iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Alejandro Burga

Maya Voichek @mayavoichek.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Super excited to share my postdoctoral work at @imbavienna.bsky.social @viennabiocenter.bsky.social - We discovered that some retrotransposons, or "jumping genes" 🧬, are able to spread from cell to cell via a new viral infectivity route. A short thread: 🧵👇 (1/7)

AI-generated illustration of the soma-to-germline transmission of retrotransposons described in our work

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Reposted by Alejandro Burga

Pauli Group (posts by Andi Pauli) @pauligroup.bsky.social · 22/05/2026

New insights into #fertilization from the @pauligroup.bsky.social & Ikawa labs! In a tour-de-force study, we discovered ✨ SPARK ✨, a conserved sperm fertilization complex that couples sperm-egg binding to membrane fusion. Read on 🧵👇 and check out our preprint for more details! tinyurl.com/34cm4xat

tinyurl.com

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Reposted by Alejandro Burga

Victoria Deneke @vdeneke.bsky.social · 22/05/2026

How do sperm and egg fuse? Surprisingly, we still don’t fully know… Our field has uncovered many pieces of the fertilization puzzle, but not how they fit together. We identify ✨ SPARK ✨ - a conserved sperm complex that couples sperm-egg binding to fusion. tinyurl.com/34cm4xat Read on! 🧵👇

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Alejandro Burga @arburga.bsky.social · 18/05/2026

🧬 New research from the Burga lab! We took a closer look at a rogue selfish protein and caught evolution in the act of turning something old into something radically new 💡 (a.k.a. neofunctionalization) @imbavienna.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... Curious? Here’s a breakdown:

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Reposted by Alejandro Burga

Manuel Irimia @mirimiam.bsky.social · 20/04/2026

Thrilled to present our comparative study on the evolution of zygotic genome activation (ZGA)!! 🥚🧬 Amazing PhD work of @campobes.bsky.social together with @fedemantica.bsky.social and many collaborators! @melisupf.bsky.social @crg.eu. Thread below 1/15 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

biorxiv.org

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Reposted by Alejandro Burga

Mia Levine @levine-lab.bsky.social · 28/11/2025

How to keep in step when your (protein) partner speeds up… Here we investigated the adaptive remodeling of a protein-protein interaction surface essential for telomere protection. Congrats to whole team! www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

science.org

Rapid compensatory evolution within a multiprotein complex preserves telomere integrity

Intragenomic conflict with selfish genetic elements spurs adaptive changes in subunits of essential multiprotein complexes. Whether and how these adaptive changes disrupt interactions within such comp...

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Reposted by Alejandro Burga

Jonathan Pettitt @genotripe.bsky.social · 28/11/2025

C. elegans researchers were early adopters of open science: "The development of common resources and the belief that research findings and mutant strains should be freely shared has propelled worm research to the forefront" www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

pnas.org

From nematode to Nobel: How community-shared resources fueled the rise of Caenorhabditis elegans as a research organism | PNAS

Experimental organisms such as the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans are fundamental to biological discovery. The success of C. elegans research has ...

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Reposted by Alejandro Burga

Carlos Ribeiro @ribeirocarlitos.bsky.social · 26/11/2025

Thrilled to share our new paper! With @tomtom-auer.bsky.social team, we asked how #evolution reshapes what animals #eat to match their ecological niches. Using pan-neuronal Ca2+ imaging, we show that the changes are in how the brain processes #taste. Link @nature.com: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

nature.com

Evolution of taste processing shifts dietary preference - Nature

Calcium imaging of taste neurons and the ventral brain provides insight into evolutionary divergence of food choice in Drosophila species, supporting a role of sensorimotor processing in addition to p...

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Reposted by Alejandro Burga

Polina Tikanova @polinatikanova.bsky.social · 24/11/2025

Happy to share that my PhD project is finally published!🪱✨ Selfish genes are found across the tree of life. They can disrupt inheritance patterns and at the same time act as units for molecular innovation. Here we tried to answer one big question: how do selfish genes emerge in the first place?

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Reposted by Alejandro Burga

Vienna BioCenter Scientific Training @vbcscitraining.bsky.social · 24/11/2025

The Vienna BioCenter Summer School 2026 call is now open for talented undergrads, it's a great opportunity for students who are interested in graduate study in the life sciences. Georg Busslinger from CeMM is recruiting! Please share training.vbc.ac.at/summer-school

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Reposted by Alejandro Burga

Institute of Molecular Biotechnology @imbavienna.bsky.social · 24/11/2025

🚨 New paper alert! Scientists in the Burga lab show for the first time how toxin-antidote elements—selfish genetic elements that perpetuate by poisoning those embryos that don’t inherit them—evolved from normal cellular proteins. More: imba.science/3M3fRyq

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Alejandro Burga @arburga.bsky.social · 24/11/2025

🪱 Selfish genes are everywhere and drive some of biology’s biggest innovations (CRISPR, antibody recombination, epigenetics). Yet almost no one asks the obvious question: how does a selfish gene begin? Our new manuscript uncovers how selfishness can emerge directly from the host genome.

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