Another nice primer is this @pbs.org video on Turing patterns (www.youtube.com/watch?v=JLkC...), The video features an interview with mathematical ecology Natasha Ellison-Neary, who highlights the role of pattern formation in biology.
The Mathematical Code Hidden In Nature
YouTube video by Be Smart
youtube.com
In the process of looking up this work to get some primers for this conversation, I found this super cute video on Alan Turing's work on morphogenesis. Something to enjoy even if folks know about this subject in depth 😀 www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ya6R...
Alan Turing: Morphogenesis And Evolution | MONSTER BOX
YouTube video by Monster Box
youtube.com
Parmvir K Bahia@parmvir.com · 2d agoLooking forward to this @cassyni.bsky.social talk "How the leopard got its spots: Revisiting Turing’s Chemical Basis of Morphogenesis" presented by Dr. John J. Tyson 📅 Wednesday 26th Aug 2026 ⏰ 17.00 PM (EDT) RSVP now: cassyni.com/events/WaXAp... @smbmathbiology.bsky.social
El reciente estudio publicado por el equipo de William Martín sugiere que los dominios Bacteria y Arquea surgieron, independientemente, a partir de una conceptualización de LUCA, entendido aquí como un quimiosistema cuyo metabolismo dependía de la actividad geológica hidrotermal.
Philip Ball@philipcball.bsky.social · 4d agoICYMI: Were there two origins of life? And was the Last Universal Common Ancestor not truly alive at all but half-rock? These are questions raised in work by Bill Martin & colleagues, which I covered for @sciam.bsky.social www.scientificamerican.com/article/life...
Donyavi, @grantkinsler.bsky.social @kgslab.bsky.social et al. demonstrate that, even in a system with high pleiotropy, the underlying genotype–phenotype–fitness map has a modular structure that makes evolutionary outcomes more predictable 🔗 academic.oup.com/mbe/article/... #societyjournal #evobio
Evolutionary adaptation proceeds through a small number of phenotypic modules
Abstract. Understanding how the myriad molecular impacts of mutation percolate to influence higher-order traits and ultimately fitness requires compressing
academic.oup.com
My new book, Phylogenetic Biology, is now published. Available online for free at dunnlab.org/phylogenetic... . Physical copies can be purchased at shop.lightningsource.com/b/085?params... or your favorite bookstore.
If you just happened to pick this week to start yelling about the importance of academic freedom, I sure hope you did more than watch silently for the past 18 months as the Trump administration assaulted everything from mRNA vaccine research to gender studies to the very idea of having universities.
New paper day! What started as an overly ambitious summer student project is now published. We asked which genomic signals best distinguish protein-coding, short ncRNA and long ncRNA genes from the genomic background. doi.org/10.1093/g3jo...
Genomic indicators of gene function: a systematic assessment of the human genome
Abstract. Proteins and non-coding RNAs are functional products of the genome that are central for crucial cellular processes. With recent technological adv
doi.org
Who needs chromatin anyway...? NOT THIS GUY! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... 1/n
Chromatin is dispensable for bacterial life
Inside cells, DNA is intimately associated with proteins, forming chromatin. The protein constituents of chromatin vary across the tree of life: histones are the principal building blocks of chromatin...
biorxiv.org
Hello, human geneticist here. There is no scientific basis for attempts to define people in terms of “good” or “bad” genes - these are discredited views in service of racist ideologies. For consensus & concerns of experts in our field, see e.g. this 2020 statement from @geneticssociety.bsky.social:
Remember this? bsky.app/profile/did:... Rigorous visualization of the structure in your high-dimensional data. Fantastic work by @dhdegroot.bsky.social With help of the reviewers of Nat Biotech it is now updated, extended an officially published here: www.nature.com/articles/s41... 1/n
Bonsai reconstructs tree representations for distortion-free visualization and exploration of high-dimensional data - Nature Biotechnology
High-dimensional data are visualized through representation on tree structures.
nature.com
Erik van Nimwegen@erikvannimwegen.bsky.social · last yr.Here it is! Bonsai. Now there is really no more excuse for using t-SNE/UMAP. Bonsai not only makes cool pictures of your data. It actually rigorously preserves its structure. No tunable parameters. Incredible work by @dhdegroot.bsky.social. I'm so excited about this! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
@vakirlis.bsky.social and I are proposing a new term in the de-novo genes / molecular evolution cinematic universe. The term is: "Emergence Bias" and our perspective piece describing it was published in @genomebiolevol.bsky.social today! So, what is an emergence bias? (1/7)
Emergence Biases in Molecular Evolution
Abstract. Biases in molecular evolution can significantly influence evolutionary trajectories. They have been described in a variety of contexts, such as d
academic.oup.com
Tinkering loci: genomic hotspots of gene birth and evolutionary innovation https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.08.09.743762v1
The first @smbmathbiology.bsky.social #MathBioNexus event is live folks! Join us to hear from John Tyson on "How the leopard got its spots: Revisiting Turing’s Chemical Basis of #Morphogenesis" 🐆 cassyni.com/events/WaXAp.... Of interest to anyone in: systems bio, developmental bio, population bio.
Episode 153 "Flower power" is out now 🌟 On this special episode, we talk with David George Haskell, a writer and biologist. We discuss his most recent book, "How Flowers Made our World", which explores the creative powers of flowering plants.
