As of today (6/17), 28,000+ peeps have commented on the proposed OMB Regulation. YAY! But also… it’s a teeny tiny fraction of the people whose jobs and lives will be made more difficult/impossible by this proposed Regulation. Not just scientists! ( 🧵 1/n)...

Abby Dernburg@adernburg.bsky.social · 2mo ago

I just submitted my comments to the docket on the Proposed OMB Regulation for Federal Financial Assistance (OMB-2026-0034). Have you submitted yours? Do it soon! For a useful guide, see www.standupforscience.foundation/policy-and-a...

The @genetics-gsa.bsky.social Yeast Meeting will always be my favorite. Highlights: grad student Leah winning best poster (!), postdoc Sarah's poster on a new @yevolab.bsky.social evolution scheme, Barbara's talk on beer yeast evolution, Leah's real time data analysis on the mentoring panel #Yeast26

Sampling yeast in Green Mountains National Forest: Breadloaf wilderness. This is high elevation spruce-fir forest. Videos here: www.instagram.com/jfay00/

First day of field season, sampling yeast in hickory creek wilderness, Allegheny national forest. www.instagram.com/jfay00/

Super excited to share our lab's work led by PhD student Margot Ruffieux on domestication of Saccharomyces cerevisiae, with a focus on sourdough and baking associated yeast! 🍞

PEQG! My favorite conference ever*. Single session, fantastic talks, great discussions. Only once every 2 years. And in the best conference location too! Abstract deadline coming up Feb 5! *Disclosure: I am required to say it's the best conference because it is and I told my mom I wouldn't lie.

Homepage - 2026 Population, Evolutionary, and Quantitative Genetics Conference

Visit our website to learn more.

genetics-gsa.org

1/🧵 Major milestone unlocked for mycology! 🍄 We just published a massive genomic resource in 𝐒𝐜𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐟𝐢𝐜 𝐃𝐚𝐭𝐚, releasing 2,695 complete circular mitochondrial species assembled from public data This single dataset nearly 𝐓𝐑𝐈𝐏𝐋𝐄𝐒 📈the known mitochondrial diversity of the Kingdom Fungi rdcu.be/eYZ2h

How to keep in step when your (protein) partner speeds up… Here we investigated the adaptive remodeling of a protein-protein interaction surface essential for telomere protection. Congrats to whole team! www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Rapid compensatory evolution within a multiprotein complex preserves telomere integrity

Intragenomic conflict with selfish genetic elements spurs adaptive changes in subunits of essential multiprotein complexes. Whether and how these adaptive changes disrupt interactions within such comp...

science.org

How do new centromeres evolve while staying compatible with the division machinery? Discover it in our new Nature paper! We show centromeres transition gradually via a mix of drift, selection, and sex, reaching new states that still work with the kinetochore. 👉 doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-09779-1

Applications due by Dec. 1

Angela Hancock@ahancock.bsky.social · 9mo ago

I recently moved my lab to Purdue University and am looking for graduate students. We are working at the interface of population genomics, quantitative genetics and functional genomics to understand how plants adapt to extreme environments. Reach out if you would like to discuss potential projects.

PEQG website live! genetics-gsa.org/peqg-2026/

Homepage - 2026 Population, Evolutionary, and Quantitative Genetics Conference

Visit our website to learn more.

genetics-gsa.org

URochester Biology has a tenure-track position open in evolutionary genetics/genomics, particularly those with mathematical, computational, and/or quantitative approaches. Deadline: Nov 10 apply.interfolio.com/173431 Bio Dept retreat photo for attention

Work is sometimes fun, having fun requires some work. I've found a blend of sampling yeast and riding that is a euphoric mix, and makes me wonder why its taken so many years to find. Route is via the finger lakes national forest, 16 miles round trip, 1hr biking straight out, 5 hours sampling back.

Great to hear back in the day stories, chum with alumns and progeny research at Roc-Fest, a celebration of Orr, Werren, Eickbush, and Jaenike and their contributions to adaptation, speciation, and selfish genetic elements. sites.google.com/view/rocfest... I contributed wine:

🚨 Microbiologists! We are recruiting Assistant / Associate Professors in 3 collaborative areas of our U. Pittsburgh School of Medicine. 1) MMG (my dept): fundamental research in med micro 2) Peds ID / I4Kids institute 3) Center for Vaccine Research 🔗 to all 3 w/info: www.linkedin.com/posts/vaughn...

