News
June 2, 2025
Our paper summarizing the main obstacles and solutions for the establishment of ATAC-seq in emerging model organisms is published in the Journal of Experimental Zoology Part B: Molecular and Developmental Evolution. In this article, we provide an overview of the method, summarize its application in arthropods and offer a step-by-step protocol for emerging model systems. Dugcar contributed great data to test different tissue preservation methods. The work represents a fruitful collaboration within the DFG-funded Priority Programme (SPP 2349) „Genomic Basis of Evolutionary Innovations (GEvol)“.
May 7, 2025
Dimitri joins us for a Bachelor thesis. He will work on the role of apoptosis in defining eye size in Drosophila melanogaster.
April 28, 2025
Raghev joins us for a Master rotation. He will work on long-read RNAseq data for spiders.
April 2, 2025
Nico participates in a certified 2-semester course about higher education at universities.
March 5, 2025
Here is the press release of our recent paper on the effect of heterchrony on eye size variation in Drosophila.
February 20, 2025
Sirsha joins us from India to work on her Master thesis. She will study Notch and Wnt signaling during exaggerated head horn formation in Gnatocerus beetles.
February 11-12, 2025
Sid and Nico joined the DrosEU Workshop in Lisbon to present and discuss our genome re-sequencing data for nine European Drosophila melanogaster populations.
February 4, 2025
More than 10 years in the making! Finally, our collaborative work on eye size variation between Drosophila mauritiana and D. simulans is finally out in BMC Biology. Montse and Elisa (former PhD students) and Georg (former Master student) contributed significantly. Fruitful collaboration between our team and Isabel Almudí, Alistair McGregor, Maria D. S. Nunes and Saad Arif.
January 13-24, 2025
Nico teaches evolutionary developmental biology for Master students.
October 27-November 19, 2024
Nico visits the lab of Yonggang Hu at Southwest University, Chongqing, China.
September 26, 2024
Publication alert: Nico contributed to a new publication on spider eye development from the Janssen Lab. "Single-cell sequencing suggests a conserved function of Hedgehog-signalling in spider eye development".
September 26, 2024
Nico presents our work at the Institut Curie in Paris.
September 10-13, 2024
Nico presents our work at the annual meeting of the German Zoological Society at the University Hohenheim.
July 29, 2024
Pauline joins the lab for a Master Rotation to study horn development in Gnatocerus cornutus.
June 10, 2024
Our opinion piece "From whole bodies to single cells: A guide to transcriptomic approaches for ecology and evolutionary biology" appeared online at Molecular Ecology. Excellent collaborative effort of the DrosEU consortium.
April 29, 2024
Ibone joins the lab for an ERASMUS internship (Universidad del Pais Vasco, Bilbao, Spain) to evaluate some spider genome annotations for Hox genes.
April 8-10, 2024
Nico and Sid join the 14th DrosEU Workshop in Barcelona to speak about our projects. Exciting 10th anniversary of this great collaborative consortium (composite below by Sid).
March 14, 2024
Nico joins the Postdoc Support and Information Fair as expert to chat about the Dos and Don'ts of an academic career.
February 26, 2024
Congratulations, Amel! Amel successfully defended her PhD thesis today. Well done! Proud supervisor out here.
January 05, 2024
Welcome Neal! Neal joins us from University Pavia (Italy) and he will work on intraspecific eye size variation in Drosophila melanogaster.
December 1, 2023
Nico successfully applied for the Heisenberg programme of the German Research Foundation (DFG).
October 4-6, 2023
Dugcar and Nico present our spider work during the annual meeting of the Priority Programme (SPP 2349) "Genomic Basis of Evolutionary Innovations (GEvol)" in Bonn.
September 26, 2023
Exciting to see the last bit of my PhD thesis (YES, my PhD thesis) published in eLife. Thanks to Gregor for putting this together. Please check the article here.
September 18-22, 2023
Nico teaches RNAseq analysis and transcriptome assembly at the Göttingen SPIRIT Summer School “Molecular Genetics in Zoology” and he presents the lab's work during the associated Göttingen Symposium “Frontiers in Molecular Zoology”.
September 12, 2023
Welcome Siddharth (Sid)! For his PhD thesis, Sid will study population genomics, RNAseq and ATACseq data for European Drosophila melanogaster to link phenotypic and genotypic variation.
