A recent scientific paper compared long-term mortality by vaccination status. I noticed that Table 2 drew a lot of attention, but was actually included in the paper as a static image. So I built a quick dataviz project to explore. 🧵

Our latest preprint revisits the classic model of mutation-selection balance. Do human recessive genes fit Haldane's 100-year old model? This work is by the wonderful @jonj-udd.bsky.social, and co-mentored by @jeffspence.github.io www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

A study on 1.7 million people in Hong Kong shows superior hybrid immunity to Covid in people who got vaccinated before infection vs. people who got infected first. "Our findings are a direct rebuttal to arguments for natural immunity," the authors write. doi.org/10.1016/j.va...

Sequence alignments are notoriously prone to error. Our latest preprint offers a new tool for filtering errors out, assesses it and other filtering tools, and recommends new best practice. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... @phylowheeler.bsky.social 1/10

Sequence alignments are notoriously prone to error. Our latest preprint offers a new tool for filtering errors out, assesses it and other filtering tools, and recommends new best practice. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... @phylowheeler.bsky.social 1/10

I wrote about missing heritability, "missing environmentality," and why I still think twin studies are interesting and valuable: kathrynpaigeharden.substack.com/p/twins-are-...

Currently dorking out over this graph about child mortality with my brother. Just mind boggling to take in.

Hi everyone! I'm co-organizing this retreat/workshop June 15-19 for those looking to get started in mathematical/computational modeling of biological processes. Location is a beautiful farm in NC. Please share with students and others who want to build modeling skills. Interdisciplinarity welcome!

This article provides more data showing how easy it is to manipulate humans on social media. These researchers rerouted the algorithm on Twitter to push some users toward “antidemocratic attitudes and partisan animosity”. It only took 1 week to elicit changes that used to take 3 years.

Well there's your problem. www.science.org/content/arti...

We have a “poverty trap” and it’s driving the destruction of social cohesion. The “poverty line” is’t 35,000, it’s $150,000, and making more than one, and less than the other is worse than being “poor”. Which is why the rage. www.yesigiveafig.com/p/part-1-my-...

Does blinding--i.e., concealing applicants' identities--reduce gender gaps in academic conference paper acceptances? Nope! Does blinding do anything? It does! Blinding reduces gaps in acceptances by institution rank. haruka-uchida.github.io/websitefiles...

New data that supports metformin as a potential intervention to reduce #LongCovid www.authorea.com/users/100423...

Please pass along - We've extended the CAMBIUM fellowship deadline to December 15! Our NSF NRT supports new grad students to harness biodiversity big data to adapt to & mitigate climate change impacts. Great fit for evolutionary genomics, bioinformatics, ecology & more. cambium.arizona.edu 🧬🌐🌎

Lab’s first paper is out!! We show the first structures of #Asgard #chromatin by #cryo-EM 🧬❄️ Asgard histones form closed and open hypernucleosomes. Closed are conserved across #Archaea, while open resemble eukaryotic H3–H4 octasomes and are Asgard-specific. More here: www.cell.com/molecular-ce...

Rares: Contrast his summary with the abstract of Wainschtein et al. Focusing on ultra-rare to the exclusion of rare/de novo/structural variants seems like cherry picking a threshold in this context.

I wrote a little bit about the "missing heritability" question and several recent studies that have brought it to a close. A short 🧵

Hot off the press! Our latest paper led by @fernpizza.bsky.social, understanding how plasmids evolve inside cells. These small, self-replicating DNA circles live inside bacteria and carry antibiotic resistance genes, but also compete with one another to replicate. 1/ www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Meet the plenary speakers for #APSPM2026. Joanna Masel @joannamasel.bsky.social Nicholas Matzke @nicholasmatzke.bsky.social Join us to discuss how protein structure is changing evolutionary theory, phylogenetics and molecular evolution. biosig.lab.uq.edu.au/strphy26/spe...

#Archaea, #DPANN, #phylogenetic_reconciliation New preprint online! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Abstract submission deadline for #AbSciCon2026 is Jan 14. I'll be co-organizing a session on "The Last Universal Common Ancestor and the Origins of Translation" with @lorendw.bsky.social and @seekingluca.bsky.social, with lots of other cool related topics at agu.confex.com/agu/abscicon.... Join us!

An empirical approach to evaluating the prevalence of long-lived balancing selection in humans--and important limitations. Work by @hannahmm.bsky.social

🧪 Hard to believe that this is still something we have to argue for in 2025. The science is settled.

