New paper 🧵 What if the "landscape" that guides cell differentiation isn't fixed, but is sculpted, in real time, by the very cells moving through it? We call this a 'sandscape' : grains of sand that carve dunes as they move, while the dunes' shape simultaneously steers where the grains go next.

1. A bit of evolutionary biology. I'm really intrigued by a new perspective piece from Steve Frank that explores connections between how natural selection creates systems that generalize and recent work in machine learning about the surprising capabilities of massively overparameterized systems.

Models trained with noisy genomes extend bacterial phenotype prediction into deep time https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.06.29.735159v1

Our paper is out! 📣 we find that molecular measures of genetic variation do not predict heritable genetic variation across species - important implications for the application of genomic data for conservation! www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Thanks to a couple of recent Ws on the funding front, we have 3 open postdoc positions in Helsinki, Finland in the field of salmonid fish ecological and evolutionary genomics. DL 7.8. More details in advert: jobs.helsinki.fi/job/Helsinki...

Every 3D tissue is a map waiting to be drawn. Flatten a curved tissue, follow how it deforms, find its hidden axis, or measure its shape to explain how it moves: it's all cartography!

How are two embryos alike? As we collect spatio-temporal microscopy data, we want to quantify variability in the timing of key developmental events. Alignment of multiple recordings is a core engineering challenge here and we suggest a solution; read about it: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Sharing our new paper, led by Dominic Devlin, now in Shuji Ishihara’s group at UTokyo. We show that 𝗺𝗼𝗿𝗽𝗵𝗼𝗴𝗲𝗻𝗲𝘁𝗶𝗰 𝗿𝗲𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗱𝘂𝗰𝗶𝗯𝗶𝗹𝗶𝘁𝘆 can evolve as a by-product of complex morphogenesis, even without direct selection for reproducibility. doi.org/10.1371/jour...

Looking forward to it! Full program here! 👇 www.evodevoconference26.com/program

☕ @nicolettapetridou.bsky.social & co report a feedback loop between Nodal signaling and tissue phase transitions in zebrafish #embryos. Nodal alters adhesion, triggering tissue rigidification and reduced porosity, which limits its diffusion and speeds up Lefty expression. go.nature.com/4vgBYmo

Indeterminism and the physics of open neural dynamics www.cell.com/trends-open/... - the brain is not a deterministic system

A study in @nature.com shows that while complex traits are polygenic in population at large, they have distinct architecture at tails, where rare variants of large effect act as key drivers. Not a surprising finding but neat to see it demonstrated in large UK Biobank cohort across traits & methods.🧪

I am genuinely humbled by the kind words from the first readers of my book! The 📗 is fully #openaccess, made possible by the generosity of libraries worldwide and @mitpress.bsky.social's D2O program: direct.mit.edu/books/oa-mon... Please help spread the word! #booksky #philsci #philsky #histsci

𝗠𝗮𝗷𝗼𝗿 𝗱𝗲𝗽𝗿𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗿𝗼𝘂𝗴𝗵 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗹𝗲𝗻𝘀 𝗼𝗳 circuit 𝗱𝘆𝗻𝗮𝗺𝗶𝗰𝘀 Finally research is considering the functional/ anatomical complexity of the brain. It's not about regions, but how circuits function dynamically. www.cell.com/neuron/abstr... #neuroskyence

New Pre-Print Alert! Evolving initial conditions: an alternative developmental route to morphological diversity with Shannon Taylor and @jamesehammond.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

🚨 Why can’t mammals regenerate limbs like frog tadpoles or salamanders? In our new paper in @science.org , we show that species-specific oxygen sensing acts as a gatekeeper for initiating limb regeneration 🐭🐸 🔗 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... #EvoDevo

Zebrafish finds Nemo. New paper with our great collaborators on gap junctional communication in widely divergent species. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Our work as Editor's choice in @evolletters.bsky.social !✨️ Developmental biases & micro- to macroevution in the lizard skull 🦎 academic.oup.com/evlett/advan...

Impacts of genome architecture on the repeatability of polygenic adaptation https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.03.26.714499v1

Predicting the effect of a #mutation on #fitness is hard. @oliviamghosh.bsky.social @petrovadmitri.bsky.social &co use fitness effects of adaptive yeast mutants to show that underlying genotype-phenotype-fitness maps are low-dimensional but context-dependent @plosbiology.org 🧪 plos.io/4dLy2Ez

🚨 We're hiring! Postdoctoral positions in modeling of development and evolution at @stockholm-uni.bsky.social & @scilifelab.se Focus: dynamical systems, time-series, phylogenetics, dimensionality reduction 📍 Stockholm 🕒 2+1 years 🔍 Details: su.varbi.com/en/what:job/... Please share!

