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Tony Gamble

@tonygamble.eurosky.social

Evolutionary biologist. Gaga for geckos. (he/him)

326 Posts2285 Follower2161 Folgt
Jamie Walters@bioboatr.bsky.social · last wk.

Y and W sex chroms are enigmatic. Compared to the rest of the genome, they show distinct structure and diversity, and are notoriously difficult to assemble. Work led by @mdalikova.bsky.social investigates these patterns for the W chromosome of silkworm, Bombyx mori www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Wrong but useful: Bombyx silkworm W chromosome assemblies are flawed but still capture strongly reduced diversity of repetitive DNA

Degenerate sex chromosomes ( e.g., the Y or W) remain among the most difficult regions of eukaryotic genomes to assemble because they are highly repetitive and structurally complex. While many recent ...

biorxiv.org

Evolutionary Journal of the Linnean Society@evojlinnsoc.bsky.social · 7d ago

Understanding how reproductive isolation evolves remains a central goal of speciation research. The increasing availability of genomic data has transformed the field, resulting in research dominated by genomic approaches, but is this a good thing? Here, this question is evaluated 👇🧪

The identity crisis of speciation genomics

Abstract. Understanding how reproductive isolation (RI) evolves remains a central goal of speciation research. Quantifying RI is challenging, and researche

doi.org

Jeff Groh@jeffgroh.bsky.social · last wk.

Avocados come in 2 varieties - A-types start each day female and switch to male midday. B-types do the reverse. In work just published from the last chapter of my PhD, we show this system evolved 40+million yrs ago and is regulated by alleles of 1 transcription factor www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Balanced polymorphism in a floral transcription factor underlies the ancient rhythm of daily sex alternation in avocado | PNAS

In avocado and certain wild relatives in Lauraceae, a highly synchronized daily rhythm of floral sex timing promotes cross-pollination between two ...

pnas.org

Rod Page@rdmpage.bsky.social · 2w ago

As I explore how to curate @boldsystems.bsky.social data I keep coming across "interesting" taxonomy, such as two research groups giving the same name (Tropiocolotes hormozganensis) to the same species in the same year! One paper is doi.org/10.11646/zoo..., the other is zoobank.org/urn:lsid:zoo...

Taxonomic status of Tropiocolotes cf. steudneri with a description of a new species of Tropiocolotes (Reptilia: Squamata: Gekkonidae) in southern Iran | Zootaxa

doi.org

Genome Biology and Evolution@genomebiolevol.bsky.social · 3w ago

@petedp.bsky.social et al. explore the molecular evolution of the A and B haplotypes of a large, sex-linked inversion polymorphism in the zebra finch responsible for most of the genetic variation in sperm morphology. 🔗 doi.org/10.1093/gbe/evag056 #genome #societyjournal

Molecular Evolution of a Sex-Linked Inversion Polymorphism in Zebra Finches

Abstract. Recent years have seen an explosion in examples of supergenes, where recombination is suppressed between haplotypes, often via inversion polymorp

doi.org

Darren J. Parker@darrenjparker.bsky.social · 3w ago

Our new paper is out! Congrats to all involved. Dosage compensation and meiotic sex chromosome inactivation are maintained under relaxed selection | PNAS www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Dosage compensation and meiotic sex chromosome inactivation are maintained under relaxed selection | PNAS

Dosage compensation and meiotic sex chromosome inactivation (MSCI) are key mechanisms regulating gene expression from the X chromosome in male-hete...

pnas.org

Brian O'Meara@omearabrian.bsky.social · last mo.

Ok, I've done this for over 3000 individual US colleges and universities at collegetables.info Here's U Illinois: collegetables.info/145637.html#... . I only used a ten year window. Let me know if folks have suggestions or ideas. Thanks @kateclancy.bsky.social for the thread!

Expense percentage by cost: a line plot showing instruction wages and academic support being about 15% of the cost, eachTable of undergrads per tenure track and all instructors, as well as trends in number of instructors, at U Illinois Urbana-Champaign and similar institutionsGraduation rate by demographic at U Illinois and other institutions. 84.9% for all, but varying by different demographic groupsIllustration of the "demographic cliff" showing a gradual decline in potential people in the 18 year old cohort. Text: There is a concern that giving changing US demographics, the number of students in the age groups who most commonly attend four year colleges will drop off, decreasing overall enrollment. This is often referred to as the “demographic cliff”, and it can be a concern for colleges concerned about the risk of falling enrollment. For this section, the analysis uses US census data on the number of people in each state by age, and the proportion of students that come from each state for this particular college, to crudely model what will happen if everything remains constant except the demographic change in the population of 18 year olds in each year – it does not account for things like the college increasing its admission rate, attracting more students from states without the same demographic changes or from other countries, or changes in the proportion of students who go to college.
Kate Clancy@kateclancy.bsky.social · last mo.

Then, unis are increasingly spending money on other stuff, so we are a lower portion of the budget. Because our dept budgets are >90% salary faculty may not realize this. But remember that's because they're underfunding each dept & expecting us to find ways to "generate revenue" to do the rest.

Figure from The Faculty Workload Myth article in the Chronicle showing that since 2000 faculty salaries have become a lower and lower portion of most four year public university budgets. We are around 13% of the budget at this point.
Andrew Carroll@acarroll.bsky.social · last mo.

How good is MiniBWA, the successor to BWA? To test it, I ran MiniBWA on sequencing from 76 different species, comparing mapping speed, rate and accuracy with BWA MEM. In short, it's really good. If you map short reads, it's well worth your time. andrewcarroll.github.io/2026/06/30/t...

The Best of Both Worlds - Assessing MiniBWA

Recently, Heng Li released MiniBWA (GitHub) alongside a paper by Heng Li and Nils Homer describing the method (paper). MiniBWA builds on the approaches in Minimap2 (also by Heng Li), but falls back on...

andrewcarroll.github.io

Dr Mark D. Scherz@markscherz.bsky.social · last mo.

Yesterday I presented what I think was the first conference poster of my career 😅 at #SMBE2026, talking about my ERC StG project on the genomics of miniaturisation in vertebrates—GEMINI. Really happy for the discussions it sparked. Thanks everyone who stopped by! 🧪

A selfie of Mark standing beside his poster, which features a penguin trying to explain what miniaturisation is and why it matters.
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Heng Li@lh3lh3.bsky.social · 2mo ago

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

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