Duilio Silva

I’m happy to announce that our preprint is out! 🧬🐭

We show that the mouse HSR selfish DNA kills embryos that do not inherit it through a toxin–antidote system, thereby increasing its transmission to the next generation. ⚡

Feedback is welcome!

@takashiakeralab.bsky.social

#SelfishDNA #meiosis4eva

📣Huge congrats to our postdoc, Takaya Totsuka, on his new paper @currentbiology.bsky.social 🎉 He found that Ca2+ oscillations regulate oocyte spindle rotation! 🐭The project started during his PhD with Prof. Miho Ohsugi.

Free link: authors.elsevier.com/c/1lUqk3QW8S...

🚨Our latest work on selfish centromeres is published @currentbiology.bsky.social 🐭🧬We found that the spindle checkpoint contributes to non-Mendelian segregation! Huge congrats to our lab manager, Zaak Walton, who led the project🎉

Free link:
authors.elsevier.com/a/1lQzN3QW8S...

Spindle checkpoint can secure additional cheating time for selfish expanded centromeres Expanded centromere DNA repeats violate Mendel’s law of segregation by preferentially segregating to the egg in animals and plants. Using oocytes collected from hybrid mice, Walton et al. show that th...

Nice work from @takashiakeralab.bsky.social: Spindle checkpoint can secure additional cheating time for selfish expanded centromeres: Current Biology www.cell.com/current-biol...

Meiosis-specific distal cohesion site decoupled from the kinetochore - Nature Communications In general, the kinetochore position and the sister-chromatid cohesion site are spatially linked. Here, the authors find a meiosis-specific distal cohesion site decoupled from the kinetochore in Perom...

New Akera's lab paper! Congrats @takashiakeralab.bsky.social and Eddie!

Proud of the first Brazilian movie to win an Oscar! "I am still here".

A versatile cohesion manipulation system reveals CENP-A dysfunction accelerates female reproductive age-related egg aneuploidy. Female reproductive aging is accompanied by a dramatic rise in the incidence of egg aneuploidy. Premature loss of chromosome cohesion proteins and untimely separation of chromosomes is thought to unde...

Some good news during these difficult times. Please check out our new preprint. We built a new tool to probe the origins of high oocyte aneuploidy rates at advanced female reproductive ages. This NIH funded work was led by a fantastic postdoc in the lab, Jiyeon Leem. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

For the ones facing hard times:

"Giving up... I've thought seriously about it, but I've never really taken myself seriously; there's more ground in my view than tiredness in my legs, more hope in my steps than sadness on my shoulders, more road in my heart than fear in my head." Geraldo E. de Souza

Happy new year everyone!

We are please to announce the return of MAYosis in 2025!

Every Wednesday in May at 4pm CET, come hear the latest #meiosis4ever stories!

Abstract sub deadline: March 8 (end of day wherever you are)

meiosis.cornell.edu/mayosis2025/

Meiosis: Exploring diversity to discover the fundamentals Meiosis is an essential cell division for sexual reproduction and fertility across eukaryotes. It involves a series of tightly regulated processes, including entry into meiosis, pairing of homologs, …

Registration now open for the 2025 EMBO workshop on Meiosis! June 22-26, 2025, Engelberg, Switzerland.
Deadline for abstract submissions and registration is Feb 15th, 2025. Lots of speaker slots will be selected from abstracts, so apply now! meetings.embo.org/event/25-mei...

DNA Break Repair by Homologous Recombination (2024) Drew Berry wehi.tv YouTube video by WEHImovies

Delighted to publish my new molecular animation:

DNA Break Repair by Homologous Recombination

youtu.be/Xe-83tBcxhs

NIH funding is why the U.S. has a biomedical industry.

The research at universities is crucial for new drug development.

Doing this research as students is how we train researchers who go on to work in the private sector.

Also funding medical schools is pretty important for training new doctors.

Transcription of a centromere-enriched retroelement and local retention of its RNA are significant features of the CENP-A chromatin landscape - Genome Biology Background Centromeres depend on chromatin containing the conserved histone H3 variant CENP-A for function and inheritance, while the role of centromeric DNA repeats remains unclear. Retroelements are...

Our paper on a centromere-enriched retroelement is out! link.springer.com/article/10.1... Congratulations to all the authors! Comments and reposts welcome and appreciated 🧬🔬

Investigation of Astyanax mexicanus (Characiformes, Characidae) chromosome 1 structure reveals unmapped sequences and suggests conserved evolution Natural selection in the cave habitat has resulted in unique phenotypic traits (including pigmentation loss and ocular degeneration) in the Mexican tetra Astyanax mexicanus, considered a model species...

New paper out! Investigation on blind cavefish 🐟 chromosome evolution 🧬. Huge effort from pandemic time coming out.
I almost got locked down away from home meeting with the co-authors 🤣
journals.plos.org/plosone/arti...

The genetic mechanism of B chromosome drive in rye illuminated by chromosome-scale assembly - Nature Communications Drive mechanisms in B chromosome systems remain unclear. Here, the authors assemble the rye B chromosome pseudomolecule, identify candidate trans-acting, drive-controlling factors of the B chromosomal...

Amazing paper on B chromosomes!
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Meiosis: Exploring diversity to discover the fundamentals Meiosis is an essential cell division for sexual reproduction and fertility across eukaryotes. It involves a series of tightly regulated processes, including entry into meiosis, pairing of homologs, …

Official website for EMBO meiosis 2025 is live now! Looking forward to seeing you in Switzerland next June! #meiosis4eva

meetings.embo.org/event/25-mei...

Last Friday I had a great opportunity to show my work on mouse HSR chromosome biased transmission based on embryonic lethality at Mid-Atlantic Meiosis Mini symposium at NIH!

For all colleagues who still do not know much about B chromosomes, I would like to share this paper on the meiotic self-pairing of tetra fish Bs.
pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC...

As well as these ones:
bmcbiol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10....

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36077895/

Amazing meeting at NIH! Thanks @takashiakeralab.bsky.social.

Good to see you here! I was wondering if you would join us!

Repeat-based holocentromeres of the woodrush Luzula sylvatica reveal insights into the evolutionary transition to holocentricity Nature Communications - Unlike most eukaryotes, Luzula sylvatica assembles holocentromeres along the entire chromosome length. Here, the authors combine genome assembly, epigenetic and cytogenetic...

I am very happy to share our recent publication 𝑹𝒆𝒑𝒆𝒂𝒕-𝒃𝒂𝒔𝒆𝒅 𝒉𝒐𝒍𝒐𝒄𝒆𝒏𝒕𝒓𝒐𝒎𝒆𝒓𝒆𝒔 𝒐𝒇 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒘𝒐𝒐𝒅𝒓𝒖𝒔𝒉 𝑳𝒖𝒛𝒖𝒍𝒂 𝒔𝒚𝒍𝒗𝒂𝒕𝒊𝒄𝒂 𝒓𝒆𝒗𝒆𝒂𝒍 𝒊𝒏𝒔𝒊𝒈𝒉𝒕𝒔 𝒊𝒏𝒕𝒐 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒆𝒗𝒐𝒍𝒖𝒕𝒊𝒐𝒏𝒂𝒓𝒚 𝒕𝒓𝒂𝒏𝒔𝒊𝒕𝒊𝒐𝒏 𝒕𝒐 𝒉𝒐𝒍𝒐𝒄𝒆𝒏𝒕𝒓𝒊𝒄𝒊𝒕𝒚 in Nature Communications @natureportfolio.bsky.social
rdcu.be/dZk7W