I've accepted that Mimulus will never beat cult allegations (that I have directly perpetuated) But hey, like any good cult, we always love new members!

Good morning, #SMBE2026! To purge, or not to purge, *that* is the question 🧬 I'll be giving a talk on how mating system transitions shape transposable element dynamics in monkeyflowers this morning in S24 at 11:20 AM - come for the Hamlet pun, stay for the cool comparative genomics!

Minibwa is a hybrid of bwa-mem and minimap2 and the successor of bwa-mem for short-read mapping. ~4X/2.5X as fast as bwa-mem/bwa-mem2 for WGS reads at comparable accuracy. Native support of directional bisulfite-seq. Applicable to long reads. Preprint at arxiv.org/abs/2606.15357

#SMBE2026 S24: Molecular mechanisms of selfish elements and strategies 🗓️ Mon Jun 29, 10:20am 🔗 smbe2026.org/programme Talks by: @levine-lab.bsky.social Yu Hua @cecilecourret.bsky.social @eleanoreritter.bsky.social Elli Cryan @alexand-kwak.bsky.social Steve Perlman @antisense.bsky.social

Time for an experiment! You know those cute little roadside stands with honors-system eggs or produce? Look, I know I live in "big scary Philadelphia oooh 👻" but I'm gonna try it. What's the worst that can happen? Thieves create habitat for native bees? Jokes on them! I wanted them to do that!

Great field #botany story of the difficulties of collecting seed from endangered species. Featuring the tireless and talented @naomibot.bsky.social . Lots of field photos in the story. I'm so glad this story got some coverage. #rareplants #conservation www.npr.org/sections/the...

In the last two weeks, 1% of new NSF awards were in biology. Just one grant of 97. One. Biology in the US is on hold until there’s a regime change.

On the cover of our #LatestIssue: Orange jewelweed (Impatiens capensis) being visited by a bumblebee (Bombus) in a remnant patch of floodplain forest in Wisconsin, USA. Image courtesy of Rachel Toczydlowski. 📖 See Schoen & Toczydlowski nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... #PlantScience

Stay tuned for the release of this new documentary at the end of the month! I think our buzz pollination clip might have just made the cut!

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)

This article is now published! academic.oup.com/nargab/artic... We’ve added a few new analyses. First off, we show that, while gene presence absence variation (PAV) scales with evolutionary distance in both plants and animals, the base level and rate of accrual are both twice as high in plants.

I mean, true.

"I don’t know why my fellowship was terminated. I suspect that it has something to do with studying a species that doesn’t fit the binary of what we expect to see in nature, with completely different males and females." @carlzimmer.com profiles my wonderful coauthor @jjinsing.bsky.social Gift link.

Very excited to share this work led by Austin Link, a graduate student in our lab. We have discovered a novel, fig-associated microbe that promotes reproductive success via variable life history mechanisms in two nematode species. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Unpopular opinion: biologists are still the ones who understand biology best

Have you ever wondered: just how strong *is* the evidence for Muller's ratchet on mtDNA? Well, wonder no more! (Project led by Yu Mo, with @smishra677.bsky.social and @yadirapga.bsky.social) "No molecular evidence for Muller's ratchet in mitochondrial genomes" www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

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” 🙃

We are hiring at California Botanic Garden! The Restoration Intern will have the opportunity to work on a variety of projects involving out-planting, seed collection, plant propagation and monitoring. This is a full time temp position (6 months) that can be extended. Please share! lnkd.in/gaNuNGxA

In these field experiments we did earlier this year in the town of Iijima, we found that spraying nectar yeast and bacteria to buckwheat fields increased insect pollination and seed set.

Check out our new preprint! This was such a great paper to work on with @stairwaytokevin.bsky.social and the rest of the team!

GUESS WHAT WEEK IT IS

Excited / nervous to share the “magnum opus” of my postdoc in Andreas Wagner’s lab! "De-novo promoters emerge more readily from random DNA than from genomic DNA" This project is the accumulation of 4 years of work, and lays the foundation for my future group. In short, we… (1/4)

When you write to your senator (weeks ago) about proposed cuts to NSF and they respond this morning saying that they will always support NIH and never mention NSF... Thanks, Jon, totally what I meant ☹️

This is my favorite fact of the day, it's just too precious 🥹

Are you from one of these states? Then we need your help to save American science! The Senate Appropriations Committee will be marking up the President's Budget Request for science on Wednesday. People have been saying the proposed cuts "decimated" US science, but that's wrong: they are apocalyptic

Incredible diversity of #pollen grains! Pollen autofluorescence acquired with @zeiss-microscopy.bsky.social #superresolution Airyscan & color-coded for depth #microscopy #bioimaging #bioart #sciart #botany #plantscience #fluorescencefriday

A very important, inspiring read, even for us biology folks outside of medicine

Based on some quick math, this alone could fund the NSF Plant Genome Research Program for ~4 years; the NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biology, which was totally axed in the NSF budget request, for ~9 years; and ~ half the total NSF GRFP budget

Our paper (w/ @smishra677.bsky.social) is now out in Genetics! academic.oup.com/genetics/adv...

