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Aleksandra (Sasha) Bliznina

@sashabliznina.bsky.social

Postdoctoral Fellow at WSI, Jaron Group and Tree of Life; biodiversity and evolution of germ-line restricted chromosomes in flies

Posts Replies Media

Aleksandra (Sasha) Bliznina @sashabliznina.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

Read this post to fall in love with flies! They are much cooler than you think! 🪰

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Reposted by Aleksandra (Sasha) Bliznina

Arif M @arf-mln.bsky.social · 23/07/2026

Very excited to see the first chapter of my PhD out on bioRxiv! It began as a rotation project and became a pivotal part of my PhD on beetles, adding a complementary macroevolutionary perspective to my second chapter on early-stage speciation in Indonesian herbivorous ladybird beetles.

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KamilSJaron.bsky.social @kamilsjaron.bsky.social · 23/07/2026

New preprint: 338 coleopteran genomes reveal exceptional rearrangement variation compared to other insect orders. Big congrats to @arf-mln.bsky.social, for getting this giant piece together. Big collaboration of @joanameier.bsky.social's and my groups. 🧵👇 doi.org/10.64898/202...

Phylogeny of 338 species with tips painted by the chromosomal ancestry of their contemporary genomes (well separated colours indicate only few changes, while blending indicates rearrangements). Colouring of the branches is by the number of rearrangements. The ring between paints and phylogeny indicates wether the chromosomal rearrangement was fusion dominated (brown) or fission dominated (teal) process.
Photo credits: Udo Schmidt, Lech Borowiec, JL Tachet, David Navrátil, Fred Chevaillot, Siga, Cosmin Manci, John Hallmén, Igor Souza-Gonçalves, Alex Hyde, H. Coiffait, David Ignace, Yves Bousquet.

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KamilSJaron.bsky.social @kamilsjaron.bsky.social · 05/06/2026

A big preprint from my group! Muller Elements are considered to be conserved in flies. We tested it by reconstructing the ancestral dipteran karyotype using 340 chromosomal genomes and suprise suprise, they're not... Led by @juliagries.bsky.social and Sam Ebdon. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... 🧵👇

Schema of three major chromosomal rearrangements leading to Muller Elements of Drosophila melanogaster since the common ancestor of Diptera.

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James McCulloch @jamesimcc.bsky.social · 03/03/2026

Why do the chromosomes of cyperids (sedges & rushes) split and fuse so regularly on evolutionary timescales? Is it because they have so many centromeres? Our new preprint, the first major paper of my PhD, addresses this question. 🧵⬇️ 1/12 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

A sedge. It may look unassuming but its genome has several unusual features.

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Aureliano Bombarely @bombarelya.bsky.social · 27/10/2025

Aleksandra Bliznina follows at #biodiversity25 with a presentation about the #evolution of the chromosomes in dark-winged fungus gnats. Autosome and GRCs chromosomes vary across different species. 3 genomes wasn’t enough to elucidate de origins of these chromosomes, so they went for 20!

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Aleksandra (Sasha) Bliznina @sashabliznina.bsky.social · 06/06/2025

What a great time we had at the kmer workshop this week!

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Amjad Khalaf 🇵🇸 @amjadkhalaf.bsky.social · 16/05/2025

New preprint! We generate 40 new high-quality microsporidian genomes from infected arthropod hosts that were sequenced to create reference genomes by the Darwin Tree of Life project. 8 of our genomes are chromosome-level, and we’re able to generate Hi-C data for 7! 🧬 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

biorxiv.org

Forty New Genomes Shed Light on Sexual Reproduction and the Origin of Tetraploidy in Microsporidia

Microsporidia are single-celled, obligately intracellular parasites with growing public health, agricultural, and economic importance. Despite this, Microsporidia remain relatively enigmatic, with man...

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Tom Mathers @tom-mathers.bsky.social · 16/05/2025

Struggling to find the tiny microchromosomes in draft bird genome assemblies? Our new #preprint introducing MicroFinder can help: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... 🧵 below (1/n) @sangerinstitute.bsky.social

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KamilSJaron.bsky.social @kamilsjaron.bsky.social · 06/03/2025

5 days left to register for the #k-mer workshop! 🧬 I would strongly recommend for anyone doing large scale biodiversity genomics. tinyurl.com/register-for...

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Andy Murray @mesofauna.bsky.social · 09/02/2025

An old photo of a larval Phronia species of fungus gnat. I love it- it looks so like a koala, cute fly larvae are the way forwards… #cute #diptera #mycetophilidae

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