New preprint! and my first single-author paper, so bear with me. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... Malaria population genetic studies have found some puzzling patterns: Ne estimates spanning orders of magnitude, genome-wide negative Tajima's D, and over a quarter of genes with πN/πS >1 1/n

Grateful to share our paper on gene-specific selective sweeps in human gut microbiomes, now out in Nature! It has been a joy to work with @rwolff.bsky.social, whose insights and hard work made this possible. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Website Task Flowchart xkcd.com/3175/

Defaulting to surgical masks in health care settings in 2025 is one of the most dissapointing examples of reluctance to change despite overwhelming evidence. Even defaulting to KN95 style would significantly increase protection of the most vulnerable. Infuriating inertia in the HC industry.

Physics Paths xkcd.com/3155/

AI in biology: "I read about some new computational method...get excited because it’s exactly what I need...I try the method...Most of the time things don’t work...I have seen this play out so many times my default assumption is nothing is going to work" blog.genesmindsmachines.com/p/we-still-c...

Window Screen xkcd.com/3151/

Another record month for bioRxiv - and further evidence the pandemic spike+dip was just that and growth continues. Thanks to all involved and that includes 🫵

Biology Department xkcd.com/3140/

The are many anecdotes for #ChatGPT helping patients. But here's one with fallacious A.I. guidance that resulted in serious complications www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/...

I've seen this on Bluesky and had to try it myself. The image below was the response to the prompt: "Show me a diagram of the US presidents since Herbert Hoover, with their names and years in office under their photos" Bravo, OpenAI, bravo.

One of the most memorable talks at the 2011 Joint Evolution Meeting in Ottawa was Rosie Redfield describing her attempts to replicate this work, chronicled in her epic blog (which deserves to be preserved in the internet history books): rrresearch.fieldofscience.com/2010/12/arse...

Science finally retracts the Arsenic life paper www.science.org/content/arti...

Replication Crisis xkcd.com/3117/

My cartoon in this weeks @newyorker.com

One thing that really bothers me with the new "virtual cell" terminology is that it is currently largely focused on a very narrow definition of models that can predict effects of trans perturbations (gene dosage, drugs etc) on gene expression. 1/

Spotted in the wild today:

I wrote a review of a recent paper on false discovery and multiple testing correction. liorpachter.wordpress.com/2025/06/16/r...

He resolved that he would not stop either, even though it was a huge sacrifice on his part. I believe this is what we owe our trainees: so long as they are invested in their work, we must be as well, even if it seems like the world is on fire around us, both literally and figuratively. 10/

Also, always applies... bsky.app/profile/aemo...

This, by Michael Lynch. I'd include AI techbros as well. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Archaea xkcd.com/3095/

Last call—hiring for my lab moving to UCLA!

Lux Capital & @wolfejosh.bsky.social are launching the Lux Science Helpline - a $100M commitment to support American scientists whose research is threatened by funding cuts, bureaucratic hurdles, and career roadblocks - that expands our Lux Labs program. www.luxcapital.com/news/our-hel...

Not @theonion.com www.nytimes.com/2025/05/10/b...

🧪 ICYMI: $25,000 bridge funding for terminated NSF grants. Major props for to the Spencer, Sloan, W. T. Grant, and Kapor Foundations for their swift action, even though we (and they) know this is a band-aid fix. Due May 30. Applications are brief: a 2-3 page memo of 6-month plans & other docs.

Upset about federal funding cuts in the US? Want some ideas of what to do? I wrote a long-ish blog post about it here ecoevoevoeco.blogspot.com summarizing things I learned meeting with Senate & House aides this week with the @aibsbiology.bsky.social Congressional Visits Day event.

We Now Know How AI ‘Thinks’—and It’s Barely Thinking at All Maybe you've heard that AIs are "black boxes" But a growing body of research keeps arriving at the same conclusion: Today's AIs all work in surprisingly similar -- and simplistic -- ways 1/2 www.wsj.com/tech/ai/how-...

Thoughts on Demis Hassabis of Google DeepMind saying that AI could cure disease in general in ten years. Bonus index to my longer posts on AI/computational drug discovery over nearly 20 years!

Apply by March31 for the 2025 Yeast Genetics and Genomics Course Jul22–Aug12 www.yeastgenome.org/blog/apply-n... This year’s instructors –Grant Brown, Soni Lacefield @lacefieldlab.bsky.social, and Greg Lang– have designed a comprehensive course covering all things yeast from genetics to genomics!

Big news: we are setting up a new non-profit organization to run bioRxiv and medRxiv. It's called openRxiv [no it's not a new preprint server; it's dedicated organization to oversee the servers] openrxiv.org 1/n

Breaking news: Thousands of researchers and their supporters, including recently fired federal workers, have gathered across the U.S. in response to layoffs and funding cuts ordered by the Trump administration. scim.ag/41zlPv4

Haru GUESS RIKISHI RECORD contest is on! Read rules below. Winner(s) get a banzuke from my copious collection. Go to this google sheet link to see open slots, you must reply here to choose a rikishi and record, only I can update the google sheet. docs.google.com/spreadsheets... Go! 🤗 #harubasho2025

I fixed the headline. And I honestly don't understand how any journalist could write this story without mentioning the study author's own "extreme productivity".

From Mike Luckovitch