So happy to see my first first-author paper published! 🎈 A short thread on how Ectocarpus and its TE secrets have kept me busy lately: rdcu.be/eITQH

1/5 🌊 The Ectocarpus genome harbors a high diversity of evolutionarily young TEs. DNA transposons dominate, but Gypsy elements carrying a Tudor domain caught our eye!

2/5 🧜 TEs form discrete, repeat-rich islands that don’t correspond to centromeres. We also found an interesting enrichment in the pseudo-autosomal region of the sex chromosome, likely fueled by local hopping of DNA transposons from the sex-determining region.

3/5 🧬 Over 80% of genes contain at least one intronic TE insertion. These intronic elements are shorter and more degraded than intergenic TEs, and overall they show minimal impact on gene expression.

4/5 ✨ And my favourite part: intact TEs are preferentially associated with small RNAs and with the histone modification H3K79me2. Their interplay offers a curious insight into alternative regulatory strategies.

5/5 🔮 Brown algae are a unique lineage in the tree of life, and working on them gave me a new perspective on the diversity of TE landscapes and regulation mechanisms across eukaryotes!