Michelle Stitzer

Interested in transposable elements. NSF postdoc at Cornell. @PopBioUCD alum. she/her.

[Michelle Stitzer @mcstitzer]

Let us know what you think! We're excited about further characterizing the evolutionary forces that interact to give rise to the highly polymorphic, absolutely beautiful TE landscape of the maize genome🌽

[Michelle Stitzer @mcstitzer]

The maize genome is bursting with TEs, jumping genes that can move to new positions - but do TEs matter for maize fitness?

[bioRxiv @biorxivpreprint]

Transposable element abundance subtly contributes to lower fitness in maize https://t.co/pa2kNZXF0Q #bioRxiv

[Michelle Stitzer @mcstitzer]

Fun to bring along current (@MerKhaiBurch, Arcadio) and former (Asher, @baoxing_song, @GuillRamstein) labmates into the world of TEs, their help on quantitative genetics and genomics was a*maiz*ing, as well as @CedricFeschotte and @EdBuckler for all their support

[Michelle Stitzer @mcstitzer]

We've tested it out on lots of plant species (and even a goldfish!) and recover not only large scale structural variation, but also base pair resolution of conserved regulatory sequence, and gapped alignment across TE-rich regions

[Michelle Stitzer @mcstitzer]

Really excited about AnchorWave! @baoxing_song taught me so much about alignment, and put together an approach that works for the real life messy stuff about genomes - like lots of TEs and paleopolyploidy

[Baoxing Song @baoxing_song]

Our genome alignment tool - AnchorWave has published online at:
https://t.co/TjGBULWlhe
It has a big improvement for plant genome comparison.

[Michelle Stitzer @mcstitzer]

It works by finding conserved gene anchors between assemblies, then uses an implementation of the wavefront algorithm that allows for two gap penalties to perform a global alignment of each anchor and interanchor region

[PLOS Genetics @PLOSGenetics]

Transposable elements (TEs) are #DNA pieces that move around the #genome

Stitzer et al model the roles of TEs & reveal a diversity of survival strategies of TE families in the #maize genome

🔎: https://t.co/BSwxtTM0R8
@mcstitzer @sna8 @SpringerNathan @jrossibarra

[Michelle Stitzer @mcstitzer]

It’s out! A natural history of the MANY transposable elements found in the maize genome
https://t.co/iDFKppJe80

[Michelle Stitzer @mcstitzer]

So absolutely honored! Thanks to @PopBioUCD and the whole evolution and ecology community at UC Davis

[Graham Coop @Graham_Coop]

Congratulating to Michelle Stitzer (@mcstitzer) this year's winner of the @ucdavis Outstanding Dissertation in Ecology and Evolution Merton Love Award. She'll give her seminar "The Genomic Ecosystem of Transposable Elements in Maize." on May 28th.

[Michelle Stitzer @mcstitzer]

The maize genome is an ecosystem, full of transposable elements! With @sna8 @SpringerNathan and @jrossibarra https://t.co/27LHRyTyty

[Jeffrey Ross-Ibarra @jrossibarra]

@sna8 @mcstitzer @abrohamm1 @SpringerNathan @HirschCandice In only four maize genomes we find 100's of thousands of variable TEs, more than an order of magnitude more TEs that vary among lines than were found in 3,000 rice lines! That's about 1.5Gb of variable TE DNA in FOUR HAPLOID GENOMES. 2/6

[Michelle Stitzer @mcstitzer]

Happy birthday Darwin! 210 never looked so delicious. #cookiedarwin @PopBioUCD #butterfest

[Michelle Stitzer @mcstitzer]

Had such a great time at #UppTransposon2018 and so excited to now have the complete Mobile DNA trilogy on my shelf! Thanks again to organizers Patric Jern, @ClaudiaKutter, and @alexander_suh.

[New Phytologist @NewPhyt]

Maize domestication and gene interaction @mcstitzer @jrossibarra #Tansleyreview https://t.co/EnvtNrdN7P

[Michelle Stitzer @mcstitzer]

Nice @ucdavis news piece on my work on transposable elements in maize. https://t.co/3MkC6eRDyD