Hello Bluesky! Does Nₑ really explain mutation rate (μ) or genome size (GS) in vertebrates? We find the apparent Nₑ–μ link in Bergeron et al. (2023) is a “back-door” path via generation time, and GS is decoupled from both Nₑ and life-history traits. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... #evobio #PNAS

I'm looking for a Swiss department to host me for an SNSF Starting Grant. I research how gene expression evolves and emerges by combining wet lab + computational work in a variety of model systems (E. coli, Drosophila, yeast). More: timothyfuqua.com If your department might be a match, let’s chat!

Goed stuk over het wetenschappelijk publicatiesysteem. Mijn voorstel is om het systeem op de schop te gooien: "niet eerst op journals wachten voordat zij de kwaliteit beoordelen, maar gelijk publiceren en vervolgens in alle openheid de peerreview doen" #PublishReviewCurate @cwtsnl.bsky.social

Last chance to submit an abstract to our symposium on fitness landscapes and genotype-phenotype maps!

Canadian PM Carney’s speech at Davos reportedly received a standing ovation. The speech marked the end of an era. It will no doubt be looked to as part of the historical record of the end of the transatlantic rules-based international order. You can read the speech in full here:

DFG erlaubt Einsatz von KI in der Begutachtung. Wenn wir jetzt noch die AI dazu kriegen, die komplette Forschung zu machen, haben wir den Menschen komplett von der Last des Forschungsprozzeses befreit und er kann sich komplett auf wichtige Dinge wie Reisekostenerstattungsanträge konzentrieren.

📣CALL FOR APPLICATIONS!! 📣 The next deadline for the #GodfreyHewitt mobility award is 31st January 2026. Open to ECRS in support of research trips or lab visits. For more information, eligibility and how to apply: eseb.org/prizes-fundi...

Good and necessarily infuriating read.

From January 1st 2026, the CNRS will cut access to one of the largest commercial bibliometric databases, Clarivate Analytics' Web of Science, along with the Core Collection and Journal Citation Reports.

Doing non-causal inference (and being explicit about it), yet using a causal word as second word in the title. If you pay Nature € 10.690, they will publish this in Nature Ageing. I can tell you what I think of that for free. www.nature.com/articles/s43...

📣CALL FOR APPLICATIONS!! The next deadline for the #GodfreyHewitt mobility award is 31st January 2026. Open to ECRS in support of research trips or lab visits. For more information, eligibility and how to apply: eseb.org/prizes-fundi...

I’m excited to announce the launch of my lab at EPFL in Jan 2026 🎉. We’ll combine evolution & synthetic biology to study and (re)engineer bacterial communication. I’m recruiting PhD students to start in the first semester of 2026. Apply via EPFL PhD programs by Nov 1 drive.google.com/file/d/1cm-t...

Opportunity for a Master’s/Bachelor’s student: - Join us for up to 5 months 🗓️ - Build computational/mathematical models 💻 - Learn about genotype-phenotype maps and evolution 🧬 - Work closely with PhD student Manuela Giraud - full info here: www.crg.eu/en/content/t...

Please spread the word! 10 days left to apply for this #sciencejobs as Assistant Professor Tenure Track in Quantitative Cell Biology 👩‍🔬 @izb-unibern.bsky.social @unibe.ch! ohws.prospective.ch/public/v1/jo... #QueerInSTEM #DisabledInSTEM #BlackInSTEM #WomenInSTEM #CarersInSTEM #AcademicSky #HigherED

I'm curious if other mid career PIs have considered completely abandoning the trad publication model. We've been making gradual moves towards that end goal. But it's been difficult to completely jump ship for one main reason for me at least. 1/

As a junior researcher who is at the doorstep of the journal publishing system this post resonates with me a lot. Journal publishing looks like a historical contingency that's kept alive by the career promises that Nature publications make. thescientistpapers.substack.com/p/how-to-be-...

