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Pío Sierra

@piosierra

Research Assistant at University of Cambridge. Mobile DNA, pangenomes, things that evolve. Investigador en la Universidad de Cambridge. ADN móvil, pangenomas, cosas que evolucionan.

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13.02.2024
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Latest posts by Pío Sierra @piosierra

Congratulations Elisa! Gulls rules!

19.02.2026 16:34 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
Postdoctoral Research Associate (Fixed Term) Applications are invited for a Postdoctoral Research Associate position to work in the group of Dr Felipe Karam Teixeira (https://www.gen.cam.ac.uk/research-groups/research-groups/karam-teixeira) in

The Department of Genetics at the University of Cambridge is seeking a talented Postdoctoral Research Associate to work in the group of Dr Felipe Karam Teixeira (www.gen.cam.ac.uk/research-gro...)

➡️For Further details see the link www.cam.ac.uk/jobs/postdoc...

10.12.2025 11:22 👍 7 🔁 10 💬 0 📌 0
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Rapid compensatory evolution within a multiprotein complex preserves telomere integrity Intragenomic conflict with selfish genetic elements spurs adaptive changes in subunits of essential multiprotein complexes. Whether and how these adaptive changes disrupt interactions within such comp...

Rapid compensatory evolution within a multiprotein complex preserves telomere integrity www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... @levine-lab.bsky.social very cool work

27.11.2025 20:43 👍 27 🔁 14 💬 0 📌 0
Drosophila TE name origins, Part 1 – Postdoc Postpunk

Kicked off a series on #Drosophila TE discovery and naming. The first post covers elements that predate the term "mobile element", and more. artemilin.dev/posts/te_nam...

21.09.2025 19:49 👍 19 🔁 10 💬 0 📌 1
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🌎👩‍🔬 For 15+ years biology has accumulated petabytes (million gigabytes) of🧬DNA sequencing data🧬 from the far reaches of our planet.🦠🍄🌵

Logan now democratizes efficient access to the world’s most comprehensive genetics dataset. Free and open.

doi.org/10.1101/2024...

03.09.2025 08:39 👍 218 🔁 118 💬 3 📌 16

😢
Thanks for sharing it

21.08.2025 22:08 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

This is really cool!

29.07.2025 10:19 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

So true.

24.07.2025 10:46 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
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Ever wonder how nature got so diverse? The secret might lie in these colorful cichlid fish 🐠

Cambridge scientists discovered that ‘flipped’ segments of DNA act like evolutionary turbo boosts — helping species adapt fast and evolve into new ones. 👇
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adr9961

17.06.2025 11:04 👍 5 🔁 4 💬 0 📌 0

Thanks for sharing Rayan!

Is that Gene on slide 15? 🤔😉

03.06.2025 14:19 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
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Biogeography, evolution, and ecology of the ancestral cichlids This article examines the early evolution and biogeography of cichlids, discussing fossil evidence and the hypotheses regarding their origins. It reviews the debate between Gondwanan vicariance and ma...

What do we know about the earliest history of cichlid fishes? Here’s an extended and updated English version of my article on the biogeography and early evolution of cichlids, which I originally published in German in 2020. 🐟 🧪 #cichlid #biogeography #paleontology
cichlidae.com/article.php?...

27.05.2025 17:52 👍 29 🔁 7 💬 0 📌 1

Indeed! 😬

19.05.2025 09:50 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
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Cryptic infection of a giant virus in a unicellular green alga Latency is a common strategy in a wide range of viral lineages, but its prevalence in giant viruses remains unknown. Here we describe a 617 kbp integrated giant viral element in the model green alga C...

Latest findings on cryptic infection of giant viruses published in @ScienceMagazine. We discovered a large virus hiding within a green algal genome producing virions.
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

12.04.2025 07:56 👍 68 🔁 37 💬 1 📌 2
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1/10 Today in @science.org in collaboration with
the Liu group we report the development of a laboratory-evolved CRISPR-associated transposase (evoCAST) that supports therapeutically relevant levels of RNA-programmable gene insertion in human cells. drive.google.com/file/d/1I-Ub...

15.05.2025 22:49 👍 132 🔁 59 💬 2 📌 5

🚨 🐟🐠 🚨

16.05.2025 08:12 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

🤩
Green of envy!

