Yay! Just saw that we got the cover of the August 1 MBoC! Woot! 🎉 Please check out our paper if you are interested in it the tubulin code or early development. www.molbiolcell.org/doi/10.1091/...

Super excited my new review on midbody remnants (MBRs) is out: "Condensates on the Move: Midbody Remnants as Large, Translation‐Competent Extracellular Vesicles" #extracellularvesicles #midbody #mitosis #condensates #translation #proteinsynthesis onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

Condensates on the Move: Midbody Remnants as Large, Translation‐Competent Extracellular Vesicles

Mitotic cells produce three EV types: exosomes and microvesicles (green/blue) delivering pre-formed molecules, and midbody remnants (magenta) containing functional ribosomes and translation machinery...

onlinelibrary.wiley.com

🚨NEW PAPER 🚨 "Deconstructing empirical fitness seascapes across scales of granularity" published in #G3 (@genetics-gsa.bsky.social) 1/2 The fitness landscape has been among the most influential instruments in evolutionary theory for nearly a century. But we often treat them as fixed and static.

www.nature.com/articles/s41... how cool!

Intestinal stem cells count self-renewal divisions to switch multipotency - Nature

In Drosophila, cell fate switching in adult intestinal stem cells is determined through an epigenetic mechanism in which these cells count divisions, switching from producing enterocytes to producing ...

nature.com

Avocados come in 2 varieties - A-types start each day female and switch to male midday. B-types do the reverse. In work just published from the last chapter of my PhD, we show this system evolved 40+million yrs ago and is regulated by alleles of 1 transcription factor www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Balanced polymorphism in a floral transcription factor underlies the ancient rhythm of daily sex alternation in avocado | PNAS

In avocado and certain wild relatives in Lauraceae, a highly synchronized daily rhythm of floral sex timing promotes cross-pollination between two ...

pnas.org

A Fluorescent Dauer Marker in Caenorhabditis inopinata Enables Comparative Analysis of Dauer-Inducing Mechanisms www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

A Fluorescent Dauer Marker in Caenorhabditis inopinata Enables Comparative Analysis of Dauer-Inducing Mechanisms

Dauer larvae are a dormant developmental stage in nematodes that is induced by a range of environmental cues. The molecular mechanisms that transduce these cues to regulate dauer entry have been well ...

biorxiv.org

How did octopuses evolve novel traits? Rishav Mitra, Richard Han, Trey Scott, et al serendipitously discover a unique ribosome adaptation that increases the accuracy of protein synthesis and evolved alongside their elaborate nervous systems vs deep sea relatives. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Caenorhabditis becei recombinant inbred lines (beRILs) reveal the scope of heritable variation within a gonochoristic nematode population www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Caenorhabditis becei recombinant inbred lines (beRILs) reveal the scope of heritable variation within a gonochoristic nematode population

Caenorhabditis nematodes are a powerful model clade for evolutionary genetics. Isogenic lines and panels of recombinant inbred lines (RILs) are among the most essential tools for genetic studies in th...

biorxiv.org

Reading Runciman’s sneery review of one of the best books I’ve read in the past few years has further lowered my opinion of Runciman

David Runciman · Trivial Pursuits: Gamification

What makes a game liberating to play is also what makes it stifling and oppressive: in both cases it’s because the...

lrb.co.uk

Clever approach from @astavoe.bsky.social for those pesky lines that were integrated with Rol -- edit them back to nonRol! I wonder what else we could build from all the existing integrated arrays. Switch colors?

microPublication Biology@micropub7n.bsky.social · last mo.

Unrolling worms: Genome Editing to Rewrite Roller Phenotypes in C. elegans #micropublication #biology #data #caltechlibrary #Celegans #PhenotypeData #Methods #NewFinding #MaterialsAndReagents https://micropublication.org/journals/biology/micropub-biology-002185

Just came across this remarkable interview with Marjorie Grene at age 94: www.thebeliever.net/an-interview... Two of my favourite bits, when Grene is asked about Rorty and about Lakatos: Rorty is just witty, but doesn't have a philosophy and Grene is quick to say that she did not kill Lakatos!

mRNA-Scaffolded Cytoplasmic Compartments www.annualreviews.org/content/jour...

mRNA-Scaffolded Cytoplasmic Compartments

The cytoplasm of vertebrate cells is compartmentalized into the cytosol and several messenger RNA (mRNA)-scaffolded condensates, present at steady-state conditions and in the absence of stress. They i...

annualreviews.org

Caenorhabditis tropicalis followed a unique evolutionary path to self-fertility doi.org/10.1093/gene...

