Matt Rockman
@wormsrock.bsky.social
Evolutionary zoology & quantitative genetics Biology Professor, New York University
I find this new discovery of a transmissible cancer in catfish fascinating. As it’s described as the fourth example of contagious cancer, let me share this phylogenetic tree of species infected by such rarities.
Nature@nature.com · 2w agoResearchers have discovered a contagious cancer in catfish – just the fourth example of tumour cells that spread naturally from one animal to another go.nature.com/4fsoLR3
Excited to announce that this fall I'm starting my lab at the University of South Carolina! Our hybrid wet/dry lab will explore fundamental topics in animal evolution, looking at how different evolutionary processes combine quantitatively [pleiotropic conflicts, mutation bias, etc.].
I had a wonderful time at @northamptonshirenhs microscopy group meeting today, where I had the privilege of doing a presentation about marine plankton, and sharing a live sample with them! Here are some of the organisms we saw. #marineplankton 🦑
Hey look, our paper about the Single-cell Pediatric Cancer Atlas that we at @cancerdatalab.bsky.social have been working on for a while is out! www.cell.com/cell-genomic... It's a pretty good resource, if I do say so myself, and we are expanding: if you have data you want to share, get in touch!
The Single-Cell Pediatric Cancer Atlas: Data portal and open-source tools for single-cell transcriptomics of pediatric tumors
Hawkins et al. introduce the Single-Cell Pediatric Cancer Atlas: a uniformly processed collection of sc/snRNA-seq data from pediatric cancer samples and models. 700 samples from 55 pediatric cancer ty...
cell.com
I just walked across Woodside and Astoria, and Queens is absolutely not beating the allegations (greatest city in the world)
Francophone worm evolutionary biologists lighting it up at evoworm2026 in Hamilton Ontario Canada
We are excited to share our pan-pangenome paper! This is a long time coming work of my postdoc with the incredible @psudmant.bsky.social, and a stellar group of people! I hope you enjoy reading it! And I am excited to talk more more about it this week at #PEQG26!! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
A Pan-pangenome illuminates complex structural variation and selection in humans, chimpanzees, and bonobos
Complete, haplotype-resolved genome assemblies have provided unprecedented insight into the evolution of structurally complex, rapidly evolving regions of human genomes; however, population-scale pang...
biorxiv.org
As a skeptical Australian might say, nor way! (Taking the scenic route to the Michael Sars Symposium in Bergen)
Very happy to announce a big new paper from the lab, led by grad students @smishra677.bsky.social and Laia Pomar-Pallarès (in collaboration with @roblanfear.bsky.social). We introduce a new way to study introgression, with accompanying software (DAFT) 1/n 🧵 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
biorxiv.org
There's something mesmerizing about the way this marauding Acotylean flatworm flows over the across the terrain, like a liquid with frills.
Happy to highlight new findings by Vanesa Getseva and Lin Poyraz about the sources of variation in germline mutation rates among humans: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... Joint work with Anastasia Stolyarova and @ipsitaagarwal.bsky.social. 1/n
A sibling study of variation in parental mutation rates
People are born with variable numbers of de novo germline mutations (DNMs), depending primarily on the ages of their parents. To explore additional causes, we developed an approach to call DNMs from nucleotide differences between siblings in genomic regions inherited identical by descent from both parents. Applying it to whole genome sequences from 28,985 sibling pairs of diverse genetic ancestries present in the UK Biobank and All of Us datasets, as well as 2,330 trios, we identified >800K autosomal DNMs and characterized mutation phenotypes in 27,645 sets of parents. We found subtle shifts in the mutation spectrum but no differences in total DNM rates among genetic ancestry groups, or between smokers and non-smokers. Testing for associations between parental mutation phenotypes and their burden of loss-of-function and deleterious missense variants in a set of 180 DNA repair and maintenance genes, we discovered that disruptions in REV1 and LIG1 increase germline mutation rates, and thus that rare mutator alleles segregate in population cohorts. ### Competing Interest Statement The authors have declared no competing interest. NIH, R35 GM083098
biorxiv.org
Researchers writing about their work frequently rely on clichés. Yet, little is known about how such clichés affect
I'm excited to tell you about the most recent preprint in my lab, demonstrating that a conserved spindle matrix protein, NPP-21/TPR, is required for the stronger checkpoint in germline cells during embryogenesis in C. elegans
bioRxiv Cell Biology@biorxiv-cellbio.bsky.social · 4mo agoNPP-21/TPR is required for developmental control of spindle checkpoint strength in C. elegans https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.04.13.718277v1
It's looking increasingly likely that I'll be hiring a 3-year computational pop-gen postdoc/PhD-level scientific programmer to start this Fall (2026). If you or someone you know is defending soon, and looking for a position, please DM/write to me! Thanks!
