Will Ratcliff

poison doesn't poison people, people poison people

Bimbo!

We’re coming for the record!

I haven’t really spent that much time playing with 4.6, but it seems similar to 4.5. Which is an incredibly good model.

I’d watch that!

Yes. But he’s playing both roles.

This photo of Thibaut looks like a publicity photo for a new Apple Original series

It was an amazing trip. A picture from our stroll through Lausanne’s vineyard region, as well as the other side of the fondue pot!

Thanks again for hosting me Omaya!

How far back in time can you understand English? An experiment in language change

If you liked this experiment, I published a full piece today in the same vein: a text that gets 100 years older with every section, from a modern blog post to a medieval chronicle.

It's a single story spanning 1000 years of English. See how far you get.

www.deadlanguagesociety.com/p/how-far-ba...

Damn it what mischief are my kinfolk up to?!

Wow, Michael, thank you so much for the detailed questions and also kind words!

I think most of these questions are unanswered, but will be major areas of exploration over the coming century. The closest I know is this: www.pnas.org/doi/full/10....

Seems to fit your central hypothesis!

Cooperation is a universal feature of complex systems, from the origins of life and microbiomes to societies. What universal patterns can be found in these systems? Here's our new @pnas.org paper. @jordipinero.bsky.social @artemyte.bsky.social @sfiscience.bsky.social www.pnas.org/doi/epdf/10....

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This is the link to the post: bsky.app/profile/noam...

Priority effects inhibit the repeated evolution of phototrophy - npj Complexity npj Complexity - Priority effects inhibit the repeated evolution of phototrophy

New paper out - fun collaboration with @wcratcliff.bsky.social & led by the wonderful Tony Burnetti! IMO, a rare clear example identifying the mechanism underlying priority effects at macroevolutionary scales. Also, continuing to justify my PhD from a plant lab 🍃

www.nature.com/articles/s44...

It was domesticated there!

Dang, I don’t know- if only Tony Burnetti were on BlueSky!

Good q! They don’t!

All rhodopsin based critters are either heterotrophs (and use rhodopsin as a facultative energy source) or also have chlorophotrophy too.

Very cool! I’ll have to watch when I’m not chaperoning a field trip of rambunctious 5th graders!

He’s one of a kind!

Sweet. Would love to chat about some time! You should talk with Tony too, this paper is absolutely his brainchild!

Yes! Only chlorophototrophs can fix carbon, which opens up totally different niche opportunities! Rhodopsins are like a little supplemental solar panel for a heterotroph.

Thanks man!

I think it still fits. The cyano hasn’t evolved a third type of photography has it?

I love this idea! I’d be game.

28/28 As always, we'd love to hear your thoughts. Thanks for sticking around to the end!

27/28 More broadly, this framework may apply to other apparent "evolutionary singularities." Eukaryogenesis. The origin of life itself. The evolution of animals. Events that happened once might not be improbable: they might simply have created priority effects that prevented repeats.

26/28 If proto-chlorophototrophy appeared in a world with established retinalophototrophs, it could escape competitive exclusion by occupying the carbon fixation niche, something rhodopsins are chemically incapable of doing. Then it had time to optimize for energy metabolism too.

25/28 This raises another question: why didn't whichever system evolved first simply exclude the second? Our model suggests retinalophototrophy likely came first. Here's why: chlorophototrophy can fix carbon. Rhodopsins cannot.

24/28 Interestingly, some organisms carry both systems. Certain cyanobacteria, marine diatoms, and phytoplankton express rhodopsins and chlorophyll machinery, differentially deploying them based on light intensity and iron availability. Even within single cells, niches are partitioned.

23/28 Why can these two systems coexist but exclude others? Because their architectures are fundamentally different. Rhodopsins are physically incapable of pumping more than one proton per photon or driving redox chemistry. Reaction centers seemingly can't shrink below 150 kDa.

22/28 This is the priority effect in action. It's not that phototrophy is hard to evolve. It's that once chlorophototrophy and retinalophototrophy optimized and filled their respective niches, they created insurmountable competitive barriers for any newcomer. The door closed behind them.