Integration and regulation of stolen organelles in a marine protist academic.oup.com/ismej/advanc... #jcampubs

Integration and regulation of stolen organelles in a marine protist

Abstract. Chloroplast-stealing (a.k.a., “kleptoplastidic”) plankton transiently obtain and integrate prey metabolic machinery into their own cells. To do s

academic.oup.com

We derive a working hypothesis for how the genetic code evolved, by assuming LUCA-depleted amino acids came early, using codons we infer via the 2-1-3 rule. We validate with independent data and a control ordering ecoevorxiv.org/repository/v... @seekingluca.bsky.social @hanonmcshea.bsky.social 1/13

So, bluesky, where is the discussion of the absolute insane things AI is doing in the realm of mathematics? It seems like we're nearly at the inflection point where the models are as good as human domain experts, and soon may well be better. Is that discourse only happening on twitter?

In 2014, Jason Rosch and I met at a GRC in Tuscany and sketched an idea on a cocktail napkin: what if we evolved S.pneumo in mice, treated them with antibiotics, varied their immune systems and watched what won? 11 years and a huge team effort later, it's out in @cp-cellhostmicrobe.bsky.social 🧵

New preprint with @biologyjoe87.bsky.social and Jürg Spaak: a mathematically rigorous method for building community assembly graphs from Lotka-Volterra models, which map which species coexist and how single species introductions shift community composition. 1/14 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

No models. No satellites. Just 50 years of Burgundy harvest dates: ~4.1 days earlier every decade. Climate change, written on a cellar wall. 🍷 🇫🇷 🧫

What makes a new kind of mind possible? In this @royalsocietypublishing.org paper, the authors explain why cognitive transitions are not just moments when animals became smarter, but evolutionary shifts that opened new spaces of cognition. @eplantec.bsky.social pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC...

We are in an uncomfortable era where it is getting a little too hard to tell if something belongs in the The Onion or not...

Mark Peifer (He, him)@peiferlabunc.bsky.social · last mo.

OK--is this satire??? The fact that we can't tell anymore is..... inpreparation.substack.com/p/opinion-i-...

All day long people talk shit about raisins on here because they don’t understand the deliciousness or utility of less wet grapes

1/6 Hey folks, headed to #Evolution2026? My lab is bringing a big crew this year, with four people presenting work from the MuLTEE examining how simple cell groups evolve into increasingly complex multicellular organisms. Come find them, ask hard questions, and say hi!

@mikeduncan.bsky.social’s history of Rome podcast is the most re-listenable podcast ever made. Comfort food for the mind. Thanks Mike for creating such a masterpiece. It’s incredibly well framed, of course, but I love your low key delivery and dry humor.

More astounding innovative palaeoart by Chinese graduate students. This time dinosaur dioramas locked in epoxy, with Tyndall effect (小红书: 念崽不会画画) 📍CAA Grad Show, Zhejiang Art Museum

Can plants grow roots up an O2 gradient?

Just saw David Tian give a great talk about this work at #PEQG26!

bioRxiv Evolutionary Biology@biorxiv-evobio.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Long-term small effective population size, inbreeding, and a recessive lethal haplotype drive premature death in the endangered Devils Hole pupfish (Cyprinodon diabolis) https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.06.06.730634v1

Finally, footage from that new whale graveyard. The fact that fossils and fresh carcasses mix together in this spot is bonkers. But of course it makes sense, because the scavengers that live down there also need a steady supply over millions of years. They can't just suddenly adapt to the deep.

Whale graveyard discovered 7km under the sea

YouTube video by nature video

youtube.com

Our paper "Gene ancestries reveal diverse microbial associations during eukaryogenesis.” is finally out in Nature. Eukaryogenesis was likely a gradual process shaped by multiple microbial partners and virus-mediated gene transfer, rather than a single binary symbiosis. doi.org/10.1038/s415...

