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Reposted by Deepa Agashe

Javier Lazaro - illustration @lazaroillustration.bsky.social · 1h

Next illustration of the series: lab animals
#art #digitalart #illustration

Illustration of a convey chain with frogs, rats and mice

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Luis-Miguel Chevin @lmchev.bsky.social · 22h

I wrote a commentary about the recent paper by @deepaagashe.bsky.social and @vrindarvkm.bsky.social

Also go have a look at the original paper if you haven't !

The timeframe of prediction for eco-evolutionary dynamics | PNAS www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

PNAS

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), a peer reviewed journal of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) - an authoritative source of high-impact, original research that broadly spans...

www.pnas.org

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Molecular Biology and Evolution @molbioevol.bsky.social · 1d

The MBE Best Student Paper award of 2024 goes to Julien Joseph (winner) and William S. Henriques (runner-up).

👏 Congratulations Julien and William for this recognition of your amazing work!

Check below for details on their research ⬇️

MBE Best Student Paper of 2024 award | Julien Joseph (Winner), William S. Henriques (Honorable mention)

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Rebecca R Helm @rebeccarhelm.bsky.social · 1d

Many sea stars begin life as young fairy-like creature (called a brachiolaria) that float through the open ocean. Eventually, a small star forms within them (here in yellow). The fairy-like brachiolaria sinks under the star’s weight, and the star pops out!
🎥@the_story_of_a_biologist (on Insta)

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Max Waugh @maxwaughphoto.bsky.social · 7d

Due to the aforementioned school project, I've been inundated with dragon content in recent weeks. Yup, it's the school mascot.

So I was transported back to my first Ecuador trip (2006), where we traveled deep into the Amazon, The highlight was... this Amazon Forest Dragon (yes, it was slow).

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Will Allen @wlallen.bsky.social · 14d

📢🦋 Our paper ‘Global selection on insect antipredator coloration’ is out and featured on the cover of @science.org

We ran a huge experiment to find out how ecological context favours camouflage and warning colouration as antipredator strategies. 1/6

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

A white-fronted bee-eater (Merops bullockoides) decides whether to consume a warningly colored white-barred acraea butterfly (Telchinia encedon). Photo (c) Mike Rowe

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Zamin Iqbal @zaminiqbal.bsky.social · 14d

Delighted to see our paper studying the evolution of plasmids over the last 100 years, now out! Years of work by Adrian Cazares, also Nick Thomson @sangerinstitute.bsky.social - this version much improved over the preprint. Final version should be open access, apols.
Thread 1/n

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Kafkaesque @kafkaesque2024.bsky.social · 17d

Magical! As dawn kisses Brazil's Veadeiros Tablelands, a stunning field of rare, endangered wildflowers mirrors the sun's rays, giving the impression of self-luminescence.

Marcio Esteves Cabral, Gold Prize, Plants & Funghi, 2025 #Nature #Landscape Comp. #EastCoastKin #Escape #BloomScrolling #Plants

A distant sunrise offers a glimmer of gold light on the far horizon, far at the top of the photo of what looks like a mountain desert region.

The majority of the photo foreground consists of bushes lit up in gold and green, illuminated as if individually lit against the darkness. The field of lit wildflowers stretches out towards the horizon where a sloping mountain ridge casts a dark shadow. The dark, barely lit sky is filled with puffy clouds with ominous dark shadows.

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c0nc0rdance @c0nc0rdance.bsky.social · 23d

The buff-tip moth (Phalera bucephala) has mastered a very particular kind of camouflage.

When they close their wings up, they resemble a broken twig.

Native to large parts of Europe, there's regional pattern variation that reflects the local tree species. This one best resembles birch twigs?

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Deepa Agashe @deepaagashe.bsky.social · 24d

Sofya is a fantastic scientist and a super nice person. Definitely recommend finding a way to work with her!

Sofya Garushyants @garushyants.bsky.social · 25d

hey bluesky 👋 visa hurdles mean I’m looking for opportunities outside the US. I’m a computational biologist (bacterial + phage genomics, postdoc in Koonin’s group @ NIH). I am interested in teaming up on funding apps. reach out if this resonates!

