Pierre Bourguet

Open positions - MuSkLE First competitive call open! The first competitive call in the frame of the MuSkLE programme, which aims at selecting 17 doctoral fellows, opens on 6th March 2026 and closes on 6th May 2026. The open ...

📢 PhD position in our lab! (MSCA COFUND)
About dystrophin in Drosophila muscle progenitor cells 🧬🪰
#PhDPosition #DevBio #Drosophila #StemCells
For candidates from outside France or have lived in France <12 months in the last 3 years.
More info 👇 (Project #16)
www.muskle.eu/recruitment/

How do the H2A.Z histone variant and its dedicated chromatin remodeller SRCAP regulate gene expression ?
Beautiful work from @armelletollenaere.bsky.social now published @ www.nature.com/articles/s41...

I am happy to announce the launch of a new Arabidopsis genomics resource! Check out arabidopsislyrata.org Now you can easily look at the natural genetic variation across the entire species range of A. lyrata and A. arenosa.

➡️ preprint from the lab! Bacteria have loads of antiviral defences in their mobile genetic elements (MGEs). So when MGEs move between bacteria, the defences move with them, generating a fast turnover of defences in bacteria. But what about the antiviral defence turnover in the MGEs themselves? 🤔

🧵👇

Exciting work, congratulations !

We are very excited to share a new resource from our team: spatial subcellular proteome maps in plants! We developed an MS-based method that registers localizations of about 8000 proteins in Arabidopsis roots in a single experiment.

(1/9)
www.biorxiv.org/cgi/content/...

A reminder that we are actively recruiting a geneticist to the Department of Genetics at Albert Einstein College of Medicine

careers-einstein.icims.com/jobs/17847/a...

Another great science appointment is coming up with @centromellone.bsky.social, Michele Pagano and Gergely Róna!
Join us live on Tuesday, March 3rd at 5pm (Rome) / 11am (NYC).
Zoom link: uniroma1.zoom.us/j/95149984403
Register here to stay in the loop: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

Post-replicative chromatin accessibility predicts cell fate change Knudsen and colleagues use repli-ATAC-seq to compare replicated and unreplicated chromatin in two models of cell identity change. They find that lineage-specific elements are accessible earlier in rep...

DNA replication globally disrupts the epigenome. But does this create a chromatin-access opportunity for TF binding to facilitate cell identity change? Now 𝐫𝐞𝐩𝐥𝐢-𝐀𝐓𝐀𝐂-𝐬𝐞𝐪 shows 𝘥𝘦 𝘯𝘰𝘷𝘰 chromatin opening & TF binding occurs specifically post-replication, in cellular differentiation & reprogramming!

Excited to share this work done during my PhD here in Vienna!

We show how chromatin compaction prevents the release of fragmented DNA in apoptosis, and use new tools to study the mechanism of compaction itself.

See our summary/"bluetorial" below & our preprint here: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Announcing the publication of TAIR12: Consult the fully reannotated genome on the European Nucleotide Archive - Phoenix Bioinformatics TAIR (The Arabidopsis Information Resource), together with our nonprofit host Phoenix Bioinformatics, is pleased to announce the public release of TAIR12

🎉📣 #TAIR12, the latest reannotation of the Arabidopsis thaliana genome, is now available under accession number PRJEB100887 on ENA and NCBI!

Thank you all the volunteer researchers whose hard work has made this possible!

#plantscience #plantbiology 🧪

bit.ly/3ZHtneT

6 bad doodles with text under each one. horseshoe crab is literally the animal horseshoe crab. shoehorse crab is a crab riding a shoe, cowboy style. crabshoe horse is a horse wearing literal crabs as shoes. shoecrab horse is a horse telling a crab to go away. crabhorse shoe is a pair of shoes, left one crab shaped, right one horse shaped. horsecrab shoe is literally the same pair of shoes, flipped.

#InvertebrateShitposting as per @joabaldwin.com's request

Ancient co-option of LTR retrotransposons as yeast centromeres - Nature Evolutionarily related ‘proto-point’ centromeres providing resolution to the evolutionary origins of point centromeres are identified in yeast, and comparison shows they evolved in an ancestor with re...

Our paper is now out in Nature:

“Ancient co-option of LTR retrotransposons as yeast centromeres”

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

A short thread on how retrotransposons helped give rise to yeast point centromeres.

