Dr. Arun Sethuraman

@bielleogy.bsky.social - #bluesoup from the BC!

What I love to see - while I’m away at a conference, our drought tolerance trials in hops are thriving and well underway at the @sandiegostate.bsky.social Alvarado greenhouse! Bunch of RNAseq, metagenomics, HPLC data incoming this Fall!

Talk about a small world! At lunch today, we realized that this is my fav college professor’s son! Ashis K Das (scholar.google.com/citations?us...) is an amazing soul, & his son, Abhirup, now a Beckman scholar from Illinois Wesleyan is carrying his legacy on, working in phage bio. #BeckmanSymposium

A beautiful SoCal day, listening & chatting science with so many early career folks (& oldies like me lol). If y’all haven’t been to a #BeckmanSymposium, you’re missing out! Also had a chance to hear from 2 amazing budding pop-gen Beckman Scholars from @joannamasel.bsky.social and Nancy Chen labs!

Aaahhh! Bestie sighting #BeckmanSymposium! @bielleogy.bsky.social ❤️

Critics of de-extinction research hit by mystery smear campaign Several researchers who have been critical of Colossal Biosciences’ plans to revive extinct animals say they have been targeted by online articles trying to discredit them

Thanks @newscientist.com for shining a light on the smear campaign against @toriherridge.bsky.social, @devoevomed.bsky.social, @flintdibble.bsky.social & myself just for fulfilling our critic & conscience role to provide expert commentary about de-extinction www.newscientist.com/article/2490...

@charleston.bsky.social and colleagues introduce the ancestry-specific expected genetic relationship matrix (as-eGRM), an analysis framework that estimates the relatedness within ancestry components between admixed individuals, in the @ajhgnews.bsky.social latest article: bit.ly/3U5p0aI #ASHG

Check out our paper in Evolution Letters!

We used D. melanogaster pigmentation as a focal trait to explore parallelism in phenotypic and genomic responses to environmental change - read more at the link below 👇

Two decades of resurrection studies: What have we learned about contemporary evolution of plant species? https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.07.27.667050v1

Scientists are Learning to Rewrite the Code of Life In a giant feat of genetic engineering, scientists have created bacteria that make proteins in a radically different way than all natural species do.

Meet Syn57, a living cell that only needs 57 codons, not the standard 64. Here's my story on how synthetic biology is tackling the mystery of our bloated genetic code. Gift link: nyti.ms/3Hf4f9v

GitHub - lh3/longdust: Identify long STRs, VNTRs, satellite DNA and other low-complexity regions in a genome Identify long STRs, VNTRs, satellite DNA and other low-complexity regions in a genome - lh3/longdust

Longdust, a new tool to identify highly repetitive STRs, VNTRs, satellite DNA and other low-complexity regions (LCRs). Similar to SDUST but for long regions.
github.com/lh3/longdust

We had a fantastic time at #Botany2025 🌱
Cool talks, collaborator meetings, new ideas… all we need is more $💵
So we headed straight to the funding gods - casino - because if we can't win over reviewers at NSF, NIH, maybe we can win over roulette 🎲
Turns out, slot machines are worse than Reviewer2 😂

Just beautiful.

a u-haul truck is sitting in the middle of a busy parking lot . ALT: a u-haul truck is sitting in the middle of a busy parking lot .

What’s the worst interstate highway in the US, and why is it ALWAYS the I5 between Los Angeles and San Diego?

Star Pass Resort in Tucson

Yo #Botany2025, heads up for #Botany2026 in Tucson: we will be about one week later than this year. Right here at the Star Pass Resort, August 1-5. Get ready for the lazy river. #plantpeopleFTW

I woke up to this - thought everyone should hear what Mr. Garcia has to say about Texas’ new gerrymandering plan to create 5 new congressional districts to suit political needs.

The rate of identical-by-descent segment sharing between close and distant relatives https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.07.30.667761v1

A SNP panel for co-analysis of capture and shotgun ancient DNA data https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.07.30.667733v1

Nice! 🤦🏾‍♂️

Ah! I think some of the events may even be at the Beckman Center on the UCI campus. I’ll message ya.

Headed to the #BeckmanSymposium? I hope to see you there! Come say hello and let’s chat science. I’ll be hosting a couple of roundtables, repping numerous societies, foundations, and journals, and at all the poster sessions, plenaries, and socials. See y’all in Irvine!

#UpAllNightWednesday at #Botany2025 will be at Street Bar!!! The first gay bar in Palm Springs 🏳️‍🌈 Be ready for karaoke!! 🎤 🕺 💃🏽 ✨

Cat’s outta the bag! So happy to continue working with the GSA, now as Senior Editor. Send me all your papers! ❤️

a figure from the linked paper, showing extremely high rates of species diversification in the higher latitudes, higher diversification in the passerines (and in the early history of the oscines), and a marked (but unevenly distributed) uptick in diversification towards the present day

New bird tree who dis.

www.cell.com/current-biol...

Lots of lab presentations today, on this final day of #Botany2025!!

Benchmarking of bioinformatics tools for the hybrid de novo assembly of human and non-human whole-genome sequencing data pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40703096/ 🧬🖥️🧪 github.com/genomicsITER...

Genomics of Neotropical biodiversity indicators: Two butterfly radiations with rampant chromosomal rearrangements and hybridization | PNAS A central question in evolutionary biology is what drives the diversification of lineages. Rapid, recent radiations are ideal systems for this ques...

Fantastic paper from an amazing team:

Genomics of Neotropical biodiversity indicators: Two butterfly radiations with rampant chromosomal rearrangements and hybridization
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

How conspiracy theories about COVID’s origins are hampering our ability to prevent the next pandemic The COVID pandemic likely began when the virus jumped from animals to humans, and didn’t start in a lab. But false narratives continue to circulate.

Our research has been engulfed by an endless torrent of lab leak conspiracy theories about the origin of the pandemic - even as the evidence for zoonosis has only grown stronger.

This fuels anti-science agendas and erodes public trust.

Now, we respond 👇

theconversation.com/how-conspira...

Totally hope you’re right! Keeping my fingers crossed for all our sakes.

And another. I just want to throw up.