#BlackLivesMatter Associate Professor, evolutionary genomics @TAMU. views my own. he/him.
Joined October 2009
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Claudio Casola retweeted
3 Feb 2025
TiG's February issue is devoted to microproteins and the small ORFs that encode them.
Check it out!
cell.com/trends/genetics/iss…
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16 Jan 2025
An absolutely brilliant research endeavor and one of the most exciting science tweets I have read so n a while
15 Jan 2025
I’m very excited to finally share the results of a passion project that has been on my mind for nearly a decade. You can find the pre-print below, but what follows is the saga of how this project came to be:
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4 Jan 2025
Wtf??
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17 Dec 2024
Key take home messages:
1. High-quality genome of SPB
2. Stevens elements conservation in Dendroctonus
3. Widespread gene losses and gains in SPB
4. Lower gene content in Dendroctonus due to gene losses, fewer new gene families
5. Lots of misannotated genes in other beetles.
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17 Dec 2024
Super fun collaborating with @coleoguy, Lynne Rieske and many others on this project!
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17 Dec 2024
But the most surprising finding came from non-Dendroctonus beetles. Many of these genomes contain thousands of genes encoding proteins with transposable element domains (TEs). Further analyses show that these are likely annotation artifacts rather than domesticated TE genes.
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17 Dec 2024
We found a range of gene gains and losses both in SPB and in Dendroctonus that may be involved in specific adaptations and possibly in its aggressive behavior. Many conserved genes have been lost in this genus (lots more details are in the paper).
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17 Dec 2024
Instead, we found that widespread gene loss and a low rate of novel gene families formation could explain the diminished gene content in Dendroctonus.
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17 Dec 2024
Intriguingly, SPB and other Dendroctonus species seemed to have fewer genes than most other sequenced beetles. We ruled out annotation errors in Dendroctonus due to artifacts and biases.
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17 Dec 2024
Second, we wanted to know what the SPB genome can tell us about its tree-killing habit, given that SPB is the most destructive forest pest in the southeastern US with outbreaks that have greatly impacted loblolly pine commercial and natural forests.
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17 Dec 2024
Happy to see our work on the assembly and genome analysis of the southern pine beetle (SPB) Dendroctonus frontalis out in RS Open Science!
So why SPB, and what did we learn? (and bonus surprise at the end..)
royalsocietypublishing.org/d…
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17 Dec 2024
First, Dendroctonus shows extreme karyotypic variation and multiple lineages that evolved neo-XY chromosomes.
Despite this variation, we confirmed that the core coleopteran Stevens elements are conserved in SPB, and we identified the bona fide SPB X chromosome.
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17 Dec 2024
SPB is one of about 6,500 species of so-called bark beetles, subfamily Scolytinae. Most bark beetles are non-aggressive, but the genus Dendroctonus, which literally means ‘tree killer’, contains a number of species that can generate devastating outbreaks (hence the name..)
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Claudio Casola retweeted
22 Nov 2024
Very pleased to see this work out that identifies a code in C3 rice co-opted to allow C4 photosynthesis. doi.org/10.1038/s41586-024-0…
Thanks to all involved but in particular @l_luginbuehl @JoeEcker @_joseph_swift Great transatlantic partnership.
@plantsci
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Claudio Casola retweeted
15 Nov 2024
The rowboat
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7 Nov 2024
#Academia Just curious if other Colleges do "space usage" tours to find out if offices and labs are empty.
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7 Nov 2024
Bad take imo. Bernie’s populism is what’s missing from the dems messaging. Maybe running on minimum wage and free college could have swayed many people who are unaffected by biden’s policies
6 Nov 2024
god just shut the fuck up bernie
We had the most pro-labor, pro-working class, pro-redistribution administration in the last fifty years and it didn't matter
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