In August, Jay Bhattacharya said “Training future biomedical scientists” was the 1st priority for his version of NIH. But talk is cheap. Let’s see how JB’s doing. 🤔 NIH supports trainees mostly via fellowship (F), training (T), and career development (K) awards. Here are funding curves for each.🧵

Just starting to read this paper on genome-wide convergence in fishes. Looks very worthwhile, and nice to see people using CSUBST. @agneeshbarua.bsky.social @msrivastava95.bsky.social Brice Beinsteiner Vincent Laudet @marcrr.bsky.social academic.oup.com/mbe/article/...

Estimates of molecular convergence reveal multiple genes with adaptive variation across teleost fish

Abstract. Molecular convergence, where specific nonsynonymous changes in protein-coding genes lead to identical amino acid substitutions across multiple li

academic.oup.com

Asking editors to do a semblance of their job seems kind of extremist these days, but is it too late to save peer review?

Tami Lieberman@contaminatedsci.bsky.social · 7mo ago

Peer review would be much improved if editors read papers in full before sending out for review. They could then provide very basic high level feedback (e.g. reorganize the text for readability [in X way], provide p-values for every claim), saving reviewer time for more meaningful feedback.

Midgely is generally a great read

Vincent J Lynch 🐘🦣🦥 🦇🐋🐢🐍@devoevomed.bsky.social · 8mo ago

#Biologists 🧪 🌱🐋

That toxic waste will then pollute the data sets used to train the next generation of AI models, leading to ‘model collapse’ as the AI tries and fails to model incoherent garbage, vomiting out yet more incoherent garbage in the process. Meanwhile repositories of scholarly information are destroyed.

PhD position available at the University of Bern in Prof. Claudia Bank's lab. Application deadline: Jan 9, 2026. Ideal for candidates with a strong math and programming background. More info: https://banklab.github.io/positions/ #phd

This looks nice. Thinking of going back to grad school so I can sign up...

Richard Lenski@relenski.bsky.social · 8mo ago

The 2026 Guarda Summer Course in Evolutionary Biology is now accepting applications. Amazing place, amazing course, amazing opportunity for early grad students. tb.ethz.ch/education/gu...

The first of its kind! ecomagazine.com/news/coastal... @azti.bsky.social @lanzen.bsky.social #eDNA #Biodiversity #MarineEcology

A Pioneering Genetic Catalog Reveals Hidden Biodiversity in Basque Estuary Sediments - environment coastal & offshore

An international research team led by the technology center AZTI has created the first gene catalog of estuarine sediments along the Basque coast. This groundbreaking scientific resource provides an i...

ecomagazine.com

>dev/null I am repeating myself, but I think this should be the standard treatment for ai slop like this. End of file and send to the abyss as soon as possible.

Carl T. Bergstrom@carlbergstrom.com · 8mo ago

Even the the damn twitter card for this Nature Scientific Reports is clearly AI Slop.

>/dev/null

BejaLabTechnion@bejalab.bsky.social · 8mo ago

A new preprint server welcomes papers written and reviewed by AI | Science | AAAS www.science.org/content/arti...

It’s officially happening folks! The Microbial Population Biology Gordon Research Conference is back in Andover, New Hampshire starting June 27th of 2027! See you there!! @wcratcliff.bsky.social @ksbakes.bsky.social @surtlab.bsky.social #microsky #mevosky

Bioluminescence, phylogenetic analysis, ancestral reconstruction. This looks like a fun paper for my reading list. (credit to @evolutionsoup.bsky.social for bringing to my attention). royalsocietypublishing.org/rspb/article...

Evolution of bioluminescence in Anthozoa with emphasis on Octocorallia

Abstract. Bioluminescence is a widespread phenomenon that has evolved multiple times across the tree of life, converging among diverse fauna and habitat ty

royalsocietypublishing.org

Good advice to beginning graduate students (and others, maybe everybody): "good writing is downstream of clear thinking and a strong understanding of the subject matter at hand." --Jamelle Bouie @jamellebouie.net

This is an interesting distraction driven by @jessicacalarco.com. The comment below misses the point that human-support (and art) wage rises are a lagging effect. It seems that what needs to happen is to accelerate the effect to counteract inequality. UBI perhaps? Decrease educational costs?

Paul Hünermund@p-hunermund.com · 8mo ago

The Baumol effect leads to rising wages in jobs with low productivity growth (such as dog walking) and thus counteracts inequality across sectors, by the way.