FINAL DAY to submit a comment about the changes to the Endangered Species Act! It takes 5 minutes and could make the difference in protecting America's flora and fauna.

OK, this is wild. In September 2023, geophysicists across the world started monitoring a very odd signal coming from the ground under them. It was picked up in the Arctic. And Antarctica. It was detected everywhere, every 90 seconds, as regular as a metronome, for *nine days*. What the HELL? 1/

This seems like a good day to re-up this advice.

Sen. Ossoff: Who out there in the American public is sitting at home demanding that we shut down cancer research and Alzheimer's research?

“Mr. Musk’s cuts to the bureaucracy will cost taxpayers $135 billion this fiscal year.” That is 3 times the entire NIH budget www.nytimes.com/2025/04/24/u...

Triple fuck: 1. White House proposed to cut NSF’s budget by 55%. 2. White House told NSF to fire half of staff. 3. “NSF announced it was terminating what could be more than $1 billion in grants already awarded” If true for #3, that’s at least three times what was terminated last Friday. FUCK

Cancelling research grants that were peer reviewed, recommended & awarded because it threatens the current regime’s political agenda is the real infringement of our rights + a violation of the NSF’s duty to honor contracts & ethically manage public funds appropriated by the US Congress. 12/

The NSF discontinuing “misinformation” research b/c it threatens free speech is laughable. 9/

If six months ago you'd told me that in autumn 2025 I'd have to go to Canada to get my annual COVID vaccine but I wouldn't do it because coming back through immigrations was too risky for someone who had criticized the government, I would have looked at you like you were having a stroke.

Yeah, things are grim. But I gotta tell you: Over the past 7 weeks of organizing around terminated grants, I've met so many inspiring folks both inside and outside of NIH and NSF. Our country is chock-full of badass scientists and Federal employees. We got this, y'all. Keep up the fight 💪

TLDR: the administration wants to remove habitat loss from the definition of "harm" for endangered species, which will effectively gut the ESA. I just commented. If you're in any way interested in ecology, nature, and the protection of endangered species, you should, too. Free daily action!

Re-watching Season 1 of "Andor" before Season 2 drops next week and boy does it have extra resonance now

New preprint! We investigated the evolution of supergenes and mechanisms underlying distyly in Linum species that diverged ca 33 Mya. 1/8 bsky.app/profile/bior...

First California Condor Hatch of the 2025 Season for Propagation!  Our Propagation Team is happy to report that on March 22, 2025 California Condor 1333 hatched successfully and is doing well being raised by its parents!  Condor 1333 at 14 days old 📷 Chelsea Haitz #raptor #birds #conservation

𝐕𝐢𝐧𝐞 𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐧𝐭𝐬 are packed and ready for their trip to Lyon, France! 🍇🚛 Early departure today: I'm heading to the CREATIS-INSA lab to test their cutting-edge 𝐒𝐏𝐂𝐂𝐓 𝟑𝐃 𝐬𝐜𝐚𝐧𝐧𝐞𝐫 — to peek inside their trunks and... uncover hidden secrets ? 👀🌱 #VITIMAGE #SMIYC #SPCCT #PlantImaging #CREATIS #3D #Xrays @IFV

As a biologist, I'm appalled at pride the White House takes in willful ignorance. In yesterday's executive order about NPR and PBS, their first example of "the trash that passes for `news' at NPR and PBS" is the statement that "banana slugs are hermaphrodites." But this is unequivocal fact.

Very excited with @tobybarilbio.bsky.social to share this preprint about his latest work on TEs! We knew that TEs were very pretty active in this global fungal pathogen of wheat. Now with nearly 2000 Illumina genomes available, we could finally ask questions about historic TE activation waves.

I just made my calls. Took <5min. Call about tariffs. Call about attacks on the judiciary. Call about Signalgate, Social security, Medicare & Medicaid, museums & libraries, science & public health, due process, free speech, national forests & parks, consumer protections.... Just call.

The self-replicating cellular organization of shoot apical #meristems New #AJB research by Étienne Couturier, @paulallanos.bsky.social, Antoine Lizée, Sébastien Besson & Jacques Dumais bsapubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/... #botany #plantscience #bryophytes #lycophytes #ferns