Manuel Irimia

🚨 Job Alert - Please share 🙏 Interested in 3D gene regulation in development & evolution? 🤓🧬 💥 Our lab @cabd-upo-csic.bsky.social is expanding! ✅ 4 years fully funded PhD position 🧪 Experimental backgrounds welcome 👇 Details below #PhDPosition #PhDOpportunity #AcademicJobs

How can a #GiantVirus 👾 lurk inside the host genome undetected? We find that epigenetic conflict lies at the centre of the ⚖️ between infection and co-existence with the host. Great collaboration with the Aylward lab out in @biorxivpreprint.bsky.social: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

🧬🧬🧬 Very happy to share our new preprint led by Fede Mantica (@fedemantica.bsky.social) on how tissue-specific alternative splicing (TS-AS) and gene expression (TS-GE) evolve across bilaterians! Thread below 🧵 1/11 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

🚨🚨🚨 As part of the MSCA-DN DECODES, we're looking for a PhD student to study splicing programs in beta cells and diabetes at @melisupf.bsky.social @crg.eu Join 14 other PhD students across Europe to decipher the splicing code in human disease. More info below 👇 www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

Transcription stops. RNA splicing takes over 🧬 ✨ Our new preprint uncovers the post-transcriptional RNA splicing landscape powering mammalian oocyte development. Read it here 👇 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

What happens when evolution adds an extra pair of eyes? Male mayflies evolve an extra pair of dorsal compound eyes, the Turbanate eyes, thought to help males detect females during mating swarms. we have investigate how this remarkable evolutionary novelty develops. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Sailing in @biorxivpreprint.bsky.social ready for summer, our study on the iconic Portuguese man o' war 🪼 is out: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6.... We use (epi)genomics to understand a critter that fascinates me since childhood. Massive team effort with @obog.bsky.social, Cummins and Neely groups. 🧵

Wow! A fourth class of transmissible cancers. CONTAGIOUS FISH MELANOMA, discovered in Lake Memphremagog (Vermont / Quebec) 🎣 🧬 😷 www.nature.com/articles/s41... @uvmvermont.bsky.social

What happens if you delete large intronic regions? In human tissue culture cells, we found many deletions that decrease growth and some that increase it. In most cases, deletion affected expression or splicing of the gene. www.cell.com/cell-reports... 1/3

🚨 Early Bird registration and abstract submission deadline for #SEBD2026 extended!! 📅 Early registration and abstract submission deadline: 10th July 📅 Scholarship application deadline: 29th June www.sebd2026.com #SEBD #DevBio @sebioldev.bsky.social 👇👇👇

Paying peer reviewers Interview with @danielgorelick.bsky.social about @biologyopen.bsky.social Fast & Fair trial in which peer reviewers were paid £220/review Spoiler: it works - fast, high quality reviews www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Very excited to finally share my PhD! 🎉 Our paper, “Neuronal microexons modulate arousal via the cAMP-PKA-CREB pathway in zebrafish,” is now published in Science Advances. Many thanks to all of my co-authors, and especially to @mirimiam.bsky.social! 📄 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

🦟 Why don’t viruses kill the mosquitoes that transmit them? 🔬 A study reveals how these insects coexist with viruses such as dengue and Zika, and what this can teach us about their spread and control. Learn more:  https://tuit.cat/uu8EJ @melisupf.bsky.social

Thank you to organisers to James Hombría and Antónia Monteiro @monteirolab.bsky.social and everyone who joined us at this week's Workshop on 'Novelty, Co-option and Divergence During Gene Network Evolution' biologists.com/workshops #BiologistsWorkshops

Our paper "Gene ancestries reveal diverse microbial associations during eukaryogenesis.” is finally out in Nature. Eukaryogenesis was likely a gradual process shaped by multiple microbial partners and virus-mediated gene transfer, rather than a single binary symbiosis. doi.org/10.1038/s415...

61 species, 13 phyla, one simple geometric rule that appears to set when every embryo starts speaking through its own genome. 🧬 Panagiotis Giannios highlights a recent #preprint from @mirimiam.bsky.social & collaborators. #EvolutionaryBiology #preLight: prelights.biologists.com/highlights/e...

Fin-catching prelight on @mirimiam.bsky.social et al.'s preprint on the animal zoo 🐟🧬

We had a great seminar by Duncan Odom @odomlab.bsky.social today about mutagenesis and cancer evolution!

Huge congrats to the CRG's Mafalda Dias for being one of eight finalists for the 2026 Premio Vanguardia de la Ciencia, one of Spain's most visible science prizes. Voting is open now and closes on Sunday 28 June at 23:59 (peninsular time).

1\ Excited to finally share some of my PhD work: OpenSplice! We measured how >590,000 mutations affect exon inclusion across 600 human exons, creating a resource to study splicing regulation, benchmark variant effect predictors, and support variant interpretation.

New preprint! In an fun collaboration with @imaeso.bsky.social and @mirimiam.bsky.social led by Manu F-M, we set to explore the potential adaptation of transposable elements 👾 to host adenine DNA methylation by recruiting prokaryotic DAM methyltransferases: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6.... 1/6

🧬 New research from the Burga lab! We took a closer look at a rogue selfish protein and caught evolution in the act of turning something old into something radically new 💡 (a.k.a. neofunctionalization) @imbavienna.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... Curious? Here’s a breakdown:

Excited to share our new study on CpG islands (CGIs) regulation by transcription factors (TFs)! CGIs drive most transcription initiation with unclear regulation. We find that chromatin-opening TFs are key players—following a surprisingly simple rule. 🧵 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... 1/9

Exhausted but extremely happy for the two past days of very exciting Science! The EvoDevOmics Spanish Network gathered together in BCN to discuss about evodevo & omics, lots of great talks, discussions and future collaborations. 🤩 #evodevo

@fany-real.bsky.social, @multicellgenome.bsky.social, @obog.bsky.social, @arnausebe.bsky.social, @bpernaute.bsky.social, @malmuedocas.bsky.social & Nuria Flames

Amazing couple of days enjoying & discussing science in the best possible company during the Barcelona meeting of the 'EvoDevOmics Network', funded by @ageinves.bsky.social. Really happy to see how the EvoDevo community in Spain is thriving & fostering a fantastic new generation of PhDs & Postdocs.

What should Europe do when demand for #ERC funding keeps rising? Restrict access or invest in excellence? Please read our open letter calling for reconsideration of the ERC 2027 resubmission restrictions & for constructive alternatives that preserve openness Consider to share & sign - see below 🧪

Really cool work ! Love the strong scaling of ZGA timing to genome size and egg volume. It's so simple and elegant. Highlights the strength of taking a comparative approach

Do you want to know when your favorite species activates its genome? Just input its genome size (🧬 in bp) and egg volumen (🥚 in um3) here! ZGA_onset = -2.37 * log10(gDNA/EggVol) + 11.74

This fits the general principle of ZGA being triggered by a 'universal' Genome: Cytoplasm ratio across animals! - and thus a highly conserved mechanism involving titration of a maternal cytoplasmic factor on chromatin.

So, by providing staged embryo mRNA for this beautiful wide comparative study, we now know that zygotic gene activation in Clytia occurs in the early blastula with 512 cells, at around 5hpf (Here termed ZGA cell cycle 9).

“Here, we generated a comprehensive transcriptomic atlas of early embryogenesis from 61 animal species, spanning 13 phyla. By applying a unified computational framework, we systematically inferred the timing of ZGA across species.” This is a big one from @mirimiam.bsky.social et al. 🔥🧪