Our study on shape diversity in cnidarians is now published. The final version includes extensive new data that substantially extend the original bioRxiv preprint. Congrats to everyone who contributed to this work! www.cell.com/cell/fulltex... @embl.org

An Empirical Bayes approach for the study of phenotypic evolution from high-dimensional data https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.03.13.711658v1

Happy to share a new preprint from my PhD thesis! “A novel framework for expanding RNNs with biophysical detail to solve cognitive tasks” 🧠💻 📝 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... @jonescompneurolab.bsky.social

This is why we love #CalciumSignaling Look how mechanical damage triggers long range Ca2+ waves in this plant !! By @annalisabellandi.bsky.social, who is now around here ;) Full www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... @science.org #microscopy #cell #mechanobiology 🧪🔬

PhD student Ouyang Xuan is going to present our work using representation learning to map developmental flow in morphological landscape: Mon Mar 16 3:30pm 'Morphogenesis' @apsdsoft.bsky.social @aps-dbio.bsky.social Check it out! #APSGlobalSummit2026

Evolutionary dynamics under phenotypic uncertainty https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.03.15.711953v1

How does development shape the variation evolution can act on? In our new paper in @pnas.org , we bridge developmental dynamics and quantitative genetics, linking dynamical models of phenotype formation with the statistical parameters used to study evolutionary change www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

(1/2) To study #SeasonalAdaptation, @mafaldaferreira.bsky.social (SciLifeLab / @stockholm-uni.bsky.social) do #fieldwork in remote parts of the world, measure color of specimens in museum collections and work in the wet lab and do computational work. ↓ 🖥️🧬🧪🌍 youtu.be/llCvotNH5to

I’m so excited to announce our new paper in @journal-evo.bsky.social showing how embryology can help us determine ancestral character states in temporal niche academic.oup.com/evolut/advan... Collab w/ A Bauer, A Wegerski, @tonygamble.bsky.social, & A Rasys #GeckoEvoDevo #Aristelliger 1/x

New Perspective form Rory Maizels & me: "Gene regulatory networks: from correlative models to causal explanations" Gene regulatory networks are supposed to give us mechanistic explanations of development, so why are we drowning in 'hairballs' of statistical correlations? rdcu.be/e7zx7

Curious about the origin of development during the transition to multicellularity? A very belated preprint alert: bit.ly/4rr2mHU Reproduction emerges from ecological interactions at the onset of multicellularity. A short 🧵 with lots of videos...

🚨 We're hiring! Postdoctoral positions in modeling of development and evolution at @stockholm-uni.bsky.social & @scilifelab.se Focus: dynamical systems, time-series, phylogenetics, dimensionality reduction 📍 Stockholm 🕒 2+1 years 🔍 Details: su.varbi.com/en/what:job/... Please share!

ENDOWED PROFESSORSHIP IN HISTORY OF SCIENCE My home department at Uppsala University is advertising an endowed professorship in the history of science. This is the best position in the field in Sweden, and probably in all of Scandinavia. Apply before 30 April 2026. www.uu.se/en/about-uu/...

How does development affect the evolutionary process? Join our symposium at www.evodevoconference26.com in Glasgow this June. We have a strong lineup of invited speakers, chaired by me and @milocco.bsky.social Submit your abstract before Thursday! ⏰

This looks like it might be particularly interesting to folks in #hpbio e.g. interested in niche concepts or some of Lewontin's arguments. "Birds That Don't Exist: Niche Pre-­Emption as a Constraint on Morphological Evolution in the Passeroidea" by Chia et al. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

Can we simulate realistic evolutionary trajectories and “replay the tape of life”? In this work, we propose a flexible, generalizable deep learning framework for modeling how the entire protein sequence evolves over time while capturing complex interactions across sites. 1/n doi.org/10.64898/202...

Collect #NeuralCrest Cells for #SingleCell #RNAseq from any vertebrate. Our new paper, present an antibody-guided #FACS method to collect NCCs. No trans-genesis or in ovo manipulation required. Demonstrated in wall #lizard #embryos using #microscopy, #RTqPCR and #scRNAseq. doi.org/10.1111/ede....

Tom Van Dooren and I are organising a symposium on "Advances in theoretical evo-devo" at the next Euro Evo Devo meeting in Glasgow. Invited speakers: @n-martin.bsky.social, Nayely Vélez-Cruz, Thomas Hansen & Günter Wagner. Consider submitting an abstract, now open! www.evodevoconference26.com

From Pankaj’s Mehta group www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... “Our findings highlight the need for rigorous benchmarking and suggest that the biology of cell identity can be captured by simple linear representations of single cell gene expression data.” 🔥🔥🔥

Morphological innovation without gene co-option: the Drosophila sex comb evolved via changes in developmental tempo and energy metabolism https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.02.13.705815v1

Existence of Causation without Correlation in Transcriptional Networks https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.02.09.704821v1

How does development shape skull evolution? In lizards, neural crest–derived skull bones drive rapid sexually selected shape change within species but show long-term constraint, revealing developmental bias linking micro- and macroevolution. Image Credit: Wikimedia academic.oup.com/evlett/advan...

"Gene Expression Noise in Development: Genome-wide Dynamics" by Hendrik Marks & colleagues FREE till March 3rd at authors.elsevier.com/a/1mQwocQbJF...

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...

"Choosing problems is the primary determinant of what one accomplishes in science." 'Now What?' by Nobel Laureate John Hopfield should be required reading for aspiring scientists. pni.princeton.edu/document/1136

I'm excited to share that our preprint is now available on bioRxiv! Our study challenges the widespread use of molecular genetic diversity as a predictor adaptive potential, with important implications for how genetic data is used to inform conservation decisions. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Throughout this work, we found it really helpful to organize our thinking along 'Marr's three levels of analysis': 1. the computational problem 2. the algorithmic solution 3. biophysical implementation Check out our review laying out this conceptual framework here: buff.ly/NE4JEOA

And here is the PDF of the 4th course @college-de-france.fr. You will find the justification and presentation of geometric representation of cell decisions, a parsimonious mathematical model for signalling and cell state transitions tinyurl.com/yc7u296j

Interested in fossils, evo-devo, and how mathematical modeling can help us understand the evolution of developmental processes? In our latest preprint, we uncover an ancestral lateral inhibition mechanism underlying epidermal patterning in liverworts.