Excited to announce a speedy new multiple-sequence alignment trimming software, led by Giorgio Bianchini: academic.oup.com/mbe/advance-...

AliFilter aims to replicate manual trimming through learnt features, make your own model!

Tutorial and docs here: github.com/arklumpus/Al...

#phylogenetics

📣 The Whelan lab is hiring a bioinformatics postdoc 📣

Together with @fabricejpierre.bsky.social, we are offering a 1-year bioinformatic PDRA position in comparative genomics of Pseudomonas aeruginosa. To find out more please visit whelanlab.co.uk/contact/. Applications close 3 April 2026!

The Palaeontological Association has written to the President of the University of Leicester, requesting that the concerns of the PhD community over the planned redundancy of their supervisors are addressed.
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LACA is quite commonly used for the Last Archaeal Common Ancestor!

Screening, sorting, and the feedback cycles that imperil peer review The process of peer review is vital to contemporary science, but is also under enormous strain. This study uses mathematical models to dissect the threats to the long-term viability of peer review, su...

1. Kevin Gross and I have a new paper out today PLOS Biology.

We used economic models based around screening games and the market for unpaid labor to highlight a meltdown cycle threatening peer review.

Postdoctoral Research Associate - Grade 7 at University of Liverpool An opportunity for an academic position as a Postdoctoral Research Associate - Grade 7 is available, as advertised on jobs.ac.uk. Apply now and explore other academic job openings.

Last day to apply to come work with me on developing AI approaches to understanding pangenome evolution www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DOU184/p...

Yes, here now but looking for somewhere to live! I should hopefully be around in November, let's chat! I'll DM you

Excited to announce I have officially joined the University of Barcelona for my Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions fellowship! I'll be working with Jesus Lozano Fernandez in the DeepEvo lab at the @geneticsub.bsky.social, on various deep nodes in the tree of life!

The prokaryotic origins of the COMMD protein family involved in eukaryotic membrane trafficking The ten eukaryotic COMMD proteins are core components of the Commander complex, with central roles in endosomal membrane trafficking and signalling. Each protein has an α-helical N-terminal (HN) domai...

🧵In collaboration with Caroline Puente-Lelievre, Ed Moody, Rosie Cater, and Tom Williams we just submitted a new paper describing the prokaryotic origins of the COMMD protein family. @cpuentelelievre.bsky.social‬, ‪@rosemaryjcater.bsky.social‬. @kmichie.bsky.social‬. 1/n

Congratulations!

Archaea produce peptidoglycan hydrolases that kill bacteria Archaea regularly interact with bacteria but reports of archaea killing bacteria are very rare. This study shows that many archaea encode peptidoglycan hydrolases, which specifically target bacterial ...

This first-author publication is my… first! Archaea kill bacteria by targeting their Achilles’ heel: peptidoglycan. Big shoutout to @ahocher.bsky.social‬, @valeriesoo.bsky.social‬, Pauline Misson, @tobiaswarnecke.bsky.social‬ and MRC LMS Proteomics. A thread 🔽
journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...

Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences: Vol 380, No 1931

The proceedings volume from our Nov24 meeting on the evolution of biospheres is just in PhilTransB @royalsocietypublishing.org delivering insights into how our biosphere evolved - and how other biospheres may evolve

Using gene tree-species tree reconcilation, molecular clocks and metabolic pathway analysis to infer with a fully dated and metabolated 😎 tree of life! Our results seems to suggest fairly rapid evolution of the total metabolic network, with a more gradual increase towards the present (2/2)

The emergence of metabolisms through Earth history and implications for biospheric evolution | Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences We investigate the evolution of microbial metabolisms from the last universal common ancestor to the extant biota through comparative phylogenomics, reconciling the evolution of the genes that underpi...

Very happy to announce our new paper on the evolution of metabolism is out now! royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...

With @tweethinking.bsky.social @sabifo4.bsky.social @ssolo.bsky.social Davide Pisani, Tim Lenton and @phil-donoghue.bsky.social

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New lease of life: Dead Zoo Lab brings back beloved Natural History Museum collection Collins Barracks is displaying about 1,300 objects while original Merrion Street location undergoes refurbishment

Great to see some nice news articles out about the new display we've been working on @dublindeadzoo.bsky.social ! 🦓🐢🐇🦥🦇

www.irishtimes.com/ireland/dubl...

