A star scientist showed that better genetics lessons could reduce racism. It was the death knell for his career
The loss of Brian Donovan’s grants and job speak volumes about federal funding priorities — and academia
www.statnews.com/2026/04/07/b...
I had the opportunity to write a research briefing for Nature, in which I summarized our recent work in African Striped Mice. It’s a short read for anyone who wants a quick overview! www.nature.com/articles/d41...
The first version of FigTree was released nearly 20 years ago and it is still widely used (including by me). But there are currently 85 issues on the GitHub repo (github.com/rambaut/figt...) and some of them I don’t really like the look of.
From our new paper out now in @currentbiology.bsky.social: www.cell.com/current-biol... w/ @neurofishh.bsky.social @gkafetzis.bsky.social @denilsson.bsky.social
Looking across animals, the vertebrate eye is an obvious outlier. Why is it so different that other highly visual animals?
Our paper is now out in Nature:
“Ancient co-option of LTR retrotransposons as yeast centromeres”
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
A short thread on how retrotransposons helped give rise to yeast point centromeres.
1/14
BREAKING: The Department of Education has ended its directive that attempted to restrict diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts in schools nationwide.
This is a victory for academic freedom and education equity.
🧬✨ New 2-part review on the evolution of regulatory DNA (enhancers & promoters)! What started as conversations between Gasper Tkačik @istaresearch.bsky.social and our group @embl.org grew into a broader synthesis.
Preprints here:
Part 1: arxiv.org/abs/2601.19681
Part 2: arxiv.org/abs/2601.21480
Once it became clear that an ICE agent could commit murder in broad daylight with no consequences except the VPOTUS defending him with no heed to the facts and instead vilifying and prosecuting the victim, we opened the door to roving death squads.
But there is no statute of limitations for murder.
If this is what they do to white American citizens in front of everyone, imagine what happens to non-white people behind closed doors.
Alex Pretti was a colleague at the VA. We hired him to recruit for our trial. He became an ICU nurse- I lover working with him. He was a good kind person who lived to help and these fuckers executed him.
White. Hot. Rage.
The commitments in the SAFE Labs Handbook.
A new community-driven lab handbook for reducing conflict and creating more positive and equitable work environments gets strong support from a survey of 200 researchers.
buff.ly/K7CGFLV
"I don’t know why my fellowship was terminated. I suspect that it has something to do with studying a species that doesn’t fit the binary of what we expect to see in nature, with completely different males and females."
@carlzimmer.com profiles my wonderful coauthor @jjinsing.bsky.social Gift link.
Live thread of the NSF biology virtual office hour:
🧵
It's out, Minos transgenesis in the pantry moth by
@donyaniyaz.bsky.social
@lucalivraghi.bsky.social
High efficient, glowing eye and silk gland markers
peerj.com/articles/202...
@peerj.bsky.social
A nudibranch sea slug with two horn like rhinophores, two oral tentacles and a lot of finger like cerata covering its back the body is translucent with highlights of blue, orange and brown
Once again I'm begging people not to compare politicians to invertebrates. Inverts are cool and diverse and play an important ecological role. Politicians are the lower order.
My first paper as a first author is officially out 🎉 @elife.bsky.social
We show that the iridescent colour of Morphos 🦋 tends to converge in sympatry while their chemical signals diverge, illustrating the constrasting effect natural and sexual selection on trait evolution.
doi.org/10.7554/eLif...
What an amazing paper from the Bonasio lab! Domesticated retroviral proteins and RNA-modifying enzymes that regulate RNA loading into and transportation via extracellular vesicles (1/2). www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
50 years ago, King & Wilson published a foundational paper that underlies the cis-regulatory paradigm (CRP) of #DevoEvo #EvoDevo, i.e., that *almost* all morphological evolution is driven by mutations in regulatory elements, rather than proteins, and it all arose from simple misunderstanding 🧪 🧵
Out now on the cover of @journal-evo.bsky.social!
Led by Sarah Khalil, we took a genomic approach to investigate the hybrid zone between different-colored Red-backed Fairywren subspecies. We found some interesting candidate genes under selection. Check it out! academic.oup.com/evolut/advan...
Latest work out today in @currentbiology.bsky.social
We find the fly development gene bicoid is much older than previously thought (~20 million yrs older!) 🪰🧬
To pinpoint its origins we tackled the Diptera phylogeny, providing some resolution (many open questions remain).
🔗 tinyurl.com/2vyuevpy
I still think this #SciComm deserves a #Pulitzer.
#InsectApocalypse
www.reuters.com/graphics/GLO...
So many issues with this new mandatory genetic test for women. World Athletics’ mandatory genetic test for women athletes is misguided. I should know – I discovered the relevant gene in 1990 www.mcri.edu.au/news/insight...
So excited to share this preprint from the Rosin lab in collaboration with the Hawley lab and @eelcotromer.bsky.social on moth spermatogenesis! We investigate the meiotic errors that occur during the formation of apyrene sperm (that have no DNA) in silkworms!
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
My prediction is that in that scenario, he blames the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which puts out employment data. Calls them corrupt, run by Democrats, out to get him. Fires people there, insists their numbers cannot be trusted, White House puts out its own fictitious data to make Trump look good
Our false head work is out! By analysing ~1000 #butterflies, we found many traits at posterior end of hindwings evolved correlatedly, likely forming a trait complex w/adaptive function to dupe predators into thinking these traits together are actual head!!
royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...
As thrilled as I am to share this, it wouldn’t have been possible without other members of @fascinatingpupa.bsky.social lab particularly Sydney Yu (not on Bluesky), a brilliant former undergrad whose honors thesis kicked off this discovery.Super grateful to have had her on this journey! (6/6)
This suggests that fruit fly’s alula may be a reduced vannus, meaning Drosophila wings are just one-third of the ancestral insect wing. To understand how wings evolved into today’s wild diversity, we need to look beyond flies to other broad winged insects like butterflies, moths & more. (5/6)
Knockdown of mirror in fruit fly wings results in the loss of a proximal-posterior lobe called the “alula” – a membranous structure present exclusively in some #Diptera like fruit flies (doi.org/10.1242/dev....). (4/6)
"mirror" is not only expressed in this posterior region of the wing disc, but #CRISPR knockouts result in mosaics where the vannus is entirely lost or partially reduced accompanied by vein anomalies and the spread of color patterns! (3/6)
The posterior part of wings in broad winged insects like butterflies has a lobe like region called “vannus” which is bordered by the anal (2A) vein. Across butterfly families, the vannus is usually characterized by distinct silver scales and devoid of color patterns like the rest of the wing. (2/6)
