U.S. court orders NIH to restore killed grants to California researchers. https://scim.ag/46xy9hY

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!

Yesterday the Supreme Court issued a convoluted, 36-page emergency order about NIH grant terminations. Two main takeaways: -$2 billion (not the government # of $780 million) in NIH grants will likely be re-terminated -future legal challenges will be much harder w/ @maxkozlov.bsky.social:

AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH

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

Riffis, Saclier & @nicolasgaltier.bsky.social analyzed coding sequences in murine rodents, finding that GC-biased gene conversion episodes caused deleterious AT→GC substitutions, followed by rapid compensatory evolution. 🔗 doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msaf168 #evobio #molbio

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/...