Identification of a VPS29 isoform with restricted association to Retriever and Retromer accessory proteins through autoinhibition | PNAS The endosomal–lysosomal network is a hub of organelles that orchestrate the dynamic sorting of hundreds of integral membrane proteins to maintain c...

Our paper on VPS29 is out now! Pleased to have been part of the team: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

(1/14) ¿Has probado alguna vez a trazar tu árbol genealógico? Es un ejercicio interesante para entender tus raíces, a pesar de que se complica cuantas más generaciones atrás intentas llegar…

Imagínate un árbol así, pero a escala de toda la vida en la Tierra. #HiloDivulgación

Distinct evolutionary trajectories of two integration centres, the central complex and mushroom bodies, across Heliconiini butterflies Neural circuits have evolved to produce cognitive processes that facilitate a species variable behavioural repertoire. Underlying this variation are evolutionary forces, such as selection, that operat...

Really happy to share our new preprint on the central complex of Heliconiini butterflies www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1.... Check it out!
@neuroethology.org @brainevolutionnews.bsky.social @prelights.bsky.social @tibbe-evolneuro.bsky.social #brainevolution #heliconius #centralcomplex

Not there yet, but in a few months!

Congratulations man! Well deserved!

Pour-over coffee: Mixing by a water jet impinging on a granular bed with avalanche dynamics Coffee is one of the most consumed beverages in the world. However, issues such as climate change threaten the growth of the temperature-sensitive Coffea arabic

☕🌊 Coffee too weak? Pour more slowly

A new study found that even a gentle water jet creates avalanches in coffee grounds, boosting mixing and extraction.

Slower pours = stronger brews with less coffee.

🔗 doi.org/10.1063/5.02...

#Coffee #SciComm 🧪

Not really my announcement to make--I am but a lesser co-author--but IQ-TREE 3 has just been released!

(Most credit to Minh Bui and @roblanfear.bsky.social and their labs)

ecoevorxiv.org/repository/v...

Actinotroch larva of a phoronid worm with phalloidin shown in yellow and acetylated tubulin in magenta. Imaged with a Zeiss LSM 800 at 10 x magnification

Featured image with Allan Carrillo-Baltodano

This is an image of a larva of a phoronid worm. To swim, the larva propels itself using cilia 💃

Find out about @allancarbal.bsky.social and his #EvoDevo research on marine annelids:
thenode.biologists.com/featured-ima...

Congratulations!

X’s dominance ‘over’ as Bluesky becomes new hub for research Data indicates more scholars turning to alternative social media site to post about their work after Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover

'Bluesky has overtaken its flailing rival X in hosting posts related to new academic research, indicating the platform is fast becoming the go-to place for scholars to share their work.'

A geological timescale for bacterial evolution and oxygen adaptation Microbial life has dominated Earth’s history but left a sparse fossil record, greatly hindering our understanding of evolution in deep time. However, bacterial metabolism has left signatures in the ge...

Ecstatic to have played a small part in this, we find that the first aerobes predate the GOE by almost a billion years! Photosynthesis implications

Lead by Adrián Davín, @benjwoodcroft.bsky.social @xrefugee13.bsky.social @tweethinking.bsky.social @ssolo.bsky.social

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Eukaryotes' closest relatives are internally simple syntrophic archaea Eukaryotes are theorized to have originated from an archaeal phylum Promethearchaeota (formerly 'Asgard' archaea)1,2. The first cultured representatives revealed valuable insight3,4 but are distantly ...

New isolates from eukaryote's closest archaeal relative: ‘Hodarchaeales’!! Syntrophic microaerotolerant peptide-degrading anaerobic archaea w/ simple cell structure & protrusions. Features conserved across the phylum provide new insight into our ancestor’s biology!
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

VIBE Research Lab Viral Informatics, Biostatistics, and Evolution Research Lab at the CVR, University of Glasgow

Three-year postdoc in computational evolutionary biology at the University of Glasgow. Ideal for PhD holders in bioinformatics. Applications close on March 18, 2025. More info: https://vibelab.co.uk/ #postdoc

Job Alert: Senior Research Associate in Phylogenomics @bristolpalaeo.bsky.social researching timing, sequence and phenotypic consequences of rediploidisation following whole genome duplication - comparative genomics, molecular clock and phenotypic disparity methods, with @jameswclark.bsky.social

Job announcement: a four-year postdoc position in phylogenomics at the Milner Centre for Evolution, Bath, with James Clark and me (I'm moving to Bath later in the year...). www.bath.ac.uk/jobs/Vacancy...