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Anna A Monaco

@annaamonaco.bsky.social
228 followers 243 following 32 posts

Evolution enthusiast and explorer of the dark genome | scicomm advocate | sometimes also artist | she/they🇿🇦🇮🇹 Postdoctoral researcher at MPIMG darkgenomevo.wordpress.com

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Reposted by Anna A Monaco
Ran Blekhman @blekhman.bsky.social · 27/06/2026
I wanted to like QED's new 1% preprint ranking. I really did. But the more I looked at the data, the more uncomfortable it made me. Here is my full peer review. open.substack.com/pub/blekhman...
open.substack.com
My Peer Review of The 1%
I wanted to like QED's new 1% ranking. I don't.
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M. Brent Hawkins @homeobox.bsky.social · 22/06/2026
Excited to share the final published version of our work on the evolution of dorsal-ventral patterning in fins and limbs, now up on @currentbiology.bsky.social In review we added new single LARM element deletions to assess their impact on dorsality. Take a look! 🔬🧪🐟🐁 www.cell.com/current-biol...
A scientific figure showing the phenotypic effects of removing individual enhancer elements from the LARM. On the left side of the image are schematic diagrams of the targeted deletions and on the right are fin skeletons showing altered anatomy.
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Anna A Monaco @annaamonaco.bsky.social · 12/06/2026
The time for my talk at #EED26 is approaching! Come to the C10 session to learn about hedgehog spines, and what they can tell us about the connection between small and large scale developmental patterning 🦔🧬💻
A sunny day in the Gilbert Scott building at University of Glasgow
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Anna A Monaco @annaamonaco.bsky.social · 18/05/2026
My years at UniBo will forever be dear to me, and Roberto does fun research. Apply!!
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Rob Patro @robp.bsky.social · 11/05/2026
This is a very cool demonstration of the possibilities of 10x Flex link.springer.com/article/10.1...! But did you know that you can get near identical results MANY TIMES faster than CellRanger by processing flex data with piscem/alevin-fry or cyto? Both highly efficient & fully, truly open source?/2
link.springer.com
10 × Genomics Flex Gene Expression is a powerful tool for single-cell transcriptomics of xenografts models - Genome Biology
The 10 × Genomics Flex Gene Expression protocol is a probe-based method that profiles fixed or frozen material, simplifying sample handling before scRNA-seq. Although probes exist only for human and m...
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Anna A Monaco @annaamonaco.bsky.social · 06/04/2026
After a long hiatus, I finally managed to write a short piece again. With an Easter egg (topical) for Asimov fans.
darkgenomevo.wordpress.com
Born in the dark: the origin of life
The question of the origin of life has haunted thinkers since the dawn of time. A recent study might have brought us closer to understanding the chemical cascade that led to our existence. And at t…
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David Ho @davidho.bsky.social · 12/03/2026
The 2026 National Science Foundation budget is $8.75 Billion.
nytimes.com
First 6 Days of Iran War Cost U.S. $11.3 Billion, Pentagon Says
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Ivano Legnini @ilegnini.bsky.social · 11/02/2026
1/6 We're hiring! Fully funded postdoc position in my group humantechnopole.it/en/research-...
humantechnopole.it
Legnini Group - Human Technopole
Laboratory for Molecular and Systems Biology of RNA   The Legnini Group at Human Technopole combines molecular and systems biology approaches to study gene regulation. We use synthetic biology and opt...
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Robert Evans (the Only Robert Evans) @iwriteok.bsky.social · 19/01/2026
Y'all see what time it is?
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molly conger @socialistdogmom.bsky.social · 19/01/2026
ICE abducted a man in minneapolis on january 6. by january 14, he was dead in a concentration camp in texas. victor manuel diaz was 36 years old. they say he did it to himself. ICE murdered him.
cbsnews.com
Man arrested by ICE in Minneapolis dies while under federal agency's custody in Texas
A 36-year-old man who was arrested by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Minneapolis died while under the custody of federal law enforcement in Texas on Wednesday, according to the agency.
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Dr Mel T @drmel.bsky.social · 02/12/2025
Great thread on the Ponzi scheme that is academic publishing. Public funds funnelled into obscene private profits using free labour of (publicly funded) Academics. AI slop contaminating the literature.
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Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics @molgen.mpg.de · 25/11/2025
🔬 Hot #PhD topic: Single-molecule fluorescence and super-resolution microscopy! Use quantitative nanoscale imaging to map nuclear organization. Apply by Jan 7 to join Johannes Stein’s Lab @jmstein.bsky.social & #IMPRS-BAC #gradschool! 👉 www.molgen.mpg.de/5098010/stei...
