Our ghost ancestry, the geometry of the genome, and metaphor madness. I know, I know, surely a post can't have it all? #science #biology #genetics #evolution
Ghosts, Genomes, and Geometry
Your DNA is full of stories
subtlesparks.substack.com
Gunnar De Winter
@gunnardewinter.bsky.social
Biologist and semi-philosopher | science (and fiction) writer | plays with words and ideas 🌍 Belgium (for now) 🙋♂️ gunnardewinter.com
Incendiary discovery... (I'll let myself out.) "We isolated a geothermal amoeba, Incendiamoeba cascadensis, that divides at 63°C and is motile up to 64°C." #science #biology
A geothermal amoeba sets a new upper temperature limit for eukaryotes
The amoeba Incendiamoeba cascadensis demonstrates that eukaryotic life can withstand temperatures beyond what was thought possible and sheds light on molecular strategies for survival in extreme heat.
cell.com
"The central question is, therefore, whether societies should accept a future in which reproductive opportunities, parental obligations and children’s life chances are increasingly organized around genetic optimization, private purchasing power and corporate profit."
Embryo screening and the new reproductive divide - Nature Human Behaviour
Nature Human Behaviour - Embryo screening and the new reproductive divide
nature.com
You've heard about CRISPR, but have you heard about its little known (likely older) sibling VIPR? VIPR, a CRISPR-ish system, "evolved from ancient conflicts between competing viruses and introduce a new programmable tool for controlling gene expression." #science #biology #genetics #evolution
A viral origin for RNA-guided immunity
Ancient viral warfare could be at the root of modern class 1 CRISPR bacterial defense systems
science.org
Dragons, druids, and a delightfully kind story review!
gwendolyn hicks@prioryruins.bsky.social · last wk.@bmccosar.bsky.social has done a profile of @kaleidotrope.bsky.social, and it’s an excellent introduction to an excellent magazine. and i am honored by the shout-out for my novelette “Full Fathom Five,” which appeared in the Winter 2026 issue! linguistics nerds stay winning :) bmccosar.com?p=47
🧬 Our “Behind the Paper” is now online at Nature Communities: “Active chromatin is not simply open—it forms compact domains that cohesin keeps from mixing.” 📖 A short story behind our recent @natgenet.nature.com paper. communities.springernature.com/posts/active... www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Lovely to see several pieces of our ctenophore work featured in this beautiful new story from @quantamagazine.org 🪼 Great piece by @mstarling.bsky.social, also featuring work by @stevehaddock.bsky.social, @arnausebe.bsky.social & @hejnol.bsky.social. www.quantamagazine.org/ctenophores-...
Ctenophores Aren’t Just Beautiful. They’re Biological Wonders. | Quanta Magazine
Comb jellies are helping answer fundamental questions in biology, from how the earliest nervous systems evolved to how bioluminescence works.
quantamagazine.org
"The narratives typically used by AI doomers also misdirect responsibility." This does not get enough attention.
Philip Ball@philipcball.bsky.social · 2w agoIn thisa piece for @thenewworldmag.bsky.social I express the wish for a better level of public discourse around AI that doesn't leave us hanging on every word of the alleged tech gurus. www.thenewworld.co.uk/philip-ball-...
Japanese team have observed directly, for the first time, noctule bats hunting birds The images they provide astonishingly resemble that painted by Brueghel over 400 years ago... maybe he had actually seen the hunt!! Paper: esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/... @ebdonana.bsky.social
Miguel Clavero@chikichanka.bsky.social · 3mo agoNatural history on canvas: Brueghel knew about bird-eating noctule bats Just published in @pnas.org, OA for all eyes Led by the one-and-only @romero-vidal.bsky.social, with the amazing @elena-tena.bsky.social and Sonia Sánchez-Navarro @ebdonana.bsky.social LINK: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
Where are all the intermediate forms between animals & plants? Our new paper with @jordiplam.bsky.social suggests evolution can split sharply between sessile, photosynthetic and mobile, sensing strategies. If so, what does this imply for claims of plant intelligence? www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
OK, so AI can apparently solve the puzzles of the Navier-Stokes equation. But can it solve the puzzles of the universe, in the way that Einstein did? My latest news feature for @nature.com looks into the question of how far AI can go towards scientific discovery. www.nature.com/articles/d41...
The Einstein test: what happens when AI tries to rediscover relativity?
