Peiwei Chen

How do transposons jump when they’re released from host control? I babysat two chromosomes for 2 years, making sure they are ok without most piRNAs. Here’s what we found & excited to share my 1st postdoc paper: “piRNA loss unleashes episodic transposition bursts” www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

happy to share that our preprint graduated from bioRxiv & out now at PNAS @pnas.org so many questions to follow up on - mechanistic, evolutionary, and everything in between... stay tuned for more transposon jumping 😆 "piRNA loss unleashes episodic transposition bursts" www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

*Save the date* The 22nd seminar in the @eseb.bsky.social l STN series on internal conflicts will feature Heikki Helanterä (Oulu) and Andrea Betancourt (Liverpool). November 5 | 8am EST / 2pm CET. internalconflictsstn.wordpress.com/seminars/

honored to receive the community engagement award this year 😊 we made an onboarding handbook for *ALL* postdocs at Cornell, and we organize monthly professional development workshops for postdocs across departments - truly a team effort!! news.cornell.edu/stories/2026...

@joethorntonlab.bsky.social and I are thrilled to co-organize the 2027 Molecular Mechanisms in Evolution GRC, June 13–18, in beautiful Portland, Maine! See our ⭐stellar⭐ lineup of speakers ⬇️ spanning evolutionary biochemistry, cell biology, development, behavior... www.grc.org/molecular-me... 1/n

Delighted to host Mariana Wolfner, doyenne of reproductive biology, for seminar @mskcancercenter.bsky.social. wanted to share her Perspective on Dave Hogness in @genetics-gsa.bsky.social. Supplement includes her unpublished thesis on ecdysone inducible genes! 🪰🧬 academic.oup.com/genetics/art...

My PhD defense is October 23! 🥹💜 So many people in this community have supported and encouraged me throughout my PhD, and I'd love to share this milestone with you all. I'll be defending virtually at 2 PM CT, and everyone is welcome! RSVP for the Teams link: forms.gle

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Our manuscript is now available in Evolution Letters @evolletters.bsky.social ! We examine the three neo-Ys in mountain pine beetle which are suspected to be contributing to cryptic species diversity. doi.org/10.1093/evle...

Wow. Did you know you can "delete" a centromere in vivo?! 🤯Crazy cool. Congratulations @centromellone.bsky.social and team ‼️ ‼️

Centromeric islands constrain CENP-A domain size and position https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.10.08.757135v1

Hello World ! Its pre-print time ! Awesome collaboration led by Michel Cohen-Tannoudji (not on Bsky) and the one and only @deborahbourchis.bsky.social. #BFF We solved the molecular mechanism underlying a mysterious hybrid incompatibility in mice: the DDK syndrome. 🧵🍿 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Now that we have moved coasts, I am thrilled to share that the ChromEvo (Raman) lab is officially open at UMass Boston 🎉 We ask how CHROMatin EVOlution leads to functional innovation and we are hiring at multiple levels. Read on and share with folks who maybe interested chromevoramanlab.github.io

Thrilled to share that our paper is finally out in Science Advances! 🔗 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... TL;DR: A Drosophila protamine acts as shields resolving conflict between X and Y chromosomes. Disruption unleashes meiotic drive that kills X-bearing sperm and skews progeny sex ratios. 🪰🧬ᯡ

I’m really happy to share that my invited review on social insect genome evolution, co-authored with @corriemoreau.bsky.social, is out now in @genomebiolevol.bsky.social 🐝🐜 This is the paper I wish I’d had when studying for quals in grad school, and was a ton of fun to write.

Excited to share my lab’s latest preprint led by postdoc @yukihaba.bsky.social and grad student Ryan Schwark. We surprisingly find that spontaneous behavior in isolation predicts a naked mole-rat’s identity, its colony membership, and even rank within its colony. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

We generated chromosome scale assemblies of house flies with different Y chromosomes. You won't believe what happened next!

Looking for a postdoc? I know a really good candidate who's seeking a position. Great abstract thinker, strong evo/popgen background and CPU & statistical skills, some math & wet lab exp. Boundless curiosity, scholarly, helps everyone. High impact paper from PhD so far. Message me for details!

I'm excited to share our new preprint: Generation of a transgenic cephalopod tinyurl.com/pc86jxz8 Cephalopods (cuttlefish, octopus & squid) are crazy critters that dynamically camouflage to their surroundings by changing the color, pattern, & texture of their skin, which they control w their brain.

A genome quality control program for the haploid stage of spermatogenesis https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.07.27.740997v1

🩸🩸🩸TODAY WE SHARE TWO MAJOR DISCOVERIES🩸🩸🩸 1. We peered into genomes and brains of the rare mosquitoes that QUIT feeding on blood and found what biting is built from 2. Humans got rid of isoleucine in their blood, malaria suffers from it, and mosquito proteomes budget for it THREADS>

Is it a gene or a transposon? 🤔

Thrilled to see this published today! Truly special because we made the initial discovery >15 yrs ago! We found two copies of a human gene called BC200 embedded in a human poxvirus. BC200 blurs the line between gene & transposon—both functional & mutagenic! www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... 🧵1/n

I am proud to share my No-AI-assisted perspective review "Plant Peptide Hormones: Three Decades of Discovery and Emerging Paradigms" for the Centennial issue of @plantphys.bsky.social 🌱🍅. It's OA, so everyone can access! 1/ academic.oup.com/plphys/advan...

