My in-laws asked if I wanted to join for mass this year, we usually opt out. I said (respectfully) “I don’t want to make my kids associate Christmas with religion”. The way she looked at me…

If you really listen to the lyrics, a lot of Christmas songs are pretty religious.

My hand holding a shortbread cookie in the shape of an airplane. There are red sprinkles in the pattern of the survivorship bias plane.

A plate of the same cookies.

Does anyone want a survivorship bias shortbread

Aging research - PLOS Explore leading PLOS aging research. Multidisciplinary, open access studies that help us take action to promote health and well-being at every stage of life.

How can multidisciplinary research—from biology to public health—help prevent decline and promote lifelong well-being?

Discover more: plos.io/49A0FTf plos.io/49A0FTf

#AgingResearch #OpenScience #Longevity

Rapid compensatory evolution within a multiprotein complex preserves telomere integrity Intragenomic conflict with selfish genetic elements spurs adaptive changes in subunits of essential multiprotein complexes. Whether and how these adaptive changes disrupt interactions within such comp...

Rapid compensatory evolution within a multiprotein complex preserves telomere integrity www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... @levine-lab.bsky.social very cool work

How do new centromeres evolve while staying compatible with the division machinery?

Discover it in our new Nature paper! We show centromeres transition gradually via a mix of drift, selection, and sex, reaching new states that still work with the kinetochore.

👉 doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-09779-1

𝘐𝘯𝘤𝘦𝘯𝘥𝘪𝘢𝘮𝘰𝘦𝘣𝘢 𝘤𝘢𝘴𝘤𝘢𝘥𝘦𝘯𝘴𝘪𝘴 at 63°C 🔥 sure enough, wheels on fire... and faaast like the ayrton senna of amoebae

Let people live their lives as they want and we'll have a better world

New Assistant Professor: Tenure Track - Fungal Biology/Medical Mycology - Minneapolis, Minnesota job with University of Minnesota - Medical School | 12848307 About the Job: The Department of Microbiology & Immunology and the Institute on Infectious Diseases (UMIID) at the University of Minnesota Medical ...

Fungal friends: The University of Minnesota is hiring a tenure track medical mycologist, with emphasis on emergence of pathogens, genomics and evolution!

www.nature.com/naturecareer...

That’s about right.

Engineered chromatin readers track damaged chromatin dynamics in live cells and animals - Nature Communications DNA damage threatens genome stability, but its dynamics in living systems remain difficult to track. Here, the authors engineer MCPH1-based protein probes that specifically recognize γH2AX, enabling r...

Check out this beautiful paper by @richardcsilva.bsky.social et al., out now in @natcomms.nature.com. Great new DSB sensors to track DNA break formation and repair in real-time
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Spores surviving space

What is the best strategy to win any contest?

Eliminate your opponents of course.

Recently, my friend @fernpizza.bsky.social showed how plasmids compete intracellularly (check out his paper published in Science today!). With @baym.lol, we now know they can fight.

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Intracellular competition shapes plasmid population dynamics From populations of multicellular organisms to selfish genetic elements, conflicts between levels of biological organization are central to evolution. Plasmids are extrachromosomal, self-replicating g...

Hot off the press! Our latest paper led by @fernpizza.bsky.social, understanding how plasmids evolve inside cells. These small, self-replicating DNA circles live inside bacteria and carry antibiotic resistance genes, but also compete with one another to replicate. 1/
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Q & A Interview with Cassandra Extavour, who studies the evolution of the genetic mechanisms employed during early animal embryogenesis to specify cell fate, development, and differentiation at Harvard Univ...

Check out our latest issue where we interview Cassandra Extavour, who studies the evolution of the genetic mechanisms employed during early animal embryogenesis to specify cell fate, development, and differentiation at Harvard University. www.cell.com/current-biol...

Morning.

Speaking of things that are going to need to be fixed:

A bittersweet acceptance: Between a manuscript and grief - the Node I was so excited when I received notification that my first first-author research paper was accepted. My excitement quickly turned into sadness with the realization that my co-PI was not seeing our vi...

A bittersweet acceptance: Between a manuscript and grief

Stefanie Williams @sillysciencelady.bsky.social shares the story behind her paper on the synaptonemal complex, including a tribute to her supervisor Scott Hawley, who passed away while Stefanie was completing the research.

Opening for a tenure-track biology Assistant Professor at the University of Washington's Bothell campus, just northeast of Seattle.

Celebrating 25 years! ✨ Pres. & CSO @planaria1.bsky.social spoke with @kshb41.bsky.social about what 25 years of #discovery means and what he hopes for the next quarter century.

Learn more about #Stowers25: bit.ly/477ywSr

A graphic displaying the Kickstarter exclusive hardcover edition of THE BOOK OF SPORES, available Nov 13 – Dec 4 2025 on Kickstarter.

THE BOOK OF SPORES 🍄 is officially live on Kickstarter—and it funded already in just 50 minutes!

Thank you to everyone who has supported our anthology, and to everyone discovering it for the first time. Excited to share what we've been cooking with you all. 💙📚🪐

www.kickstarter.com/projects/fan...

Here's a big thank you to everyone at NIH who is trying to get everything regarding grants and reviews re-started!!!

Stable hypermutators revealed by the genomic landscape of genes involved in genome stability among yeast species Abstract. Mutator phenotypes are short-lived due to the rapid accumulation of deleterious mutations. Yet, recent observations reveal that certain fungi can

New work led by members of the @rokaslab.bsky.social! ☺️ 1,154 yeast genomes in the Saccharomycotina subphylum were surveyed for their relationship between reduced gene repertoires broadly associated with genome stability functions and elevated evolutionary rates.🧬
academic.oup.com/mbe/advance-...

Thanks for this

Three German universities offering post-docs for researchers "who cannot conduct or continue their work in the USA appropriately because of actual political pressure. "
www.uni-konstanz.de/zukunftskoll...

Investigator Jennifer Gerton presented her groundbreaking chromosome #research at National Academy of Sciences offering new insights into how #DNA fusions shaped human #evolution. 🧬

Learn more about the discovery: bit.ly/4pJxSBw

Dr. Florence Sabin | Immunologist and educator, born #OTD in 1871.

The first woman to hold a full professorship at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine (where she graduated from in 1900) and the first woman elected to the National Academy of Sciences. #WomenInSTEM

Congratulations to all the Democratic candidates who won tonight. It’s a reminder that when we come together around strong, forward-looking leaders who care about the issues that matter, we can win. We’ve still got plenty of work to do, but the future looks a little bit brighter.

this is so cool! I've never seen 𝘚𝘦𝘳𝘳𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘢 like that 👀
#MicroSky

Scripps Research scientists launch new digital clinical trial to test repurposed drug for long COVID symptom relief

We've just launched the first large, site-less (home, direct to participant) randomized trial for treatment of #LongCovid, testing tirzepatide (a GLP-1 drug) vs placebo. Please help spread the word
www.scripps.edu/news-and-eve...