I've accepted that Mimulus will never beat cult allegations (that I have directly perpetuated) But hey, like any good cult, we always love new members!

alison scott@alisondawnscott.bsky.social · last mo.

enjoying @eleanoreritter.bsky.social’s talk on TEs in selfers at #SMBE2026 and her comment that Mimulus “has kind of a cult following in the US”

Good morning, #SMBE2026! To purge, or not to purge, *that* is the question 🧬 I'll be giving a talk on how mating system transitions shape transposable element dynamics in monkeyflowers this morning in S24 at 11:20 AM - come for the Hamlet pun, stay for the cool comparative genomics!

Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution@official-smbe.bsky.social · 2mo ago

#SMBE2026 S24: Molecular mechanisms of selfish elements and strategies 🗓️ Mon Jun 29, 10:20am 🔗 smbe2026.org/programme Talks by: @levine-lab.bsky.social Yu Hua @cecilecourret.bsky.social @eleanoreritter.bsky.social Elli Cryan @alexand-kwak.bsky.social Steve Perlman @antisense.bsky.social

Minibwa is a hybrid of bwa-mem and minimap2 and the successor of bwa-mem for short-read mapping. ~4X/2.5X as fast as bwa-mem/bwa-mem2 for WGS reads at comparable accuracy. Native support of directional bisulfite-seq. Applicable to long reads. Preprint at arxiv.org/abs/2606.15357

#SMBE2026 S24: Molecular mechanisms of selfish elements and strategies 🗓️ Mon Jun 29, 10:20am 🔗 smbe2026.org/programme Talks by: @levine-lab.bsky.social Yu Hua @cecilecourret.bsky.social @eleanoreritter.bsky.social Elli Cryan @alexand-kwak.bsky.social Steve Perlman @antisense.bsky.social

Time for an experiment! You know those cute little roadside stands with honors-system eggs or produce? Look, I know I live in "big scary Philadelphia oooh 👻" but I'm gonna try it. What's the worst that can happen? Thieves create habitat for native bees? Jokes on them! I wanted them to do that!

Great field #botany story of the difficulties of collecting seed from endangered species. Featuring the tireless and talented @naomibot.bsky.social . Lots of field photos in the story. I'm so glad this story got some coverage. #rareplants #conservation www.npr.org/sections/the...

A botanist searches for the seeds of the rare Death Valley Sage

For more than 15 years, botanist Naomi Fraga has been trying to collect seeds from the rare Death Valley sage, for safekeeping in a vault of native California seeds.

npr.org

In the last two weeks, 1% of new NSF awards were in biology. Just one grant of 97. One. Biology in the US is on hold until there’s a regime change.

Jeremy Berg@jeremymberg.bsky.social · 5mo ago

Between 2/28 and 3/13, 97 awards were issued: Directorate of Math and Phys Science: 36 Engineering: 19 Computer and Info Science: 14 STEM Education: 10 Geosciences: 8 Tech, Innov, Partnerships: 5 Social, Behav, Econ Sci: 4 Biol Sciences: 1 2/2

On the cover of our #LatestIssue: Orange jewelweed (Impatiens capensis) being visited by a bumblebee (Bombus) in a remnant patch of floodplain forest in Wisconsin, USA. Image courtesy of Rachel Toczydlowski. 📖 See Schoen & Toczydlowski nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... #PlantScience

Stay tuned for the release of this new documentary at the end of the month! I think our buzz pollination clip might have just made the cut!

Calling all OrthoFinder users! We’ve just released GLADE, a tool to infer gene gains, losses, duplications, and ancestral genomes across a phylogeny. GLADE runs directly on OrthoFinder results. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... github.com/lauriebelch/... (1/10)

This article is now published! academic.oup.com/nargab/artic... We’ve added a few new analyses. First off, we show that, while gene presence absence variation (PAV) scales with evolutionary distance in both plants and animals, the base level and rate of accrual are both twice as high in plants.

Evolutionary and methodological considerations when interpreting gene presence–absence variation in pangenomes

Abstract. While graph-based pangenomes have become a standard and interoperable foundation for comparisons across multiple reference genomes, integrating p

academic.oup.com

John Lovell@jotlovell.bsky.social · 12mo ago

Determining presence-absence variation (PAV) across reference genomes is a major goal of pangenome analysis. It turns out that A LOT of gene PAV is due to methodological artifacts. We explore the causes of this in soybean and cotton datasets in our recent preprint: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

I mean, true.

John Cassidy: Powell put to shame heads of law firms, universities & public companies who have caved to the White House. He demonstrated that, at least in economic arena, there are still some institutional constraints that Trump cannot sweep aside, or not easily. www.newyorker.com/news/the-led...

"I don’t know why my fellowship was terminated. I suspect that it has something to do with studying a species that doesn’t fit the binary of what we expect to see in nature, with completely different males and females." @carlzimmer.com profiles my wonderful coauthor @jjinsing.bsky.social Gift link.

