Many arguments for jettisoning PhD thesis requirements because it serves no utilitarian value and is a waste of time have also been used to argue against liberal arts. If the last few years have taught us anything, it’s the value of a liberal arts education. Everything isn’t about utility.
A star scientist showed that better genetics lessons could reduce racism. It was the death knell for his career The loss of Brian Donovan’s grants and job speak volumes about federal funding priorities — and academia www.statnews.com/2026/04/07/b...
statnews.com
I had the opportunity to write a research briefing for Nature, in which I summarized our recent work in African Striped Mice. It’s a short read for anyone who wants a quick overview! www.nature.com/articles/d41...
A genetic switch turns off parental behaviour and drives infanticide in male striped mice
In striped mice, the social environment affects expression of the Agouti gene, which in turn can drive pup-directed hostility.
nature.com
Forrest Rogers, PhD@forrestdrogers.bsky.social · 8mo agoWhy are some males caring toward infants while others are neglectful or abusive? I'm so pleased to share work that my colleagues and I @princeton.edu have just published @nature.com (an explanatory thread to follow!) (1/8)
The first version of FigTree was released nearly 20 years ago and it is still widely used (including by me). But there are currently 85 issues on the GitHub repo (github.com/rambaut/figt...) and some of them I don’t really like the look of.
rambaut/figtree
Automatically exported from code.google.com/p/figtree - rambaut/figtree
github.com
From our new paper out now in @currentbiology.bsky.social: www.cell.com/current-biol... w/ @neurofishh.bsky.social @gkafetzis.bsky.social @denilsson.bsky.social Looking across animals, the vertebrate eye is an obvious outlier. Why is it so different that other highly visual animals?
Our paper is now out in Nature: “Ancient co-option of LTR retrotransposons as yeast centromeres” www.nature.com/articles/s41... A short thread on how retrotransposons helped give rise to yeast point centromeres. 1/14
Ancient co-option of LTR retrotransposons as yeast centromeres - Nature
Evolutionarily related ‘proto-point’ centromeres providing resolution to the evolutionary origins of point centromeres are identified in yeast, and comparison shows they evolved in an ancestor with re...
nature.com
BREAKING: The Department of Education has ended its directive that attempted to restrict diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts in schools nationwide. This is a victory for academic freedom and education equity.
🧬✨ New 2-part review on the evolution of regulatory DNA (enhancers & promoters)! What started as conversations between Gasper Tkačik @istaresearch.bsky.social and our group @embl.org grew into a broader synthesis. Preprints here: Part 1: arxiv.org/abs/2601.19681 Part 2: arxiv.org/abs/2601.21480
Long-term evolution of regulatory DNA sequences. Part 1: Simulations on global, biophysically-realistic genotype-phenotype maps
Promoters and enhancers are cis-regulatory elements (CREs), DNA sequences that bind transcription factor (TF) proteins to up- or down-regulate target genes. Decades-long efforts yielded TF-DNA interac...
arxiv.org
Once it became clear that an ICE agent could commit murder in broad daylight with no consequences except the VPOTUS defending him with no heed to the facts and instead vilifying and prosecuting the victim, we opened the door to roving death squads. But there is no statute of limitations for murder.
If this is what they do to white American citizens in front of everyone, imagine what happens to non-white people behind closed doors.
Alex Pretti was a colleague at the VA. We hired him to recruit for our trial. He became an ICU nurse- I lover working with him. He was a good kind person who lived to help and these fuckers executed him. White. Hot. Rage.
A new community-driven lab handbook for reducing conflict and creating more positive and equitable work environments gets strong support from a survey of 200 researchers. buff.ly/K7CGFLV
"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
It's out, Minos transgenesis in the pantry moth by @donyaniyaz.bsky.social @lucalivraghi.bsky.social High efficient, glowing eye and silk gland markers peerj.com/articles/202... @peerj.bsky.social
Once again I'm begging people not to compare politicians to invertebrates. Inverts are cool and diverse and play an important ecological role. Politicians are the lower order.
My first paper as a first author is officially out 🎉 @elife.bsky.social We show that the iridescent colour of Morphos 🦋 tends to converge in sympatry while their chemical signals diverge, illustrating the constrasting effect natural and sexual selection on trait evolution. doi.org/10.7554/eLif...