September 4-8, 2023
Laura, Dugcar and Nico are presenting our work at the annual meeting of the German Zoological Society meeting in Kassel.
April 11, 2023
Welcome Laura and Neele! Neele will work on her Bachelor thesis and Laura joins for a Master rotation. Both will work on head development in the Gnatocerus beetle.
March 20-21, 2023
It was a pleasure to host the Workshop “Development, Function and Evolution of Invertebrate Eyes” here in Göttingen. We had an exciting meeting with excellent talks covering a wide range of topics. Thanks a lot to all participants and the co-organizers (Alistair McGregor, Maike Kittelmann, Lauren Sumner-Rooney, Alex Buffry).
March 13-16, 2023
Nico presented our work at the Münster Evolution Meeting (MEM).
November 12, 2022
First part of Gordon's PhD thesis is published in BMC Frontiers in Zoology. We thoroughly compare different methods for cell and nuclei dissociation, and we evaluate the efficiency after 10X Genomics single cell RNAseq and single nuclei RNAseq. Many thanks to Susanne Reinhardt and Andreas Dahl from the Dresden-concept Genome Center for the fruitful collaboration.
November 4, 2022
Gordon defended his PhD thesis today... He did an exceptionally good job in presenting his work and answering the questions of the examination board members! Very proud PI on the pic below!
September 19, 2022
Welcome, Duğçar to our team! Duğçar will work on spider gene duplications and their diversification in expression and regulation.
September 17, 2022
Nice partial lab revival at the Great Barrier Run 2022. Elisa and Micael joined Nico, Jochen and Ufuk for a nice 6 km fun obstacle run.
September 12-16, 2022
Nico presents our work at the 6th Meeting of the ANN "Evolution of the Arthropod Brain - From Development to Structure" and the 114th Annual Meeting of the German Zoological Society in Bonn.
September 7-9, 2022
Kick-off meeting of the Priority Programme (SPP 2349) "Genomic Basis of Evolutionary Innovations (GEvol)" in Münster. Our Spider-Genomics team (Natascha, Matthias, Niko and me) presented the plans for the genome duplication project. Great and inspiring meeting!
June 13, 2022
After submitting a grant proposal with Claudia Fricke and Sonja Grath aiming at studying local adaptation using fly from the European Drosophila Population Genomics Consortium (DrosEU), it is a pleasure to meet the DrosEU team in Belgrade for the 2022 workshop.
May 11, 2022
Our preprint reporting Gordon's attempts to obtain reproducible single-nuclei RNAseq data from low input material is out. Well done, Gordon! Thanks for valuable input from Susanne Reinhardt and Andreas Dahl from Dresden. Please find the preprint here.
February 24, 2022
Congratulations to Ting for her successful thesis defense! Very well done!
February 24, 2022
The Editorial for the Special Issue "Evolution of Postembryonic Development" is published in Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution. Thanks to Patrícia Beldade and Fernando Casares for editing this nice collection of articles. And many thanks to all authors who contributed their work and to all reviewers!
December 10, 2021
Lab outing. We successfully managed to escape from the photographer at Breakout Göttingen. The delicious Flammkuchen afterwards was certainly deserved.
November 17, 2021
Our paper reporting wing shape variation in three Diptera is published in Front. Ecol. Evol. This work was a great collaboration with Ernst Wimmer and Natalia Siomava. Thanks to Micael from our team for re-analyzing all data generated by Natalia.
November 15, 2021
Welcome, Tutku, to our team! She joins as internship student to work with Gordon on validating interesting genes involved in eye-antennal disc development and evolution.
May 14, 2021
A warm welcome to Linh! He joins our team as Postdoc to work on the integration of functional genomics data to molecularly characterize eye size variation between D. americana and D. novamexicana.
April 22, 2021
We met with pizza and beer in the freezing cold today to have a small farewell celebration. Lena successfully finished her Bachelor thesis and she will go on working on her Master. Armin successfully finished his Master thesis and he will move to Dresden for his PhD. All the best wishes for for you two!
March 17, 2021
A preprint of an exciting collaboration with Isabel Almudi, Alistair McGregor, Dani Nunes and Saad Arif (and many more) is available now. We reveal variation in orthodenticle regulation to cause eye size differences between D. mauritiana and D. simulans.
