I am so excited to announce that the Weber Lab will be opening in the Department of Anatomy, Physiology, & Cell Biology @ucdavisvetmed.bsky.social @ucdavis.bsky.social. We will be investigating the development and evolution of vertebra size, shape, and function. And yes, the jerboas are coming with!

Did you know the Santa Cruz Developmental Biology Meeting has an entire session just for NEW PI Talks? And a New PI Keynote Talk? It does! These will be chosen from the abstracts. New PIs, sign up! @socdevbio.bsky.social @rashmi-priya.bsky.social @lowelab.bsky.social scdb2026.sites.ucsc.edu

A reviewer of my evolutionary genetic complexity paper asked me to cite Donovan as evidence of the real harm of simplification, and I'm so grateful. This is a hard read.

Needhi Bhalla 💅🏽@needhibhalla.bsky.social · 4mo ago

“We’ve lost out on the ability to continue to improve this work to make it more effective, and to explore how to apply it to other areas…There are a lot of different ways that genetics has been used to justify prejudice and…that human-made social categories interface with biological categories“🧪

Bondi was awful, but no worse than Patel. Noem was terrible, but no worse than Hegseth. Funny that it’s only the women who get fired.

If preparing figures please consider "colorblind friendly" approaches (www.nature.com/articles/d41...). I am missing the long-wave opsin, which manifests in strange ways: I can't discern red vs. black. This dichromacy is rare and severe, but ~300 million have more common forms addressed in link.

Colour me better: fixing figures for colour blindness

Images can be made more accessible by choosing hues, shapes and textures carefully.

nature.com

How many of us who remember watching the Challenger launch in your elementary classroom still get highly emotional when a personed mission launches?

The Cooper lab is hiring a postdoc with a strong background in mouse genetics and molecular biology to advance.our gene drive work. Must be extremely organized, engineering-minded, and outcomes-oriented. Spread the word and have interested candidates email me directly.

Annual reminder: if you’ve been accepted to multiple graduate programs and are still deciding, please let the ones you’re definitely not going to know as soon as possible! -Someone who got into his PhD off the waitlist the day after the deadline

First year and incoming PhD students are impacted the most bc few faculty can be comfortable with a ~5 year financial responsibility.

Siegenthaler Lab@siegenthalerlab.bsky.social · 5mo ago

Possibly once councils meet that some of these (especially the single digit) will turn into NOAs eventually. Its not possible to plan anything on 'eventually' - projects/labs just stagnate because you don't want to hire, put out resources only to find out the grant won't be funded.

Possibly once councils meet that some of these (especially the single digit) will turn into NOAs eventually. Its not possible to plan anything on 'eventually' - projects/labs just stagnate because you don't want to hire, put out resources only to find out the grant won't be funded.

If you're doomscrolling, guess what? So far there are 51 kākāpō chicks hatched and thriving this season, the same number of birds as we had in TOTAL in the 90s! Only one chick has died and there are still fertile eggs waiting to hatch!

Very sad news. Gail Martin (1944-2026) was a figure in developmental biology. She pioneered the field of ES cells. A great colleague, a friend and a lovely person.

I had an email exchange with a guy yesterday who insisted I was making a mistake not outsourcing my writing to an LLM. He said, "It knows more than you do." He couldn't understand that this was impossible because the work of writing is figuring out what "I" think.

Cause that's what heroes do.

"Relax your tight end" for the win...

This is ok tho

Co-loquial literally refers to speaking together, what more could behoove a journal?🤷‍♂️

L.o.l

It would be great if SoCal earthquakes would stop happening while I'm in my office on the 6th floor 🤢

Meanwhile, "Even a casual pass through the great halls of mammals..." was deemed "too colloquial" for another journal. @currentbiology.bsky.social for the win again.

Stephen Matheson 🌵🚲@sfmatheson.bsky.social · 7mo ago

OMG the abstract starts: Imagine the tools a cow would make. This idea, humorously illustrated in Gary Larson’s Far Side cartoon, captures a widespread assumption: cows are neither problem-solvers nor tool users. In science, as in culture, livestock species are often cognitively underestimated...

As Julie Packard prepares to retire, a look at her amazing legacy that shaped the Monterey Bay Aquarium and its global impact. 🌊🦑🧪 #scicomm www.montereycountynow.com/news/cover/a...

As Julie Packard prepares to retire, a look at her legacy that shaped the Monterey Bay Aquarium and its global impact.

Explore Julie Packard's 41-year legacy shaping the Monterey Bay Aquarium, ocean conservation, and global impact.

montereycountynow.com

It's been a good few weeks for cool bird genomcis - incl this, on warblers sharing colour genes through hybridisation (with evidence of between-genus introgression journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...

A colorful legacy of hybridization in wood-warblers includes frequent sharing of carotenoid genes among species and genera

Introgression between species can shape evolutionary trajectories in important ways. This study of the entire family of the colorful wood-warblers (Parulidae) uses whole-genome sequencing to reveal fr...

journals.plos.org

Bilaterian guts share embryonic patterning, but what about the adult gut? This study of 5 species reveals conserved TF modules that define A-P #gut compartments, with lineage-specific modifications, illuminating #bilaterian gut #evolution & diversification @plosbiology.org 🧪 plos.io/49pgpH3

I taught Genetics again this year. We need to include discussion of the problematic history of our field, especially as the claims of eugenics are once again centered in our political discourse. Last year I wrote this piece, explaining my reasoning and approach 🧪 1/n www.cell.com/trends/genet...

ROTO Research Group@roto-rub.bsky.social · 8mo ago

Next week, we welcome @rebeccasear.bsky.social in our Lecture Series. Rebecca will talk about 21st century eugenics, scientific racism and the role of academia in promoting political ideology. Just register here to participate 👉 rotorub.wordpress.com/roto-lecture... #PhilSci #HPBio

A new reporter mouse for visualising Hedgehog/GLI signalling activity This Research Highlight showcases the work from Hannah Schrader Dear, Nicole Franks, Benjamin Allen and colleagues: journals.biologists.com/dev/article/...

Look at those tail crescendos!! Another amazing example of disproportionate elongation of mid-tail vertebrae, and they note it is distal to the more functionally-constrained proximal tail.

Genome Biology and Evolution@genomebiolevol.bsky.social · 9mo ago

The November cover of Genome Biology and Evolution features @raularayadonoso.bsky.social @kenrokusumi.bsky.social @anthonygeneva.bsky.social et al., who studied how structural rearrangements and selection promote phenotypic evolution in Anolis. 🔗 doi.org/10.1093/gbe/evaf196 #genome #evolution

C'mon people, mustard gas is chemical warfare...

Dave Jamieson@jamieson.bsky.social · 9mo ago

Border Patrol agent Lairmore testifies that he was not injured by the sandwich, but he felt the impact through his ballistic vest. The sandwich came apart and "kind of exploded" on his chest upon impact, he says. "I could smell the onions and mustard."

This perfectly encapsulates what the GOP position is on the shutdown.

If SNAP benefits vanished tomorrow, feeding 42 million Americans for a month would cost about $7.8 billion.That’s less than 1% of the combined net worth of the three richest men in the U.S. A reminder of how obscene inequality has become and how easily hunger could be solved if we chose to.