Convergent iridescence and divergent chemical signals in sympatric sister-species of Amazonian butterflies
Ecological interactions exert contrasting evolutionary pressures on sympatric Morpho butterflies, promoting convergence in iridescence but divergence in chemical cues, illustrating how ecological inte...
doi.org
What an amazing paper from the Bonasio lab! Domesticated retroviral proteins and RNA-modifying enzymes that regulate RNA loading into and transportation via extracellular vesicles (1/2). www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Pseudouridine selects RNAs for extracellular transport
RNAs move through the extracellular space to transmit information between cells, including mammalian neurons, yet how specific RNAs are channeled into these extracellular routes is unknown. Using geno...
biorxiv.org
Out now on the cover of @journal-evo.bsky.social! Led by Sarah Khalil, we took a genomic approach to investigate the hybrid zone between different-colored Red-backed Fairywren subspecies. We found some interesting candidate genes under selection. Check it out! academic.oup.com/evolut/advan...
Latest work out today in @currentbiology.bsky.social We find the fly development gene bicoid is much older than previously thought (~20 million yrs older!) 🪰🧬 To pinpoint its origins we tackled the Diptera phylogeny, providing some resolution (many open questions remain). 🔗 tinyurl.com/2vyuevpy
Revised evolutionary relationships within Brachycera and the early origin of bicoid in flies
Mulhair et al. uncover a functional bicoid in non-cyclorrhaphan flies, pushing the gene's origin back by ∼20 million years. Reassessing the Diptera phylogeny using the largest dataset to date permits ...
cell.com
So many issues with this new mandatory genetic test for women. World Athletics’ mandatory genetic test for women athletes is misguided. I should know – I discovered the relevant gene in 1990 www.mcri.edu.au/news/insight...
World Athletics’ mandatory genetic test for women athletes is misguided. I should know – I discovered the relevant gene in 1990 - Murdoch Children's Research Institute
MCRI's Professor Andrew Sinclair SRY gene identifier critiques World Athletics’ new gene testing rule. Read more.
mcri.edu.au
So excited to share this preprint from the Rosin lab in collaboration with the Hawley lab and @eelcotromer.bsky.social on moth spermatogenesis! We investigate the meiotic errors that occur during the formation of apyrene sperm (that have no DNA) in silkworms! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Programmed meiotic errors facilitate dichotomous sperm production in the silkworm, Bombyx mori
The goal of meiosis is typically to produce haploid gametes (eggs or sperm). Failure to do so is catastrophic for fertility and offspring health. However, Lepidopteran (moths and butterflies) males pr...
biorxiv.org
My prediction is that in that scenario, he blames the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which puts out employment data. Calls them corrupt, run by Democrats, out to get him. Fires people there, insists their numbers cannot be trusted, White House puts out its own fictitious data to make Trump look good
Our false head work is out! By analysing ~1000 #butterflies, we found many traits at posterior end of hindwings evolved correlatedly, likely forming a trait complex w/adaptive function to dupe predators into thinking these traits together are actual head!! royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...
Very excited to share the first chapter of my PhD thesis out in @elife.bsky.social : doi.org/10.7554/eLif... We discovered how the gene "mirror" is necessary for specifying the “vannus”, a unique domain in the posterior part of butterfly wings. 🦋🦋 (1/6) #CRISPR #butterfly #genomics
The life of each of us began when a sperm and an egg came together. But what happens at a molecular level? Our latest work in Cell led by @vdeneke.bsky.social & Andreas Blaha reveals a conserved fertilization complex that bridges sperm and egg in vertebrates! (1/11) www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...
While helping out on a cool genomics project recently, I came to realise I’d been taught a pretty big inaccuracy about the events that occur at fertilization. I suspect that almost everyone reading this has the same misapprehension, so let’s do some learning together: 1/
🚨Postdoc opportunity🚨: LepEU postdoc: comparative population genomics of European scale adaptation in butterflies 2 year, full-time PD in my group, Stockholm Univ. Applications assed on rolling basis, deadline: 23 August 2025. Planned start 1 Oct. Details: christopherwheatlab.wordpress.com