1/14

The PopGen Vienna Seminar series schedule is ready for the next term (March-June). It's jam-packed with fantastic speakers in #evolution, #genetics, #genomics, #popgen, and more! Details and streaming link signup can be found on our website popgen-vienna.at/news/seminars/

A reference-free pipeline for detecting shared transposable elements from pan-genomes to retrace their dynamics in a species - Genome Biology Background The role of transposable elements (TEs) in host adaptation has gained interest in recent years. Individuals of the same species undergo independent TE insertions, providing genetic variabil...

🚨📢📄 Article in press in Genome Biology doi.org/10.1186/s130...
We introduce panREPET, a reference-free pipeline to detect shared transposable element (TE) insertions across pangenomes and retrace their evolutionary dynamics #TEsky 🧵👇

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.
1/n

Check out this story by Handler, Brennecke et al. on how the piRNA pathways distinguish transposable element transcripts. Beautiful work!

Thrilled to announce I've been awarded a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship! 🇪🇺 I'll be joining @pejullien.bsky.social's group at @ibmp-cnrs.bsky.social in Strasbourg. Excited for what's ahead! 🎉

This week in @science.org, a celebration of plant pangenomes. A pangenome analysis for massively polyploid sugarcane species, and one for Brassica rapa giving insight into subspeciation.

What's all the fuss about pangenomes? Pamela and Douglas Soltis explore this in an insightful Perspective(1/4)

The Centre for Research in Cellular Biology of Montpellier (CRBM) is recruiting Junior / Senior Group Leaders - FocalPlane The Centre for Research in Cellular Biology of Montpellier (CRBM) is recruiting Junior / Senior Group Leaders to shape its research in the coming decade

'The Centre for Research in Cellular Biology of Montpellier (CRBM) is recruiting Junior/Senior Group Leaders to shape its research in the coming decade.
The deadline for application is 31st of March 2026.'
#sciencejobs
focalplane.biologists.com/cell-biology...

Here we go again! Join us in Vienna, May 21–22, for two days of plant science—talks, discussions, and celebration of what makes plants both beautiful and essential 💚Full program + registration here: www.oeaw.ac.at/gmi/news-eve...
Come be part of it — each of you counts!

I am excited to offer a postdoctoral research position in my lab in Oxford studying the distribution of small RNAs during plant sexual reproduction. shorturl.at/7Goxt
Reposts appreciated!
Obligatory cat video to brighten your day. :-)

📢 Three new #bioRxiv preprints from our team on holocentric chromosomes.

Together, they connect centromere repeat evolution, karyotype dynamics, and meiotic recombination outcomes, revealing how holocentric genomes evolve and function. 🧬👇

Dominant contribution of Asgard archaea to eukaryogenesis - Nature A survey of the reconstructed gene set of the last eukaryotic common ancestor shows a consistent link between Asgard archaea and the origin of numerous, functionally diverse&nbsp;eukaryotic genes, dem...

Dominant contribution of Asgard archaea to eukaryogenesis.

tldr; Best guess, ~ 50% of conserved eukaryotic protein families are from from Asgard archaea!

#science #biology #evolution #nature #bioinformatics

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

After a short break in our webinars we are delighted to be back up & running this month!

First up, on Jan 30th we will be joined by @lucas.farnunglab.com from @harvardmed.bsky.social 🔬

Shortly after, on Feb 13th we will be hosting @heardlab.bsky.social from @crick.ac.uk 🧬

Registration details 👇

The (Yoav) Voichek lab has opened its gates at the Weizmann Institute, and is actively recruiting students and researchers at all levels - come explore gene regulation and computational genomics in a fun, friendly sprouting lab 🤗🥼⚗️🧪
www.weizmann.ac.il/plants/voichek

Pervasive cis-regulatory co-option of a transposable element family reinforces cell identity across the mouse immune system Transposable elements (TEs) make up about half of the human and mouse genomes and play important regulatory roles in immune responses. However, the cis -regulatory contribution of TEs to immune cell d...

New Year, New Paper!🎊

Pervasive cis-regulatory co-option of a transposable element family reinforces cell identity across the mouse immune system
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Centerpiece of Jason Chobirko's PhD, talented PhD student co-mentored by Andrew Grimson & me. Really excited about it!🧵

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!

REFEREE 1: “I conclude with a simple, direct statement - this is the best paper I have read all year!”
#TransparentPeerReview

Co-evolving infectivity and expression patterns drive the diversification of endogenous retroviruses
@juliusbrennecke.bsky.social et al

www.embopress.org/doi/full/10....

Intrigued by a long-standing conundrum in small RNA biology—how nuclear Argonaute proteins silence transposons when they *need* target transcription for their own recruitment—we studied the piRNA pathway.

And found a hidden RNA-decay axis from Piwi to the RNA exosome.