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Mia Levine

@levine-lab.bsky.social
2K followers 533 following 40 posts

Associate Professor @ Penn Biology, Penn Epigenetics Institute, Penn Center for Genome Integrity. We combine evolutionary genetics and cell biology to study how DNA repeat evolution perturbs and preserves genome integrity.

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Reposted by Mia Levine
Andres Bendesky @bendeskylab.com · 04/10/2026
10 days left to apply for an Assistant Professorship in Evolutionary Biology at Columbia.
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Alex de Mendoza @alexdemendoza.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
It's live! The next @embo.org #EvoChromo meeting will take place next year October in St Feliu de Guíxols (Spain), check it out here: meetings.embo.org/event/27-chr.... It's been great to co-organise with @dodonova-sveta.bsky.social @kellervalsecchi.bsky.social @cedricfeschotte.bsky.social & Nick I.
meetings.embo.org
Chromatin evolution from molecules to genomes
Technological advances over the past decade have enabled genome-wide mapping of chromatin organization across diverse organisms at unprecedented resolution. These studies have uncovered both conserve…
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Andrew Santiago-Frangos @asantiagofrangos.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Our lab's first preprint! The antiphage protein Tiamat is an ATPase and DNase with homologs across the tree of life. What started as undergrad Shirley Yuan's summer project grew into a paper and a collaboration with @jpkbravo.bsky.social's group. Link: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
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Cedric Feschotte @cedricfeschotte.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Thrilled to see this published today! Truly special because we made the initial discovery >15 yrs ago! We found two copies of a human gene called BC200 embedded in a human poxvirus. BC200 blurs the line between gene & transposon—both functional & mutagenic! www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... 🧵1/n
science.org
Escape of the BC200 gene to a human poxvirus reveals its persistent transposition in primates
Transposable elements mobilize within and occasionally between genomes, including from host to virus. We identified two insertions of the human BC200 noncoding RNA gene in the poxvirus molluscum conta...
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Julius Brennecke @juliusbrennecke.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
Five years ago, on a walk with @mayavoichek.bsky.social through the third district around the @viennabiocenter.bsky.social we concluded that "every day we do not work on the mysterious Env-independent infectivity of MDG1 retrotransposons is a lost day ... " The birth of an entire research domain.
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Sarah McAnulty, Ph.D. @sarahmackattack.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
If you care about keeping the Academy of Natural Sciences open to the public in Philadelphia, I need you to read and share this thread. Trish Wellenbach was sent from the mayor's office to oversee the Academy of Natural sciences situation. She needs to hear from us. Here comes the action item:
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AndreaVentura @andreaventura.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Very nice paper from @agnelsfeir.bsky.social and colleagues on the role of MMEJ in ecDNA maintenance and rearrangements. www.nature.com/articles/s41...
nature.com
MMEJ repair of breaks at TA repeats maintains ecDNA and cancer fitness - Nature
Stability of extrachromosomal DNA (ecDNA) relies on microhomology-mediated end joining at fragile TA-rich sites, with FANCM suppressing break formation, suggesting that Polθ disruption may destab...
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Sarah McAnulty, Ph.D. @sarahmackattack.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
The doors of the Academy of Natural Sciences will be closing on Sunday...for now. But this isn't over. We're meeting at the Academy of Natural Sciences when doors close to gather for a moment of resolve followed by a march to City Hall. Join us. art by @lindzeamays.bsky.social luma.com/7ggkgtjb
a t. rex holds a candle in front of the words This isn't over, next to save the academy candle vigil, 5pm Sunday Sept 27, 1900 ben franklin parkway
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Mia Levine @levine-lab.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
mailbox FULL
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Mia Levine @levine-lab.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Wow! Congrats, Xin!
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Reposted by Mia Levine
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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David L. Stern @gallseeker.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
1/n New paper! In collaboration with Angela Gronenborn's lab, we solved the crystal structures of 2 bicycle proteins. They share some similarity to saposins, but are clearly not saposins. Instead, this stable backbone provides a platform for crazy diversity of form and surface chemistry.
pnas.org
PNAS
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), a peer reviewed journal of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) - an authoritative source of high-impact, original research that broadly spans...