He Studied Why Some Female Birds Look Like Males

nytimes.com

Very excited to share this work led by Austin Link, a graduate student in our lab. We have discovered a novel, fig-associated microbe that promotes reproductive success via variable life history mechanisms in two nematode species. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

A novel, fig-associated microbe promotes reproductive success via variable life history mechanisms in C. elegans and C. inopinata

Variation in life history strategies is among the most striking features of animal diversity. Simultaneously, the microbes an animal interacts with are a critical and dynamic aspect of the host enviro...

biorxiv.org

Unpopular opinion: biologists are still the ones who understand biology best

Have you ever wondered: just how strong *is* the evidence for Muller's ratchet on mtDNA? Well, wonder no more! (Project led by Yu Mo, with @smishra677.bsky.social and @yadirapga.bsky.social) "No molecular evidence for Muller's ratchet in mitochondrial genomes" www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

No molecular evidence for Muller's ratchet in mitochondrial genomes

Muller's ratchet predicts that non-recombining genomes can accumulate deleterious mutations, though molecular evidence for it is rare. Previous studies have tried to detect ratchet-like behavior in mi...

biorxiv.org

NSF - Forced reorg - POs down ~ 40% (DRP, most rotators not renewed, retirements) - Forced move (and we have to pack and clean) to a building with no furniture, little to no conference space for panels, inadequate 🛜, …) I personally love the boxes they gave us for packing. “Details matter” 🙃

We are hiring at California Botanic Garden! The Restoration Intern will have the opportunity to work on a variety of projects involving out-planting, seed collection, plant propagation and monitoring. This is a full time temp position (6 months) that can be extended. Please share! lnkd.in/gaNuNGxA

In these field experiments we did earlier this year in the town of Iijima, we found that spraying nectar yeast and bacteria to buckwheat fields increased insect pollination and seed set.

Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability@stanforddoerr.bsky.social · 8mo ago

Food research spotlight 🌾 A team of Stanford researchers is studying interactions between pollinators, microorganisms, and buckwheat crops in Japan. They hope to better understand these fundamental ecological relationships and gather evidence to potentially improve crop yields and food security.

Check out our new preprint! This was such a great paper to work on with @stairwaytokevin.bsky.social and the rest of the team!

Kevin Bird@stairwaytokevin.bsky.social · 10mo ago

New — with @joannarifkin.bsky.social, @jotlovell.bsky.social, @spicybotrytis.bsky.social, and many more — we created seven new high-quality genomes and explored pangenomic variation in the emerging oilseed crop pennycress (Thlaspi arvense). 1/

GUESS WHAT WEEK IT IS

Excited / nervous to share the “magnum opus” of my postdoc in Andreas Wagner’s lab! "De-novo promoters emerge more readily from random DNA than from genomic DNA" This project is the accumulation of 4 years of work, and lays the foundation for my future group. In short, we… (1/4)

De-novo promoters emerge more readily from random DNA than from genomic DNA

Promoters are DNA sequences that help to initiate transcription. Point mutations can create de-novo promoters, which can consequently transcribe inactive genes or create novel transcripts. We know lit...

biorxiv.org

When you write to your senator (weeks ago) about proposed cuts to NSF and they respond this morning saying that they will always support NIH and never mention NSF... Thanks, Jon, totally what I meant ☹️

a man with a mustache is sitting on a swing in the park .

Alt: a man with a mustache is sitting on a swing in the park .

media.tenor.com

This is my favorite fact of the day, it's just too precious 🥹

Patrick McKenzie@patrickmckenzie.bsky.social · last yr.

A distinguishing character of Monarda fistulosa and its close relatives is a fun tuft of hairs at the top of the upper corolla lobe. Endearingly it persists all through flower development (and is arguably even more fun in the early stages)

Are you from one of these states? Then we need your help to save American science! The Senate Appropriations Committee will be marking up the President's Budget Request for science on Wednesday. People have been saying the proposed cuts "decimated" US science, but that's wrong: they are apocalyptic

Incredible diversity of #pollen grains! Pollen autofluorescence acquired with @zeiss-microscopy.bsky.social #superresolution Airyscan & color-coded for depth #microscopy #bioimaging #bioart #sciart #botany #plantscience #fluorescencefriday

A very important, inspiring read, even for us biology folks outside of medicine

Jack Iwashyna@iwashyna.bsky.social · last yr.

“On Not Betraying Our Trainees, Especially Now” I won an Extraordinary Achievement Award from the Critical Care Assembly last month The @atscommunity.bsky.social premier journal @atsblueeditor.bsky.social TODAY published the remarks I made on that occasion www.atsjournals.org/doi/10.1164/...

Based on some quick math, this alone could fund the NSF Plant Genome Research Program for ~4 years; the NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biology, which was totally axed in the NSF budget request, for ~9 years; and ~ half the total NSF GRFP budget

The Associated Press@apnews.com · last yr.

BREAKING: The Pentagon said the deployment of National Guard members and Marines to protests over immigration raids in LA will cost $134 million.

Our paper (w/ @smishra677.bsky.social) is now out in Genetics! academic.oup.com/genetics/adv...

Estimating recombination using only the allele frequency spectrum

Abstract. Standard methods for estimating the population recombination parameter, ρ, are dependent on sampling individual genotypes and calculating various

academic.oup.com

Matthew Hahn@3rdreviewer.bsky.social · 2y ago

Here is a video of my talk for those interested: www.youtube.com/watch?v=GmcU...