Comparative transcriptomics reveals an extracellular worm Argonaute as an ancestral regulator of LTR retrotransposons academic.oup.com/gbe/advance-...

Our paper unpacking "fitness" is out doi.org/10.1093/gene.... How to define fitness depends on what question you ask. Selection acts on organismal vital rates, longer-term outcomes make sense for genetic lineages, models link them. "Invasion fitness" = speed, but sometimes probability matters more.

😀 Actually, what is a gain-of-function mutation? doi.org/10.1093/gene...

Put simply: It coordinates action in more varied and context-dependent ways across more complex environments, AND it regulates a more complex internal environment. Highly recommend this chapter from Sterling and Laughlin! link.springer.com/article/10.1...

New book "A Primer for Experimental Evolution" with coauthors Michael Rose, Margarida Matos, and Joe Graves. www.worldscientific.com/worldscibook... A compact primer for students and colleagues interested in planning and designing experiments to address questions in evolutionary biology.

Microbial genetic screen identifies bacterial genes that compromise Caenorhabditis elegans reproductive fitness journals.asm.org/doi/full/10....

With Eugene Koonin, we wrote a rather comprehensive review on the origin, evolution and organization of the #virosphere. We describe all 10 viral realms and the logic behind them, and so much more. Check it out! comptes-rendus.academie-sciences.fr/biologies/ar...

New work: Our earlier work showed that Foldseek characters could be adapted for phylogenetic alignment, treating each character as an evolutionary state. That part holds but there's a hidden assumption baked in that needed unpacking. So lets do that.🧵 #StructuralPhylogenetics #Evolution #Protein

Internalized Evolutionary Inertia on Body Plan Evolution onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Cathepsin B protease mediates high population density-induced mutagenesis to drive genome evolution and competitive growth www.nature.com/articles/s41...

WormTagDB: a systematic survey of endogenously tagged proteins in Caenorhabditis elegans and roadmap toward the tagged proteome academic.oup.com/g3journal/ad...

Differential Phoretic Vector Use Among Sympatric Caenorhabditis Nematodes and an Association With Invasive Nitidulid Beetles in Southwestern Germany onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

7 years ago I was incredibly lucky to join @hoosierflyman.bsky.social on the great #Seabattical Today, you can read in full print @genetics-gsa.bsky.social the description of a NEW SPECIES of Drosophila parasitoid and it's really unique biology. I just happened to be the guy who found it! 🐝🏝️🪰

! High-resolution global recombination mapping in C. elegans reveals sexual dimorphisms shaped by meiotic chromosomal features and structures www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

(1/15) Thrilled to share new Evo-Devo work where we address the molecular, cellular & morphometric basis of an extreme axis segmentation program in the Japanese eel — an animal that forms 120 vertebrae.

Here is a banger! Our new paper in @currentbiology.bsky.social is out! We have used museomics to sequence a 45yr old specimen of Drosophila enhydrobia, a rare and most unusual fly whose larvae are aquatic(!) and predatory(!). Very cool, big success. authors.elsevier.com/sd/article/S...

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Kinetochore proteins control microtubule dynamics in postmitotic neurons to regulate the formation of dendritic spines www.pnas.org/doi/full/10....

Developmental constraints in the repeated evolution of male tail characters in rhabditid and diplogastrid nematodes journals.plos.org/plosone/arti...

A Trojan horse pathogen breaking through partner-choice barriers in the insect gut doi.org/10.1073/pnas...

Chromosome size as a robust predictor of recombination rate: insights from holocentric and monocentric systems academic.oup.com/genetics/art...

Happy to announce two-fold news! 1) The SCINKD paper is now published in @molbioevol.bsky.social - doi.org/10.1093/molb... 2) SCINKD [v2.2.4] release has reduced runtimes (about 2x) and the revitalized mode for genomes >5Gb is now live and tested on genomes up to 21Gb! 🐸 github.com/DrPintoThe2n...

We are happy to share our new bioRxiv pre-print on A-P axis patterning. A great collaboration with Felix Zhou (UT Southwestern) & the Yeomans group (Physics, Oxford) www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

✨A central mission of PASEDB is to foster networking, discussion, and a sense of community We want to highlight new #EvoDevo labs in Pan-America. In our first newsletter issue, we highlight: - Roberto Márquez - Anyi Mazo-Vargas @anyimv.bsky.social - Bruno Vellutini @bruvellu.bsky.social

Looking at the EvoWorm 2026 abstracts--I'm getting excited about this meeting!!

