We tend to emphasize the maternal role in development: an egg cell is enormous compared to a sperm cell, and a mother gestates the embryo. But a growing body of research suggests that sperm cells carry more than just genetic information. www.quantamagazine.org/how-dads-fit...

Great coverage of our work on the pelvis: www.harvardmagazine.com/research/har...

SMBE is now on Weixin/WeChat! Stay up-to-date with the latest news, events, and articles published in @molbioevol.bsky.social and @genomebiolevol.bsky.social Follow the @officialSMBE account, or scan the QR code with the app. 🔗 academic.oup.com/smbejournals/pages/wechat #society

This is an important and information rich article. I wondered about the effects by Institute. The table below (which is snipped here but is in the article) has that info. Broken down by # of grants and $ amounts.

We are thrilled to announce the first official release (v0.1.8) of #𝗯𝗲𝗱𝗱𝗲𝗿, the successor to one of our flagship tool, #𝗯𝗲𝗱𝘁𝗼𝗼𝗹𝘀! Based on ideas we conceived of long ago (!), this was achieved thanks to the dedication of Brent Pedersen. 1/n

The Hopkins Lab (hopkins-lab.com) at the University of Florida is looking to recruit a postdoc to work on the genetics of organ function and evolution across Drosophila and beyond. Please visit tinyurl.com/vcsjpmzz or email me for more info. And please RT or send to anyone who might be interested!

On this date, Matthew Shephard died 27 years ago. He was beaten, tortured, and left for dead on fence for being gay. Please keep him and his wonderful mother Judy in your thoughts. And let's all work for a world where such horrific things do not happen to anyone. ❤️🏳️‍🌈

It bears repeating that nearly the entire US enterprise in science and technology has been irreversibly gutted. This is shocking. All this loss has occurred without any real benefit to the average US citizen. Except we now have the biggest, best funded secret police force perhaps ever. Yay for us!

AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH

Happy #RNA Day everyone!!! 🎉🎉🎉 #AUG1st #RNASky

Excited to report that Joy Bergelson (bergelsonlab.org) and I will be running a brand new GRC conference on the Function of Evolving Systems in the summer of 2026. The 2028 one will be chaired by Mikhail Tikhonov (physics.wustl.edu/people/mikha...) and @asanchezlab.bsky.social! Stay tuned!

FlyBase.org release FB2025_03 is live! Go enjoy the refreshed data.

Those who enjoyed the plenary talk from @mollyprz.bsky.social this morning at #SMBE2025 might like to read more about this work in this 2024 @plosbiology.org paper with @natanaels.bsky.social &co: journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...

Symposium 17: Thematic symposium: regulatory genomics and non-coding elements #SMBE2025

My sincere thanks to @official-smbe.bsky.social for the opportunity to share my work at the grad student excellence symposium this week in Beijing ❤️‍🔥

This morning ended with the Graduate Student Excellence Symposium, where our eight awardees presented their great work. 👏 Congratulations to all GSEA recipients! #SMBE2025

Back in plenary at #SMBE2025, and a temporary reprieve from the extreme FOMO induced by parallel sessions. First talk from @dylansosa.bsky.social, looking at evolutionary dynamics of tRNA repertoire & codon usage in young genes (mostly leveraging data from Drosophila spp)

UChicago Ecology & Evolution has arrived at @official-smbe.bsky.social !

Our study on a male-essential microRNA and the evolution of other dosage compensation mechanisms in birds is now out in Nature! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

#SMBE2025 Symposium 7: The Origin, Evolution, and Phenotypic Contributions of New Genes 🔗 smbe2025.scimeeting.cn/en/web/program/25070

I'll be recruiting across all levels for January 2026, so please reach out if you think our work sounds interesting and visit our website for more info (hopkins-lab.com). To borrow @asherleeks.bsky.social line, enthusiasm > past experience.

In a new PNAS paper, Michael Lynch takes apart two attempts to confect "laws" of evolution, both apparently made with the authors not knowing much about evolution. whyevolutionistrue.com/2025/06/13/m...

We have met them already, but when in Beijing, make sure not to miss this amazing set of talks by the winners of the Graduate Student Excellence Award, presented at a dedicated symposium at the start of #SMBE2025. 🙌 Details on the website: smbe2025.scimeeting.cn/en/web/progr...

Flybase lost all of the NIH support overnight - it is a disaster for the community. Please consider donating. I just did! www.philanthropy.cam.ac.uk/give-to-camb...

🧬 Today, we present GSEA winner Dylan Sosa, PhD candidate at the University of Chicago. Dylan investigates the rate, pattern, and mechanisms of transfer RNA gene duplication to understand its propagation and maintenance in D. melanogaster. More on Dylan ⬇️ and follow him: @dylansosa.bsky.social

Excited to see the final version of this paper with @samurscicop.bsky.social and Daniel Matute out in @genomebiolevol.bsky.social! We took a dive into the complicated demographic history of Aedes aegypti mosquitoes and its impact on the distribution of genetic diversity doi.org/10.1093/gbe/...