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Katie Mack @astrokatie.com · 20/11/2025
Can’t believe the whole country has to suffer through the return of Dickensian childhood diseases because the worst, most ignorant attention-demanders decided other people’s expertise makes them feel bad
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Carolyn Bertozzi @carolynbertozzi.bskyverified.social · 17/11/2025
Remind us @nytimes.com, who is it that is ruining the workplace? www.thecrimson.com/article/2025...
thecrimson.com
As Summers Sought Clandestine Relationship With Woman He Called a Mentee, Epstein Was His ‘Wing Man’ | News | The Harvard Crimson
When former Harvard President Lawrence H. Summers was pursuing a romantic relationship with a woman he described as a mentee, he turned to a longtime associate for guidance: convicted sex offender Jef...
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Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics @molgen.mpg.de · 11/11/2025
We were very happy to welcome this amazing group of early-career researchers as part of the @Falling Walls Science Summit in Berlin! Special thanks to @annaamonaco.bsky.social (Mundlos Lab) and @matthewkraushar.bsky.social for hosting the group and providing an in-depth tour of their labs!
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Anna A Monaco @annaamonaco.bsky.social · 11/11/2025
Go join Ivano and Ale!!! Great people and great science 🧫✨
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Anna A Monaco @annaamonaco.bsky.social · 31/10/2025
It’s Halloween 🎃 which means spooky skeleton time! ☠️ And what is spookier than making us entirely re-think our concept of cell type? Learn how each domain of bone is shaped by its own pressures, answering to its own ancestral ghosts 👻 tinyurl.com/mt8cwdvk
tinyurl.com
Three bone bloodlines
The vertebrate skeleton is formed from three embryonic lineages, each contributing to different bone types. While skeletal progenitors converge on shared functions, they retain unique molecular sig…
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Katie Mack @astrokatie.com · 19/06/2025
Chatbots — LLMs — do not know facts and are not designed to be able to accurately answer factual questions. They are designed to find and mimic patterns of words, probabilistically. When they’re “right” it’s because correct things are often written down, so those patterns are frequent. That’s all.
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Dr. Sedona Murphy @sedonamurphy.bsky.social · 21/10/2025
My new lab at the @molgen.mpg.de will be following up on some of the nuclear organization aspects of ecDNA so please do reach out if this is of interest :)
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Anna A Monaco @annaamonaco.bsky.social · 17/10/2025
To all ERCs looking to dip their toes in data analysis: I cannot recommend this enough!
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Anna A Monaco @annaamonaco.bsky.social · 15/10/2025
How your email finds me
News headline reading “Pterosaur died with belly full of plants-a fossil first”. Below in a smaller font reads “New discovery confirms the long debated hypothesis that the ancient winged reptiles ate plants”.
Below that a picture of the pterosaur fossil.
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Anna A Monaco @annaamonaco.bsky.social · 05/10/2025
I’d like to distract you from The Horrors™️ with what I’m pretty sure is a spotted sea hare (Aplysia dactylomela). I found this beauty and 6 of their friends while staring into tide pools like the goblin I am.
A beige sea slug with black rings decorating its mantle, in a tide pool on a bed of sea grass
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Anna A Monaco @annaamonaco.bsky.social · 25/09/2025
I usually write about what fascinates me, but this time it had to be about my concerns. This took a long time to write, I had a lot of thoughts, feelings, and literature to work through. There is still much more I’d like to say, but for now I leave you with this read. tinyurl.com/y6hx838y
tinyurl.com
The smoke and mirrors of de-extinction
Jurassic Park’s warnings about scientific ambition echo today as biotech companies pursue de-extinction. However, these efforts often overlook ecological realities and distract from pressing conser…
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Alyssa Long @measuredandslow.bsky.social · 23/09/2025
Hey a thing I really don’t want to get lost here is that while Tylenol doesn’t cause autism, IT’S FINE TO BE AUTISTIC. Let’s not grant them the premise that autism should be eradicated in our way to correct the science, okay? Okay.
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Emily Troyer @fishfetisher.bsky.social · 08/09/2025
It's Wacky Hat Day
Sea urchin sporting a 3d printed traffic cone hat.