Transgenerational inheritance is variable across Caenorhabditis worms www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Global genomic diversity of the selfing nematode Caenorhabditis tropicalis correlates with geography www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

! Epigenetic constraints and enhancer innovation link neuronal plasticity to evolutionary adaptation www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1...

WAT www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

The abstract submission deadline for EvoWorm 2026 is today! Don't forget to submit an abstract!! Share your exciting science at *the* best meeting!!! evoworm.org

Are you ready for *the* meeting about the evolutionary biology of Caenorhabditis and other nematodes? The abstract deadline is Wednesday! EvoWorm 2026 will be held at McMaster University from June 16–19 Abstract deadline: April 15 Registration deadline: June 1 Details can be found at evoworm.org

Optimal male fertility and fecundity in Caenorhabditis elegans requires Microprocessor and Argonaute gene function academic.oup.com/g3journal/ad...

Caenorhabditis elegans populations shape their microbial environment www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Whole-organism spatial transcriptomics at single-cell resolution in C. elegans https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.04.09.717568v1

Analysis of Nematode Ventral Nerve Cords Suggests Multiple Instances of Evolutionary Changes to Neuron Number onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

🎉 It's published! Our placental long-read transcriptome is now in @natcomms.nature.com! Thank you to @arjunbhattac.bsky.social, @jonhuang.bsky.social, and @mikelove.bsky.social for collaborating on this first project of my postdoc @mdanderson.bsky.social. A recap 🧬🫄🧵 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

"Complexity and Innovation in Carnivorous Plant Genomes" by Victor A. Albert et al. "Here, we review recent research that has uncovered some of the more interesting genomic oddities and specializations among carnivorous plants..." FREE till May 26th at authors.elsevier.com/a/1muZP_3rsx...

1/25 New paper out in PNAS! We show that the fitness costs of reproductive specialization, where somatic cells give up reproduction, scale inversely with organism size. Larger organisms can afford far more soma, removing a key barrier to multicellular complexity.

Rethinking mitochondrial heteroplasmy: selection, conflict and adaptation royalsocietypublishing.org/rstb/article...

The two papers: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... and www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Really excited that this major work from my PhD is finally published in @plosbiology.org ! In it, we were trying to tackle a fundamental question in evolution - how do genetic mutations map onto evolutionary fitness? (1/n) journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...

How common is multicellularity in bacteria? And archaea? And how does it evolve? We wrote a short review "On the architecture and evolution of prokaryotic multicellularity". Preprint link: bit.ly/4ta06Gq Sharing and comments are much appreciated. 1/4

Reconsidering cytonuclear discordance in the genomic age academic.oup.com/evolut/artic...

A question for biologists: we often talk about evolutionary novelty. What does “novelty” mean for you? What’s your favorite definition if any? Or just a rule of thumb for what is and isn’t novel.

Back in the noughties when I was an academic, my lab did quite a bit of work on (conserved) alternative transcripts. This study in @plosbiology.org presents compelling evidence that most alternative transcripts are deleterious noise journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...

Intraspecific variation in the duration of epigenetic inheritance in wild isolates of C. elegans www.cell.com/current-biol...

Tissue-specific DNA Repair Strategies Underlie Apparent High Transposon Activity in the C. elegans Soma academic.oup.com/g3journal/ad...

The data is in: the NIH goalposts have shifted. What were once almost certain fundable scores have become coin flips and what used to be likely grants have become aspirational, leading to fewer awards. Another manifestation of how HHS policies have led to fewer awards and less science.

Here is the "effective payline" for each institute, estimated (by Claude) as the percentile where one can expect 80% probability of funding from a logistic regression fit. The effective payline has gone from a historic ~12% to 6% in 2025.

Two complementary articles from the lab of Anming Meng and Katie McDole discussing the history and biology of organizer in 🐟, 🐸, and 🐭. Even after more than 100 years since its discovery, major questions remain, especially for mammals. doi.org/10.1016/j.cd... doi.org/10.1016/j.cd...