Faculty Professor Associate - Full-Time | Vaughn Cooper

We are recruiting Faculty microbiologists in three (3) different, complementary, and collaborative areas at the University of Pittsburgh associated with the School of Medicine. 1) Fundamental researc...

linkedin.com

Very pleased to share this long term (nearly 20 years) study of yeasts isolated from vineyards and forests, now up on biorxiv: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Ella Al-Shamahi (muslim missionary turned evolutionary biologist, host of BBC human series) opinion piece on why follow the science fails. www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/202...

We are excited to share GPN-Star, a cost-effective, biologically grounded genomic language modeling framework that achieves state-of-the-art performance across a wide range of variant effect prediction tasks relevant to human genetics. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... (1/n)

What killed the competitive renewal at NIH? drugmonkey.wordpress.com/2025/07/31/w...

What killed the competitive renewal at NIH?

Following up on yesterday’s whinesplaining about the relative difficulty of getting a NIH grant across pertinent career eras, I had some more thoughts on generational expectations and gasligh…

drugmonkey.wordpress.com

Walunjkar, @ghaemmaghamilab.bsky.social @justinfay.bsky.social et al. profiled the proteomes of two yeast species with differences in thermal tolerance, finding a proteome-wide shift in stability, driven by both sequence change and cellular context. 🔗 doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msaf137 #evobio #molbio

New paper w/ @plos.org! @chaochihl.bsky.social identifies a unique mutational pattern among sodium azide-induced mutants. SNPs in 'CC' context and indels. Thanks to @justinfay.bsky.social @lilei0051.bsky.social @giuliafrascarelli.bsky.social @nanoporetech.com et al journals.plos.org/plosgenetics...

Sodium azide mutagenesis induces a unique pattern of mutations

Author summary Sodium azide is frequently used as a mutagen for experimental studies in plants. It induces primarily C → T changes. We find that these most often occur when a cytosine (C) is followed ...

journals.plos.org

"We believe that mapping the damage done and its human costs—and the pushback and resilience work already underway—is necessary groundwork for building and retaining political agency"

Unbreaking

How the administration is breaking the government, and what that means for all of us.

unbreaking.org

Ed Yong@edyong209.bsky.social · last yr.

I urge everyone to read Unbreaking’s new page on everything the govt is doing to destroy & diminish medical research funding. It’s the best thing I’ve read on this topic: @lizneeley.bsky.social & co have such done an incredible job. unbreaking.org/issues/medic...

Abstract submission and early registration for Evolution and core processes of gene expression www.asbmb.org/meetings-eve... June 26–29, 2025

Evolution and core processes in gene expression

June 26–29, 2025 | Kansas City, Mo.

asbmb.org

Hitchhiking in facultative sexuals e.g. baker's yeast: can reduce diversity across the genome and contribute to Lewontin’s paradox. Results relevant to anyone (e.g. me) who has looked but found few if any strong sweeps. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Beyond Recombination: Exploring the Impact of Meiotic Frequency on Genome-wide Genetic Diversity

An important aim of population genetics is to elucidate the processes affecting genetic diversity across regions of the genome and across species. Canonical population genetic models of sexually repro...

biorxiv.org

A model for background selection in non-equilibrium populations https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.02.19.639084v1

1of3 Our new preprint now online: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... Commercial #Saccharomyces cerevisiae baker's yeasts: strain redundancy, genome plasticity, and colonization of the sourdough environment and the human body

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

The central limit theorem for the number of mutations in the genealogy of a sample from a large population

The number K of mutations identifiable in a sample of n sequences from a large population is one of the most important summary statistics in population genetics and is ubiquitous in the analysis of DN...

biorxiv.org

All NIH study sections canceled indefinitely. This will halt science and devastate research budgets in universities.

Our work, which shows statistical issues with the previous claim of a severe ancient bottleneck in the ancestry of African populations, has been selected as a Featured article in Genetics. doi.org/10.1093/gene...

A previously reported bottleneck in human ancestry 900 kya is likely a statistical artifact

Hu et al. (Science, 2023) recently inferred a severe ancient bottleneck around 900 thousand years (kya) ago in African ancestry but found no similar eviden

doi.org

And another MIRA from @gutengroup.mcb.arizona.edu ! Please send along successful grant proposals and job apps. Seeing these is enormously helpful to folks applying for grants or jobs the first time!

Jeffrey Ross-Ibarra@jrossibarra.bsky.social · 2y ago

New! @jenncoughlan.bsky.social kindly shared their MIRA NIH award with our github repo. If you have a successful grant app you're willing to share, please contribute! github.com/RILAB/statem...