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Deepa Agashe @deepaagashe.bsky.social · 29d

😅 Thanks Pepi!

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Deepa Agashe @deepaagashe.bsky.social · 29d

About 10 years ago, we set up lots of experimental beetle populations, censused monthly. Expecting extinction, I said the workload would drop soon. But they all rescued themselves! 😱 So Vrinda & co kept counting. Many hundreds of thousands of beetles later, we have some neat outcomes. Enjoy!

Vrinda Ravi Kumar @vrindarvkm.bsky.social · Sep 10

Our work on evolutionary rescue is finally out in this week's issue of PNAS! Check out the NCBS communications team piece on our work quoted below.

National Centre for Biological Sciences, Bengaluru @ncbsbangalore.bsky.social · Sep 10

#LatestPublication
Vrinda & team from Dr Deepa Agashe's lab tracked beetle populations for 5+ years in harsh environments. Findings show how traits of founders influenced the long-term survival of their descendants.

🔗 bit.ly/42hsviC

@deepaagashe.bsky.social

🧵Check out the thread to know more!👇

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Bryan Gitschlag @bryangitschlag.bsky.social · Sep 8

NEW PAPER! Some kinds of genetic mutations are more likely to arise than others. Such "biases" in mutation vary between species.

Analyzing data from 14 species, we show that this variation explains species differences in the genetics of adaptation!

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www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Graph showing a positive correlation between "bias in adaptive outcome" on the vertical axis and "mutation bias" on the horizontal axis, with 14 data points representing 14 respective species, with a line of best fit equal to a slope of 0.82 on the log-scale axes. Each data point contains horizontal and vertical error bars to illustrate the uncertainty in both the mutational and adaptive data. The 95% confidence interval of the slope is shown in parentheses (0.44 to 1.24), based on 10,000 simulated data sets, where the simulated data sets are based on statistical resampling of the empirical data (i.e. "bootstrap" data sets). Regression lines based on these bootstrap data sets are shown as light gray lines.

The type of bias reported here refers to the ratio of transitions versus transversions, where transitions are a DNA mutation that preserves the basic structure of the DNA base (i.e. a purine-to-purine or pyrimidine-to-pyrimidine mutation), and transversions are mutations that alter the structure of the DNA base at a particular site (i.e. replacing a purine with a pyrimidine or vice versa). In other words, this graph shows that transitions contribute more toward adaptive evolution in species where transitions arise at a higher rate.

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Pedro Vale @pfvale.bsky.social · Sep 8

*Congratulations* to former Darwin Trust-funded PhD student Arun Prakash for being awarded the Alfred Russel Wallace award from @royentsoc.bsky.social for his PhD on #immune regulation of disease #tolerance and immune #priming in #Drosophila!

@edinburghbiology.bsky.social @uoe-eid.bsky.social

Former PhD student wins the Alfred Wallace Award for significant contribution to the science of entomology | Edinburgh Infectious Diseases | Edinburgh Infectious Diseases

September 2025: Dr Arun Prakash, a Darwin Trust PhD student, has been retrospectively awarded the prestigious award from the Royal Entomological Society for his 2021 thesis ''Immune Regulation Of Dise...

edinburgh-infectious-diseases.ed.ac.uk

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Kelly Turnbull @coelasquid.bsky.social · Aug 31

Sometimes we’re unsatisfied with a thing we made because when it only existed in our head, we saw all the things it could have been and when it’s done we know all the things that it isn’t, but we can’t see the way it expands into a million new things when someone else unpacks it in their head. 🖊️🦑

Frustrated little dude gripping a pencil saying “how do I pack this down into something I can actually share?” While swirling rainbows labeled “INFINITE POTENTIAL” float around them.

Little dude frowns at a tiny grey box, exclaiming “all that work for THIS?!”

Little dude shoves the grey box into another little guy’s hands; Frowning, stomping off, and saying “Here you go, I made this, it sucks.”

Second little dude cracks open the box, swirling rainbows project out onto their face.

Second little dude stares in awe at all the swirling rainbows now floating around them.

