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Matt Beaumont

@mbeaum.bsky.social

PhD student at the Vienna Institute of Population Genetics. Working on transposable elements and their invasion dynamics.

Posts Replies Media

Reposted by Matt Beaumont

Bosco Gracia @boscogracia.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Happy to share the first article of my PhD in @elife.bsky.social: Environmental temperature is a strong driver of subspecies competition in the #Drosophila #microbiome You can check it out here: elifesciences.org/articles/110... #SymbioSky #MicroSky #symbiosis #AcademicSky🧪

elifesciences.org

Environmental temperature is a strong driver of subspecies competition in the Drosophila microbiome

Changes in abiotic factors, such as temperature, can affect the host fitness indirectly by modulating subspecies dynamics of key taxa, which are usually overlooked in microbiome research.

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Reposted by Matt Beaumont

Riccardo Pianezza @rpianezza.bsky.social · 04/10/2025

We discovered an endogenous retrovirus that's still spreading in natural D. melanogaster populations! It was horizontally transferred from D. erecta in Central Africa, so we named it "Kuruka", which means "jump" in Swahili. Read its cool story here: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

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Matt Beaumont @mbeaum.bsky.social · 28/08/2025

Germline defence from TEs largely relies on piRNAs. Yet, @divyaselvaraju.bsky.social and I monitored a P-element invasion in Drosophila that was stopped by an internally deleted copy, no host intervention required! doi.org/10.1371/jour... Many thanks to @rpianezza.bsky.social & @rokofler.bsky.social

journals.plos.org

Rapid emergence of non-autonomous elements may stop P-element invasions in the absence of a piRNA-based host defence

Author summary Transposable elements (TEs) are short, self-replicating DNA sequences found in nearly all genomes. While they can be harmful to their hosts, many organisms have evolved defence systems,...

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