These two have made a difference. This prize will help them make even more of a difference.

NPR@npr.org · 9mo ago

Two scientists who are fast friends, one Nigerian and one American, have won the MacArthur Foundation's 100&Change competition for their network to catch the next disease with pandemic potential.

"The digestive systems of carnivorous plants" This looks really cool. 👌 Work from Matthias Freund, Dorothea Graus, Rainer Hedrich & Kenji Fukushima et al. academic.oup.com/plphys/artic... #PlantScience

The digestive systems of carnivorous plants

A comparison of the forms and functions of digestive and absorptive glands in carnivorous plants sheds light on their convergent evolution.

academic.oup.com

recent protein language models can extract embeddings from protein sequences reflecting high-order features, developed statistical tests to evaluate the adaptive convergence of such features. Interested to see how people will use this (I edited it, not an author). www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Language models reveal a complex sequence basis for adaptive convergent evolution of protein functions | PNAS

Convergent evolution, or convergence, refers to repeated, independent emergences of the same trait in two or more lineages of species during evolut...

pnas.org

Job Opening **ASSISTANT PROFESSOR MARINE ECOLOGY**, Department of Biological Sciences, University of Rhode Island. jobs.uri.edu/postings/15960

My department at UT Austin is looking to hire an Assistant Professor in Evolutionary Biology, broadly defined. Feel free to reach out to me with any questions you may have. apply.interfolio.com/177547

Congratulations Joe!

Genetics Society UK@gensocuk.bsky.social · 9mo ago

Congratulations to Joe Felsenstein on being awarded the 2026 Mendel Medal!

Happy to share Jialin's first publication. She did a great job exploring the transition to land in animals. Co-supervised by the great Jordi Paps and me and in collaboration with Davide Pisani and @phil-donoghue.bsky.social

Nature@nature.com · 9mo ago

Nature research paper: Convergent genome evolution shaped the emergence of terrestrial animals go.nature.com/4i0i61w

Super piece.

Open position at the Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics: We are looking for a Director of the Center of Pathogen Bioinformatics apply.refline.ch/499599/0346/... I am in the Center's steering board together with fantastic colleagues (Emma Hodcroft @firefoxx66.bsky.social, Richard Neher @neher.io, and

📢 Open Call! The Max Perutz Labs invite applications for a Tenure-Track Professorship in Genome Biology. We are particularly interested in researchers investigating the molecular and biophysical mechanisms underlying genome function and regulation. More details ➡️ tinyurl.com/3t7vvdct

Now accepting proposals for the Small Grants for Local and Regional Outreach, which provide up to $1000 USD for a variety of evolution education & outreach projects, workshops, and events. Submit your proposal by March 2, 2026! shorturl.at/I8HqO

I'm super stoked that Colorado voted to fund free meals for kids for schools. (I've been saying lunches, but the program includes breakfasts, too.)

Please register for BAPG at Stanford 12/6, especially if you want to give a talk or a poster. The deadline is Nov 16. bapg2025.github.io/bapg2025stan... And please reshare on bsky!

Dmitri Petrov@petrovadmitri.bsky.social · 10mo ago

For population genetics and evolutionary biology folks in the Bay Area: the next BAPG will be hosted by Stanford CEHG and the Petrov lab at Stanford on 12/6. Registration is free but required. The deadline for talk submission is Nov. 16. Hope to see you soon! Pls RT! docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

Oh, the dreadful onions and mustard. Should be pun trigger warning on link.

Phil Plait@philplait.bsky.social · 9mo ago

Lettuce pray for him

One month left for early-career researchers to apply for a funded place at our Workshop 'Novelty, Co-option and Divergence During Gene Network Evolution' organised by James Hombría & Antónia Monteiro Deadline 5 Dec. biologists.com/workshops/ju... @isabelalmudi.bsky.social @jlopezrios.bsky.social

Novelty, Co-option and Divergence During Gene Network Evolution

Novelty, Co-option and Divergence During Gene Network Evolution Recent studies on the evolution of novel traits provide a window of opportunity to understand how existing gene-regulatory networks (GRN...

biologists.com

#phahe #phagesky www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

A membrane-bound nuclease directly cleaves phage DNA during genome injection

From mammals to bacteria, the direct recognition and cleavage of viral nucleic acids is a potent defense strategy against viral infection, but it requires mechanisms for distinguishing self from non-s...

biorxiv.org