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Sarah McAnulty, Ph.D. @sarahmackattack.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
Attention Philly Families! It is critical that we show Drexel and city government that our enthusiasm for the Academy of Natural Sciences is going strong! Bring your kids, friends, & neighbors down to the parkway on Saturday from 2-6pm. It's a kid-friendly rally to support the academy!
dinosaurs and bugs happily party together at the Save the Academy family rally. Saturday September 26, 2-6pm 1900 ben Franklin parkway, come dressed as your favorite dinosaur, insect, animal, or just yourself! There's a duck billed dino, a triceratops, a brachiosaurus, a pterodactyl, a millipede, dragonfly, and beetle!
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Rebecca Tarnopol @tarnopol.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
Our latest work now on bioRxiv! We found evidence for multiple independent HGTs of the anti-parasitoid effector cdtB in drosophilids, including anciently in the last common ancestor of subgenus Drosophila 👀 You can browse our data here: trnpl.github.io/antiparasito...
trnpl.github.io
Drosophila Phylogeny Explorer
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Bernard Kim @bernardkim.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
Princeton EEB is running a very broad faculty search at the Assistant Professor level. Please consider applying to join us! This is a wonderful, collaborative, cohesive department with diverse interests and amazing colleagues. apply.interfolio.com/193474
apply.interfolio.com
Apply - Interfolio {{$ctrl.$state.data.pageTitle}} - Apply - Interfolio
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Harmit Singh Malik @harmitmalik.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
Reposting this ongoing search (any discipline of biology) for an Assistant to Associate level colleague in the Division of Basic Sciences at Fred Hutch. Great city, great colleagues, great core facilities, great trainees.
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Laura Ross @laurarossevo.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
My lab @ Edinburgh university is recruiting a postdoc to work on the weird and wonderful germline-specific chromosomes of flies. elxw.fa.em3.oraclecloud.com/hcmUI/Candid... collaboration with @germline.bsky.social and yukiko yamashita funded by @novonordisk.bsky.social please repost!
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Pau Pascual @paupascual.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
New paper from the Capelson Lab in collaboration with the @ranganlab.bsky.social where they found that Nup93-2 only partially overlaps with mature NPCs. This off-pore Nup pool helps silence Polycomb domains. 🤩https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.08.28.747911v1
biorxiv.org
Distinct functions of Nup93 paralogs in tumor growth and Polycomb-mediated repression of JAK/STAT signaling
Nuclear pore complexes (NPCs) are nuclear envelope (NE)-embedded protein assemblies that mediate nucleocytoplasmic exchange and interact with the genome, including binding of an NPC component Nup93 to...
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Peter Andersen @germline.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
We are recruiting a PhD student 🥼🙋 Topic: how germ cells bend gene expression dogmas Fly genetics + proteomics + genomics. Fully funded. Aarhus University 🇩🇰 info on the project and how to apply👇 mbg.au.dk/en/peter-and... I'd really appreciate it if you'd help spread the word. Thanks
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Rangan Lab @ranganlab.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
New preprint in collaboration with the Capelson lab. Roles for nucleoporin paralogs.
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Lucie Etienne @lucievirevolte.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
Insights into longevity & virus-driven adaptation from Myotis bat genomes International & fantastic collab. with @psudmant.bsky.social @denard.bsky.social Labs ! Major credit to the 2 leading scientists: Juan Vazquez & @lauterbur.bsky.social now with their own labs! You 2 rock! (1/n)
nature.com
Insights into longevity and virus-driven adaptation from Myotis bat genomes - Nature
Comparative and functional analyses of Myotis bats uncover unique patterns of adaptation in virus-interacting proteins and longevity-associated pathways, linking two hallmarks of bat biology.
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Peter Andersen @germline.bsky.social · 29/08/2026
We watched piRNAs and transposons across development, saw them dance tightly and wrote a paper about it. It's so cool to see it online and we will make a thread about it all very soon. Stay tuned :-)
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Nels Elde @elearlybird.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
Open your lab here at Utah! utah.peopleadmin.com/postings/208...
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Harmit Singh Malik @harmitmalik.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
MxA is one of the broadest antiviral proteins mammals make. It’s a big reason most bird flu strains never get a foothold in people. The rare ones that succeed have learned to dodge it. How MxA actually recognizes viral targets at the molecular level is unknown for a bunch of technical reasons.
