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Moritz Blumer

@moritzblumer.bsky.social
162 followers 298 following 16 posts

Postdoc @GeneticsCam. Interested in Genomics, Biodiversity, Speciation, Conservation 🐟🦇🐋🐛🐆. Formerly @goetheuni & @mpicbg. github.com/MoritzBlumer 🇪🇺

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Reposted by Moritz Blumer
Aylwyn Scally @aylwyn-scally.bsky.social · 15/03/2026
This story is a good example of why it is so difficult to communicate genuine science to the public. Despite every scientist not on the company payroll decrying it as a bogus and unscientific project, the story presents it as some sort of both-sides issue. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...
theguardian.com
Can scientists really resurrect the dodo? Inside the company that says it can
Colossal Biosciences’ CEO says its work follows a ‘moral obligation’ while critics say it’s ‘tech bro’ hype that could undermine conservation
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Reposted by Moritz Blumer
The Atlantic @theatlantic.com · 25/11/2025
X’s decision to show where its accounts are based “is, theoretically, a positive step in the direction of transparency”—yet Elon Musk may have instead revealed that the platform is “just a worthless, poisoned hall of mirrors,” @cwarzel.bsky.social argues.
bit.ly
Elon Musk’s Worthless, Poisoned Hall of Mirrors
How X blew up its own platform with a new location feature
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Reposted by Moritz Blumer
University of Cambridge @cam.ac.uk · 13/06/2025
How did nature’s incredible diversity come to be? These cichlid fish may offer a clue 🐠 Cambridge researchers have found that chunks of ‘flipped’ #DNA can help fish quickly adapt to new habitats and evolve into new species, acting as evolutionary ‘superchargers’ 👇 bit.ly/3HGqEN6
Three cichlid fish swimming in clear water, with text at the bottom asking 'How do 'supergenes' shape the evolution of fish?'
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Moritz Blumer @moritzblumer.bsky.social · 19/06/2025
And thanks to all other co-authors, some are on bluesky: @currocam.bsky.social @alexhooft.bsky.social @joelelkin.bsky.social @millanek.bsky.social @dlimnothrissa.bsky.social @domino-joyce.fishsci.com.ap.brid.gy @astridboehne.bsky.social @emiliapsantos.bsky.social @ericmiska.bsky.social
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Moritz Blumer @moritzblumer.bsky.social · 19/06/2025
A special thanks to everyone involved in this long-term project, especially the main authors Valentina Burskaia, Ilia Artiushin, @sahajaysmita.bsky.social, Hannes Svardal and Richard Durbin. Stay tuned for more interesting inversion stories!
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Moritz Blumer @moritzblumer.bsky.social · 19/06/2025
Taken together, our findings point towards a dual role for recombination-suppressed regions (in our case: inversions) in the evolution of cichlid adaptive radiations. This is in line with another very nice recent study (Kumar et al., doi.org/10.7554/eLife.104923.2) who found the same inversions.
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Moritz Blumer @moritzblumer.bsky.social · 19/06/2025
(As a side note: We also found evidence that previously identified sex determination systems in the Lake Victoria sister radiation are most likely inversions, but emerged independent from the Malawi ones).
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Moritz Blumer @moritzblumer.bsky.social · 19/06/2025
Interestingly, we found strong evidence that at least three inversions are involved in sex determination in some lineages, while the same inversions do not determine sex in other groups.
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Moritz Blumer @moritzblumer.bsky.social · 19/06/2025
Together with the origin of two inversions in the deepwater 𝐷𝑖𝑝𝑙𝑜𝑡𝑎𝑥𝑜𝑑𝑜𝑛 lineage, and the higher inversion frequencies in the extant deep clade, we believe that these inversions played a role when lineages adapted to different habitat depths, one of the most common axes of diversification in fish.
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Moritz Blumer @moritzblumer.bsky.social · 19/06/2025
Focusing on the SNPs from within the inversion regions that were most correlated with inversion state, we identified patterns of positive selection that were enriched for genes related to sensory perception.