February 19, 2021
We updated our preprint reporting wing shape variation in three Diptera. Manuscript is submitted and currently in review.
January 2, 2021
What a great start into 2021! Our paper on eye size variation between D. melanogaster and D. mauritiana is accepted for publication in Molecular Biology and Evolution! Thanks a lot to all co-authors for your contribution.
July 30, 2020
Micaels Paper on eye size and head shape variation is online as of today at Scientific Reports. Thanks to all our collaborators!
July 30, 2020
Small Farewell dinner for Micael. We wish you all the best for your new job and thanks a lot for all your contributions! To make sure that you'll not forget your critters, one branch of the Drosophila phylogeny carries your name now: See here.
July 22, 2020
Nico presents our work on the genetic basis of eye size differences between D. americana and D. novamexicana at the Arthropod Genomics Meeting 2020.
March, 2020
Two new preprints from our group:
February 20th, 2020
Elisa, we wish you all the best for your new job as Data Scientist at EvoTec! To make sure that you will not forget your lab animals, we dedicated one branch of the Drosophila phylogeny to you: See here!
February 12th, 2020
Nice collaborative Perspective Article on Spider sex appears in the special issue "Crossroads in Spider Research - evolutionary, ecological and economic significance" in Development Genes and Evolution. Thanks to Mathilde Cordellier, Jutta Schneider and Gabriele Uhl for the great work!
January 20th, 2020
Zaheer joins the lab from Pakistan for a 6-month research stay. He will work on mandible growth in Gnatocerus cornutus beetles.
December 25th, 2019
Nice Christmas Lab Outing with Neon Golf and Dinner.
October 25th, 2019
After her successful thesis defense, Elisa can now receive her graduation hat and kiss the Gänseliesl.
September 12th, 2019
Nico receives the Walter-Arndt Prize of the German Zoological Society during the annual meeting in Jena.
February 12th, 2019
The preparations for the next SPIRIT Summer School on “Molecular Genetics in Zoology” and the accompanying Symposium on "Frontiers in Molecular Zoology" are slowly starting. Save the dates:
Summer Schools: September 16-19, 2019
Symposium: September 19-20, 2019
Thanks to Gregor Bucher for initiation and all the work done so far!
January 15th, 2019
Exciting meeting ahead: DZG Graduate Meeting "Evo-Devo in Germany: Status quo and future directions". Registration is open until February, 15th. For more information see here.
January 14th, 2019
Marc starts his Bachelor rotation working on eye-antennal imaginal disc development in Drosophila with Ting.
October 30th, 2018
Our collaborative paper with Jorge Vieira is accepted for publication in Genome Biology and Evolution.
June 18th, 2018
Warm welcome to Cristina Matas de las Heras from Universidad CEU San Pablo, Madrid, Spain. Cristina will work on the functional analysis of U-shaped during eye development for her summer internship.
June 18th, 2018
Warm welcome to Sanem Ayaz from izmir University, Turkey. Sanem will work on the functional analysis of Pannier during eye development for her summer internship.
June 7th, 2018
Drosophila collection trip to the cherry plantations in Witzenhausen. We started highly motivated to catch some flies for DrosEU. Unfortunately, no single fly... :-(
April 9th, 2018
Welcome, Lenny and Georg joined the team. Lenny will work with Ting on the establishment of an enhancer test system. Georg will characterize the visual properties of D. melanogaster and D. mauritiana in collaboration with Marion Silies.
October 1st, 2017
Welcome, Ting-Hsuan Lu joined the team. She will mainly work on the functional characterization of eye size differences between D. melanogaster and D. mauritiana.
August 29th, 2017
Matthias' (University of Cologne) paper on Ets4 expression and function in the spider Parasteatoda tepidariorum just appeared online in elife. Sweet fruits of a nice collaboration!
August 23rd, 2017
DrosEU action at ESEB Meeting. Exciting phenotyping plans on the way... stay tuned.
August 14th - 18th, 2017
Göttingen SPIRITS Summer School "Molecular Genetics for Zoologists" takes place in Göttingen with a great symposium on Monday and hand-on training in RNAi, CRISPR/Cas9, transgenesis, RNA-seq, de novo assembly and NGS data analysis.
