After starting the laboratory during the pandemic in 2020, finally the projects that we've been working on start to see the light. Projects take time to mature, but here we have two exciting works on DNA methylation (what else!) that break new grounds.
In this study, Luke follows the rabbit hole of Amoebidium's genome, the major chunk of his PhD. What started as an evolutionary investigation into the origins of animal 5mC, ended up being a crazy story about giant viruses and other genomic oddities, lateral gene transfer in eukaryotes and epigenomic arm races. Have a look in BioRxiv here: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.01.08.574619v1.
A summarised "tweetorial" can be read here: https://x.com/deMendoza_Alex/status/1744633351036649884?s=20
Then, we are lucky to share department with the great Martin-Duran lab, so we joined forces to study annelid methylomes, a so far neglected phylum in 5mC research. Led by Kero Guynes, we found that methylation is all but stable across development in annelids, and that methylation erosion extends to ageing in these critters. Find the link to the preprint here: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.12.21.572802v1.full.
Chema wrote a nice tweetorial here: https://x.com/Chema_MD/status/1739740306344448329?s=20
Long life to non-model organisms!