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Moritz Blumer @moritzblumer.bsky.social · 19/06/2025
Interestingly, we found evidence that uninverted haplotypes of these inversions in benthics introgressed repeatedly from riverine lineages, in one case likely even from a 𝑃𝑠𝑒𝑢𝑑𝑜𝑐𝑟𝑒𝑛𝑖𝑙𝑎𝑏𝑟𝑢𝑠-like outgroup to the Malawi radiation, a lineage that still exists in the surrounding rivers today.
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Moritz Blumer @moritzblumer.bsky.social · 19/06/2025
In particular, the chromosome 9 and the compound chromosome 11 inversions likely arose in the proto 𝐷𝑖𝑝𝑙𝑜𝑡𝑎𝑥𝑜𝑑𝑜𝑛 lineage and remain polymorphic among today’s benthics.
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Moritz Blumer @moritzblumer.bsky.social · 19/06/2025
... we believe that the most species rich and ecologically diverse subradiation arose from a hybridization event between the ancestors of two ecologically contrasting lineages: the riverine-like 𝐴. 𝑐𝑎𝑙𝑙𝑖𝑝𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑎 and the deepwater specialists 𝐷𝑖𝑝𝑙𝑜𝑡𝑎𝑥𝑜𝑑𝑜𝑛.
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Moritz Blumer @moritzblumer.bsky.social · 19/06/2025
Taking into account all available lines of evidence, especially the phylogenetic distribution of the inversions (see the first image) and patterns of allele sharing among Malawi clades and outgroups within and outside inversion regions ...
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Moritz Blumer @moritzblumer.bsky.social · 19/06/2025
Using new chromosome-level assemblies and haplotagged (linked) reads of representatives of the major clades we confirmed that these regions are in fact inversions. Pairwise alignments also showed that the outlier region on chromosome 11 consists of two adjacent but co-segregating inversions.
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Moritz Blumer @moritzblumer.bsky.social · 19/06/2025
Using windowed PCA and a new clustering approach we identified five chromosome-scale regions with aberrant phylogenetic patterns – consistent with large and divergent segregating haplotypes.
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Moritz Blumer @moritzblumer.bsky.social · 19/06/2025
The biallellic variant callset is available for download: doi.org/10.17863/CAM....
doi.org
Research data supporting "Introgression dynamics of sex-linked chromosomal inversions shape the Malawi cichlid radiation"
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Moritz Blumer @moritzblumer.bsky.social · 19/06/2025
Following a decade of field work with many collaborators from Europe and Malawi, we sequenced 1,375 Malawi cichlids from 240 species (covering all major ecomorphological clades) and called variants against a chromosome-level 𝐴. 𝑐𝑎𝑙𝑙𝑖𝑝𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑎 reference genome.
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Moritz Blumer @moritzblumer.bsky.social · 19/06/2025
Check out our new paper about chromosomal inversions in Malawi cichlids! 🐟🧬 Available here without a paywall: hdl.handle.net/10067/214834... (click on the ‘Full text (open access)’ link).
A circular phylogeny of Malawi cichlids with inversion frequencies indicated for different taxa as rings around the tree.
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Reposted by Moritz Blumer
LIB @leibnizlib.bsky.social · 16/06/2025
‪🐟 How do new #species arise?🧬 800+ species, 1 lake, little time: Cichlids in Lake #Malawi evolved with stunning speed—no geographic barriers needed. A new Science study shows how #supergenes & chromosome inversions drive biodiversity. #LIBresearch Find out more: leibniz-lib.de/de/news/1206...
Various Malawi cichlids in the shallow waters of Otter Point, Malawi
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Reposted by Moritz Blumer
Eric Miska Lab @miskalab.bsky.social · 06/05/2025
@fxquah.bsky.social 's paper is finally out @genomeresearch.bsky.social and we made the cover!! This was only possible due to the brilliant illustration by @sonhita.bsky.social Paper here: genome.cshlp.org/content/35/5... See below for more details 🧵
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Reposted by Moritz Blumer
Ingwar Perowanowitsch @ingwarpero.bsky.social · 10/04/2025
Dass ausgerechnet die CSU-Politikerin Doro Bär, die noch vor wenigen Jahren den menschengemachten Klimawandel leugnete, jetzt neue Forschungsministerin werden soll - ein Job, bei dem es ganz besonders darauf ankommt, der Kraft der Wissenschaft zu vertrauen, ist m.E. hochproblematisch.