July 31st, 2017
Finally, our collaborative spider and scorpion genome paper is out in BMC Biology.
Press release by the Oxford Brookes University.
Press release by the University of Göttingen (German and Englisch).
See a blog article by Alistair here.
BBC Radio Interview by Alistair here.
July 20th, 2017
Naomí, thank you very much for your contribution to our work and good luck for your studies in Chile.
June 30th, 2017
After almost 5 years, Montse leaves our team for the next step in her career. Thank you very much for the great time!
June 19th, 2017
Our collaboration paper with the Casares lab is accepted for publication in Biology Open.
June 12th, 2017
Anıl Bilen joins our team for an internship. He will work with Elisa on the characterization of pnr during Drosophila head and eye development.
March 31st, 2017
Registration for the Göttingen SPIRITS Summer School "Molecular Genetics for Zoologists" organized by Gregor Bucher is open now!
For more information and registration see here.
March 30th - April 1st, 2017
Nipam Patel visited our lab to present his recent work at the Blumenbach Lecture Series.
March 23rd, 2017
As part of the NWG Meeting in Göttingen, Max S. Farnworth and Nico host a symposium on "The evolutionary diversity of nervous system development - from worms to humans". See here for the full program.
March 22nd-25th, 2017
Nico presents our Hunchback work at the 12th Meeting of the Germany Neuroscience Society in Göttingen.
March 22nd, 2017
We have an open PhD position within the International Max Planck Research School for Genome Science. Experience with Drosophila genetics and CRISPR/Cas9 would be great. Please apply directly to the IMPRS-GS.
March 20th, 2017
Hiroki Oda from Osaka presented his exciting spider work at the GZMB Developmental Colloquium. Well-deserved beer and Schnitzel afterwards.
March 20th, 2017
Gordon joins the team to work with Micael on Drosophila americana and Drosophila novamexicana eye size differences.
March 15th-18th, 2017
Elisa, Micael and Nico present our work at the joint Meeting of the German and Japanese Societies of Developmental Biology in Kiel.
March 13th, 2017
Naomí starts her internship. She will work with Montse on a morphological characterization of eye size differences in Drosophila.
February 7th,2017
Melissa successfully submitted her Master thesis. Congratulations!
January 30th, 2017
David successfully submitted his Master thesis! Congratulations!
January 24th/25th, 2017
SpiderWeb Meeting in Göttingen.
December 8th, 2016
Posnien Lab Christmas party. Room Escape... Mission completed!
November 27th - December 1st, 2016
Yasukazu Okada from Tokyo University visits our lab to establish a collaboration on Gnatocerus cornutus research.
October 31st, 2016
Nico presents our work in Munich at the Dpt. of Evolutionary Biology.
October 26th, 2016
Julia successfully submitted her Master thesis. Congratulations! Julia will start her new job at evotec in December. All best!!
October 12th/13th, 2016
The fifth GOEvol Meeting "NETWORKS IN BIOLOGY" takes place. FOr more information, visit the GOEvol Website.
May 24th, 2016
Our re-annotation paper is out now in BMC Genomics. Check it out here.
May 23rd, 2016
Montse successfully defended her PhD thesis today. Congratulations!
May 23rd, 2016
Antje joins our team for her Bachelor thesis. Welcome!
April 26th, 2016
Natalias paper on body size measurements in different Diptera is online and will be part of the Size and Shape Special Issue in Development Genes and Evolution. For more articles of the Special Issue, visit the DGE website.
April 25th, 2016
Nico discusses career options with Postdocs at the "Career steps for Postdocs in Academia and Industry" meeting at the Max Planck Campus in Göttingen.
April 21st, 2016
Nico successfully applied for a startup grant from the Göttingen Graduate School for Neurosciences, Biophysics, and Molecular Biosciences (GGNB). With this grant, Melissa will continue to study the molecular basis for the sexual dimorphism in mandible size in Gnathocerus cornutus.
April 20th, 2016
Montses paper on a comprehensive evaluation of statistical methods to test differential gene expression across species is accepted for publication in BMC Genomics.
March 31st, 2016
Our collaborative Editorial article for the Size and Shape Special Issue in Development Genes and Evolution is online. For more articles of the Special Issue, visit the DGE website.
