I'm reviewing abstracts for an upcoming scientific conference, helping the planning team to select which attendees get a chance to present their work. Some are amazingly good. Some suggest that the applicant has not ever been taught how to write an abstract. Here are some basic tips: 🧪

Merry Christmas and Happy New year!! Happy holidayssss......

After a small break we resumed with day 7 of Darwinter 2025. Anuraag presented a 2013 paper about how phages try to evolve as generalists and expand their host range over time, a paper by @lisabono.bsky.social

New in ACS SynBio: led by Dennis Bolshakov, we used the awesome power of yeast to define how expression levels, noise, and sequence program the dynamics of synthetic protein waves, allowing us to genetically encode new cellular timescales stable over generations! pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10....

🗞️ New preprint from the lab, led by our postdoc Ana Garoña (not on here) in collab with @andreagiometto.bsky.social: “Experimental evolution of cellular miniaturization reveals a mechanism for cell size evolution”, aka: “honey, we shrank the yeasts!” 🎥 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Fisher's Fishes, a local yet all India theoretical bio student collective in India has arranged for the IgNobel Talk about the phase behaviour of cacio e pepe sauce. Join in on 17th December at 7 pm IST | 2:30 PM CET | 8 AM EST.

Day 6 of Darwinter 2025. We discussed a preprint by @wcratcliff.bsky.social about costs of germ-soma differentiation, its relation to organismal size and developmental time, and what condition could drive the selection for higher organismal size given somatic cells exist. Presenter:Jyotishko, Intern

It is amazing that @dudinlab.bsky.social beautiful #ExM composition has been selected to highlight our #6mA work for the cover of @natgenet.nature.com. #Protists (and ichthyosporeans in particular) in the cover of NG must be quite unique!

Interested in cell adhesion, evolution of multicellularity, or developing tools for emerging marine models? My lab at UM is hiring a postdoc, and the application is now open: 🔗 tinyurl.com/28jvu4aa If you know anyone looking for a postdoc, please pass this along!

4th day of Darwinter 2025. We discussed a paper by our PI @yashrajchavhan.bsky.social The paper was about how population size can shape trade off dilutions and adaptation to a marginal niche unconstrained by sympatric habitual conditions. Paper was presented by Akash P, an intern in the lab.

3rd day of Darwinter 2025. We discussed a paper on Trait and Plasticity Evolution in mutualistic and competitive interactions. The discussion was moderated by Harini, an IPhD student.

After discussing how multicellularity can be clonal, Aggregative or mixed depending on the salinity levels and starting cell density in C. flexa, we moved forward to understand how metabolic constraints can shape spatial organisation in clusters. Presenter: Anjali B @yashrajchavhan.bsky.social

We have started Darwinter, a winter paper seminar at the Chavhan Lab for Understanding Evolution. Lab members and interns choose a recent interesting work or a seminal paper revolving around the research done in our lab and present it. I started with the C. flexa paper by @thibautbrunet.bsky.social

1/28 New preprint up, which I think is the best theoretical idea I've ever had. We asked a simple question: what are the costs of investment into non-reproductive somatic cells? Turns out these costs decrease with the *logarithm* of organism size! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Some archaea—an ancient group of microorganisms—have an entirely novel genetic code, according to a new study in Science. The findings expand our understanding of how alternative genetic codes evolve and hint at new molecular tools for biotechnology applications. https://scim.ag/4omApQ7

So happy to announce our new preprint, “A geothermal amoeba sets a new upper temperature limit for eukaryotes.” We cultured a novel amoeba from Lassen Volcanic NP (CA, USA) that divides at 63°C (145°F) 🔥 - a new record for euk growth! #protistsonsky 🧵

New preprint from our lab www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...! Andrea Dos Santos and Clément Vulin combine experiments and models showing how adding glucose can strengthen negative interactions between microbial species. This can be used in tandem with antibiotic treatment to inhibit pathogens!

Tony Burnetti and I recorded this super fun podcast in which we rank evolution's craziest adaptations. I think it turned out great! I might make this an exercise for one of my final evolution lectures next time I teach (dynamically rank / debate in class!). www.youtube.com/watch?v=JSum...

#ThursdayThoughts I will never understand the hate theoretical biophysicists have for students with a biology background trying to do theory. "You will never be able to do theory," is something I have heard very often from them.

We just released a new major version of TrackMate (v8), the cell and organelle tracking plugin of Fiji. It ships many new features, detailed below, but that are articulated around the following:

Dang, hard disagree. The best papers to write and read are works of art, not merely a list of data and statements. Don’t let LLMs take this away too, for gods sake.

Interesting cancer grand challenges just announced. Funders looking for interdisciplinary & international teams. I'm an outsider, but fascinated that some of them have clear eco-evo cell-population dynamical component. finance.yahoo.com/news/cancer-... @cancergrand.bsky.social @cancerresearchuk.org

Do you want to #model quantitative trait #evolution? Do you like #SPDEs? Happy to say my first solo author paper, now out in Theoretical Population Biology, is about just this! Check it out here: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... I'm super proud of this y'all :') #scisky 🧪 🧬 #mathsky #physics

What if, instead of sampling hundreds of phages, we could just make the right ones glow? Enter Phage Discovery by Co-culture (Phage DisCo)! Simply, this method combines two strains: a wildtype and a modified strain, each fluorescently tagged. Now, fluorescent signal will mark plaques of interest. 3/

Phages! At the Disco! Here's Ellie (the first author's) thread on our new preprint on how to discover weird new phages using glowing bacteria:

I recently resurrected my website and added a space for me to dump all my harebrained ideas out into the void in case someone else with more free time stumbles upon them and wants a free harebrained idea. Anyway, here's one. magaro.net/cressida/por...

Incredible graphic - the myriad of ways that bacteria defend themselves against antibiotics. 14 resistance mechanisms, summarised by Idan Yelin & Roy Kishony in Cell www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Geometriphylogenetics xkcd.com/3010

Hi #SciSky I am a BS-MS student at IISER Thiruvananthapuram interested in microbial #evolution, evolution of #multicellularity, genome evolution, theoretical evobio and bioinformatics. Currently a student in the lab of @yashrajchavhan.bsky.social to understand more about evolution & multicellularity