Polina Tikanova

PhD student @IMBA_Vienna
🌴 tropical nematodes & selfish elements

[Polina Tikanova @polinatkn]

Moving this account to 🦋
(polinatikanova)! Thanks to #SMBE2025 I’ve finally realised that most of the science is happening there

[Kristina Stapornwongkul @KStapornwongkul]

🚨Just one week left to apply! Join our team @IMBA_Vienna !

[Aaron Vogan @Hulk_Vogan]

We're hiring! If you're looking for a postdoc position and are interested in #fungal genomics and/or giant transposons please apply. We're hoping to find someone with experience transforming A. fumigatus.
https://t.co/XtGxP56CeU

[Niko McCarty. @NikoMcCarty]

TIL that E. coli K12 — the most widely used strain of bacterium for biological research — is named "K-12" because it was first isolated from a diphtheria patient staying in room K-12 of a Stanford University hospital in 1922.

Naming conventions in biology are weird!

[Polina Tikanova @polinatkn]

...and it's my PhD work. I'm very proud of it, and happy we've finally assembled it as a manuscript, please check it out🤓
First pic is an illustration from "How selfish is DNA?" by Cavalier-Smith, last - an adult hermaphrodite of Caenorhabditis tropicalis in its full glory✨
4/4

[Polina Tikanova @polinatkn]

Nematodes carry numerous toxin-antidote selfish elements in their genomes, but we understand very little about how these systems emerge🤔 A toxin is lethal without an antidote, and there's no reason to evolve an antidote without the presence of the toxin in the first place
1/4

[Polina Tikanova @polinatkn]

Check our preprint and Alejandro's thread ⬆️
Big thanks to all Burga lab members (best team ever����), @arburga for guidance and endless support, all co-authors and my worms for being collaborative!🪱
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[Igor Adameyko @adameykolab]

It is an alien world.. Brachiolaria talks to tornaria barrel-shaped larvae of hemichordates. Zooplankton of the North Sea. Tornaria size is about 1 mm.

[Aaron Vogan @Hulk_Vogan]

Interested in transposable elements and fungi? Come join us at Uppsala University. I'm currently hiring a PhD student to work on developing a model system to observe horizontal transfer of giant transposable elements (Starships) under lab conditions. https://t.co/Y044SKDjyg

[Alejandro Burga @arburga]

[Please RT] 🚨Deadline Alert: The 10th edition of the “Evolutionary Biology of Caenorhabditis and other Nematodes” meeting 🪱#EvoWorm24 will take place in Vienna, Austria (June 17-20). Travel and childcare grants are available. More info about the meeting
https://t.co/XmTvFLTqnW

[IMBA imbavienna.bsky.social @IMBA_Vienna]

New manuscript alert! Writing in @Nature, the Burga Lab (@arburga) describe a genomic silencing mechanism which represses a selfish genetic element in the eggs of the nematode C.tropicalis only when it is paternally inherited. Their findings reveal the potential evolutionary origin of genomic imprinting.
https://t.co/6JLDNaIyNH

[Polina Tikanova @polinatkn]

Finally our exciting (and a little crazy) story is out!

[Alejandro Burga @arburga]

🪱"All genes are created equal, but some are more equal than others" Happy to share our recent work dissecting a parent-of-origin effect in worms, which could have important implications for our understanding of the evolution of imprinting @IMBA_Vienna
https://t.co/CIbrG1MLbf

[Polina Tikanova @polinatkn]

Me reading replies 🤯

[Polina Tikanova @polinatkn]

@safinalexey Можно и так сказать! У меня сейчас новые друзья, менее ��отографичные :)

[Alejandro Burga @arburga]

The 10th edition of the EvoWorm Meeting will take place for the first time @IMBA_Vienna @viennabiocenter in June 17-20, 2024. If you love or want to learn more about nematodes & evolution, this is the meeting for you! :) We wait for you in lovely Vienna!

[IMBA imbavienna.bsky.social @IMBA_Vienna]

‼️ Breakthrough in evolutionary genetics ‼️

#Virus-like #transposons wage war on the species barrier 🧬🦠🪱🐠🪼 An all-IMBA paper #JustPublished in @ScienceMagazine

Read more ➡️ https://t.co/urXInQ713u

IMBA's Burga Lab @arburga with co-first authors @SonyaWiden & @CampoBes nail down a vector of #HorizontalGeneTransfer (#HGT) in eukaryotes:

The "culprits" are called #Mavericks - Ancient virus-like transposable elements

@viennabiocenter @TrainingVbc @oeaw

Link to the paper in Science ➡️ https://t.co/NX6IxAOC89

More on the Burga Lab's research ➡️ https://t.co/6YKmA5cXK0

Congratulations to all authors: Sonya Widen, Israel Campo Bes, Alevtina Koreshova, Pinelopi Pliota, Daniel Krogull & Alejandro Burga on this groundbreaking work 🎉🎊

[Polina Tikanova @polinatkn]

Looking forward for the poster session today #worm23! Happy to chat about toxin-antidote elements in C. tropicalis🪱🌴

[Alejandro Burga @arburga]

Then we have two fantastic posters by Phd students Polina Tikanova @polinatkn P511B & Alevtina Koreshova @AKoreshova P512B (the first two brave students who join my lab!) Both posters on Monday session from 7:30-10:30pm

[Polina Tikanova @polinatkn]

Awesome team, fun and challenging projects and great research environment on campus, can only recommend 🤓

[IMBA imbavienna.bsky.social @IMBA_Vienna]

📣 We are #hiring! The Fly and Worm facility at IMBA seeks a technical assistant with experience in basic molecular biology techniques. Apply now. 🎯 https://t.co/K4sMfFe9MV