & @guidopuccetti.bsky.social

🧬 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

#TEworldwide

Transposable elements are vectors of recurrent transgenerational epigenetic inheritance DNA methylation loss at transposable elements (TEs) can affect neighboring genes and be epigenetically inherited in plants, yet the determinants and significance of this additional system of inheritan...

Happy to share the results of a long-haul post-doc project, now online @science.org, aiming at understanding the rules of transgeneration epigenetic inheritance over TEs in plants and its extent and impact in nature. More below!
doi.org/10.1126/scie...

PanGene-O-Meter: Intra-Species Diversity Based on Gene-Content Bacterial genome evolution is shaped to a great extent by horizontal gene transfer, detectable as genes with a presence-absence pattern of variation that does not follow phylogenetic relationships acr...

How diverse are the individual strains within your species?
How broad is their Pangenome?
How will you choose representatives from the whole collection?

Look no further! PanGene-O-Meter is here for you!
From @haimashkenazy.bsky.social @plantevolution.bsky.social

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

A Concise Guide for the Characterization and Curation of Transposable Elements in Insect Genomes Transposable elements (TEs) can play a huge role in shaping the structure and evolution of genes and genomes, but it can be difficult, especially in non-model organisms, to confidently characterize th...

#TEsky A Concise Guide for the Characterization and Curation of Transposable Elements in Insect Genomes from valentinapeona.bsky.social doi.org/10.1007/978-...

Pangenomic context reveals the extent of intraspecific plant NLR evolution Individual- and population-level diversity is required for pathogen defense by nucleotide-binding site leucine-rich repeat (NLR) proteins. Teasdale et al. leverage annotated, divergent A. thaliana gen...

Happy to be able to finally share our NLR pangenome paper, out now in CHM.

"Pangenomic context reveals the extent of intraspecific plant NLR evolution"

www.cell.com/cell-host-mi...

#plantscience #plantimmunity #pangenomes #science #nlr

Super excited to share our new preprint! 🎉 This project has been an incredible learning experience, thanks to the amazing lab and wonderful people I get to work with. Huge thanks to my supervisor! @plantevolution.bsky.social

Long-read detection of transposable element mobilization in the soma of hypomethylated Arabidopsis thaliana individuals - Genome Biology Background Because transposable elements (TEs) can cause heritable genetic changes, past work on TE mobility in Arabidopsis thaliana has mostly focused on new TE insertions in the germline of hypometh...

Paper led by @movillome.bsky.social on unbiased detection of (somatic) #TE insertions in #Arabidopsis with @pacbio.bsky.social long reads out after peer review. Thanks to academic editor Leandro Quadrana for shepherding it through the review process.
#plantscience
link.springer.com/article/10.1...?

Thanks Silvia! 😁

1/2 Somatic TE transposition in plants is getting traction again (70 years after McClintock's discovery of "controlling elements")! A very large collection of somatic TE insertions in A. thaliana described by Ambreen et al.(www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...).

It's finally out!🎉

We known that the #microbiome confers colonization resistance against #pathogens, we know that some meds 💊 affect gut microbes 🦠

So, do 💊 alter colonization resistance? It turns out that some do! If you wanna know more, check out our latest work www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Enhancer adoption by an LTR retrotransposon generates viral-like particles, causing developmental limb phenotypes - Nature Genetics Activation of an LTR retrotransposon inserted upstream of the Fgf8 gene produces viral-like particles in the mouse developing limb, triggering apoptosis and causing limb malformation. This phenotype c...

Finally out! 🥳 Our paper showing how a transposable element (TE) insertion can cause developmental phenotypes is now published @natgenet.nature.com 🧬🦠🐁
Below is a brief description of the major findings. Check the full version of the paper for more details: www.nature.com/articles/s41588-025-02248-5

In this study, Hermant et al. describe the evolution of the retrotransposon MERVL and its cis-regulatory transcription factor binding motifs, highlighting the phyloregulatory adaptation at play during early embryogenesis.

