Very proud to share my first choanoflagellate paper with the world! This paper takes the first steps in understanding gene regulation and chromatin in choanoflagellates and sets the stage for my labs work! Some key points below! (1/6)
I have open positions for both PhD students and Postdocs in my lab starting next year. Please share far and wide. If you are interested please reach out.
Excited to finally share that I have been awarded an ERC Starting Grant and I will start my own group at the Center for Chromosome Biology
@uniofgalway
in 2024 working on chromatin and gene regulation in choanoflagellates!
#ERCStG
@ERC_Research
Cake courtesy of
@MSarsCentre
Over the moon to have been awarded a Sir Henry Wellcome Postdoctoral Fellowhip from
@wellcometrust
which will give me a generous 4 years of support to investigate the evolution of Polycomb repression using choanoflagellates as a model with
@dsboothacosta
and
@RobKlose
!!!
Super excited to have been selected to be a Development Pathway to Independence(PI) fellow. Thanks so much to the team
@Dev_journal
for this amazing opportunity!
We are delighted to announce our first cohort of Pathway to Independence (PI) Fellows. Following a very competitive call, we have selected eight talented postdocs who we will be supporting as they navigate the job market.
Just a reminder that I am looking for 2 Postdocs to join my new group next year! There are no deadlines, but I have some great candidates so if you are thinking to apply then get in there soon!
I have open positions for both PhD students and Postdocs in my lab starting next year. Please share far and wide. If you are interested please reach out.
Excited to share my latest work from the Rentzsch lab
@Sars_Centre
@BioUiB
where we use Nematostella to investigate the evolution and function of the CoREST complex.
Our work from the Rentzsch lab on the CoREST complex in Nematostella is now published in
@BMCBiology
! It is improved from the original bioRxiv and now includes a much more comprehensive analysis of the evolution of CoREST thanks to
@Leclere_L
1/3
Our latest work from the Rentzsch lab
@Sars_Centre
is now posted on bioRxiv. We investigated the role of Lsd1, a highly conserved histone demethylase, in Nematostella as a paradigm for the role of chromatin regulators in development and neurogenesis.
1/4
I see more and more editors complaining about not finding reviewers, and yet I rarely get asked to review...is it that this is a field specific problem or that editors are not interested in asking early-career researchers?
Excited to share my 1st preprint from
@Sars_Centre
.In collaboration with
@christyschnitz
we look at the evolution of PRC1 in animals and found an early expansion of PCGF proteins which has interesting implications on the evolution of PRC1 complex diversity
On my way to beatiful Seville for
#EMBOevoAnimalGenomes
@EMBO
. If you want to talk about gene regulation in choanoflagellates(not animals but close enough🤷♂️) then hit me up, I have a poster. I also have positions in my new lab so happy to discuss with anyone who is intersted!
I have open positions for both PhD students and Postdocs in my lab starting next year. Please share far and wide. If you are interested please reach out.
The abstract deadline for the EMBO "Evo-Chromo: Evolutionary approaches to research in chromatin" meeting is approaching. Dont miss out on your chance to attend this awesome workshop!
Extremely happy to have played a small part in writing this excellent Spotlight article in
@Dev_journal
arising from an equally excellent
@Co_Biologists
workshop on chromatin evolution!
EvoChromo: towards a synthesis of chromatin biology and evolution
It's great to see this perspective by me and my fellow
@Dev_journal
Pathway to Independence Fellows out. We discuss our take on the future of developmental biology or, in my case, "The evolutionary origins of animal development"
Very sad to be leaving beautiful Aarhus after
#EMBOevoChromo
! What an amazing meeting full of great science and even greater people. Already looking forward to the next one.
How does anyone keep up with chromatin literature while doing literally anything else? I usually see multiple papers per day that I feel I should read but simply dont have the time😪
Nice to see these probelms being highlighted. PhD students in Ireland are massively underpaid. In fact the NUIG scholarships are less that €1000 euro a month, about 2/3rds what you would earn on minimum wage.