Caenorhabditis tropicalis followed a unique evolutionary path to self-fertility

Abstract. Caenorhabditis nematodes provide three natural experiments in which a male/female species evolved to produce one with males and self-fertile herm

doi.org

Shubin closes with a reminder of the vital importance of shared evolutionary history in basic biomedical research: we’re learning how to cure human disease thanks to work on fruit flies, worms, and even fish

Excellent welcoming squad for the #Evolution meeting!! Five stars! ⭐️

I think this was one of the best talks I’ve heard! Evolution 2026 starting amazingly! @neilshubin.bsky.social #Evolution2026

Our paper on the evolution of cellular miniaturization is now out in PNAS! www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... A short recap 🧵

Marco Fumasoni@marcofumasoni.bsky.social · 8mo ago

🗞️ New preprint from the lab, led by our postdoc Ana Garoña (not on here) in collab with @andreagiometto.bsky.social: “Experimental evolution of cellular miniaturization reveals a mechanism for cell size evolution”, aka: “honey, we shrank the yeasts!” 🎥 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

! "Moreover, transphyletic transplantation experiments show that the blastopore lip of M. leidyi leads to the generation of a secondary body axis in embryos of the cnidarian Nematostella vectensis."

@paveltomancak.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Big paper from @hejnol.bsky.social lab. Title says it all. Congrats, Stanislav Kremnyov and the team. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

The new OrthoFinder paper is out now! In this new work, we introduce major advances in accuracy and scalability, allowing analysis on much larger datasets www.nature.com/articles/s41... github.com/OrthoFinder/...

OrthoFinder: improved phylogenetic orthology inference with enhanced accuracy and scalability - Nature Methods

The updated OrthoFinder v3 software boosts accuracy and scalability in phylogenetic orthology inference with massive and diverse datasets.

nature.com

Brault et al. propose guidelines for standardized π estimation, systematic reporting of summary statistics, and the adoption of richer metadata to ensure that population genomic data remain comparable and reusable across a wide range of systems. 🔗 doi.org/10.1093/gbe/... #genome #evolution

Why are leaves the shape that they are? What controls intraspecific, genetic variation in leaf shape? New from my lab, in collaboration with many others, led by PhD student Amanda Peake: mapping the leaf shape polymorphism in Ipomoea hederacea.

bioRxiv Plant Bio@biorxiv-plants.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Newly arisen indel governs a leaf shape polymorphism in the Ivy Leaf Morning Glory (Ipomoea hederacea) https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.06.04.730136v1

🧨 New publication out (I think this one is 🌶️ ): Cerca & @stelkens.bsky.social - "The identity crisis of speciation genomics". academic.oup.com/evolinnean/a...

How do alternative reproductive modes arise? In this @pnas.org paper, we show that hybridogenesis -where a haploid set of chromosomes is transmitted clonally across generations- acted as an intermediate step between sexual and asexual reproduction in stick insects. doi.org/10.1073/pnas...

How predictable is evolution? Replicated C. elegans experiments show environmental differences and population bottlenecks jointly shape the repeatability of adaptation doi.org/10.1093/evle... Image credit: Wikimedia

Comparative transcriptomics reveals an extracellular worm Argonaute as an ancestral regulator of LTR retrotransposons academic.oup.com/gbe/advance-...

Comparative transcriptomics reveals an extracellular worm Argonaute as an ancestral regulator of LTR retrotransposons

Abstract. Safeguarding the genome from non-self elements is essential for development, reproduction, and ageing. One of the major threats to genomic integr

academic.oup.com

Our paper unpacking "fitness" is out doi.org/10.1093/gene.... How to define fitness depends on what question you ask. Selection acts on organismal vital rates, longer-term outcomes make sense for genetic lineages, models link them. "Invasion fitness" = speed, but sometimes probability matters more.

Why there are so many definitions of fitness in models

Abstract. Evolutionary “fitness” is operationalized in many different ways in models. Its role is to quantify that which is favored by natural selection. G

doi.org

Joanna Masel@joannamasel.bsky.social · 2y ago

Our latest preprint doi.org/10.32942/X2V... explains why fitness can be defined in so many ways, and which version(s) you should use when. Fitness quantifies what natural selection favors. 1/

😀 Actually, what is a gain-of-function mutation? doi.org/10.1093/gene...

Actually, what is a gain-of-function mutation?

Abstract. For more than a century, scientists have worked to characterize, understand, and predict the consequences of mutations. For almost as long, scien

doi.org

Put simply: It coordinates action in more varied and context-dependent ways across more complex environments, AND it regulates a more complex internal environment. Highly recommend this chapter from Sterling and Laughlin! link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Why an animal needs a brain - Animal Cognition

In Principles of Neural Design (2015, MIT Press), inspired by Charles Darwin, Sterling and Laughlin undertook the unfashionable task of distilling principles from facts in the technique-driven, data-s...

link.springer.com

New book "A Primer for Experimental Evolution" with coauthors Michael Rose, Margarida Matos, and Joe Graves. www.worldscientific.com/worldscibook... A compact primer for students and colleagues interested in planning and designing experiments to address questions in evolutionary biology.