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Mia Levine @levine-lab.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
Terrific opportunity! Damian is a wonderful mentor with an exceptionally creative and compelling research program.
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Mia Levine @levine-lab.bsky.social · 10/08/2026
This looks so exciting! Can't wait to read it. Congrats!
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C. Brandon Ogbunu @cbo.bsky.social · 04/08/2026
🚨NEW PAPER 🚨 "Deconstructing empirical fitness seascapes across scales of granularity" published in #G3 (@genetics-gsa.bsky.social) 1/2 The fitness landscape has been among the most influential instruments in evolutionary theory for nearly a century. But we often treat them as fixed and static.
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Ian Henderson @hendersi.bsky.social · 25/07/2026
CRISPR-mediated centromere fission generates neochromosomes with distorted meiotic inheritance in Arabidopsis biorxiv.org/content/10.6... new preprint from us - includes changing the Arabidopsis karyotype from 5 -> 6 chromosomes using Cas9 & outcomes of 5/6 chromosome hybrid meiosis
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Mia Levine @levine-lab.bsky.social · 27/07/2026
Very cool Mahul - excited to read this!
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Mia Levine @levine-lab.bsky.social · 27/07/2026
Very excited for you, Pavrutha (and all the future Raman Lab trainees)! Congratulations!
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Agnel Sfeir @agnelsfeir.bsky.social · 17/07/2026
mtDNA deletions cause incurable diseases. Our CRISPR screen found a fix: deleting MTERF1 restores mitochondrial function, not by clearing bad genomes, but by making the healthy ones work harder. Simple Biology! New preprint 👇 @tatakavlashvili.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
biorxiv.org
MTERF1 loss buffers against pathogenic mtDNA deletions through transcriptional regulation
Large-scale mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) deletions cripple oxidative phosphorylation once they exceed a critical heteroplasmy threshold, causing incurable mitochondrial pathologies. Using a genome-wide C...
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Antoine Molaro @antoinemolaro.bsky.social · 17/07/2026
Hello World ! We have another postdoc position open in the lab! Are you a freshly minted Ph.D. with a passion for chromatin and evolution ? Come join our ERC project #EvoEpi ! Inclusive environment + cool people + great science = success details 👉 tinyurl.com/3r6zk54n Repost are always appreciated
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Peiwei Chen @peiwei-chen.bsky.social · 17/07/2026
How do transposons jump when they’re released from host control? I babysat two chromosomes for 2 years, making sure they are ok without most piRNAs. Here’s what we found & excited to share my 1st postdoc paper: “piRNA loss unleashes episodic transposition bursts” www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
biorxiv.org
piRNA loss unleashes episodic transposition bursts
In Metazoa, transposon expression is suppressed by the piRNA pathway, and disruption of this pathway leads to rampant transposon expression. However, it remains unclear whether increased transposon ex...
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Harmit Singh Malik @harmitmalik.bsky.social · 24/06/2026
I know it seems like a heretical idea, but one way to figure out if a preprint is really interesting (to you) is... to read the preprint. Then, in the spirit of sharing, send a note to authors: a simple kudos or a more detailed question. I do this a dozen times a year. It's awesome. Try it.
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Abby Buchwalter @abbybuch.bsky.social · 21/06/2026
After some good funding news, we are hiring! Looking for a postdoc to join our team and lead our explorations into transposon repression by the nuclear lamina. Check out the full ad on our lab website at buchwalter-lab.github.io/postdoc-ad.pdf + contact me to learn more!
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Peter Andolfatto @pandolfatto.bsky.social · 16/06/2026
1/n Check out our new paper, spearheaded by @fborne.bsky.social, just out in PLoS Genetics doi.org/10.1371/jour....
doi.org
Epistasis among clustered lineage-specific amino acid substitutions in the Drosophila Trio protein
Author summary Proteins fold into three-dimensional structures that are essential for their function. Because these structures depend on interactions among amino acids, the fitness effect of a mutatio...