@SimonHarrisTD
and
@scienceirel
seem quiet on the issue!
Finally, I'm going to be looking for both PhD students and Postdocs to come and join me on this adventure so if you are interested in gene regulation, chromatin, choanoflagellates, evolution or any combination of the above please reach out!
Super sad to be saying goodbye to Davis after
@cnidofest
! Was so nice to see so many friends, make new ones and enjoy all the awesome science. Roll on 2024!!!
#cnidofest2022
Writing my ERC application might be the most stressful thing I've ever done. Like why does everything have to be a hypothesis? What's wrong with just asking interesting questions? And why isnt there an ERC writing support group?
Great opportunity to join the Rentzsch lab
@Sars_Centre
to work on Nematostella neurogenesis. Great lab, amazing people and fantastic environment!
Please RT
It has been a real pleasure to co-organize this EMBO/NNF workshop on chromatin evolution on May 11-14 2022 in Aarhus, Denmark with such a great group. It promises to be a super interesting workshop so please register and share!
Interested in evolution and chromatin? Craving meeting people and discussing science again? Then consider registering for our Evo-chromo EMBO/NNF workshop in Aarhus, Denmark on May 11-14 2022. Exciting line-up + lots of sel. speaker slots. Please share!
The
@Dev_journal
2023 PI fellows are currently meeting at the
@Co_Biologists
. Listening to them all present their research goals for their future labs. It’s exciting to hear their diverse plans and see where the next generation of devbio PIs will be taking us!
I can't recommend this position enough. An exciting topic, super friendly and dynamic group, an awesome supervisor
@Pawel_Burkhardt
and one of the best institutes for EvoDevo in the world
@MSarsCentre
....and all of that in beautiful Bergen!
Want to understand the evolution of first brains🧠?Come join us
@MSarsCentre
@UiB
. Postdoc position available: "Decoding the gelatinous origins of brain evolution" as part of our
@HFSP
grant w Fred Wolf
@uniGoettingen
#ctenophores
. RTs highly appreciated.
Very sad to be finished in the
@MRC_WIMM
after two great weeks working in
@TSS_Lab
and learning from
@LukMartyna
but feeling inspired and motivated to bring what I have learned back to my work in
@Sars_Centre
The second Nordic meeting on Development, Stem Cells, and Regeneration will now be online. Great line up of speakers and opportunities for posters and short talks!
Feeling very motivated following
#Tutzing2019
after 4 days of fun and science with supportive colleagues and inspiring friends. Looking forward to
@cnidofest
already!
Bioinformatics position open to work in collaboration with me in the Rentzsch lab
@Sars_Centre
using transcriptomics and epigenomics to understand neurogenesis in Nematostella
#atacseq
Today I learned that there's is a SHELL-FORMING ANEMONE that is symbiotic with hermit crabs and my life is now dedicated to telling everyone I know about it.
Two positions available in the Frank lab in Galway to work on stem cells and regeneration in Hydractinia. A fantastic opportunity to work in a great lab with an awesome supervisor
@thecocodium
! Also Galway is an amazing place to work/live!
Why do
@MSCActions
doctoral networks only fund 3 year PhD positions? Surely funding 4 years would be better, who can finish a life science PhD in 3 years?
We've heard a lot about choanoflagellates at
#DevMeeting23
. If you're interested in working with these models,
@JM_Gahan
has open positions!
Learn more about James' work in
@Dev_journal
's Pathway to Independence interview
How did I just discover
@nightsciencepod
with
@ItaiYanai
and
@MartinJLercher
? Its so nice to hear successful scientists talk frankly about how the scientific process really works as opposed to how were told it should work!
