Blaxter Lab

It was a pleasure to talk to Robin McKie @ObserverUK about Project Psyche which is striving to sequence all 11,000 species of European butterflies and moths. A huge community effort! 🦋 @Psychegenome theguardian.com/environment/ar…

📰Startling genome discovery in butterfly project reveals impact of climate change in Europe ✍️Robin McKie @ObserverUK @CharJWright @blaxterlab theguardian.com/environment/ar…

Have long-read data and want to know what you've really sequenced, and how much of it? Reliable taxonomic labels are often scarce if the target is from a less well-explored group. VAE embeddings can tease apart different organisms in read sets: biorxiv.org/content/10.110…

𝘊. 𝘦𝘭𝘦𝘨𝘢𝘯𝘴 paved the way for genetic research, and was the first animal to have its entire #DNA sequenced. Now, researchers are sequencing the genomes of hundreds more nematode species to study evolution and genetic diversity. Find out more ⤵️ sangerinstitute.blog/2024/05/30/the…

Our review "Genome evolution in intracellular parasites: Microsporidia and Apicomplexa" is now out in @JEukMicro! This could not have been possible without @orefrancis and @blaxterlab <3 - art by me and the talented @petrathepostdoc

In addition to the basic steps of genome assembly, we also added a "check for contamination" step using #BlobToolKit. Here you can see how we used #BTK to clean up a genome contaminated by contigs of bacterial origin. Thanks to @rjchallis & @blaxterlab for this resource!

The talk abstract deadline for EvoWorm 2024 is today! Don't forget to submit an abstract!! oeaw.ac.at/imba/seminars-… #evoworm24

[Please RT] 🚨Deadline Alert: The 10th edition of the “Evolutionary Biology of Caenorhabditis and other Nematodes” meeting 🪱#EvoWorm24 will take place in Vienna, Austria (June 17-20). Travel and childcare grants are available. More info about the meeting oeaw.ac.at/imba/seminars-…

We're advertising for a PhD on somatic evolution in plants! Come and work with me @ARU_Biology and @ATJCagan @GeneticsCam. It's a fully funded 3 year PhD position starting in September. Advert here: findaphd.com/phds/project/s… Please share widely!

Comparative genomics reveals the dynamics of chromosome evolution in Lepidoptera nature.com/articles/s4155…

📰 Butterfly genomes have barely changed for 250m years, study reveals ✍️ @pgreenfielduk @guardian theguardian.com/environment/20…

A wonderful writeup on our study also out today in @guardian @guardianeco, it was great to talk to @pgreenfielduk about butterfly genomics and why sequencing their genomes is so vital!

Delighted that our work on chromosome evolution in Lepidoptera is published today! ✨🦋

Butterflies and moths make up 10% of all named species on planet Earth 🌍 They are vital pollinators, herbivores, and indicators of ecosystem health 🌳 Project Psyche will sequence the genomes of all 11,000 European species, aiding #conservation 🧬 projectpsyche.org

🆕 Butterfly and moth genomes have remained remarkably intact over 250 million years of #evolution, despite huge diversification we see today 🦋 Some rare species have defied these rules, offering clues into their distinct biology and evolution 🧬 sanger.ac.uk/news_item/butt…

📰 Read ‘Comparative genomics reveals the dynamics of chromosome evolution in Lepidoptera’ with @sangerinstitute @SangerToL @darwintreelife @blaxterlab @CharJWright @marakat @phylewgenetics @EdinburghUni @thymelicus in @NatureEcoEvo ⤵️ nature.com/articles/s4155…

@KamilSJaron @BGAcademy23 Super grateful for @KamilSJaron @blaxterlab @marakat for all their help, and my colleagues at @darwintreelife

First preprint of my PhD is out! We survey all publicly available microsporidian datasets on the SRA and show that polyploidy is widespread in Microsporidia! biorxiv.org/content/10.110…

How do moths and butterflies see?🦋👀 Our new preprint looks at the evolution of #opsin genes across #Lepidoptera. We uncover fascinating patterns of opsin duplication, translocation, and expression by analysing 219 genomes (most from @darwintreelife) 🔗tinyurl.com/mr2xh7cx

📢#BoB2023 STUDENT AWARDS📢 The scientific committee and chairwomen/chairmen selected 3 best student talks (sponsored by @pensoft) and 3 best student posters (sponsored by Bushman)! The list of awardees below 👇🧵