RNA from herbarium samples is more stable than previously thought and can be extracted for different uses genome.cshlp.org/content/earl.... Study led by @atyszka.org and in collaboration with @philcarella.bsky.social @khongsamchia.bsky.social @phylonatworks.bsky.social @sciencedrew.bsky.social

Glad to see this preprint is up doi.org/10.32942/X2C... describing what can be done to study UrbanEcoEvo using only publicly available data. Congrats to @shawn-anthony.bsky.social, and a great chance to collaborate with Natalie Love

Another exciting #SSB2026 workshop to highlight: A Primer for Phylogenetic Causal Inference with @oschwery.bsky.social & @pseudacris.bsky.social Also, lots of new info on the website and more soon: ssb2026.github.io Follow for the latest updates! @jembrown.bsky.social @systbiol.bsky.social

Not to shamelessly promote lab stuff, but if anyone is teaching evolution or phylogenetics, Karolis’ program has been great for students learning about trees. Its user interface is more like a basic calculator instead of a scientific calculator, which helps when learning. github.com/karolisr/tre...

#phylogenetics Mac users alert: TreeHouse opens trees with >500k+ tips and it is very FAST. The initial version can open, sort, root/unroot, & save multitree newick files (Nexus+ coming soon). Karolis is soliciting features. Apple-certified installer here: github.com/karolisr/tre...

Glad to see this work by @atyszka.org published, and excited to see the Field Museum on the front of Trends in Plant Sciences this month. Also, a great chance for the lab to collaborate with Drew Larson. www.cell.com/trends/plant...

🚨 I’m thrilled to share that I am starting as an Assistant Professor at Wake Forest University this Fall! 👀 Opportunities coming soon as I re-root my research program in plant ecophysiology and evolution at Wake 🌿 🌲🌱 #NewPI #plantecophys #botany @wfubiology.bsky.social @wakeforest.bsky.social

Excited to share a new paper with Sandra Guerrero-Rubio and @docbroc.bsky.social on the convergent evolution of betalains, now published in @newphyt.bsky.social! nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/.... A 🧵

New Postdoc position (2yrs) available in our #EvoMPMI lab @JohnInnesCentre. Come and work with on harnessing the diversity of immune mechanisms to protect plants. jobs.jic.ac.uk/Details.asp?va…

I’m extremely proud of all of our undergrads who undertook the difficult journey of producing scientific material and learning how to process transcriptomic data! Check out the culmination of our work on BioRxiv!! @evojfwalker.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

@shawn-anthony.bsky.social helped ~20 undergrads learn transcriptomics in this budget friendly investigation into the dogbane family. A fun way to investigate the molecular evolution of the group. Also, a chance to collaborate with @phylonatworks.bsky.social and Jarrad! doi.org/10.1101/2025...

Conserved effectors underpin the virulence of liverwort-isolated Pseudomonas in divergent plants Very happy to share the published version of our work on natural Marchantia-Pseudomonas interactions. Out now in Current Biology: www.cell.com/current-biol...

I am honored to be elected an AAAS fellow! news.umich.edu/13-u-m-facul...

Are you analyzing genotype data via PCA or MDS, in particular including ancient DNA samples? Here is a novel easy-to-use tool to assess the stability of these analyses by bootstrapping the SNPs: academic.oup.com/bioinformati...

In recognizing that lots of students (undergrads and grads) are unaware of the dire situation created by the recent executive / DOGE actions, I am trying to compile a list of how these will impact folks so I can make materials and spread the word and get more advocates. 1/2

🎙️Season 2 of our podcast is here! Kicking things off with the mind-blowing study below. This research shatters the assumption that herbarium specimens are unsuitable for transcriptomics, successfully extracting mRNA from historical plant samples: open.spotify.com/episode/1cqA...

RNA from herbarium specimens is more stable than you think. Cool new study from @atyszka.org @evojfwalker.bsky.social and team. @khongsamchia.bsky.social and I were happy to contribute by functionally validating an NLR immune receptor last expressed in 1956 : www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Getting quality transcriptome assemblies from Herbarium samples is possible doi.org/10.1101/2025.... Work led by @atyszka.org. Another fun collaboration with @philcarella.bsky.social and @khongsamchia.bsky.social, who functionally validated an NLR immune receptor from a sample collected in 1956.

A former undergraduate, Miles Woodcock-Girard, made a transcriptome assembly pipeline (doi.org/10.1093/bioi...) and is looking for features people may want. He’s a big advocate for maintaining software, so please reach out to him on GitHub if there’s anything you would find helpful.

Very happy to share the final version of our work on the evolution of broad host virulence in Pseudomonas out now @cellhostmicrobe It’s just in time for the holidays 🎄🦠 www.cell.com/cell-host-mi...

New pre-print from the lab on the natural history, phylogenomics, and allopolyploidy of North American Drosera. This work was from the pre-COVID field work graduate student Rebekah Mohn did in peatlands across the US and fell into muddy pits many, many times.