New on the Node: Reflections on the ‘Evo-chromo’ Workshop
ECRs Alexander Blackwell (
@Cambridge_Uni
) and
@JM_Gahan
(
@Sars_Centre
) report from the
@Co_Biologists
Workshop exploring chromatin biology in the context of evolution
Very excited to be
@EMBLEvents
for
#EMBOchromatin
and epigenetics. Come to poster
#117
on Thursday to hear about chromatin in Nematostella and talk about the evolution of chromatin regulation
That feeling when you get an unexpected result that is either 1. Some really cool biology or 2. A technical artifact. It's like Schrödinger's discovery, both amazingly interesting and also boring until I do the experiments to find out which!
Call out for a collaborator: Im interested in looking at transposable elements and how they are repressed but not sure the best way to annotate them in my genome!
Super cool finding showing unexpected and profound differences between plant and animal gene regulation! Highlights perfectly the need to study gene regulation in diverse species!
Transcription regulation in plants vs. animals - same-same or different? We show in a new preprint that in plants, regulatory sequences next to the TSS are position-dependent - as opposed to animal enhancers which are position-independent (1/6)
Our
#Hydractinia
genome manuscript is now a preprint on bioRxiv. Check it out! Thanks to all 28(!) co-authors for their contributions to this enormous effort to characterize two different Hydractinia genomes - H. symbiolongicarpus and H. echinata.
Its amazing how broken the Irish research system is. I am submitting a grant to
@scienceirel
and reading their absolutely ridiculous requirements for an "impact statement" means my recent
@ERC_Research
grant wouldnt get funded in Ireland. Real lack of vision from
@SimonHarrisTD
📢Finally out! Excited to share our findings on a population of adult stem cells holding germinal and neuronal potential in the sea anemone
#Nematostella
, conducted together with
@PRHSteinmetz
during my PhD
@Sars_Centre
@UiBmatnat
Very sad that the
#EMBOevoAnimalGenomes
meeting is over. Was awesome catching up with friends, making new ones and hearing amazing Science and all that in beautiful Seville which is, as Mike Levine described, "somewhere between Hollywood and the Bible"!
@PlantEvolution
Im pretty sure that saying its the "only metazoan" is also a bit if a stretch. Most cnidarians are extremely plastic and Id bet you can find others that do just this!
"Here we are 100 years later making use of these chemistries in ways that we hope will benefit human health."
In her
#NobelPrize
lecture
@CarolynBertozzi
spoke about how her work builds on curiosity-driven research, and how important that type of research can be for our futures.
@diandarisma
Quick answer: No. The more complicated answer is that research is not a 9-5 regardless of career stage and working long hours and weekends is sometimes necessary to get things done BUT this should not be at the expennse of work/life balance.
1/4 I'm thrilled to announce that I'm joining
@EMBOPress
as an academic editor responsible for
#Ecology
and
#Evolution
. As you may know, while these 2 important subjects are part of
@EMBO
's mission statement, the journals haven't frequently published papers on these topics. 🧵
@YehuMoran
Depends on your relationship with the colleague but If you need to set the record straight then you could write a commentary piece on the paper
New in
@embojournal
– 6mA randomly contaminates
#Hydractinia
embryonic genomes through misincorporation of degraded methylated maternal RNA. Alkbh1 is a cleaner, removing 6mA from the 64-cell embryo to allow zygotic transcription
@Febrimarsa
@BaxevanisLab
I often get asked why we still need pride....we need it because it is a protest, not a celebration and while this continues to be our reality we will continue to protest
"the last words he heard alive were his attackers barking “disgusting f****t” at him"
3yr postdoc available in our lab with focus on the ultrastructural characterization of the ctenophore nervous system
@Sars_Centre
@UiB
in beautiful
#Bergen
, Norway funded by
@ERC_Research
. RTs highly appreciated. Deadline 17. Oct 2022. For details see:
Very sad to have to leave this beautiful location after an amazing few days discussing chromatin evolution thanks to
@Co_Biologists
feeling inspired and energised to get back to the lab
With today being
#TransDayOfVisibility
I think it is good to reflect on how we as scientists can work harder to ensure our Trans friends and colleagues feel safe and supported in our community and in our workplaces!