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🚨 New preprint out!
We reconstructed parental haplotypes in >440k individuals (UK & Estonian biobanks) to estimate assortative mating directly in the parental generation.
This reveals intensified assortment in recent generations.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

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Razib Khan @razibkhan.bsky.social · 12d

Fortune favors the fearless: millennia of Austronesian maritime feats
www.razibkhan.com/p/fortune-fa...

Fortune favors the fearless: millennia of Austronesian maritime feats

Epic Explorers of the Stone Age: the full scope of Austronesian audacity, part 1/2

www.razibkhan.com

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Reposted by Razib Khan

i/o @avidseries.bsky.social · 28d

Intermarriage rates by race/ethnicity.

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Reposted by Razib Khan

Matthew Cobb @matthewcobb.bsky.social · Sep 8

News in the history of molecular biology. The Science History Institute in Philadelphia has acquired a huge archive of correspondence and other scientific material from the pioneers of molecular biology (Franklin, Klug, Perutz, Delbrück etc, with items from Crick and Watson, too). 1/n

History of Molecular Biology Collection

This unparalleled collection includes Rosalind Franklin's historic 'Photo 51,' which revealed the double-helix structure of DNA.

www.sciencehistory.org

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Razib Khan @razibkhan.bsky.social · Sep 4

Reposted by Razib Khan

Gurdur @gurdur.bsky.social · Aug 31

This from @razibkhan.bsky.social is very interesting indeed:
"When civilization control-alt-deletes: prehistoric Europe’s false dawn and long reboot: Reflecting on Europe’s lost 5,000-year-old first draft"
www.razibkhan.com/p/when-civil...

When civilization control-alt-deletes: prehistoric Europe’s false dawn and long reboot

Reflecting on Europe’s lost 5,000-year-old first draft

www.razibkhan.com

Reposted by Razib Khan

Carl Zimmer @carlzimmer.com · Aug 8

Trump executive order seeks to centralize control of grantmaking under political appointees www.statnews.com/2025/08/08/t...

Trump executive order seeks to centralize control of grantmaking under political appointees

A sweeping new executive order seeks to transform how the federal government awards billions of dollars in research grants

www.statnews.com

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Reposted by Razib Khan

Adria LeBoeuf @adriatica.bsky.social · Aug 1

Pretty amazing. Potatoes are the outcome of an ~9 million year ago hybridization that led to an explosive radiation. The evolution of storage.

Chenxin Li, PhD @chenxinli2.bsky.social · Jul 31

The hybrid origin of potato tuberization.

From: www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...

Ancient hybridization underlies tuberization and radiation of the potato lineage

Genomic and functional analyses reveal that the potato lineage originated from a homoploid interspecific hybridization event between the Tomato and Etuberosum lineages 8–9 million years ago. The alter...

www.cell.com

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Reposted by Razib Khan

Nicolas Bierne @couplingdmi.bsky.social · Aug 1

Still no good evidence that inversions dominate evolution.

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Razib Khan @razibkhan.bsky.social · Jul 30

big names are now putting the stamp of approval on polygenic embryo selection

Reposted by Razib Khan

Dr Huw Groucutt @huwgroucutt.bsky.social · Jul 26

Hammond et al 2025. 'The behavioural ecology of hominin locomotion' 👌 www.frontiersin.org/journals/eco...

Frontiers | The behavioural ecology of hominin locomotion: what can we learn from landscapes of fear and primate terrestriality?