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Reposted by Moritz Blumer
Riley Black 🏳️‍⚧️ 🦕 @restingdinoface.bsky.social · 07/04/2025
Dire wolves were not close relatives of gray wolves. They last shared a common ancestor more than 5 million years ago. What Colossal has done is make something new and slapped a dire wolf sticker on it, as if an organism equals a hypothetical genome.
scientificamerican.com
Dire Wolves Were Not Really Wolves, New Genetic Clues Reveal
The extinct giant canids were a remarkable example of convergent evolution
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Reposted by Moritz Blumer
Milan Malinsky @millanek.bsky.social · 12/03/2025
Do you want to make genetic maps from sperm/pollen/gametes? Now there is an easy way, based on Hi-C sequencing. Thanks to Richard Durbin and Ed Green for the idea and a group of co-authors including @mariontalbi.bsky.social and @danielbolnick.bsky.social for contributions.
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Reposted by Moritz Blumer
Anne Applebaum @anneapplebaum.wsocial.eu · 22/02/2025
Germans have been subjected to covert Russian propaganda as well as overt American propaganda - jointly in support of the far-right www.nytimes.com/2025/02/13/w...
nytimes.com
Between Russia and Elon Musk, German Voters Face a ‘Dual Front’ of Disinformation (Gift Article)
In the first major European vote since President Trump’s re-election, influence campaigns are targeting Germany from two sides.
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Reposted by Moritz Blumer
Marc Fischer @marc-fischer.bsky.social · 16/02/2025
Time to evict AirBnB from your life, if you have't already.
independent.co.uk
Airbnb’s co-founder is joining Elon Musk’s DOGE
Gebbia, a close friend of Musk, has praised DOGE’s work and defended it against criticisms on social media
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Reposted by Moritz Blumer
Kai Kupferschmidt @kakape.bsky.social · 14/02/2025
There is a lot going on right now! So much in fact that our news team at @science.org is now running a Trump tracker to keep track of it all. *sigh* 🧪 www.science.org/content/arti...
science.org
Welcome to Trump Tracker: Probationary workers at health agencies being fired today
Follow President Donald Trump’s impact on U.S. research and science globally
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Reposted by Moritz Blumer
Science Magazine @science.org · 06/02/2025
The dismantling of USAID could disrupt many clinical trials and wipe away U.S. “soft power” in developing countries, scientists warn.
scim.ag
'It’s tectonic:’ U.S. foreign aid freeze deals a blow to research around the globe
Dismantling of USAID could disrupt many clinical trials and wipe away U.S. “soft power” in developing countries, scientists warn
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Reposted by Moritz Blumer
Miguel V. Almeida @migueldvalmeida.bsky.social · 29/01/2025
Our first deep dive into TEs and piRNAs in African cichlids is finally published! genomebiology.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.... rdcu.be/d69S5 Our main findings below 🧵 #TEsky
genomebiology.biomedcentral.com
Dynamic co-evolution of transposable elements and the piRNA pathway in African cichlid fishes - Genome Biology
Background East African cichlid fishes have diversified in an explosive fashion, but the (epi)genetic basis of the phenotypic diversity of these fishes remains largely unknown. Although transposable e...
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Reposted by Moritz Blumer
Michael Hiller @hillermich.bsky.social · 29/01/2025
Happy to report that our work on immune system adaptations in bats is now out in @nature.com 🦇🧬 www.nature.com/articles/s41... @ariadnamorales.bsky.social @batresearch.bsky.social @virology.bsky.social @DGKontopoulos.ecoevo.social.ap.brid.gy @sgn.one @bat1kgenomes.bsky.social Read more ...
nature.com
Bat genomes illuminate adaptations to viral tolerance and disease resistance - Nature
A systematic analysis of 115 mammalian genomes, including 10 new bat genomes, reveals prevalent positive selection in immune genes in bats and shows key adaptations in the antiviral gene ISG15 that ai...
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