Pío Sierra

The paper presents nine T2T genomes of Lake Malawi cichlids, revealing a novel centromeric satellite structure with inverted elements and potential implications for speciation.

Across 325 Darwin Tree of Life genomes, satellite-array and transposon-cluster centromeres are phylogenetically scattered, fitting a model of repeated interconversion; satellites share higher-order repeat structure but not sequence.

This study identifies fgf8a as a key gene driving brain divergence in Lake Malawi cichlids through species-specific enhancer elements and functional experiments.

The paper analyzes piRNA expression variation across mouse strains and finds genetic differences contribute to strain-specific piRNA production, including from retrovirus insertions and protein-coding genes.

The paper investigates the dynamic co-evolution of transposable elements and the piRNA pathway in African cichlid fishes, revealing expanded piwil1 genes and divergent piRNA-producing loci.

The paper introduces a method to identify transposable element families using pangenome polymorphisms and presents a tool called pantera that effectively detects TE families with high sensitivity and accuracy.

MCHelper automates transposable element library curation across species, improving quality and reducing redundancy and false positives.