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Anna A Monaco @annaamonaco.bsky.social · 07/09/2025
A bit late, but I finally got around to writing an accessible piece about @julianeg.bsky.social 's cover article from July. In case you needed something else to worry about in this day and age! 🦠 tinyurl.com/mrx5tfre #scicomm #devbio #transposons
tinyurl.com
Awakening monsters in the dark (genome)
Hidden in our DNA are “jumping genes” that usually stay silent. But sometimes they wake up, reshaping bodies in dramatic ways. A strange mutation in mice showed how one rogue element near a key lim…
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Anna A Monaco @annaamonaco.bsky.social · 03/09/2025
I can’t believe I missed this! Yet another amazing work by Brent on deep regulatory homology in vertebrates and the fin-to-limb transition. An absolute must read 🐠🐟🐡
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Cecilia Baldoni @cecibaldoni.bsky.social · 01/09/2025
The secret to shrew brain shrinkage? 🤔 Not cell loss, but water loss! Our new paper shows that brain cells shrink by losing water, a wild feat of brain plasticity 🤯 Check the paper! www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... @mpi-animalbehav.bsky.social @labdavalos.bsky.social @batichica.bsky.social
sciencedirect.com
Programmed seasonal brain shrinkage in the common shrew via water loss without cell death
Brain plasticity, the brain’s inherent ability to adapt its structure and function, is crucial for responding to environmental challenges but is usual…
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Society for Developmental Biology @socdevbio.bsky.social · 02/09/2025
Axolotl (Ambystoma mexicanum)🦎 can regrow limbs, tail, spinal cord, heart, and even parts of its brain. Axolotls are champions of regeneration and also shed light on limb patterning, wound healing, and developmental plasticity. Image from Prayag Murawala #ModelMonday #DevBio
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Anna A Monaco @annaamonaco.bsky.social · 21/08/2025
The peppered moth is a textbook example of natural selection, its colours shifting with the soot-darkened trees of the Industrial Revolution. But the genetic secret behind its “dark” form took 150 years to uncover: a new “jumping gene” that rapidly took over the population. 🦋 tinyurl.com/4zrc4e93
tinyurl.com
The “dark” secret of industrial moths
The peppered moth has long been a textbook example of natural selection, its colours shifting with the soot-darkened trees of the Industrial Revolution. But the genetic secret behind its “dark” for…
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The Royal Society @royalsociety.org · 20/08/2025
#OnThisDay in 1858, a seminal journal article comprised of papers by Alfred Russel Wallace FRS and Charles Darwin FRS on the theory of evolution by natural selection was published by the Linnean Society, the first public announcement of the theory of evolution. bit.ly/3k8fq4u
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Ana Marie Cox @anamariecox.com · 19/08/2025
The biggest trick the devil ever pulled is to call LLMs “artificial intelligence.”
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Nature @nature.com · 13/08/2025
The Max Planck Society is good at attracting international postdocs but struggles to retain them, survey finds go.nature.com/4fFENHi
go.nature.com
Postdoc depression and anxiety rates are rising, finds survey of 872 researchers
The Max Planck Society is good at attracting international postdocs but struggles to retain them, survey finds.
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Mark A. Hanson @hansonmark.bsky.social · 14/08/2025
A reminder you/your lab can support FlyBase at Cambridge through the following link. Every bit helps. Please share if you yourself can't donate. www.philanthropy.cam.ac.uk/give-to-camb...
philanthropy.cam.ac.uk
Drosophila Genetic Database
The Drosophila Genetic Database, FlyBase, is on the brink of collapse due to the sudden termination of the FlyBase NIH grant, which includes salaries for 5 literature curators based at the University ...
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Anna A Monaco @annaamonaco.bsky.social · 29/07/2025
🦇🦇🦇 darkgenomevo.wordpress.com/2025/07/29/t...
darkgenomevo.wordpress.com
The molecular remix of bat wing evolution
How do you build a wing from a hand? In bats, it’s all about remixing the molecular beat. The core gene circuitry is shared with other mammals, the innovation lies in timing and context.
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Anna A Monaco @annaamonaco.bsky.social · 23/07/2025
Pretty surreal to see my artwork on the cover of Nature Genetics! Big congrats to @julianeg.bsky.social, @stemundi.bsky.social and the others, and thank you Juliane for letting me help bring your research to life visually. www.nature.com/ng/volumes/5...
The cover of Nature Genetics July 2025 issue. Digital art of a mouse paw skeletal prep on dark background, digits I to IV disintegrating into viral particles. A caption says “An endogenous retrovirus causes limb malformation”.
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Max Delbrück Center @mdc-berlin.bsky.social · 11/07/2025
🏳️‍🌈 Resilience in Times of Change: Join #mdcBerlin’s LGBTQI+ community for the 4th Pride Symposium on July 18 at #mdcBIMSB. Talks, panel discussion, bake sale, and a Pride After Hour – amplifying queer voices in science. Info and registration: 👉 www.mdc-berlin.de/news/news/me... 👈
Graphic with photo and text: The top half features a photo of a speaker addressing a seated audience in a modern room, with a rainbow Pride flag on the wall and a screen displaying speaker info. The background is framed with a vibrant rainbow-colored marbled design. Overlaid white sans-serif text appears in dark green and magenta text boxes in the lower half, reading “PRIDE SYMPOSIUM” and “JULI 18, 2025 MDC-BIMSB.”
