New preprint from the lab. This has been a looong project -- checking how well do genome features (conservation, transcription, epigen, population var, repeats, sequence stats, etc) discriminate coding & noncoding genes from the genomic background.
Figure showing the evolutionary diversification of Lepidopteran larval appendages.
Really excellent paper on the genetics of caterpillar butt ornaments
journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...
For those interested, the papers associated with my talk:
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39146405/
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41699381/
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36735790/
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36050399/
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41763210/
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31454312/
In this new work we show that planarians establish long-lasting and heritable small RNA–based gene regulatory states despite lacking canonical RNA-dependent RNA polymerases and nuclear RNAi machinery.
NEW: Wikipedia editors have implemented new policies and restricted a number of contributors who were paid to use AI to translate existing Wikipedia articles into other languages after they discovered these AI translations added AI “hallucinations,” or errors, to the resulting article.
In addition to promoting entertainment, X's feed algorithm tends to push more conservative content to users' feeds. Seven weeks of exposure to such content in 2023 shifted users' political opinions in a more conservative direction, particularly with regard to policy priorities, perceptions of the criminal investigations into Trump and views on the war in Ukraine. The effect is asymmetric: switching the algorithm on influenced political views, but switching it off did not reverse users' perspectives on policy priorities or current political issues.
We show that exposure to algorithmically curated content led users to follow conservative activist accounts. In contrast, when the algorithmic feed was switched off, users continued to follow the accounts they had engaged with previously. This indicates that exposure to feed algorithms has a lasting impact on users' feeds and their political attitudes.
This is a very interesting new paper in Nature about the role that feed algorithms on X play in influencing political attitudes.
No paywall: www.nature.com/articles/s41...
How could a simple self-replicating system emerge at the origins of life? RNA polymerase ribozymes can replicate RNA, but existing ones are so large that their self-replication seems impossible. Could they be smaller?
Excited to share our latest work in @science.org on a new small polymerase.
1/n
At the top, a participant of the Mascara Festival smiles while wearing traditional attire. In the bottom, people smiling and dancing during the Sandurot Festival. Text says: Happy 25th birthday, Wikipedia!
Twenty-five years ago, Wikipedia was an unlikely idea: a place where anyone could share free knowledge.
Today, it’s one of the most visited sites on Earth, not powered by corporate ads, but by people.
Best explanation of the liar's dividend that I've ever seen.
It’s insulting to tell 🇨🇦 scientists we need international scientists to run to our rescue & ensure innovation.
🇨🇦 scientists have exceeded expectations with paltry funding. If the gov funded Tricouncil > & sustainably; imagine how innovative we’d already be!! /End
Canadian researchers should be aware the there is a motion before the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Science and Research to force Tricouncils to hand over disaggregated peer review data on all applications:
Applicant names, profiles, demographics
Reviewers names, profiles, comments, and scores
We have a new preprint for you. Naked mole rats are very long-lived rodents and have increased translational fidelity.
Interestingly, 28S ribosomal RNA is split. Here we investigated the structure of the ribosome by single particle cryo-EM. Take a look.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
To use it like this is to teach children that a statistical composite is better than their own imagination.
It is morally wrong on that basis alone, before you even get to all the harm required to produce it
Chemists call for ban on generative AI for chemical structures: "serious errors could damag[e] the next generation of scientists"
As ever, the problem seems to be not AI but lazy application of it and lack of checks. Whether _that_ problem is solvable...
www.chemistryworld.com/news/the-che...
RNA3DB 2025-10-01 release
github.com/marcellszi/r...
#RNA #RNAsky
The database of all RNA chains in PDB arranged in structurally disimilar components, including Rfam annotation.
More chains (25,666), more independent components (144), more Rfam families represented (853).
“The transformation is astonishing. [Paris] has quietly—& quickly—become one of the most bike-friendly cities in the world. What started as a series of emergency “coronapistes” or pop-up bike lanes, built during the pandemic has evolved into a permanent bike network spanning hundreds of kilometres.”
This is the lie at the center of the "demographic crisis" framing. In the US, per worker productivity has tripled since the 1960s. But instead of increasing compensation or various forms of dependent care, this **enormous** new surplus goes to private profits, asset inflation, and rent extraction...
TIL You can whistle a language!
On La Gomera (one of the Canary Islands), Silbo Gomero encodes Spanish into whistles that carry across valleys for kilometres!
It’s taught in schools since 1999 and considered a Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity by UNESCO
Integrated prediction of RNA secondary structure jointly with 3D motifs and pseudoknots guided by evolutionary information.
@aakaran31.bsky.social and @rivaselenarivas.bsky.social
link.springer.com/article/10.1...
I get that the news cycle is packed right now, but I just heard from a colleague at the Smithsonian that this is fully a GIANT SQUID BEING EATEN BY A SPERM WHALE and it’s possibly the first ever confirmed video according to a friend at NOAA
10 YEAR OLD ME IS LOSING HER MIND (a thread 🧵)
RFdiffusion3 is here! We train a general network that explicitly models every atom and use it to design active enzymes and DNA binders.
Tremendous team effort with Jasper, Rohith, Raktim, Rafi, Yanjing, Paul, Jonathan, and many others!
Check it out: lnkd.in/eiUFfJaM.
bioRxiv partners with Dryad to enable easier, better linking to curated datasets connect.biorxiv.org/news/2025/09...
forgot to include link to our looooooooong miRNA hairpin saga. pls share with your miRNA geek friends and let us know what you think! in the meantime, here's a picture of stretch armstrong i pulled from the interweb.
www.cell.com/cell-reports...
Our Genomics in Context Awards will support these new transdisciplinary teams.
Learn more at our webinar on 18 November ⤵️
wellcome.org/research-fun...
The “problem” with vaccines? They so effective at preventing deaths that they create generations of people that question whether disease was a problem in the first place because they have never experienced the horrors of a world without vaccines.
We are all super happy and proud to see our work on the function and evolution of the #cephalic #furrow published in @nature.com. Let me say a few things about the background and history of this work on the #Evolution_of_Morphogenesis (1/12)
🌎👩🔬 For 15+ years biology has accumulated petabytes (million gigabytes) of🧬DNA sequencing data🧬 from the far reaches of our planet.🦠🍄🌵
Logan now democratizes efficient access to the world’s most comprehensive genetics dataset. Free and open.
doi.org/10.1101/2024...
Congrats to my better half @legionella.bsky.social and his lab and collaborators on this cool discovery! TLDR, they've identified and re-animated a bacteriophage of Legionella pneumophila, a bacteria long thought to not be susceptible to phage attack. Check it out! 🦠
