Patrick Phillips

Inconceivable!

This is normally called embellishment, but embellishment has nothing to do with it. The sparkling light has existed in all its brightness from the very beginning in the world of phenomena. 3/3

This is why, no matter whether nature or human things are concerned, the artist conceals innumerable priceless gems in a place that common mortals dare not approach. 2/3

Natsume Söseki (1987): The artist can be defined as one who works within the four corners of the world to suppress what is called common sense and no longer inhabits more than three of them. 1/3

I’ve definitely seen lines at our famous campus Prince Puckler’s Ice Cream, but never a happy mob. That’s apparently what a perfect fall Saturday in Eugene following a Friday night football win brings.

Killian standing in front of a podium at his thesis defense!

Going to break my social media hiatus for a belated congratulations to @kdc509.bsky.social on an outstanding thesis defense last week! I cannot say enough good things about Killian - an amazing scientist and human being.

DAF-2/IGF-1 degradation: Males WAY outlive hermaphrodites! This is so cool. @patrickphillips.bsky.social

Lol @mads100tist.bsky.social. We've tried a number things for mass culture over the years, like self-enclosed "worm balls". But the reality is that running for the hills is a young-male's game.

Great work led by @rosealsaadi.bsky.social and @hlewack.bsky.social

Make males live more than 400% longer and prevent sexual disfunction late in life?! We're down with it. Our latest preprint: Disruption of the insulin signaling pathway in C. elegans dramatically increases male longevity and enhances reproductive health late in life. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Bowl of gnocchi in cream sauce next to a tea kettle.

Inspired by my recent workshop visit in Sicily, the lab had an Italian food potluck during lab meeting. I made pumpkin stuffed gnocchi in a nutmeg sage cream sauce, but we have no kitchen. So I finished the gnocchi in an electric tea kettle. Worked ok.

Grew up a huge Dodgers fan but the last serious game I watched was in grad school when Kurt Gibson made the greatest hit I’ve ever seen. So yes, I’ve turned on this baby after seeing the hoopla.

Picture of five people wearing berets and costume jewelry.

Happened to wear black today, so I got sucked into a lab Louvre heist Halloween dress up.

This is nuts, because we know that we can use synthetic biology to optimize these “beasts” of burden. Not sure of the application. I have visions bacterially manned gates sorting the worthiness of other bacteria.

I'm recruiting a postdoc for my group (based in beautiful Eugene, OR). Please get in touch if you're interested, esp if you'd like to chat at #ASHG25!

Available to read via #OpenAccess
The egg-counter: a novel microfluidic platform for characterization of Caenorhabditis elegans egg-laying
pubs.rsc.org/en/content/a...
Patrick C. Phillips et al
@patrickphillips.bsky.social @uoregon.bsky.social @stephenbanse.bsky.social

Very important paper for the geroscience hypothesis. Healthy aging is critical, even in the face of obvious disease states.

I don’t need to tell you, but one cool scaffolding idea is to take one example and to return to it at each stage of the course to slowly unpeel the genetics onion. Mouse coat color is perfect for that because you can go from transmission to molecular to biochemistry to population genetics.

Bateson and Punnett’s first example was rooster combs, which is cool. Mouse coat color is great because you can tie it directly to molecular function that explains the epistasis. Check out my 2008 NRG paper for examples and pictures. Also plant examples if you are into that kind of thing 😁

Homepage - Population, Evolutionary, and Quantitative Genetics Conference Visit our website to learn more.

Save the date! #PEQG26 June 9-12 2026 in Asilomar, CA. Happens only every 2yrs, but is my favorite conference. Full website coming soon, and registration and abstract submission opens November 14, but I'm allowed to tease that keynotes will be @jnovembre.bsky.social @jennytung.bsky.social and me!

"Random" variation in just a handful of genes explains differences in reproductive outcomes across genetically identical individuals. It's Ground Hog Day or Midnight Library for worms — if those stories also revealed epigenetic associations (I'm sure they were supposed to be in there someplace).

Just out in press in eLife, a cool and brilliant piece of work by @amywebster.bsky.social: Gene expression variation across genetically identical individuals predicts reproductive traits. elifesciences.org/articles/106...

Although other work, which I have also never published, shows that this domain can be much bigger than you would expect. (Other than that Dr. Fermat, how is your research going).

The situation that you describe is the physical manifestation of of that more general principle. And of course it will almost always be true within a certain small chromosomal region, say within the confounds of a gene.

Something that I discovered as a graduate student, but have never published. Formally, from a statistical point of view, dominance and epistasis are only distinguishable under linkage equilibrium. Otherwise they are confounded.

You become twice as spicy every ten years.

Your next, much more major test, is the Baroque Cycle, which I loved, but boy does it take a while to get rolling. I read these books and then read Cryptonomicon because I wanted to follow the story. This has to be the most oblique prequel ever written. Great read for scientists in particular.

New position in Developmental Neuroscience in the University of Oregon Department of Biology. There is also a neuroengineering search going on in the Knight Campus at the same time, so exciting buildouts in that area at the UO. academicjobsonline.org/ajo/jobs/30255

Come be my boss! My dept. at GT is searching for a new chair. Drop me a line if you are interested, I'd be happy to talk about this position, GT, ATL- anything. It's a drama-free department filled with cool people in a dynamic city.

www.biosciences.gatech.edu/chair-search

Bittersweet to be leaving @docedge.bsky.social after a wonderful postdoc, but excited to share that I'm joining @uoregon.bsky.social next month as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Data Science.