It’s an RNA world. RNA is posited to be the first genetic material, arising 4 billion years ago. It can store information and act as an enzyme. Eventually, it duplicated its information into a more stable form, DNA.

I have two small closed microcosms at home that have already experienced several collapses. My mistake—I left them in the dark more than once, triggering major shifts. And yet, they persist, after two years: algae, small protozoa, and unseen bacteria continue to thrive.

Noise is key to evolution; entropy is key to metabolism. We have to stop pretending that biology fights against these things rather than relying on them!

Can randomness drive the evolution of microbiomes? In this paper, a new eco-evolutionary framework shows that environmental fluctuations can trigger host-level selection. Stochastic assembly isn’t noise: it’s the key. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... @andreatabi.bsky.social @vmaull.bsky.social

The puzzle of time remains one of the most persistent obstacles to a unified theory of physics

Podem predir el futur mitjançant les matemàtiques? Què ens diu la teoria del caos? Quins són els límits de la nostra capacitat de predir la complexitat? Parlarem amb Doyne Farmer, un dels pares de la teoria, i amb la matemàtica Eva Miranda @evamirandag.bsky.social museuciencies.cat/activitats/2...

Could life have begun with simpler molecules than we once thought? A new paper in @science.org by @edogia.bsky.social shows that a tiny RNA catalyst can self-replicate itself, suggesting that life may have been easier to emerge than expected. Getting closer. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

What if we had a Rosetta Stone for brain oscillations—one framework to translate between models and scales? In this paper lead by F Castaldo and @ruffini.bsky.social they build a simple, systematic ladder of neural mass models showing how diverse formalisms connect arxiv.org/pdf/2512.10982

“A bird with a 10-gram brain is doing pretty much the same as a chimp with a 400-gram brain,” said Onur Güntürkün, who studies brain structures at Ruhr University Bochum in Germany. “How is it possible?”

How do you grow a thousand-year-old tree without waiting a thousand years? As @interspecies.agency writes, ecologists are trying to build a kind of time machine, making younger trees acquire in decades the ecological richness that normally takes centuries. www.noemamag.com/how-to-build...

Can we engineer cognition in aneural systems? What are the challenges and implications? Can synthetic biology be used to interrogate basal cognition? Our new paper with @jordiplam.bsky.social explores these questions using models of minimal gene circuits. Available here pubs.acs.org/doi/pdf/10.1...

My student @jordiplam.bsky.social just received an invitation from what appears to be a predatory journal. The prose is remarkable: part delirious flattery, part Victorian novel, and entirely committed to ensuring that the only conceivable reply is “yes.”

This is the entrance of one of the old buildings near my home in Barcelona. I can’t help thinking the architect might have been a fan of George Boole: just look at the pattern of zeros and ones in the columns. And the doors even remind me of a robot face… Low Kolmogorov complexity though.

Why did consciousness evolve at all? A superb special issue of @royalsocietypublishing.org brings together experts across disciplines to explore the functions of consciousness and why it emerged in some species but not others. @tecumsehfitch.bsky.social royalsocietypublishing.org/rstb/issue/3...

Could the logic of life be shaped by the architecture of biological circuitry? In this paper, @manlius.bsky.social shows how genetic, metabolic, and social networks can govern slow evolutionary dynamics in a unified nonequilibrium framework. iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1...

Excited to share a new PhD thesis from my student and soon Dr @vmaull.bsky.social on synthetic ecosystems, preventing tipping points, and a new concept: emergent bioengineering. Very proud of this achievement, and thankful to @sfiscience.bsky.social, where many of these ideas came to life.

What causes tipping points in complex microbial ecosystems? Check this @pnas.org paper by @thilogross.bsky.social showing that cross-feeding networks create strong interdependencies & small structural changes can trigger abrupt collapses. @akhilesh-nandan.bsky.social www.pnas.org/doi/epdf/10....

From death comes diversity! 🦠🧪🌐🌏 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Glad and excited to talk about "Cognition Spaces: : from individual to collective brains" at the @maxplanck.de Max Planck Institute and discuss about new projects on neuroscience of basal cognition (and beyond) with my dear colleague Aneta Koseska @koseskalab.bsky.social mpinb.mpg.de/en/events/ev...

After reading his previous books (especially Other Minds) I was really looking forward to @petergs.bsky.social new one, and it does not disappoint. A great journey through the evolution of life & cognition and how they have shaped our biosphere. Must-read @brigan.bsky.social @jordiplam.bsky.social

Consciousness researchers studying “islands of awareness” have found that disconnected brains likely sink into a strange form of deep sleep

What kinds of cognitions are possible? Are there discrete classes of cognition? Here's our new paper with @brigan.bsky.social @jordiplam.bsky.social @mitibennett.bsky.social @mkhochb.bsky.social and @drmichaellevin.bsky.social arxiv.org/abs/2601.12837 We explore basal, neural and human-AI spaces.