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Max Planck Institute of Immunobiology and Epigenetics @mpi-ie.bsky.social · 25/06/2025
We are excited to officially welcome a new group leader at the MPI-IE in #Freiburg. 🎉 Dr Juliane Glaser 🥳 – she studies epigenetic mechanisms of embryonic development, with a focus on transposable elements. 👉 Interview: www.ie-freiburg.mpg.de/6043545/2025... Welcome, @julianeg.bsky.social!
Portrait photo of Dr. Juliane Glaser
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Anna A Monaco @annaamonaco.bsky.social · 23/06/2025
Mustering the courage to share my latest scicomm endeavour: I channelled my love for writing into a blog where I can hopefully bring the marvels of evolutionary biology and non-coding DNA to all Science lovers! darkgenomevo.wordpress.com/2025/06/22/i...
darkgenomevo.wordpress.com
It just takes one change
Here, I run though three examples of evolutionary novelty driven by single non-coding DNA changes: limb loss in snakes, gliding in sugar gliders, and coat coloration in African striped mice. These …
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George Conway ⚖️🇺🇸 @gtconway.bsky.social · 22/06/2025
Much as I would not dare to predict the consequences of this war, I do think we can summarize it thusly so far: A smart and evil man manipulated a stupid and evil man into a war against a fanatical and evil regime.
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Anna A Monaco @annaamonaco.bsky.social · 20/05/2025
Talking at @pintofscience.de was really scary and really fun. Thank you everyone for the sold out event ✨ #pint25
A person dressed in black in on a stage with a microphone. There is some burlesque imagery, and a Pint of Science banner.
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Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics @molgen.mpg.de · 16/05/2025
❗Don’t miss: Dr. Anna Alessandra Monaco, postdoc in the lab of Stefan Mundlos, will give a talk at the Pint of Science Festival about her research project entitled “Junk that shapes us: the Dark Genome's role in Evolution.” 👉 pintofscience.de @annaamonaco.bsky.social @stemundi.bsky.social
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Sarah McAnulty, Ph.D. @sarahmackattack.bsky.social · 12/05/2025
You *can't* call yourself a good scientist and write off complexity that is a natural part of the system by declaring it an aberration or abnormality. You can not toss it out of your understanding of the system. Western science has historically been really bad about doing this. It cannot continue.
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Stefan Mundlos @stemundi.bsky.social · 06/05/2025
Our BAT paper is accepted in Nature Ecology & Evolution! Single cell, gene regulation, TADs and key TFs that shape the bat wing. Genomics goes Evodevo 😍
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Anna A Monaco @annaamonaco.bsky.social · 05/05/2025
Dear Berliners, I warmly invite you to join us in this conversation around our responsibilities as digital citizens in the era of (mis)information. Come share strategies for smarter media consumption! lu.ma/zsb00xbm?loc...
lu.ma
Event IPN - Misinformation Maze: Finding facts in a noisy world · Luma
Misinformation Maze: Finding Facts in a Noisy World Date: May 22, 2025 Time: 6:30 PM Location: Thomas The Startup Lawyers HQ – Oranienburger Str. 23, 10178 -…
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Anna A Monaco @annaamonaco.bsky.social · 29/04/2025
Catch yours truly at Zum starken August talking about how the dark genome went from junk to multicellular roadmap! Ticket sales launched today: pintofscience.de/events/berlin #pint25
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Anna A Monaco @annaamonaco.bsky.social · 16/04/2025
That’s me in the corner That’s me at the desk Top Waiting for R to update
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Anna A Monaco @annaamonaco.bsky.social · 12/04/2025
Highly entertaining and informative live posting of the dire wolf manuscript read-through. 10/10 ⭐️
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Tom Kimmerer, PhD @tomkimmerer.bsky.social · 07/04/2025
This is such nonsense. This company "claims that the same techniques it uses to summon back species from the dead could prevent existing but endangered animals from slipping into extinction themselves." We already have a method for preventing extinction. It's called conservation, and it works.
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Pride in STEM @prideinstem.bsky.social · 31/03/2025
Today is International Transgender Day of Visibility. There’s much to do everywhere so that trans and non-binary people can live without fear. Our single point of reflection is this: what’s your organisation doing to support trans+ people?
Digital drawing of The trans flag as painted stripes.
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