#Growth-coupled #selection just got an update ! In the last years, E. coli selection strains for #central , #amino #acid and #energy metabolism intermediates were created by the community. So, we compiled them and revisit the core concepts of growth coupling. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Hey y'all, grant-pending, I may be unemployed starting from October. If you have any leads on biotech / postdoc positions in the German-speaking part of Switzerland, I'd greatly appreciate a message. I'm great with Data Analysis, Molecular Biology, and Teaching. (Plz RT!) More at timothyfuqua.com

"a fascinating case study on the limits of AI in biology and the harms of current publishing incentives" rachel.fast.ai/posts/2025-0...

🔊 ¡Llamado a pensar la evolución desde el sur! Invitamos a estudiantes de maestría y doctorado en biología evolutiva de Sudamérica a postularse a EvoSur. 🧬 Un espacio para intercambiar ideas, debatir evolución y tejer redes científicas con todas las voces, todas: sites.google.com/view/evosur2...

How can physics contribute to understanding the evolution of complexity? Although great results have been produced over the last decades, some recent "theories" appear to ignore key ideas from evolutionary theory and are seriously flawed. Check this paper in PNAS www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1...

Here is a cool Flow-Lenia simulation, which is a continuous cellular automaton with two distinct features: 1. Mass conservation - sum of all activations is constant through time 2. Localized update rules - enables simulations with differently behaving matter on the same grid

Was protein size the constraint that made splicing and thus nuclei necessary for biological novelty 2.3-2.6My ago? Elegant paper with exciting implications. www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1...

Allobates zaparo knows it's a fraud.

The first version of this post had a broken link and I deleted it. Please spread again this corrected version. Thanks😊.

Inside me there are two wolves. One of them has a 15 genome edits the other 20 genome edits. Neither of them is a dire wolf.

yes sadly. We talk a lot about the evils of Impact Factors but scientists are to Nature as sneaker junkies are to Nike.

Here's a talk I gave at the Kavli Fontiers in Science symposium two weeks ago. It is pitched as a general introduction to evolutionary transitions in individuality. It was a good one- this might be a good teaching resource for evo bio courses. It is clear and high-level. vimeo.com/1066647126

Lungfish xkcd.com/3064

nature.com/articles/s41467-024-51895-5, its reply doi.org/10.1101/2024.01.29.577800, and the reply to the reply doi.org/10.1101/2024.09.17.613512 cleared up so much of the confusion I had about epistasis. Publishing such discussions and reviewer comments is invaluable. Appreciate both lab's efforts.

🤔 The 🇩🇰 government asked us: how can democratic control over tech giants be strengthened? We - the government's expert group on tech giants - outline 7️⃣ principles and a set of guidelines for tackling economic, democratic, and security vulnerabilities:

Super excited to see my main PhD project finally out in @naturemicrobiol.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/s41.... We show for the first time that a synthetic and engineered pathway can indeed exceed nature at one-carbon fixation.

When you switch to Discussion-writing mode

Amazing effort and results. I have been wondering when someone would confirm experimentally what has been predicted by Kashtan, Noor & @urialonlab.bsky.social (www.pnas.org/doi/full/10....), and similar papers from that time. Experimental evolution of evolvability www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

I feel like Catalytic Computing could be an interesting analogy to biological development where the line between algorithmic regions and memory regions in the genome is also very blurry. Maybe this blur has benefits beyond resource optimization.

Mitochondria and its division of labor w/ Nucleus is apparently very Neo-marxist... 😅 Title of NSF grant cut: "Role of Mitochondria as Intracellular Shuttles for Nuclear Gene-Regulatory Transcription Factors During Pluripotent Cell Division and Fate Specification" huntnewsnu.com/83890/campus...

Me @plosbiology.org 🤝 struggling with .eps

Getting stuck in the Adobe account verification popup of a Photoshop installation I didn't know I had just because the supplementary figure was in .eps format.