I feel this one in my soul

Leaving my #NSF office for the last time, again

These guys are starting to size up nicely

🚨 What if evolution is the ”law”… and networks are the machines that do the work? In this paper (just published) I try to formalize how living systems are non-equilibrium, information-processing, adaptive matter. With a great biological flavor! 🧪🌐🌍🧬🦠 👉 iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1... 🧵 1/

We got yeast chihuahuas and yeast Great Danes out here evolving from the yeast wolves!

FINALLY GOT IT! I've taken well over 100,000 pelican pictures, maybe 200,000. Over 20,000 the past month alone. Today, I snagged "The One That Got Away" In my infinite optimism, I give you, a very rare: Fish success story. 🪶

Honestly, this is pretty cool!

🔥🔥🔥🔥

NSF - Forced reorg - POs down ~ 40% (DRP, most rotators not renewed, retirements) - Forced move (and we have to pack and clean) to a building with no furniture, little to no conference space for panels, inadequate 🛜, …) I personally love the boxes they gave us for packing. “Details matter” 🙃

@sayantandatta.bsky.social brought some Swiss culture to our lab after his month-long visit to @dudinlab.bsky.social's lab. I mean, other than the badass expansion microscopy chops, that is.

Awwwww yeeeeaaaah!

1/28 New preprint up, which I think is the best theoretical idea I've ever had. We asked a simple question: what are the costs of investment into non-reproductive somatic cells? Turns out these costs decrease with the *logarithm* of organism size! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

lol, I’d nominate this for @thelouvreof.bsky.social in the old school Science Twitter wing

Just preprinted what I think is the best theoretical insight I've ever had, which I believe fundamentally changes how we understand the evolution of germ-soma specialization. Hopefully the preprint will be up tomorrow and I can do a deep dive!

“The only reason I don’t have this funding is because my last name is Rodriguez.” MOSAIC checked many of the boxes of the administration — but that didn't matter. It was terminated, and left grantees scrambling Next installment of American Science, Shattered: www.statnews.com/2025/12/08/t...

Flytraps are crushing it- looking forward to some big bog gardening this spring!

Tony Burnetti and I recorded this super fun podcast in which we rank evolution's craziest adaptations. I think it turned out great! I might make this an exercise for one of my final evolution lectures next time I teach (dynamically rank / debate in class!). www.youtube.com/watch?v=JSum...

New preprint from our lab www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...! Andrea Dos Santos and Clément Vulin combine experiments and models showing how adding glucose can strengthen negative interactions between microbial species. This can be used in tandem with antibiotic treatment to inhibit pathogens!

One of my favorite preprints of the year from the great @mollyschumer.bsky.social. A foamy virus that makes things sparkle, now up on TWiEVO episode 120 for some podcast peer review www.youtube.com/watch?v=3T65...

Now, what you hear is not a test, I'm rapping to the beat And me, the groove, and my friends are gonna try to move your feet You see, I am Pontifex and I'd like to say hello

In which I fruitlessly beg NIH grant-seeking folks to focus on what is actually important. drugmonkey.wordpress.com/2025/11/21/i...

We just released a new major version of TrackMate (v8), the cell and organelle tracking plugin of Fiji. It ships many new features, detailed below, but that are articulated around the following:

Epic paper!!

Does anyone have any recs for good paper reading software? Something that allows me to listen to a paper like its a podcast, so I could digest papers while driving/walking/gardening?

Super excited for this project and grateful to the John Templeton Foundation for support!

Setting up for the 10 year qbios anniversary professional networking event (party)!

Dang, hard disagree. The best papers to write and read are works of art, not merely a list of data and statements. Don’t let LLMs take this away too, for gods sake.

Congratulations to Joe Felsenstein on being awarded the 2026 Mendel Medal!

3.49 at my favorite grocery store. How am I gonna fit this in my fridge?

Let me use this as an opportunity to talk about Jordi et al's very cool paper, now out in PNAS 🧪: pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC... You can read our news and views here: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

@sacrozhangt.bsky.social and I wrote a commentary on Jordi van Gestel and Carol Gross's latest paper, check it out! www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... Sadly, the Editors at PNAS rejected our initial introduction, which was a David Attenborough style voice over of the microbial Serengeti (included below)

Asgard collaborative expedition begins… Falkor (too) has left Montevideo

End of season figs are delicious

Trump: "Nobody knows what magnets are."

Perhaps a better way to put my view: we should think of intelligence(s) as capacities, i.e. things a system can do, rather than a latent thing that systems have. Then the performance on the test simply is the thing and we don't need to speculate about whether the test measures the real, hidden thing

We are looking for a scientific computing associate interested in data-driven equation discovery here at @hhmijanelia.bsky.social. This is an alternative to a postdoc that you can use to move into academic or software jobs. Please spread the word! hhmi.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/Extern...

Mini @rokaslab.bsky.social reunion with Dr. Abigail Lind @abigailllind.bsky.social Amazing seminar... What is in our gut and what is it doing!? I assume our students are flocking to try EukDetect!

terrytao.wordpress.com/2025/11/05/m... This is pretty wild

If someone made this into a drug, I'd be a hopeless addict. Super cool- more Asgardian cell biology please!

Definitely an amazing meeting- attend if you can!

It's #reccomendation_writing_friday! What rec letters are you working on today? For me, it's 1 NSF GRFP 1 Goldwater fellowship 2 Tenure letters 3 Grad school letters of rec

Should I make this my new professional head shot?

The GRAPE selection escapes from slow in planta directed evolution #spotlight #MolecularPlant cell.com/molecular-pl...

🚨Our collaboration with @centriolelab.bsky.social & @gautamdey.bsky.social is out today in @cp-cell.bsky.social We show that #Expansion #Microscopy is a broad-spectrum modality for Euks, enabling 3D phenotypic maps rooted to phylogeny. #ProtistsOnSky #SciComm #SciSky www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...

I love working at a university. Walking across campus at the end of a long day, seeing groups of students hanging out in the green spaces and doing fun activities, it always puts a smile on my face.

Anyone know of a scanner that can be controlled by a computer so we can image at a specific interval?

I fully encourage President Trump to continue his renovations of the White House when he's done with the East Wing. It's a great idea. Might I suggest a presidential golf course next? (The more time he spends on trivial things like this, the less time he has to continue undermining democracy.)

New paper with my (amazing) friend and mentor @jrpenades.bsky.social Really looking forward to see what plasmid aficionados think of this one!! With @asantoslopez.bsky.social @wfigueroac3.bsky.social Akshay Sabins and others www.cell.com/cell-reports...