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Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution @official-smbe.bsky.social · 12/06/2026
#SMBE2026 S24: Molecular mechanisms of selfish elements and strategies 🗓️ Mon Jun 29, 10:20am 🔗 smbe2026.org/programme Talks by: @levine-lab.bsky.social Yu Hua @cecilecourret.bsky.social @eleanoreritter.bsky.social Elli Cryan @alexand-kwak.bsky.social Steve Perlman @antisense.bsky.social
SMBE2026 | S24: Molecular mechanisms of selfish elements and strategies
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Molly Schumer @mollyschumer.bsky.social · 09/06/2026
Exciting new work from the lab led by @lagiven.bsky.social & co-advised by @tododge.bsky.social mapping pigmentation variation in the swordtail X. nezahualcoyotl! Spotting variation is linked to xmrk but embedded in complex genomic regions that Tris & Lyle tackled with UL nanopore: shorturl.at/Ljw1z
shorturl.at
Two melanic pigment patterns are associated with a sex chromosome-linked oncogene in the mountain swordtail Xiphophorus nezahualcoyotl
Sex-linked traits are widespread, but their genetic architecture has been challenging to characterize, due in part to the repetitive and structurally complex nature of sex chromosomes. In swordtails a...
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Matthew Hahn @3rdreviewer.bsky.social · 02/06/2026
Very happy to announce a big new paper from the lab, led by grad students @smishra677.bsky.social and Laia Pomar-Pallarès (in collaboration with @roblanfear.bsky.social). We introduce a new way to study introgression, with accompanying software (DAFT) 1/n 🧵 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
biorxiv.org
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Cedric Feschotte @cedricfeschotte.bsky.social · 29/05/2026
📣 POSTDOC position available in the Feschotte Lab at Cornell to work on #TRANSPOSONS! More details below. Pls send informal application or inquiry ASAP by DM or email to cf458_at_cornell.edu. Pls spread the word 🙏 #TEsky www.thefeschottelabatcornell.com
thefeschottelabatcornell.com
The Feschotte Lab at Cornell
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Mia Levine @levine-lab.bsky.social · 21/05/2026
viruses are our inspiration - you guys are way ahead of us.
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Mia Levine @levine-lab.bsky.social · 21/05/2026
This is incredibly kind. A bit speechless, honestly. You probably don't remember but I pitched you some of these ideas a couple years ago during a visit to UofA. I recall my HUGE sense of relief when you didn't flinch, and even went so far as to say something like, "of course that's possible." ;)
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Mia Levine @levine-lab.bsky.social · 20/05/2026
Wow - thank you, David.
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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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The EMBO Journal @embojournal.org · 18/05/2026
Host-transposable element coexistence: a matter of resistance, tolerance and trade-off Read this new review by Séverine Chambeyron, Charlotte Grimaud, Mikiko Siomi et al link.springer.com/article/10.1...
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Needhi Bhalla 💅🏽 @needhibhalla.bsky.social · 12/05/2026
👀"These results establish that naturally occurring copy-number variation within repetitive pericentromeric DNA is not merely noise, but a functional source of variation in chromosome segregation and gene regulation."
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Cedric Feschotte @cedricfeschotte.bsky.social · 07/05/2026
👋 Transposon lovers: registration is now open for the CSHL TE meeting! We have a 🔥 lineup of invited speakers and many slots for short talks selected upon abstract across all areas of TE biology. 🧬➰🧬 #TEsky Abstract deadline: July 10 meetings.cshl.edu/meetings.asp...
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Jae Young Choi @jychoi.bsky.social · 30/04/2026
I'm looking to hire a postdoc. Please share if you can!
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Laura Ross @laurarossevo.bsky.social · 27/04/2026
Did you know that many organisms delete parts of their genome during development? To know more please join us at the Roscoff meeting on "Mechanistic and Evolutionary Basis of Programmed DNA Elimination" Sep21- 25, 2026. Please share!
cjm.sb-roscoff.fr/en/conferenc...
cjm.sb-roscoff.fr
The mechanistic and evolutionary basis of programmed DNA elimination | CNRS - Conférences Jacques Monod (CJM)
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Molly Schumer @mollyschumer.bsky.social · 23/04/2026
Please share widely! We will imminently be posting a technician position in our lab group since @rheasood.bsky.social is off to grad school 🙌! If you know of anyone excited about molecular biology, evolution, and functional genomics please have them reach out (schumer at stanford). Start date ~June
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