March 17th, 2016
PhD position available!
A joint PhD position with Henner Simianer here in Göttingen is available to start in October 2016. The main aim of the project will be to study intra-specific variation in compound eye size in Drosophila melanogaster . Please visit the website of the Research Training Group "Scaling Problems in Statistics" for more details about the general setting of this position. A detailed description of the project, information about the application procedure and further requirements are available here: Job Ad.
March 16th, 2016
Natalia starts her Bachelor thesis.
February 9th, 2016
Bairon and Felix join our team for short term internships.
February 4th, 2016
Nico presents our Drosophila work in Lyon at the Institut de Génomique Fonctionnelle de Lyon. Thanks to Antonin from the Khila Lab for the invitation!
January 1st, 2016
Elisa starts her PhD thesis and Micael joins our team as Postdoc.
November 15th-17th, 2015
Nico visits Uppsala University to participate in the U4 Rectors Meeting and to present our work at the Department of Earth Sciences, Palaeobiology in the group of Graham Budd and Ralf Janssen.
October 19th, 2015
David starts his Master Lab Rotation working on head size and shape differences between D. melanogaster and D. mauritiana.
September 23rd, 2015
Finally! Our work will be funded for the next 3+2 years by an Emmy Noether grant of the German Research Foundation (DFG).
September 14th, 2015
Julia starts her Master Lab Rotation working on Hunchback function during eye development.
September 9th -12th, 2015
Elisa, Montse and Nico present our work at the EDRC in Heidelberg.
June 4th, 2015
Call for "Size and Shape" special issue in Development, Genes and Evolution.
April 28th, 2015
Christophs's paper on Spider eye development is online
April 27th, 2015
Gordon successfully finished his Bachelor thesis on Hunchback function in the Drosophila eye disc
February 18th, 2015
The GOEvol/U4 Meeting took place in Göttingen. A short report of the meeting is available here
December 15th, 2014
First announcement of the GOEvol IV Meeting on Wednesday, February 18th 2015 in Göttingen.
This year’s meeting aims at building on the already established U4 network, a strategic partnership between Ghent University (Belgium), the University of Göttingen (Germany), the University of Groningen (Netherlands) and Uppsala University (Sweden).
Our upcoming meeting will give an overview of evolutionary research at these four Universities followed by a discussion about shared teaching possibilities.
Please visit the GOEvol Website for more information about the GOEvol and the upcoming meeting.
November 26th, 2014
Maarten's paper on Sexual dimorphism and natural variation within and among species in the Drosophila retinal mosaic is online
November 17th, 2014
Elisa starts her lab rotation
October 13th, 2014
Gordon starts his lab rotation
October 6th, 2014
Carolin and Melissa start their lab rotations
August, 2014
First fly collections for the DrosEU consortium. Wow, that is fun.
July, 2014
Finally... our Parasteatoda tepidariorum reference transcriptome is accepted for publication in PLOS ONE
Find the paper here
May, 15th 2014
Micael started his Postdoc. He will work on eye size variation between D. novamexicana and D. americana
May, 9th 2014
The 3-6 year old kids from the Kindergarden North Campus visit our lab to learn about our research. Visit the Outreach section for more details and some pics.
April, 2014
Lena and Nora successfully finished their Bachelor thesis
April 2nd - 4th, 2014
Size and Shape Symposium in Göttingen
October, 2013
GOEvol III
July, 2013
Nora joined the group for her Bachelor thesis
March 4th, 2013
Lena joined the group for her Bachelor thesis
December 18th, 2012
The first international SpiderWeb Meeting will be held at Oxford Brookes University, UK in February 2013. Registration is open.
December 1st, 2012
Melanie joined the group for her Bachelor thesis.
September 5th, 2012
The next GOEvol Meeting will take place on October 2nd, 2012 at the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization (Bunsenstraße 10, Göttingen)
Contact
Nico Posnien
Georg-August-University Göttingen
Johann-Friedrich-Blumenbach
Institute for Zoology and Anthropology
Department of Developmental Biology
Ernst-Caspari-Haus (GZMB)
Justus-von-Liebig-Weg 11
37077 Göttingen
Germany
Phone: +49 (0) 55139 28662
E-mail: nposnie[at]gwdg.de
Funding
