Caturday

When I was a grad student the government paid me to go to Taiwan and try to start collaborating.

Last night in North Dakota

My lab at Indiana University is searching for a *postdoc* and *technician* to contribute to our work studying the evolution of social behavior using fruit flies as a model system. Details below, feel free to email me with any questions! More info on our research: saltzlab.com

Best conference for a computational guy looking for an industry job? I can only think of PAG

Mystery flies

My awesome grad student Shashank and I wrote this paper trying to look at broader patterns of HT in TEs. HT is happening everywhere! DNA transposons jump further than other classes! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

I had such a great time visiting the University of Minnesota yesterday. Yaniv Brandvein is such a cool scientist and human

Transposable elements drive much of naturally occurring genetic lethality in Drosophila melanogaster https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.10.16.682755v1

When transposons jump, genomes diverge - even in cultured cells. I am happy to share our new preprint: a chromosome-scale genome assembly for Drosophila OSC cells, one of the key model systems in the piRNA field, especially for nuclear piRNA biology. 🧬🧵 (1/12)

What would you say if you saw it in another country? What would you say if you had been told in 2015 that this is where we would be?

My daughter commandeered my coffee table to keep her recovering brother company 😊

Join the AAUP and other allied organizations across the nation on October 18 for a day of peaceful and impactful protest as we come together to make clear: America has no kings, and the power belongs to the people! #NoKings #AAUP #AcademicFreedom #HigherEducation #DefendHigherEd #Education

Tonsils coming out today, but he's mostly interested in sperms whales 🤣🤣

This manuscript was so much fun to write! Who thought we'd find an ongoing invasion in Dmel. TEs are so cool 😎

📣 Our department is hiring an Assistant Professor in Evolutionary Cell and Molecular Biology to join the @weillinstitute.bsky.social PLS spread the word! academicjobsonline.org/ajo/jobs/30607

“Who me? As a tripod fish, I deal with stress and fear by transforming into an eyeless abyssal predatory elder god. What about you?” 🎥 Huge thanks to @frida.yolotzin for letting me use the baby tripod fish video, and @schmidtocean for permission to share the adult video.

Tenure-track Assistant Professor in Computational Ecology and/or Evolution @columbiauniversity.bsky.social. Deadline to apply September 30. Reach out if you have questions. apply.interfolio.com/172496

New preprint out from the lab, including @rroyaute.bsky.social: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... In this we test what we refer to as the "standard model" of behavioral variation. This was inspired by recent work identifying intra-genotypic variation as a major contributor to "individuality". 1/

Tenure seminar, done!

From now on I'm measuring stress levels in terms of old coffee cups. Currently at level 8

Germline defence from TEs largely relies on piRNAs. Yet, @divyaselvaraju.bsky.social and I monitored a P-element invasion in Drosophila that was stopped by an internally deleted copy, no host intervention required! doi.org/10.1371/jour... Many thanks to @rpianezza.bsky.social & @rokofler.bsky.social

Registering a lab server with the university IT department, call if you don't hear from me within three days 🤣

Nooooooooooo

Heng Li and his lab are just out here propping up our entire field doi.org/10.1101/2025...

holy shit this is a helluva ad from the Democrat running against Joni Ernst in Iowa. worth every second

The 2025-26 Eco-Evo job list is out. Good luck to those applying! docs.google.com/spreadsheets...

The lab is going to look so cool for the fall of American democracy

The Signor lab is loving our new lab shwag, designed by the ever wonderful @nepeteaa.bsky.social

@shashankpritam.bsky.social first research paper on the effect of insertion bias on transposon fitness!! With @almoroscarpa.bsky.social and @rokofler.bsky.social link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Anyone else cave and use osx because open source Linux wasn't broadly stable/usable enough but now osx makes it's own chips and nothing is compatible

If declining to review requires more than clicking a button I'm going to ghost the invitation I'm sorry

My colleagues Baptise Rafanel et al. investigated how a newly invading transposon can be silenced. They found that not only antisense insertions in piRNA clusters such as flamenco, but also insertions in the 3‘UTR of genes can drive potent silencing.

I approve of this message

I am seeking a postdoc for my group at UCLA. We work at the intersection of population genetics x microbiome (garud.eeb.ucla.edu). If interested, please message me!

I have never seen suzukii ovipositors in person until today and that shit is wild

You haven't really lived until you've tried to purchase a computer with federal funds from a non contract vendor

“California’s agricultural industry is absolutely massive. The state grows about a third of the country’s vegetables, three-quarters of its fruits and nuts, and employs nearly 900,000 farmworkers each year.” laist.com/news/immigra...

Some papers you really love

Finally out! 🥳 Our paper showing how a transposable element (TE) insertion can cause developmental phenotypes is now published @natgenet.nature.com 🧬🦠🐁 Below is a brief description of the major findings. Check the full version of the paper for more details: www.nature.com/articles/s41588-025-02248-5

Why is every large external drive noisy AF

🧵 1/ In bioinformatics, cutoffs rule everything. What’s “significant”? What’s not? Let’s talk thresholds—and how they shape your science.

We have a secret police and concentration camps and every morning I'm supposed to just get up and brush my teeth

According to a new poll, nearly three-quarters of Californians believe local police officers should arrest federal immigration agents who “act maliciously or knowingly exceed their authority under federal law.” By @liborjany.bsky.social www.latimes.com/california/s...

"On Tyranny" free resources to use and to share, now or any time snyder.substack.com/p/on-tyranny...

I don’t think anyone is prepared for what they just did w/ ICE. This is not a simple budget increase. It is an explosion - making ICE bigger than the FBI, US Bureau of Prisons, DEA,& others combined. It is setting up to make what’s happening now look like child’s play. And people are disappearing.

I was always leery of latex snobs but omg word is fucking unusable.

*endless screaming*