Super excited to share my postdoctoral work at @imbavienna.bsky.social @viennabiocenter.bsky.social - We discovered that some retrotransposons, or "jumping genes" 🧬, are able to spread from cell to cell via a new viral infectivity route. A short thread: 🧵👇 (1/7)

Incredibly excited to share my new preprint! 🪰🧬 Ever wondered how germ cells can specify their fate without having a dedicated transcriptional program? We found that germ cells keep the uncommitted chromatin state of the early embryo www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

So proud of my lab mate @sagrill.bsky.social (whose on the job market 👀) for this magnum opus from @remlehmann.bsky.social lab @whiteheadinstitute.bsky.social ScRNA-seq of 🪰 germ cells reveals new biology, answers age old questions, and proposes new paradigms! 1/8 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

VIPR is now out in Science! What started with a mysterious RNA led us to an unexpected way of recognizing DNA, as well as some clues to CRISPR’s origins. So happy to share these two papers with an incredible team. Links below; original discovery thread here ↓

Fly people: please consider nominating your PhD student who completed their dissertation in any area of Drosophila research between July 2025 and December 2026 for the @genetics-gsa.bsky.social Larry Sandler Award. Nominations due by November 12: genetics-gsa.org/awards/larry...

I am excited to share that I will be joining the Baker Institute for Animal Health and College of Veterinary Medicine at Cornell University as an Assistant Professor next spring! I am grateful to my mentors and colleagues who have supported me throughout this journey.

Applications are open for LMAP! 🧬 This 6-week program (starting October 15) helps bioscience grad students & postdocs build leadership and people-management skills for research environments. Led by team-building expert Molly Grisham. Space is limited—apply now! 🔗 buff.ly/ASs5kmw

Excited to share that I'll be starting my own lab at Texas A&M next month! I am recruiting graduate students and postdocs to study comparative and population genomics of development and reproduction in animals. Get in touch if you are interested in our work! www.danshawgenes.com

My lab @ Edinburgh university is recruiting a postdoc to work on the weird and wonderful germline-specific chromosomes of flies. elxw.fa.em3.oraclecloud.com/hcmUI/Candid... collaboration with @germline.bsky.social and yukiko yamashita funded by @novonordisk.bsky.social please repost!

super proud - my very first review is online www.annualreviews.org/content/jour... many thanks to @signor-molevol.bsky.social @rpianezza.bsky.social @almoroscarpa.bsky.social for the fun collaboration

www.nature.com/articles/s41... “By mining millions of AlphaFold2 models, we identify two human families of ‘superdark’ seven-transmembrane proteins—TM184 and PRRT—with structural homology to G-protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs).”

We are recruiting a PhD student 🥼🙋 Topic: how germ cells bend gene expression dogmas Fly genetics + proteomics + genomics. Fully funded. Aarhus University 🇩🇰 info on the project and how to apply👇 mbg.au.dk/en/peter-and... I'd really appreciate it if you'd help spread the word. Thanks

Bet you didn't have "John Pool starts youtube channel" on your 2026 bingo card! Emphasis on native landscaping / sustainability, & evolution/genetics for a general audience. If you watch, please let it play through (else youtube thinks it's bad). Feel free to share! www.youtube.com/channel/UCj8...

How long does DNA damage last? @aaronquinlan.bsky.social and I found evidence that lesions are transmitted from parent (P0) to offspring (F1) in C. elegans. If they segregate unrepaired for multiple cell divisions, lesions generate multi-allelism in the F1 germline. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Finally - the 🧵! So, the piRNA pathway defends the animal germline from transposons. But most of what we know comes from narrow developmental windows like late oogenesis, where it's easiest to study. We asked if the pathway is the same across development. It is not! /+

We watched piRNAs and transposons across development, saw them dance tightly and wrote a paper about it. It's so cool to see it online and we will make a thread about it all very soon. Stay tuned :-)

A developmental switch in the piRNA pathway ensures stage-specific transposon silencing https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.08.28.747770v1

What does it take to evolve a new trait? We have a new paper out that uses the Drosophila sex comb—a male-specific grasping structure found in a subset of drosophilids—as a model to answer this question 1/11

For folks interested I just posted my keynote on ARGs from #PEQG26 on youtube (with permission). Thanks again to @genetics-gsa.bsky.social and organizers for what was a wonderful conference (except for the 24hrs prior to my talk when I was too nervous to sleep or think straight) youtu.be/ntJOdZd0mwc

Delighted and very proud to see our study (and Anna-Maria's first first-author paper) recently out in PNAS: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... @cambiochem.bsky.social @cruk-ci.bsky.social 1/5

New paper with Nick Davies and Kevin Foster in @natcomms.nature.com. We show that often neither selection against transposons’ deleterious effects nor exploitation by parasitic elements is sufficient to keep them in control. Only active host suppression does. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Super fun #MoreauLab dinner last night!

Job alert! We are hiring a Lab Assistant II to support the construction and analysis of cell villages. This position is a great opportunity to contribute to several ongoing projects while learning cutting-edge cell culture approaches. DM me with questions. Apply here: tinyurl.com/wellslabtech

BLink-seq is out! Linked-read sequencing that brings phased whole-genome data to non-model species at population scale. We show it phases haplotypes and detects SVs, revealing previously undocumented structural complexity in an adaptive Atlantic silverside inversion. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

I am thrilled to share that I will join the American Museum of Natural History @amnh.org as the Dean of Collections, Curator, and Professor in September!