We are excited to announce APSPM 2026 - the SMBE Australasian Protein Structural Phylogenetics Meeting! 🗓️ 15-18 Feb. 2026 🌏 Brisbane, Australia 🔗 biosig.lab.uq.edu.au/strphy26/ 📄 Abstract submission: 28.11.2025 ✈️ Travel grant application: 28.11.2025 ✏️ Registration: 15.01.2026 #StrPhy26

The new #NSF #GRFP application now excludes 1000’s of students, including those who were told they could apply this year, or who planned to apply next year. We have a new specific petition urging #NSFGRFP undo this harmful action. If you are impacted sign here: laurenkuehne.github.io/grfpChanges/

It is insanity that this hugely consequential news — whether Trump’s EO vomit tirade about H1Bs applies to current visa holders — is sourced *anonymously*! No one will go on record to clarify the new rules!? www.politico.com/news/2025/09...

Massive sibling regression study finds that human traits are largely environmentally driven (average heritability = 0.3)

Our new paper @asn-amnat.bsky.social develops a Grand Unified Theory including both exploitative and interference competition doi.org/10.1086/737628. The R* rule of ecology (that 2 species cannot coexist on a single resource), is widely broken, including via a new trade-off we describe. 1/9

The House discretionary budget bill is now out for FY26, including a proposed *slight boost* in NIH funding & many other components that will take time to unpack. Bill text: appropriations.house.gov/sites/evo-su... A few key points including IDC analysis in a provisional 🧵

Trump admin planning to change student visas from lasting for duration of academic program to fixed 4-yr term, and then much harder to renew Could destroy US ability to attract global talent, particularly those seeking advanced degrees in STEM. The median time to complete a PhD is 5.7 yrs per NSF.

Very sad to see. www.thetransmitter.org/community/ha...

This guy has talent, he should write for the Onion frankaj.substack.com/p/bridge-pla...

Suppose, however, the appropriation is reduced by 10% in the first year of implementation and remains at this lower level (recall that the Administration is proposing a 40% reduction). This results in a larger dip in the number of funded grants. 5/n

The NIH switching to fully funding projects upfront will lead to a painful transition period. There'll also be an impact on indirects I haven't seen mentioned before. @drugmonkey.bsky.social @jeremymberg.bsky.social @donmoyn.bsky.social clauswilke.substack.com/p/nih-funded...

Terrible Friday news dump.The wealth of expertise. The decades of scientific progress. The emerging and urgent challenges we were focused on tackling. It is all so short-sided and cruel. www.nytimes.com/2025/07/18/c...

🎉 I'm thrilled to share that I’ll be joining the University of Arizona as an Assistant Professor starting January 2026! I’ll be recruiting PhD students, lab technicians, and postdocs—so if you're interested in host-microbe interactions, I’d love to hear from you!

Trump’s Tax Scam now heads back to the House, where Republicans can only afford to lose 3 votes. The bill barely squeaked by with a single-vote margin the first time, and it’s only gotten more divisive since. Anyone who tells you this is a done deal doesn’t know what the hell they’re talking about.

If you don't know about mosquito dunks, you should! They're floating plant material containing a type of bacterium that only attacks mosquito larvae. Just put one in the water and stop mosquitos from hatching. They're inexpensive and highly effective. Signed, a friendly bluesky entomologist.

One of the organizers of The Bethesda Declaration 👇👇

The Trump administration has killed a $600 million grant to Moderna to develop an mRNA vaccine for H5N1 influenza. @helenbranswell.bsky.social reports. www.statnews.com/2025/05/28/m...

My father worked in a tire factory in Appalachia. Friends and family in the military. Used to vote Republican. Got into college on a diversity program for the underprivileged. Ended up a Harvard professor. And now my funding is terminated because we're trying to stick it to the elites.

HMMER is the bedrock of genomic annotation globally, and now its funding is terminated for no reason. @cryptogenomicon.bsky.social is now on bsky:

I helped draft this open letter about last Friday’s gold standard science executive order. Take a look and consider signing if you agree.

A long thread about mpox and the context specific nature of outbreaks prompted by the large outbreak of MPXV Clade IIb happening at the moment in Sierra Leone:

Now published in PNAS: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Therefore students are "entitled to that money at whatever institution will take them (as long as it's not Harvard, or the next institution to run afoul of the administration)" Doesn't change the situation much but hopefully provides some clarity.

America is in danger of experiencing an academic brain drain  economist.com/science-and-...

. @pnas.org just published the final version of our manuscript on how generation time and effective population size interact to shape vertebrate germline mutation rates, led by Luke Zhu and Annabel Beichman: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

🚨 A new rule would let career scientists like NSF/NIH program officers be replaced by political appointees Already 14,000+ public comments, deadline is Friday 📣 Comments can be short. Courts consider them—and scientists with NSF/NIH experience are especially impactful Speak up! shorturl.at/WKuBj

I wrote about the fact that this denies boosters to household members of eg transplant patients, unless those household members themselves have a qualifying disease.