Today our new postdoc Dr. Zoé Postel starts. Zoé comes directly from France where she did a PhD at University of Lille on population genomic analyses of speciation and cytonuclear incompatibilities in Silene. Welcome Zoé!

On January 10-12 2023, the conference Evolution in Sweden will be held in Uppsala. This year it is co-organized by the DDLS programme in Evolution and Biodiversity with Tanja as one of the co-organizers representing DDLS. There will be two presentations from the Slotte lab, both talks on Wednesday morning on Linum supergene evolution and loss. Tanja at 9:15 and Panagiotis at 10:00 am, both in Fries-salen. Hope to see many evolutionary biologists there!

On December 16, 2022, Juanita Gutiérrez-Valencia successfully defended her PhD thesis entitled “Genomic studies of mating system variation in flowering plants”. Congratulations! Many thanks to external examiner Dr. Mario Vallejo-Marin, Uppsala University, and the members of the examining committee!

Tanja Slotte and former Slotte lab Carl Tryggers postdoctoral fellow Emma Berdan were among the Evolutionary Biologists interviewed by science writer Carrie Arnold for the popular science article “How supergenes fuel evolution despite harmful mutations” in Quanta Magazine.

This week’s SciLifeLab newsletter included a write-up on our Linum distyly supergene paper in Current Biology. Read it here.

Our paper presenting the first full sequencing and characterization of the Linum distyly supergene is now published at Current Biology. Read it here!

Our paper on the genetic architecture and evolution of the distyly supergene in Linum has been accepted for publication in Current Biology. Congratulations to first author Juanita and all coauthors!

Gutiérrez-Valencia J, Fracassetti M, Berdan EL, Bunikis I, Soler L, Dainat J, Kutschera VE, Losvik A, Désamoré A, Hughes PW, Foroozani A, Laenen B, Pesquet E, Abdelaziz M, Vinnere Pettersson O, Nystedt B, Brennan A, Arroyo J, Slotte T. 2022. Genomic analyses of the Linum distyly supergene reveal convergent evolution at the molecular level. Current Biology, In press.

A paper resulting from a collaboration with Siri Birkeland and colleagues at the Natural History Museum in Oslo has just been accepted for publication in Molecular Ecology! Congratulations to Siri and all coauthors!

Birkeland S, Slotte T, Brysting AK, Gustafsson ALS, Hvidsten TR, Brochmann C, Nowak MD. 2022. What can the cold-induced transcriptomes of Arctic Brassicaceae tell us about the evolution of cold tolerance? Molecular Ecology, In press. bioRxiv doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.12.04.471218

Genome sequences of multiple wild potato species and landraces hold promise for developing improved varieties of an important food crop. Juanita and Tanja wrote a short Nature News & Views piece about Tang and colleagues’ new paper on genome evolution and diversity of wild potatoes, highlighting how genomic resources can aid development of new varieties of this important food crop. Both the paper and our News & Views piece are out today!

Our new preprint entitled “Genomic analyses of the Linum distyly supergene reveal convergent evolution at the molecular level” is now up on bioRxiv.

In this study, we present a chromosome-scale genome assembly of the distylous species Linum tenue, and use population genomic data to identify the distyly supergene. We show that hemizygosity and thrum-specific expression of S-linked genes, including a pistil-expressed candidate gene for style length, are major features of the Linum distyly S-locus supergene. We find a striking resemblance between the independently evolved Linum and Primula distyly supergenes in terms of genetic architecture, molecular evolution, and the assembly of the gene set at the supergene.

Gutiérrez-Valencia J, Fracassetti M, Berdan EL, Bunikis I, Soler L, Dainat J, Kutschera VE, Losvik A, Désamoré A, Hughes PW, Foroozani A, Laenen B, Pesquet E, Abdelaziz M, Vinnere Pettersson O, Nystedt B, Brennan A, Arroyo J, Slotte T. 2022. Genomic analyses of the Linum distyly supergene reveal convergent evolution at the molecular level. bioRxiv doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2022.05.27.493681