a painting of uncle sam pointing at the viewer with an american flag behind him
ALT: a painting of uncle sam pointing at the viewer with an american flag behind him
media.tenor.com
Now published @genomebiolevol.bsky.social: our paper showing that the genes for critical, ancient components of protein synthesis machinery - tRNAs - are bombarded with mutations, leading to remarkable allelic diversity that likely has functional consequences! academic.oup.com/gbe/article/...
Allelic Variation at tRNA Genes in Three Nematode Species Indicates Mutation Load Despite Strong Purifying Selection
Abstract. Cytosolic transfer RNAs (tRNAs), which are encoded as hundreds of genes in nuclear genomes, experience exceptionally high mutation rates and have
academic.oup.com
Really excited to see this work out now in Ecology Letters! May be particularly interesting to those thinking about life-history trade-offs and eco-evolutionary feedbacks, and how those may interact to maintain variation within natural populations. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
Pervasive Fitness Trade‐Offs Revealed by Rapid Adaptation to Shifting Population Densities in Large Experimental Populations of Drosophila melanogaster
Trade-offs are an inherent feature of organismal biology and fundamental to the evolution of natural populations. Using experimental evolution in large, genetically diverse populations of Drosophila ...
onlinelibrary.wiley.com
Applications are open until Mar 31! Spread the word
Megan Phifer-Rixey@phiferrixey.bsky.social · 6mo agoAre you a science teacher in the greater Philadelphia area? Our lab has summer funding for a middle/high school science teacher to do research and develop educational materials. We are using genomics to understand how cities impact house mice. Apply here: careers.drexel.edu/cw/en-us/job...
I defended my PhD 10 years ago today. That was the least remarkable thing that happened that day. Sharing something I wrote about it last year. Since then "the horrors persist but so do we." And with dignity.
I am SO THRILLED to share our first fully-lab lab paper!!!!!! Led by @hybridzones.bsky.social & @hagarsoliman.bsky.social, w/ a major assist from @pfschwarz.bsky.social!!!!!!!!!!!!! Read more below, if you're curious (you should be- it's AWESOME!!!!!!!) link: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Introgression and parental conflict shape repeated occurrences of postzygotic isolation in Mimulus
Postzygotic reproductive isolation is often thought to accumulate as a byproduct of neutral divergence. Yet it frequently evolves rapidly, in line wit…
sciencedirect.com
Our paper is out in @Science! The Atlantic silverside spans Earth's steepest latitudinal gradient in coastal sea-surface temperature. Despite high gene flow, populations show clinal genetic variation in multiple locally adapted traits. doi.org/10.1126/scie...
love when there's an article about how life is sustainable in the superheated waters surrounding a hydrothermal volcanic fissure on the ocean floor and then like six paragraphs in you find out the author's parents are chemosynthetic bacteria 🙄
Excited to share our new review in @natrevbiodiv.nature.com, coauthored w/allstar postdocs @vale-alaasam.bsky.social @annainthefield.bsky.social @anthonysnead.bsky.social Bridging island biogeography & evolutionary processes, we explore how eco-evo dynamics play out in the urban mosaic rdcu.be/e4tcj
Eco-evolutionary dynamics shaping biodiversity in the urban mosaic
Nature Reviews Biodiversity - The urban mosaic is a complex assimilation of habitats, biotic and abiotic factors with eco-evolutionary influence on local and regional biodiversity. In this Review,...
rdcu.be
Holy crapoly, what an opportunity!
Jeffrey Ross-Ibarra@jrossibarra.bsky.social · 6mo agoFun news! @gcbias.bsky.social and I are teaching a 2-week online population genetics workshop this summer to raise money for the Center for Population Biology at UC Davis. We're trying to gauge interest -- please fill this out if you might be interested! And please share broadly!