“I once spoke to someone who had survived the genocide in Rwanda, and she said to me that there was now nobody left on the face of the earth, either friend or relative, who knew who she was… Genocide means not just mass killing, but mass obliteration to the verge of extinction…” Christopher Hitchens

"If we ruin the earth, there is no place else to go” ― Carl Sagan

Lancet study finds “no evidence” that Tylenol use in pregnancy increases the risk of autism, ADHD, or intellectual disability, despite claims by Trump and backers

Com s’origina i evoluciona el temps mental al cervell humà? Com es construeixen la memòria i el futur? Com es deteriora en l’Alzheimer? Què ens diu l’art de les coves sobre la ment? Vine a la nostra expo “La invenció del temps” @ibe-barcelona.bsky.social @melisupf.bsky.social @museuciencies.cat

Can we ever truly understand animal languages—and even communicate with other species? Recent advances in artificial intelligence, especially large language models, have reignited the belief that this dream may soon be within reach. www.cell.com/current-biol... @odedrechavi.bsky.social

Holy hell, what an obituary

El temps existeix? El podem observar, mesurar o definir amb claredat? “La màgia del temps” és una conferència de @jordicami.bsky.social que convida a qüestionar què entenem realment per temps @melisupf.bsky.social @museuciencies.cathttps://museuciencies.cat/activitats/2026-01-22_conversesnat/

What if animals emerged by installing a new biological operating system that repurposed what already existed, much like the rise of the smartphone? Here's our new paper in @embojournal.org @ibe-barcelona.bsky.social @melisupf.bsky.social @sfiscience.bsky.social link.springer.com/article/10.1...

“You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.” — Ray Bradbury. In the name of their freedom, autocrats have always treated books as enemies. This documentary is well worth watching: www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ykll...

🔄 New study reveals how cooperation between species could sustain more diverse and resilient ecosystems The study has developed a comprehensive mathematical theory in which, for the first time, cooperation is essential to explaining how ecosystems are organized and maintained. 👉 tuit.cat/UiNyq

After reading the wonderful "The Idea of the Brain" by @matthewcobb.bsky.social, I was eagerly anticipating his new book, a biography of Francis Crick. It’s finally here, and it looks terrific.

Que és el temps? Una qüestió fonamental de la que ens parlarà la investigadora @gemmadlc.bsky.social sky.social sobre les lliçons sorprenents de la física quant a la seva naturalesa @esfcatalunya.bsky.social @icreacommunity.bsky.social ajuntament.barcelona.cat/biblioteques @museuciencies.cat

Is there a mathematics of discontinuous behavior? Christopher Zeeman was a leading proponent of Catastrophe Theory, a topological approach to sudden change that underpins much of today’s work on tipping points. This is his beautiful 1976 paper in @sciam.bsky.social www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/2...

Why does life explore so few of the forms it could possibly take? Using fractal descriptors, this #scienceadvances paper shows that Earth’s biosphere clusters around simple shapes, reflecting deep evolutionary constraints. @artemyte.bsky.social @manlius.bsky.social www.science.org/doi/pdf/10.1...

Can a single mathematical edxpression capture the whole spectrum of shapes that can exist? An attempt towards the "super formula" was made in this paper by Johan Gielis, revealing a novel and powerful way to study universal natural forms & phenomena. @manlius.bsky.social @jordipinero.bsky.social

We often think of our genes as the script of our fate. But genes are not the whole story. www.quantamagazine.org/how-metaboli...

How much can we say about the complexity of brains and minds from low-scale, molecular and sub-cellular events? Here's my drawing of Cajal's Demon, an entity that tries to do that @manlius.bsky.social @lmprida.bsky.social @mkhochb.bsky.social @drmichaellevin.bsky.social @wiringthebrain.bsky.social

Afternoon walk with my kids in a cold Barcelona day.

Netflix’s Stranger Things is more interesting: it leans on Einstein instead. I’ll let myself be a bit more speculative than usual and ask a simple question: if the Upside Down had to obey physics, what would it have to be? Happy 2026! 👉 open.substack.com/pub/manlius/...

Rod Taylor—star of The Time Machine movie—had his nephew visit Barcelona this Christmas, where he discovered our time machine at "The Invention of Time" exhibition at #CentreMartorell. “It’s the most beautiful one in existence.” Come see it and travel with us! museuciencies.cat/exposicio_te...

This is how the Andromeda galaxy would appear at night if it were not obscured by interstellar dust. It’s hard not to wonder how this might have shaped human history: the realization that we live in one galaxy among many could have emerged millennia earlier, changing everything @manlius.bsky.social

In the mid-19th century, Bernhard Riemann conceived of a new way to think about mathematical spaces, providing the foundation for modern geometry and physics. www.wired.com/story/behold...

With more than 400,000 homes destroyed in the war, Gazans are being forced to choose between living in tents exposed to the elements or run the risk of living inside the ruins of buildings that could collapse any minute. https://cnn.it/4qfJrj4

Are bacterial spores some kind of travelling neurons? In this @science.org paper the authors show that B. subtilis spores can integrate environmental signals over time and remember transient nutrient pulses. @koseskalab.bsky.social @drmichaellevin.bsky.social www.kaitokikuchi.com/assets/pdf/K...

How did organs originated in the evolution of multicellularity? Despite their obvious importance, we still lack a theory of evolutionary organogenesis. Here's a @cp-trendsecolevo.bsky.social paper on how the placenta can offer answers @multicellgenome.bsky.social www.researchgate.net/profile/Oliv...

A balance of infection and harmony called endosymbiosis helps shape evolution. For the first time, biologists have reproduced this arrangement between microbes in a lab.