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...

Parasite defense covaries with reproductive timing, not with resistance www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Final version @nature.com of our paper describing unconventional multicellular development in a choanoflagellate inhabiting an extreme environment. A ton of new data since the first @biorxivpreprint.bsky.social preprint (which we've kept updating). A brief 🧵 (carried over from the old place)

! Intracellular buffering enables developmental robustness after genome doubling in C. elegans embryos www.cell.com/cell-reports...

So I pleased to announce the conceptual spawn of FigTree: PearTree (acronym still to be finalised). If you want to dive right in it is hosted as a web app here: artic-network.github.io/peartree (click the “Example...” button for immediate candy and then click every button you can find).

New blog post: "Higher orders need higher standards" skewed.de/lab/posts/hi... I discuss our current work disentangling misconceptions around "higher-order" networks: arxiv.org/abs/2602.16937 Explainer thread for the paper here: bsky.app/profile/tiag...

📄 Repeated evolution of supergenes on an ancient social chromosome 🐜🧬 ⬇️ www.cell.com/current-biol...

A symbiotic origin of the ribosome? #OriginsOfLife #scienceSky academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/ar...

Our internal organs are evolutionary marvels. New technologies are transforming our understanding of the evolution of vertebrate organs. You can find more by reading here: rdcu.be/e5EgU #EvoBio #EvoDevo 🐟🦎🐢🦇🐊🦜

Beyond metaphor: quantitative reconstruction of Waddington's landscape and exploration of cellular behavior academic.oup.com/bib/article/... - really nice review of how big data and new computational methods and reviving an old conceptual framework

Oh please do, I don't think I'm familiar with that one! I can share a few of my favorites, starting with this Molly Carnes paper showing very low levels of agreement between reviewers in their evaluations of the same grant applications www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Another group at Madison also found very low agreement among reviewers across all dimensions of NIH’s official rubric, and further suggested that very little of the difference in reviewer opinion was attributable to proposal content osf.io/preprints/ps...

Pangenome analysis reveals families of ubiquitin-ligase adaptors as key genomic divergence drivers that lead to hybrid incompatibility genome.cshlp.org/content/earl...

🪱Worm-friends! Join us this summer in Madison for the C. elegans topic meeting(s) - MAPSS *and* DevCell 🪱 Early birds get the you-know-what, and the early registration deadline is THIS FRI: conferences.union.wisc.edu/ceaging/ It's buy-one-get-one, and who out there doesn't love a deal?? 🙌

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

Collect #NeuralCrest Cells for #SingleCell #RNAseq from any vertebrate. Our new paper, present an antibody-guided #FACS method to collect NCCs. No trans-genesis or in ovo manipulation required. Demonstrated in wall #lizard #embryos using #microscopy, #RTqPCR and #scRNAseq. doi.org/10.1111/ede....

Why are some males caring toward infants while others are neglectful or abusive? I'm so pleased to share work that my colleagues and I @princeton.edu have just published @nature.com (an explanatory thread to follow!) (1/8)

Bacterial diet influences mutation rate in Pristionchus pacificus academic.oup.com/g3journal/ad...

How does the piRNA pathway solve the self vs. non-self problem? 🧬 Since piRNAs come from single-stranded RNA, how does the cell choose the right ones? For years, "piRNA clusters" were seen as THE privileged source. But are they really special and earmarked for biogenesis? (1/19)

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A very interesting and well-executed study. royalsocietypublishing.org/rspb/article...

Evolutionarily conserved behavioral plasticity enables context-dependent mating in C. elegans www.cell.com/current-biol...

The Hallmarks of Cancer Enter the Multiverse www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...

I had intended to post something about this new Google DeepMind paper that appeared yesterday in Nature, but the press coverage has added to what there is to say. So this is a long 🧵 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

For historical and conceptual context of understanding the genome as a dynamic reactive system, may I suggest our paper in @biologicaltheory.bsky.social link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Chromosome-scale #genomes from newly sequenced spiders & the whip scorpion, the genetic basis of spinneret emergence in spiders & the complex history & functional importance of arachnid genome #evolution www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... #biodiversity #genomics

#DBfeature Bones, brains, and bias—neural crest cell contribution to craniofacial structure Active Learning Assignments for craniofacial perception & normal phenotypic variation by Jeffrey Carmichael, Diane Darland et al www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

How does gene regulation shape brain evolution? Our new preprint dives into this question in the context of mammalian cerebellum development! rb.gy/dbcxjz Led by @ioansarr.bsky.social, @marisepp.bsky.social and @tyamadat.bsky.social, in collaboration with @steinaerts.bsky.social

The Caenorhabditis Genetics Center Curated Special Collections: a guide to protein degradation systems academic.oup.com/genetics/adv...

Calling all OrthoFinder users! We’ve just released GLADE, a tool to infer gene gains, losses, duplications, and ancestral genomes across a phylogeny. GLADE runs directly on OrthoFinder results. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... github.com/lauriebelch/... (1/10)

Are stick insects unique in their ability to transition to parthenogenesis? Our new review in @journal-evo.bsky.social covers intraspecific and hybrid origins, cytological mechanisms, and co-occurence of female-only and sexual populations, with comparisons to other taxa. doi.org/10.1093/evol...

Check out our new review in Nature Reviews Genetics on de novo emerged genes and proteins. How they emerge, are lost and persist - and how de novo emerged proteins relate to randomized proteins! @bornberglab.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Check out our new paper, out in the current issue of Proc B! In this work, we investigate the long-term persistence of the Drosophila pseudoobscura SR chromosome without suppression. We reconstruct its evolutionary history, showing that it has a history of suppression and escape from suppression.

Meiotic drive has long been considered as a genetic curiosity. Genomic "footprints" suggest otherwise. Check out our new review doi.org/10.1093/molb..., a cross-taxa synthesis arguing that recurrent drive is a pervasive and underappreciated force in genome evolution.

Finally had a chance to read this beautiful paper from Susan Mackem's lab. It's interesting that even well-established paradigms, like Sonic Hedgehog's role as a traditional morphogen in limb development, can be proven wrong over time. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Do contest-related traits evolve faster? A test of the exaggerated evolution hypothesis in a clade of Neotropical arachnids royalsocietypublishing.org/rsbl/article... | #BiologyLetters #Evolution

gonna do the old science twitter thing and post my reading here this year

New paper with @smishra677.bsky.social! How many different trees can be generated by just one duplication event? It turns out A WHOLE LOT, if you consider the coalescent process. 1/ www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

PEQG! My favorite conference ever*. Single session, fantastic talks, great discussions. Only once every 2 years. And in the best conference location too! Abstract deadline coming up Feb 5! *Disclosure: I am required to say it's the best conference because it is and I told my mom I wouldn't lie.

OUT NOW! Parasex generates highly recombinant progeny in Candida albicans with increased virulence By Robert Fillinger, Scott Filler, Anna Selmecki, Richard Bennett, Matthew Anderson & colleagues. #microsky @annaselmecki.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/s41...

✨ Latest exciting story of the group in @nature.com. Here, we go beyond SNPs and built a species-wide atlas of genetic variants in yeast. With >1,000 near T2T genomes, we show how large genomic variations affect trait diversity. www.nature.com/articles/s41...