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Microbiome Virtual International Forum @microbiomevif.bsky.social · Aug 28

Season 5 is going to start 🔜

Check out the program and
feel free to join the keynotes by presenting your work–abstract submission is open www.microbiome-vif.org/en-US/-/info...

@kathlemon.bsky.social ‬ @saramitri.bsky.social @simrouxvirus.bsky.social @halllab.bsky.social @deepaagashe.bsky.social

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Craig Primmer @fishcongen.bsky.social · Aug 22

Aurelien Tellier presenting the details of #eseb2027 which will be a hub meeting, with connected and local sessions in 4 hubs (Gothenburg, Munich, London, Istanbul) eseb2027.org #eseb2025

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ESEB 2025 Congress @eseb2025.bsky.social · Aug 22

✨ Day 5 of #ESEB2025 wrapped! Thanks for an inspiring week: safe travels home, and see some of you tonight 🎉

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Sara Mitri @saramitri.bsky.social · Aug 22

So excited to share this new paper by @sulheim.bsky.social and others! It's rare that you find a pattern, propose a hypothesis and the more you look, the more data you find that fits! Snorre's intuition, hard work and rigour to put it all together have been inspiring! Let us know what you think...

Snorre Sulheim @sulheim.bsky.social · Aug 20

Excited to share the first results from my postdoc at @dmf-unil.bsky.social with @saramitri.bsky.social
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Microbes release lower-value metabolites at higher rates

Microbes release a wide range of metabolites into their environment, yet the reasons for this release and the factors that influence release rates are not well understood. Here, using a combination of...

www.biorxiv.org

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Rowan Green @rowancallumg.bsky.social · Aug 18

New paper out @molbioevol.bsky.social on antimutator Ecoli, mutational spectra and the distribution of fitness effects of antibiotic resistance with @knightjar.bsky.social @rokkrasovec.bsky.social and others @mermanchester.bsky.social doi.org/pzfm
Read🧵for highlights and fun stats (1/13)

Antimutator and Mutational Spectrum Effects Can Combine to Reduce Evolutionary Potential in Escherichia coli ΔnudJ

Abstract. The rate of spontaneous mutation is a key factor in determining the capacity of a population to adapt to a novel environment, for example, a bact

doi.org

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Deepa Agashe @deepaagashe.bsky.social · Aug 14

Very cool work, showing how to increase adaptation rates with very specific tuning of local mutation rates!

Tiffany Taylor @taylorlabgroup.bsky.social · Aug 13

🦠 New paper led by James Horton (feat. J Cherry & @gretelwaugh.bsky.social) reveals GnT DNA motif can boost T→A mutation rates up to 1000×, & how tweaking nearby bases can fine-tune its potency.
General across bacteria + potential in synbio.
📄 academic.oup.com/mbe/advance-ar…
🔗 James’s thread ⬇️

https://academic.oup.com/mbe/advance-ar…

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Journal of Evolutionary Biology @jevbio.bsky.social · Aug 11

We will be in the exhibition hall @eseb2025.bsky.social!

✅ Meet our editors
✅ Support your society journal

@agonzalezvoyer.bsky.social @maxreuter.bsky.social @ebablab.bsky.social @vakirlis.bsky.social @arnaudlerouzic.bsky.social @francescaraffini.bsky.social @masahitotsuboi.bsky.social

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Marshall Julius 🚀 @marshalljulius.bsky.social · Jul 28

Welcome to Jurassic Pork 🦕🥟🦖
#Delicious #Dinosaur #Dumplings

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Deepa Agashe @deepaagashe.bsky.social · Jul 29

Very nice work!

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Paula Ramiro-Martínez @paularamiro.bsky.social · Jul 22

New paper alert! 🚨

Plasmids promote bacterial evolution through a copy number-driven increase in mutation rate.

We combine theory, simulations, experimental evolution, and bioinformatics to demonstrate that mutation rates scale with plasmid copy number.

Let's dive in! 🧵👇

Plasmids promote bacterial evolution through a copy number-driven increase in mutation rate

Plasmids are autonomously replicating DNA molecules that stably coexist with chromosomes in bacterial cells. These genetic elements drive horizontal gene transfer and play a fundamental role in bacter...

www.biorxiv.org

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