Another handful of sand in the gears: Researchers cannot serve on a panel *at all* if anyone from their institution has submitted to that panel. Recusing themselves for the proposal itself is no longer sufficient. This is needless, but will certainly slow things up even further.

NSF imposes stricter conflict-of-interest rules for grant-review panels

Researchers say changes could further burden the understaffed agency

science.org

www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/.... Afternoon stroll soundtrack: a brilliant edition of Word of Mouth presented by @michaelrosenyes.bsky.social Thanks for the watter-based shoutout! @bbcsounds.bsky.social

Word of Mouth - How did people speak throughout history? - BBC Sounds

Michael Rosen meets popular YouTuber Simon Roper, who tries to recreate how people spoke.

bbc.co.uk

Our new paper doi.org/10.1098/rspb... on long-term genetic threats to small populations finds that "mutational meltdown" (bad mutations fixing) is less of a problem than "mutational drought" (too few good new mutations) @wmawass.bsky.social @uliseshmc.bsky.social @jeremyjberg.bsky.social 1/5

Extinction vortices are driven more by a shortage of beneficial mutations than by deleterious mutation accumulation

Abstract. Habitat loss contributes to extinction risk in multiple ways. Genetically, small populations can face an ‘extinction vortex’—a positive feedback

doi.org

I am having too much fun writing this book. I have tons of other things on my plate, but I keep shoving them aside to keep the flow going.

I was wondering why I had such a sense of inner peace, until I realized I just haven't set up my work email yet on my new phone. Now...I'm not sure if I want to.

This is a very large flytrap (Maroon Monster).

Somewhat hilarious review left by a guy who bought plants from me

This is a pretty sweet tray of flytraps (a b52 hybrid, for the nerds out there)

Can a biological system acquire the capacity to generate two distinct life forms from one genome? Some dimorphic 🍄 live with a built-in capacity to change form, growing either as single yeast-like cells or as filamentous networks depending on their surroundings. 🧪🌐 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Amazing stuff Ben!

Ben Larson@blarson.bsky.social · 3mo ago

And now it's out! Happy that PNAS selected for the cover this SEM image snapped by @samjlord.bsky.social, one of the most evocative visualizations of Euplotes that I have ever encountered. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... Stay tuned for what is shaping up to be some fascinating follow-up in the lab...

Multinucleate cells challenge deeply-held assumptions about complexity, ecological success and evolution. Postdoc extraordinaire and gifted writer @mrosjac.bsky.social tackles this subject with aplomb - tell us what you think! www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... @currentbiology.bsky.social

Multinucleation as a recurring evolutionary strategy for scaling and plasticity

Multinucleate cells — single cells containing multiple nuclei in a shared cytoplasm — are found across the eukaryotic tree of life. Having evolved ind…

sciencedirect.com

1(9 Great preprint from @wcratcliff.bsky.social @elibbyscience.bsky.social on obligate multicellularity and collective adaptation in snowflake yeast. Thought-provoking results! But I think the paper also highlights a deeper conceptual issue in the #multicellularity field. Let me explain:

Will Ratcliff@wcratcliff.bsky.social · 3mo ago

1/35 New preprint! We show that obligate multicellularity removes fundamental population genetic barriers to multicellular adaptation. Even a brief unicellular phase can dramatically constrain the evolution of beneficial multicellular traits. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

here’s my guess: they trained a bigger version of Opus, and it’s modestly better. Problem: they don’t have the compute capacity to serve it at scale, and new models get stale quickly. So they pivot to “it is not safe to release on the world!”, which builds hype and makes them seem ethical.

Ed Zitron@edzitron.com · 3mo ago

have heard a bit about mythos from a major finance company and their reaction has been that it A) did almost exactly the same thing as Claude Opus and B) that it finds thousands of "vulnerabilities" where less than 1.5% are actually exploitable and some that were entirely fictional.

1/35 New preprint! We show that obligate multicellularity removes fundamental population genetic barriers to multicellular adaptation. Even a brief unicellular phase can dramatically constrain the evolution of beneficial multicellular traits. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...