A really cool preprint from Joanna Wysocka's lab showing that housekeeping genes use distal enhancers as dosage buffers against TF fluctuations, but only during critical cell fate transitions. Makes so much sense! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Enhancer buffering protects dosage-sensitive housekeeping genes during vulnerable developmental transitions

Housekeeping genes maintain robust expression across cell types despite dynamic transcription factor fluctuations, yet their haploinsufficiency is associated with many tissue-specific developmental di...

biorxiv.org

More coverage of @jeffgroh.bsky.social's work on avocado flower mating morphs polymorphism

The Wall Street Journal@wsj.com · 6d ago

Scientists have long known that avocado trees live a somewhat spicy life, changing sexes depending on the time of day. Now, a study helps explain how the process works—and could speed up breeders’ ability to develop new varieties. 🥑: on.wsj.com/4q4c5Fe

Very cool pair of papers demonstrating little link between amount of additive genetic variation and amount of nucleotide variation within species: journals.plos.org/plosbiology/... www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Levels of additive genetic variation vary substantially between species

Adaptive potential determines how populations respond to environmental change. This study compiles evolvability estimates from over 170 multicellular species, revealing substantial variation across th...

journals.plos.org

This is what fighting fascism looks like.

"Nationalism is an infantile disease. It is the measles of mankind." -Albert Einstein

Our News & Views article “Body-plan organizer in comb jellies hints at animal ancestry” now published in @nature.com 🎉 We discuss fascinating work revealing organizer activity in comb jellies & the evolution of animal development. rdcu.be/fsLWq @ruthstyfhals.bsky.social @msarscentre.bsky.social

Very cool new pre-print from @rmash.bsky.social and team “…parental care shapes the storage, expression and release of genetic variation…” www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Parental care is a genetic capacitor

Parental care is widespread across the animal kingdom and plays a critical role in offspring development. Yet, its broader genetic and evolutionary impacts remain underexplored. Here, using the bipare...

biorxiv.org

What is the evolutionary origin of the organizer? New work from @kremnyovs.bsky.social, @tclebedeva.bsky.social & Hejnol Lab @uni-jena.de reports the blastopore lip of the #ctenophore Mnemiopsis leidyi, a member of the evolutionary sister group to all other metazoans, exhibits organizer activity.

A blastoporal organizer in a ctenophore - Nature

Experiments using the comb jelly Mnemiopsis leidyi and the sea anemone Nematostella vectensis reveal that the emergence of a core signalling pathway may have been a key innovation enabling the transit...

nature.com

Skeletons in the closet: Inside the unraveling of the California Academy of Sciences sfstandard.com/2026/05/26/c...

Lavish bonuses, first-class flights, and a ghost mansion: Inside the unraveling of The California Academy of Sciences

For years, insiders sounded the alarm about mismanagement. Now, after mass layoffs, a ballooning deficit, and a director’s resignation, one of San Francisco’s crown jewels is fighting for its life.

sfstandard.com

There are almost no crustaceans in the deep ocean. Not because they would get crushed, but because they would DISSOLVE. The cold & high pressure cause changes to water that make it very corrosive to calcium carbonate shells. But there's one crustacean who solves this problem with ALUMINUM ARMOR.

My goodness this is cute. Short & Harasti (2026) named a new pipefish species after Snuffleupagus (the giant elephant muppet) Image of Solenostomus snuffleupagus sp. nov. by David Harasti. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

“They’re just saying, ‘We’re getting rid of all the science.’” How the Trump Administration Ended Independent Science at the E.P.A. Gift link: nyti.ms/4ugMo59

What would cause evolution to stop‽ 🧪

HHMI@hhmi-science.bsky.social · 4mo ago

Stunning new landmark study from #HHMIInvestigator David Reich & team @harvardmed.bsky.social lets us watch human evolution in real time across 10,000 years, & what ~16,000 ancient genomes reveal is striking: Natural selection didn't stop when civilization began — it sped up: bit.ly/4ep7uJI.

Hello Bluesky! Does Nₑ really explain mutation rate (μ) or genome size (GS) in vertebrates? We find the apparent Nₑ–μ link in Bergeron et al. (2023) is a “back-door” path via generation time, and GS is decoupled from both Nₑ and life-history traits. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... #evobio #PNAS