Flower power (Ep 153)
How have flowers shaped the modern world?
bigbiology.substack.com
I gave a talk at the University of Gent in June arguing that the race science of the likes of Nathan Cofnas does not stand up on its own terms. Thanks to @ptrbck.bsky.social for the invite. It contains work I've done with Rasmus Winther & @stairwaytokevin.bsky.social. Apologies for the audio.
In a new #FreeAccess #review, Bin-Bin Liu argues that the #pangenome era increases the need for explicit #macroevolutionary coordinates to improve the interpretation of micro-scale #genomic signals. Read the paper for #free⬇️ doi.org/10.1111/jse.... @wileyecology.bsky.social #PlantSci #evolution
From genomes to graphs: Why macroevolution still matters in the pangenome era
Pangenomes and graph genomes reveal structural and haplotypic variation, but they do not by themselves explain why genomic features are shared among lineages. A conservative evidence ladder evaluates...
doi.org
Our paper, “Shared Pivotal Genome of European and South-American Polyploid Fescues (Festuca sp.) Uncovered by Comparative Cytogenetics,” has been published! A big thank you to all our co-authors and collaborators for making this work possible. academic.oup.com/aob/article/...
Shared Pivotal Genome of European and South-American Polyploid Fescues (Festuca sp.) Uncovered by Comparative Cytogenetics
AbstractBackground and aims. Polyploidization is one of the major evolutionary forces in grasses (Poaceae), yet the genomic relationships between polyploid
academic.oup.com
We witnessed two neutron stars collide with both #GravitationalWaves & light OTD in 2017: #GW170817 Just 1.7 secs after the merger was saw a gamma-ray burst, and then ~11 hours later astronomers found a new point of light in NGC 4993: the kilonova ✨ #NeutronStarWeek @ligo.org @egovirgo.bsky.social
"...the adaptive landscape framework specifies how fitness is distributed over phenotype space but takes that space itself as given. Yet the structure of that space is itself determined by development, which sets what is possible at each timescale through appropriate coarse-grainings."
Lisandro Milocco@milocco.bsky.social · last wk.What can development contribute to predicting evolution? I argue it sets what evolution can access, and this depends on timescale since different parts of development evolve at different rates. Hence coarse-graining: keep only what matters 📣 New in @evojlinnsoc.bsky.social doi.org/10.1093/evol...
In several of his books and interviews, Mario Bunge stated that Pinker is at the forefront of right-wing pseudointellectual thought. I was skeptical about Bunge´s statements back then, but now I appreciate how accurate he was.
Kevin Bird@stairwaytokevin.bsky.social · last wk.Even as far back as The Blank Slate, Pinker's sloppy pop sci books had to get major corrections by experts www.nybooks.com/articles/200...
Steven Pinker es un ejemplo de superación personal, porque siempre encuentra la forma de ser aún más miserable.
@lastpositivist.bsky.social · last wk.Shilling your book off a bloke's suicide is just so classless wtf, is he not rich enough already!? Bring back shame.
I wish that more biologists appreciated how the Price Equation could be used as a scaffold to connect parallel fields, such as quantitative genetics and evo-devo, and thereby build a more general theory of evolution.
Mauricio González-Forero@mauriciogforero.bsky.social · last wk.Updated preprint: “A mathematical synthesis of genetics, development, and evolution”. Much of our understanding of phenotypic evolution relies on quantitative genetics, which in turn relies on what is known as the infinitesimal model. Thread. 1/10 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
"In this review we advocate for the conceptual and practical advantages of the joint-inference paradigm, while recognizing that, in many cases, results from joint inference and a two-step approach will be effectively identical ..." academic.oup.com/sysbio/artic...
An Evolving View of Character Macroevolution
Abstract. Phenotypes serve as the interface between organisms and their environments and are thus pivotal for comprehensive biological understanding. Howev
academic.oup.com
So thrilled that my paper on Crick's philosophy of science -- at least in the 1950s & 60s is forthcoming in Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science! H/t @matthewcobb.bsky.social
PhilSci-Archive@philsci-archive.bsky.social · 2w agoNew on the Archive: Baxter, Janella (2026) Correcting Course for Richer Research Programs: What Nonstandard Genetic Codes Mean for the Frozen Accident Theory. [Preprint] https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/30774/
”Here, we clarify how ecotypes can be distinguished from other forms of local adaptation, outline criteria for their recognition, and synthesise evidence on the ecological and evolutionary processes that give rise to them.” www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Genomic insights into the origin of ecotypes
A century after Turesson introduced ecotypes as locally adapted subunits of species, their origins and nature remain debated. Recent advances in molec…
sciencedirect.com
pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC...
The Genetic Consequences of Range Expansion and Its Influence on Diploidization in Polyploids
Despite newly formed polyploids being subjected to myriad fitness consequences, the relative prevalence of polyploidy, both contemporarily and in ancestral branches of the tree of life, suggests alter...
pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
Development is an evolutionary phenomenon https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/42584221/ #EvoDevo
If you're a biologist, especially one in a field that has a history of eugenics and racism (which absolutely includes my own field of evolutionary biology) and you choose to remain "neutral" as race science once again crawls out from under its rock, you are not in fact neutral.