14.05.2025 15:00 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
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📢 HPRC Release 2 is here!

Now with phased genomes from 200+ individuals, a 5x increase from Release 1.

Explore sequencing data, assemblies, annotations & alignments in our interactive data explorer ⬇️:

humanpangenome.org/hprc-data-re...

12.05.2025 13:14 👍 37 🔁 28 💬 0 📌 3
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Massively parallel jumping assay decodes Alu retrotransposition activity - Nature Communications Here, the authors develop a high-throughput assay to measure the jumping potential of thousands of transposons in parallel.

Massively parallel jumping assay (MPJA) enables to test the jumping potential of thousands of transposons. Analysis of >160,000 Alu haplotypes identified transposition-asssociated domains. Amazing work by Navneet Matharu, Jingjing Zhao, Martin Kircher and many others.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

09.05.2025 03:50 👍 77 🔁 35 💬 1 📌 2

A new result with Teratorns involved. 150Kb!

02.05.2025 08:37 👍 2 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0

"Essential components of the genome", indeed.

30.04.2025 12:26 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
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Celebrating DNA Day with transposable elements Each year on DNA Day, we celebrate the DNA double helix structure and the Human Genome Project's completion. Here we dive into a fascinating genomic component: transposable elements. Once seen as mere...

😍
communities.springernature.com/posts/celebr...

25.04.2025 08:04 👍 3 🔁 2 💬 0 📌 0

🤩

15.04.2025 08:26 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

This is a such a great work! So many things to find out now that we start having complete™ genomes.

10.04.2025 08:35 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
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Rapid evolution of recombination landscapes during the divergence of cichlid ecotypes in Lake Masoko Abstract. Variation of recombination rate along the genome is of crucial importance to rapid adaptation and organismal diversification. Many unknowns remai

I’m very proud and happy to share the first paper of my PhD with @millanek.bsky.social that is now published in the latest issue of the journal Evolution @journal-evo.bsky.social.

academic.oup.com/evolut/artic...

14.03.2025 16:42 👍 52 🔁 17 💬 1 📌 0
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Lungfish

Pretty much sums up all my concerns, genetic and computational. 😅
xkcd.com

18.03.2025 13:10 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

I was so much looking for this after I saw her presenting it last year. Great story!

18.03.2025 13:07 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0

An excellent postdoc opportunity with Adrian Baez-Ortega at the University of Cambridge on the genomics of transmissible cancer.

Adrian is a brilliant scientist and mentor, this is a fantastic opportunity I strongly recommend.

17.03.2025 07:33 👍 8 🔁 3 💬 0 📌 0
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Interactions and evolutionary relationships among bacterial mobile genetic elements - Nature Reviews Microbiology In this Review, Lang and colleagues present an overview of the current knowledge landscape regarding mobile genetic elements in bacteria, with a focus on their evolutionary relationships and interacti...

www.nature.com/articles/s41...
In collaboration with Andrew Lang and Alison Buchan, we just published a review on the complex and sometimes convoluted interactions and evolutionary relationships among bacterial mobile genetic elements.
#phage #plasmid #evolution #bacteria #plasmidbiology #MGE

11.03.2025 13:12 👍 96 🔁 54 💬 2 📌 1
Illustration depicting the ways in which fungi can exchange genetic material with each other. Starship mediated HGT is confirmed experimentally in this preprint.

Illustration depicting the ways in which fungi can exchange genetic material with each other. Starship mediated HGT is confirmed experimentally in this preprint.

We did it! We caught Starship #transposons moving between #fungal species in the lab, including between species separated by ~100my. We think Starships are a mediator of HGT in fungi, akin to conjugative elements in bacteria. Check out the preprint. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

07.03.2025 06:18 👍 255 🔁 137 💬 3 📌 10
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Why do some animals, like whales, live exceptionally long lives free from many age-related diseases? 🐋

Join Dr Alex Cagan to find out how nature’s solutions to longevity may hold the key to tackling our own health challenges.

🗓️ 03 April
⌚ 8-9pm
📍 Cambridge Union
🎫 Booking required

07.03.2025 13:27 👍 0 🔁 2 💬 1 📌 0