Scientists are probing whether language models trained on historical data can reproduce creative breakthroughs.
nature.com
LLMs are cognitive viruses that can depress collective cognitive competence. But by the same token, immunization is possible. arxiv.org/abs/2609.03344
Large-Language Models as a Cognitive Virus
Large-language models (LLMs) are rapidly becoming part of human culture, reshaping how information is produced, transmitted, and used. Here we propose that their diffusion can be understood through a ...
arxiv.org
Yet another tantalizing clue that our ancient roots may be found in Asgard(ian archaea)! #science #biology #evolution #microbiology
An Asgard archaeon from a modern analog of ancient microbial mats
A novel Asgard archaeon, Nerearchaeum marumarumayae, is present in microbial mats in Shark Bay, Australia. Combining genomic and structural analyses, together with high-resolution electron cryotomogra...
cell.com
Sarah Demers, chair of the physics department at Yale University, sees potential for the use of AI in physics. But she refuses to use it to write her emails. Read her interview: www.quantamagazine.org/in-an-age-of...
In an Age of AI, a Physicist Seeks What Endures | Quanta Magazine
Sarah Demers, chair of the physics department at Yale University, sees the potential for large language models to both help and harm her field.
quantamagazine.org
Somehow, this one went from genetic drift to superferrets and caffeinated gremlins. #science #biology #evolution #psychology #mentalhealth
Drift
Lightning, leaves, and anchors
subtlesparks.substack.com
Snake embryos are little spirals! That is all. Carry on. #science #biology #animals #development
How snake embryos coil
Snake embryos coil, but how and why they corkscrew remains unexplored. Weber et al. find that the embryos wind up clockwise via buckling of the rapidly elongating axial body against the slow-growing, ...
cell.com
When stressed, this comb jelly reverts to a larval form, then matures again when favorable conditions return. Learn more: https://scim.ag/4gmdt2J #ScienceMagArchives
Why do some #bacteria #evolve #antibiotic resistance more readily than others? This study shows that naturally occurring single nucleotide polymorphisms in the PhoQP system change how readily E. coli evolves trimethoprim resistance and which mutations enable it. 🧪 #AcademicSky plos.io/4qCDXQM
New obsession unlocked: ghosts in our DNA. #science #genetics #evolution
Recovering signatures of archaic hominin introgression using ancestral recombination graphs
Admixture between modern humans and extinct hominins has shaped the genomes of present-day individuals, but reconstructing this history has been constrained by the scarcity of archaic samples and unad...
science.org
Geochemical clues hint that worm-like creatures in the Ediacaran period benefited from symbiosis with bacteria go.nature.com/4gDTwTU
Animal-microbe partnerships date back to the dawn of complex life
Geochemical clues hint that worm-like creatures in the Ediacaran period benefited from symbiosis with bacteria.
go.nature.com
"... what I do want to rescue is the sense that the future can be different: the sense that science-fiction writers have always had that yesterday and tomorrow don’t need to be the same. Capitalism has captured the future, and is now commodifying it and selling it back to us..."
Superlative projects are made possible by great collective efforts | Aeon Essays
Superlative things were done in the past century by marshalling thousands of people in the service of a vision of the future
aeon.co
A perspective in @natmethods.nature.com on Why forces are fundamental to understanding how life comes into being - by us, @campaslab.bsky.social @yanlanmao.bsky.social @sarawickstrom.bsky.social Miguel Concha, Alba Diz-Muñoz and @streichan.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/s41...
The physics of sculpting a living creature - Nature Methods
Cell biologists have long known that mechanical forces, such as tension and compression, influence tissue differentiation. Now, advanced methods are letting them observe and manipulate these forces in...
nature.com
This is neat! Mapping chromosome mix-ups to find evolutionary 'highways'. Also, for some reason, I'm not surprised that ctenophores are being weird again. #science #biology #evolution #genetics
Topological mixing and irreversibility in animal chromosome evolution
Animal chromosome homology can persist over hundreds of millions of years, despite fusions and translocations. The frequency, pace, and impact of these changes remain unclear. We develop a multiscale ...
science.org
🚨New paper in Biology Letters! 🥳 Hybridization events in Squamata support the viviparity-driven conflict hypothesis royalsocietypublishing.org/rsbl/article... Based on the MSc thesis of David Broek. Hybridization is also interesting in other taxonomic groups, not just birds. 😉
What are the genetic mechanisms for the #evolution of novel traits? This study by @brhopkins92.bsky.social &co links #Drosophila sex comb teeth to expression changes within ancestral cells, leading to diverged metabolic/developmental rates, and a novel structure. 🧪 #AcademicSky plos.io/4gQOnZK