A defining feature of the hominin clade is bipedality, often parcelled together with terrestriality. However, there is increasing evidence of locomotor diver...

www.frontiersin.org

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Reposted by Razib Khan

Graham Dellaire @docdellaire.bsky.social · Jul 26

Evolutionary molecular biology paying dividends again - this time in finding new modulators of innate immunity - www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

A human homolog of SIR2 antiphage proteins mediates immunity via the Toll-like receptor pathway

Key actors of mammalian immunity originated from bacterial antiphage systems. The full extent of immune system conservation between bacteria and eukaryotes is unknown. Here, we show that the silent in...

www.science.org

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Reposted by Razib Khan

Vincent J Lynch 🐘🦣🦥 🦇🐋🐢🐍 @devoevomed.bsky.social · Jul 22

I ways forget the 🦠 🐘 🧪

Vincent J Lynch 🐘🦣🦥 🦇🐋🐢🐍 @devoevomed.bsky.social · Jul 22

You all know I'm a vocal critic of #ColossalBio and Ben Lamm for their deëxtinction #DisInformation, annoying y'all in the process! But I also give credit where credit is due, and a vaccine for EEHV is a *big* deal; Ceterum (autem) censeo deëxtinction esse delendam

cincinnatizoo.org/groundbreaki...

Groundbreaking Vaccine Helps Young Elephants at Cincinnati Zoo Overcome Deadly Virus - Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden

cincinnatizoo.org

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Razib Khan @razibkhan.bsky.social · Jul 6

observer.co.uk/news/science...

‘People can change their minds’: the evolutionary biologi...

Ella Al-Shamahi is the erudite presenter of a breathtaking new series about our 300,000-year history. But her own evolution story isn’t short of drama ei...

observer.co.uk

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Reposted by Razib Khan

alex ioannidis @alexgioannidis.bsky.social · Jul 5

I'm disturbed by tenured faculty on here behaving like high school bullies.

I ask them to look up ad hominem and recognize that what Mamdani did was atrocious and newsworthy.

Why are we defending an uber-privileged applicant whose father was faculty at the Ivy League university he was applying to?

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Reposted by Razib Khan

Chris Stringer @chrisbstringer.bsky.social · Jul 1

Here are replicas of crania: Kabwe, La Ferrassie Neanderthal, Harbin and a recent human..

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Reposted by Razib Khan

Hugo Spiers @hugospiers.bsky.social · Jun 28

Impressive and risky research testing ancient seafaring in Japan (love the map):

Paleolithic seafaring in East Asia: An experimental test of the dugout canoe hypothesis

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

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Reposted by Razib Khan

JD Vance @jd-vance-1.bsky.social · Jun 25

‪Congratulations to the new leader of the Democratic Party @zohrankmamdani.bsky.social

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Reposted by Razib Khan

Rob Patro @robp.bsky.social · Jun 19

This is amazing! SSHash is already one of the fastest existing indexes for kmer queries (esp streaming ones). These performance improvements are surprisingly big! We (@noorpratap.bsky.social & I) suggested streaming improvements & Giulio adopts those & more (w/onhurting the negative lookup case).1/2

Giulio Ermanno Pibiri @jermp.bsky.social · Jun 19

Being working on revising some parts of the SSHash software to bring performance improvements. Here are the results: much better construction performance and faster streaming queries.

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Razib Khan @razibkhan.bsky.social · Jun 12

blueskye fr

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Reposted by Razib Khan

Ethan Mollick @emollick.bsky.social · Jun 2

I make my first post in a week and the replies include this stuff from someone with 26,000+ followers (yes, blocking and removing them, but who needs to put up with this on every post?)

They aren't even reactions to the post, just folks hunting for people to insult and attack.

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Razib Khan @razibkhan.bsky.social · Jun 9

Khanversation #43: Jane Smith on cargo cults and Curtis Yarvin in the New Yorker
www.khanversationpod.com/p/khanversat...

Khanversation #43: Jane Smith on cargo cults and Curtis Yarvin in the New Yorker

Khanversation episode number forty-three

www.khanversationpod.com

Reposted by Razib Khan

Melissa Wilson @sexchrlab.bsky.social · Jun 6

So excited to talk (remotely) at UC Riverside tonight as the student-nominates speaker. It means so much to be selected by the students.

Selfie of brunette with glasses at a desk in front of a laptop.

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