Learn more here:
➡️ tinyurl.com/gd352270

The Expansion and Diversification of Epigenetic Regulatory Networks Underpins Major Transitions in the Evolution of Land Plants Abstract. Epigenetic silencing is essential for regulating gene expression and cellular diversity in eukaryotes. While DNA and H3K9 methylation silence tra

New study with @petrollromy.bsky.social @borglab.bsky.social traces the evolution of epigenetic silencing in plants. Deep conservation of PRC2-mediated H3K27me3 marks across green algae suggest ancient, conserved networks of gene repression.

🔗 doi.org/10.1093/molb...

#evobio #molevol #plants

The Custom-Lab Institute was featured in Germany's most important journal on the latest news from the life sciences sector, the "Laborjournal"! 😍

When you go to wrong hotel, but right plant

Deadline was just extended to 30th March! :)

🧪 I know it sounds like a cliché but I am TRULY AND UTTERLY THRILLED that this work from my postdoc at #unimi is out. SPL/NZZ is a very important gene (it initiates sporogenesis) but a very mysterious one. 🧵
1/8

Low number of fixed somatic mutations in a long-lived oak tree - Nature Plants Sequencing of nested branches from a 234-year-old oak tree reveals a low number of somatic mutations accumulating during its lifetime, implying that mechanisms are in place to reduce these potentially...

Another @biorxiv-evobio.bsky.social preprint of work led by @wenfeixian.bsky.social. With our Lausanne colleagues, we revisit the Napoleon Oak. An earlier long-read genome had revealed a relatively low number of somatic mutations (www.nature.com/articles/s41...).

1/2

I am very excited to see my first PhD paper out as a preprint. "The expanded Bostrychia moritziana genome unveils evolution in the most diverse and complex order of red algae". Huge thanks to @borglab.bsky.social for the great supervision and guidance through this exciting project!🎉

🚨Preprint Alert🚨 I'm really happy to finally share our exploits in red algae and introduce the wider community to Bostrychia, the new model system we have been developing to tackle the molecular biology of red algae. Isn't she a beauty? Thread below 🧵 1/8 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

@movillome.bsky.social first-author preprint at @biorxiv-genomic.bsky.social from his PhD work at @maxplanckcampus.bsky.social, tackles the detection of TE mobilization. It’s inspiring to follow his progress and see his contributions to the field. 👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼Looking forward to seeing more! #Plantsci

Thanks Silvia!! Especially a big big thanks to you, for your support, mentorship and guidance! ☺️☺️☺️

Diagram of somatic TE insertions across the A. thaliana genome

In our latest @biorxiv-genomic.bsky.social preprint, we describe our approach to use PacBio HiFi reads to detect somatic TE transposition -- good enough to detect rare events that are present in only single cells. Led by Andrea Movilli.
#plantscience
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

"Experimental design and diagram that show how different configurations of mapped long reads were used to call somatic mobilization events of TEs"

🌱⤴️🧬⤵️ Really interesting preprint on somatic TE activity detected in methylation-deficient Arabidopsis lines! From @movillome.bsky.social et al.
A notable point is the variable extent of mobilization across individuals. Is it random or an environmental factor?
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Thanksss Etienne!! I always like to think about it as if we have different weights tipping the balance towards or against the mobilization of a given TE, global and local mC, redundant host-mediated mechanisms (and their alleles), environment, etc... What about "conditional probability" :)

...and, of course, "activists" destroyed the trial field of the first CRISPR-edited crops grown in Italy.

mycrispr.blog/2024/06/21/s...

It's always the same with these people, and exactly what orgs like #GreenPeace promote. 🤮

#PlantScience #PlantGMOs #PlantNGTs

I just published: Distrutto! Vandali distruggono un campo sperimentale di riso in Italia 🇮🇹

“Come scienziati pubblici esprimiamo sconcerto e tristezza per aver subito una violenza ingiustificata, frutto di oscurantismo e pulsioni antiscientifiche.”

link.medium.com/EeUDArEQGKb