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Ava Mackay-Smith

@a-mack-s.bsky.social
102 followers 287 following 13 posts

Duke UPGG Ph.D. candidate with Greg Wray | evo/regulatory genomics, adaptation/speciation, and dataviz design 🦋 | NSF GRFP fellow | she/her 🌻

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Ava Mackay-Smith @a-mack-s.bsky.social · 03/08/2026
Thanks to our collaborators at GWU and STRI for facilitating this improvement to the genomic resources we have available for Heliconius! 🦋 3/3
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Ava Mackay-Smith @a-mack-s.bsky.social · 03/08/2026
It's also nice to see that instruments like @pacbio.bsky.social's Revio can produce near-complete assemblies without additional sequencing data types! Using only Revio long reads, some of these new assemblies approached ~2-3 contigs per chromosome 🧬
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Ava Mackay-Smith @a-mack-s.bsky.social · 03/08/2026
Happy to share this release of some new long-read genomes in @genomebiolevol.bsky.social! We hope that subspecies-specific, quality genomes will enable better profiling of variation underlying phenotypic differences in Heliconius, mitigating bias from using a relative's genome as the reference 1/3
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Reposted by Ava Mackay-Smith
Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution @official-smbe.bsky.social · 04/06/2026
#SMBE2026 S03: Genome Plasticity and Evolutionary Innovation 🗓️ Tue Jun 30, 10:20 am - Part 1 🗓️ Tue Jun 30, 1:20 pm - Part 2 🔗 smbe2026.org/programme
SMBE | Genome plasticity and evolutionary innovation
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Ava Mackay-Smith @a-mack-s.bsky.social · 20/04/2026
🥳 Super excited to see this work out from the urchin side of the Wray lab team! ⬇️
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Reposted by Ava Mackay-Smith
EvolDir @evoldir.bsky.social · 23/06/2025
Join the SEPEEG meeting on Oct 3-5 in the Great Smoky Mountains to explore ecology, evolution, and genetics. It’s student-friendly! More info: sepeeg2025.blogspot.com #conference
sepeeg2025.blogspot.com
SEPEEG2025
Southeastern Population Ecology & Evolutionary Genetics Meeting Oct 3-5, 2025 Great Smoky Mountains Institute at Tremont
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Ava Mackay-Smith @a-mack-s.bsky.social · 01/07/2025
That’s the inspiration for our title, genome mountaineering - every one of our section headers and table/figure captions are named after something mountain-related! academic.oup.com/gbe/article/... Thanks for reading till the end! * 7/7 #PopGen #evo #evolution #genomics #epigenomics
academic.oup.com
Genome Mountaineering: Expanding Horizons of the 3D Genome for the Intrepid Evolutionary Adventurer
Abstract. The physical positioning of DNA in 3D space within the nucleus can be important for understanding how genetic changes influence gene regulation a
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Ava Mackay-Smith @a-mack-s.bsky.social · 01/07/2025
If you made it this far, one of my favorite parts of writing this paper was that we kept thinking about the genome as moving from a linear representation into a series of loops and twists, almost like a mountain range. 6/7
media.tenor.com
a national geographic logo can be seen in the background of a snowy mountain
ALT: a national geographic logo can be seen in the background of a snowy mountain
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Ava Mackay-Smith @a-mack-s.bsky.social · 01/07/2025
Because this was a Perspectives-type article, citations are limited, and we had to make some tough choices about the works we cited (this was hard!) My apologies if we weren’t able to include your work & please feel free to repost this thread to publicize your own related research! 5/7
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a man in a blue shirt and tie is standing in front of a bulletin board with papers on it .
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Ava Mackay-Smith @a-mack-s.bsky.social · 01/07/2025
We hope that this Perspective sparks curiosity and acts as a low barrier for entry into this space, rather than a comprehensive review (many of which already exist and are excellent!) If you make it till the end and are hungry for more, check out Table 1 for some recommended subsequent reading! 4/7
media.tenor.com
an orange and white cat is reading a book called the lore
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Ava Mackay-Smith @a-mack-s.bsky.social · 01/07/2025
We focus on exploring: 1) evolutionary rates and #conservation in #comparative studies, 2) evolutionary innovation in 3D genome structure, 3) #structuralvariation and breakpoints, and 4) general principles of #generegulation as informed by 3D #genomestructure. Sound cool to you? Check it out! 3/7
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spongebob squarepants is smiling and holding his hands up in the air with the words `` genetics '' written above him .
ALT: spongebob squarepants is smiling and holding his hands up in the air with the words `` genetics '' written above him .
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Ava Mackay-Smith @a-mack-s.bsky.social · 01/07/2025
Instead of being a highly technical review, we focus on some of the conceptual questions that evolutionary biologists can investigate with these methods. We want to convince you that 3C-based genomic methods can contribute towards answering questions you’re already interested in! 2/7
media.tenor.com
two men are sitting on a couch and one of them is saying " this is next level "
ALT: two men are sitting on a couch and one of them is saying " this is next level "
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Ava Mackay-Smith @a-mack-s.bsky.social · 01/07/2025
🌟 paper tweetorial! 🌟 check out my first first-author paper from my Ph.D! We wrote a small (=easy-to-read) Perspective piece trying to bridge the gap between #evolutionarybiology and the expanding world of #genomic assays, specifically #chromatin conformation capture (3C and related approaches) 🧵1/7
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Ava Mackay-Smith @a-mack-s.bsky.social · 08/05/2025
🦋 Happening today at #BoG25: Are you interested in unusual patterns of recombination in the context of ongoing hybridization?? If you answered yes OR no to this question, come by poster 187 tonight! Learn something, or teach me something! 🦋
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Ava Mackay-Smith @a-mack-s.bsky.social · 05/05/2025
🦋 If you're 1) coming to #BoG25 (!!!) and 2) like thinking about weird patterns of recombination or population genetics, come say hi & stop by my poster "Exploring hybridization persistence: Gene regulatory dynamics and sex-specific recombination landscapes in Lepidoptera" 🦋
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