When the government cancels your research grant, here’s what you can do The mass cancellation of US federal grants marks yet another escalation in political interference in science, but there are ways to keep crucial research going.

www.nature.com/articles/d41...

BREAKING: Reports that Trump would try to cut NIH's budget by 40% have come true.

The request released moments ago would:
- Cut $18 BILLION to NIH's $47b budget
- Eliminate NIMHD, NCCIH, FIC
- Collapse ICs into five 'focus areas'

There's also a long screed about NIH's deficiencies.

Gene-by-environment Interactions and Adaptive Body Size Variation in Mice From the Americas Abstract. The relationship between genotype and phenotype is often mediated by the environment. Moreover, gene-by-environment (GxE) interactions can contri

@katyamack.bsky.social @phiferrixey.bsky.social et al. studied GxE interactions in wild-derived inbred strains of house mice from N. and S. America, finding strain-specific responses to high-fat diets and widespread condition-specific gene regulation.

🔗 doi.org/10.1093/molb...

#molbio #evobio

Fluctuating reproductive isolation and stable ancestry structure in a fine-scaled mosaic of hybridizing Mimulus monkeyflowers Author summary Hybridization between species can create genetic novelty and promote adaptation, but can also erode species barriers and dilute genetic diversity. Climatic variation likely impacts the ...

My second dissertation chapter is now published in PLOS Genetics! A really fun study in which we examine hybridization dynamics across space and time between monkeyflowers Mimulus guttatus and Mimulus nasutus in the Columbia River Gorge. @plos.org journals.plos.org/plosgenetics...

Newly published in Genetics:
academic.oup.com/genetics/adv...
We ask what gene flow & introgression do to gene coexpression networks. The answer is: a lot.

Substitution load revisited: a high proportion of deaths can be selective Abstract. Haldane's Dilemma refers to the concern that the need for many “selective deaths” to complete a substitution (i.e. selective sweep) creates a spe

Our latest paper revisits Haldane 1957 on speed limits to adaptation, the paper that triggered neutral theory. We clarify and then significantly extend the theory, and apply the resulting model to @mexpositoalonso.bsky.social's data doi.org/10.1093/gene... 1/14

Within-species floral evolution reveals convergence in adaptive walks during incipient pollinator shift - Nature Communications During evolution, how adaptive walks cross fitness valleys remains unclear. This integrative study on monkeyflowers reveals that convergence in large steps (floral color and gene expression) drives a ...

Really excited to say that my lab's paper on color transitions in Mimulus sect. Erythranthe is out! We found that some traits demonstrate evolutionary convergence in phenotype & genotype, while others are divergent, & that - as Bob Vickery found - bees prefer yellow!

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

NIH Grants Fueled $95 Billion In FY 2024 Economic Activity, Finds New Report National Institutes of Health grants generated almost $95 billion in economic activity nationwide in FY 2024 according to a new report by United for Medical Research.

New report shows that NIH grants fueled $95 billion in economic activity and 407,782 jobs in 2024.

That's not to mention the countless lives that biomedical research has saved.

Show me a better investment than that.
www.forbes.com/sites/michae...

Last weekend I wrote a letter to the editor to my hometown newspaper as part of the Sciencehomecoming.com movement.

I will share my letter in this thread, and share my approach to lower the activation energy for y'all to join me.

🧪 #microsky

The Dalton lab with the University of Kansas's Department of Molecular Biology is seeking an assistant researcher with interest in molecular biology, genetics, and rare disease. employment.ku.edu/staff/29537BR #KUjobs #researchjobs #UniversityLabJobs

Have you checked @jpverta.bsky.social latest on PNAS? Great application of functional genomics for studying the regulatory basis of complex traits, like maturation time! doi.org/10.1073/pnas...

I wrote a little commentary about it too! See bellow for link.

Academic Skyers: I am compiling a list of policies and statements from various universities about how they are handling the "pause" in terms of stopping expenditures (or not).

Please respond to this post with your institution and materials.

THANK YOU!

NIH In Your State - United For Medical Research Select a state on the map to see the impact of NIH funding across America.

I just reached out to my senators about the NIH situation. If you need to find out how much impact NIH has in your state in terms of dollars in and their economic impact here's a link: www.unitedformedicalresearch.org/nih-in-your-...

Home

If you planning to apply to graduate school in biology or related fields - but want a gap year to gain more research experience - KU offers two post-baccalaureate programs: NIH funded PREP and NSF RaMP (BioGEM). Both can be found on our website oasisstem.ku.edu - Priority deadline March 1.

Another great paper from the PanAf family, focusing on local adaptaion in chimpanzee populations: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
Fecal samples 💩 and target capture 🧬 (exome) going to another level. So proud to have been part of it, amazing work led by Harrison Ostridge and @aidaandres.bsky.social

If you know anyone who might be interested in working as a technician before a PhD, I'm looking for someone to work with me to generate some amazing data to understand the genetics of behavior, sex differences, and reproduction in an evolutionary context. Bonus? Amazing and supportive department!

Not an entirely surprising result but impressive to see empirically: “most GEA candidates did not exhibit GxE”

Nicolas Svetec, David Begun, and I wrote a review article about de novo genes. If you are interested in this topic please take a look at this final open-access version at AnnualReviews
www.annualreviews.org/content/jour...

Ultrafast classical phylogenetic method beats large protein... Amino acid substitution rate matrices are fundamental to statistical phylogenetics and evolutionary biology. Estimating them typically requires reconstructed trees for massive amounts of aligned...

Large protein language models can learn complex epistatic interactions, but how much does that help with predicting variant effects? In this NeurIPS article, we show that classical independent-sites phylogenetic models can outperform pLMs on this task.
1/7
openreview.net/forum?id=H7m...

Registration for #MWPG24 is now open! There are talk slots and posters available for trainees, so please come and present your work.

docs.google.com/forms/d/1GH2...

📣 Job opportunity: My lab is hiring a postdoc to join us at
at the University of Kansas EEB. We are an evolutionary genomics lab interested in the role gene expression evolution in adaptation & speciation. Details: employment.ku.edu/staff/27747BR Please share widely!

Save the date: the next Gordon Research Conference on Speciation will be March 2-7 2025 in Ventura California. It will be preceded by a Gordon Research Seminae for grad students and postdocs March 1-2

The Mack lab at KU is looking for a technician -- please consider passing on to anyone who might be looking! employment.ku.edu/jobs/staff/a...

It’s finally published!

Work with Bob Holt & Mike Barfield, showing that mixed sexual & asexual reproduction can assist with adaptation to spatially varying environments.

(This was the work I presented at Evolution 2023 this summer in Albuquerque, if you stayed until the end!)

📢 EEB folks: Advertise your programs or open postbac, technician, and grad student positions to SACNAS
attendees!

forms.gle/NWixJBxvjNk8...

SSE, ASN, and SSB will have a booth at the conference and will share these opportunities with attendees.
#ecoevo #botany