This week we've been lucky to have two publications coming out.
Together with Iñaki Ruiz-Trillo we have written a brief review about of animal multicellularity and the origins of embryonic development, focusing on processes observed in unicellular holozoans. See it here (Open Access): https://dev.biologists.org/content/147/23/dev192575
With Ozren Bogdanovic and his team, we have discovered how an actinopterygian-specific Dnmt3b duplicate (Dnmt3ba) has a specific role in maintaining a non-canonical form of cytosine DNA methylation in zebrafish. This is another interesting example on how DNA methyltransferases specialise in transposable element silencing. Open access link here: https://academic.oup.com/nar/advance-article/doi/10.1093/nar/gkaa1135/6017363.
Evolution of Dnmt3b gene family in actinopterygians.
The Garvan Institute of Medical Research has made a brief press release where Ozren explains some of the findings: https://www.garvan.org.au/news-events/news/new-dna-modification-2018signature2019-discovered-in-zebrafish