Xavier Grau-Bové 🌾

The next SMBE conference is shaping up to be a great one…

Historian of eugenics here. I don't normally like to retweet bad arguments, but this is such a fundamental misunderstanding of eugenics, I think it's important to point out. I don't have time to debunk all of the ways this is inaccurate, but I'll highlight a few things and then recommend some books🧵

Dated gene duplications elucidate the evolutionary assembly of eukaryotes - Nature Analysis of eukaryotic gene sequences using a relaxed molecular clock methodology indicate that eukaryotes emerged 3.0–2.25 billion years ago as a result of mitochondrial endosymbiosis with complex ar...

Our latest, led by the inimitable Chris Kay "Dated gene duplications elucidate the evolutionary assembly of eukaryotes" in which we used gene duplications to test hypotheses of eukaryogenesis. TLDR? They're all wrong. With @tweethinking.bsky.social @anya1.bsky.social @ssolo.bsky.social Davide Pisani

RegEvol: detection of directional selection in regulatory sequences through phenotypic predictions and phenotype-to-fitness functions Regulatory DNA controls when and where genes are expressed, making it a key driver of phenotypic evolution. Yet detecting selection in non-coding regions remains difficult, as most approaches rely on ...

I'm excited to present this new model to detect positive selection on regulatory sequences, which has been 3 years in the making!
Thanks to Alexandre Laverré and @phylogenetrips.bsky.social for their amazing work on this project. 😃
doi.org/10.1101/2025...
Thread!

We are thrilled to announce the first official release (v0.1.8) of #𝗯𝗲𝗱𝗱𝗲𝗿, the successor to one of our flagship tool, #𝗯𝗲𝗱𝘁𝗼𝗼𝗹𝘀! Based on ideas we conceived of long ago (!), this was achieved thanks to the dedication of Brent Pedersen.

1/n

(And if it's not costing them money, it will later on, and then they will be locked in and in a worse position to cancel the contract.)

Hybridization and introgression are major evolutionary processes. Since the 1940s, the prevailing view has been that they shape plants far more than animals. In our new study (www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
), we find the opposite: animals exchange genes more, and for longer, than plants

Headless bodies hint at why Europe’s first farmers vanished Wave of mass brutality accompanied the collapse of the first pan-European culture

This is an extremely interesting article about the collapse of early farming societies across Europe around ~5000 BC.

We like to think of prehistoric times as being largely peaceful, but it seems early civilisations weren't immune to ritualistic violence & cultural collapse.

Looking for PhD opportunities?👇🏻

Proteome-wide model for human disease genetics - Nature Genetics popEVE is a proteome-wide deep generative model to identify and predict pathogenicity of missense mutations causing genetic disorders.

Introducing popEVE, an AI model which can support diagnosing diseases "as rare as one". It was created by a team from the CRG and @harvardmed.bsky.social using data from hundreds of thousands of different species and of genetic variation across the human population.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

It's a well-conducted study with an intellectually ambitious goal — to provide an alternative theoretical framework to a key tenet of the neutral theory.

I seldom read reviewer reports, but in this case I'm grateful they're there. They make great counterpoints & put these efforts into perspective.

Most interesting! The abstract says it all:

«The neutral theory of molecular evolution, positing that most amino acid substitutions are neutral, [is well supported]. However, here we report that the key premise of the theory—beneficial mutations are extremely scarce—is violated.»

Ens fa de mare i de pare, i s'engreixa
de tèrbola tenebra, i no desdenya
de beneir la reixa de la queixa.

Be mossegaire, mal de tots nosaltres,
aquesta activitat d'ensenyar els altres,
aplica-te-la, porca, a tu mateixa.»

(L'església catòlica espanyola, Joan Brossa, 1954)

«Puta paparra, carronya on fermenta
la claveguera de la llum del dia,
apunta el seu coet lluna opulenta
i implora no fallar la punteria.

Teixeix sotanes una aranya lenta.
Com ballen amb les vides per la via
que va del militar a la serventa!
Despullen amb les ungles pedreria.

…

This writing doesn't affect reality any more than any writing does; that is to say, indirectly, but considerably.

Adenine DNA methylation associated with transcriptionally permissive chromatin is widespread across eukaryotes - Nature Genetics Long-read sequencing in 18 unicellular eukaryotes reveals that 6mA is widespread across eukaryotes and is enriched at transcriptionally permissive regions, which are also marked by H3K4me3.

Out today, our take on 6-methyladenine #6mA evolution in Eukaryotes @natgenet.nature.com. We asked a simple question, is really DNA 6mA common across the eukaryotes? The answer is "yes" if you're a unicellular eukaryote 🦠, not so if you're multicellular 🐝🌱🍄. www.nature.com/articles/s41... 1/9

You were moved to do this by pride and by hate. Is it any wonder the result was ruin?

Happy to share Jialin's first publication. She did a great job exploring the transition to land in animals. Co-supervised by the great Jordi Paps and me and in collaboration with Davide Pisani and @phil-donoghue.bsky.social

A truly refreshing perspective on an age old debate. Big implications for animal evolution but also useful techniques to address many other remaining phylogenetic questions.
Congrats to you both on a wonderful piece of work!

«… Given that at least some segments of the local community have taken to the streets of Barcelona to protest the socioeconomic and cultural costs of mass tourism, there clearly are costs to these types of schemes».

And do we know whether the putative benefits are equitably redistributed in the local economies?

«[Recent studies in Barcelona] fail to mention the possibility that some sub-groups of the local population could experience negative economic outcomes from the airport and its proposed expansion…»

Most interesting. Increasing air travel connectivity in Europe has diminishing or negative economic returns in many regions, and may even be a regressive subsidy to the already rich.

A colleague is looking into organising a journal club about tinkering as a source of evolutionary innovation (sensu Jacob 1977)...

She's got a couple of candidate papers already, but we're looking for new ideas 🙂

Any recommendations?

#evosky #evobio

I'm trying very hard to zoom in to check out the target species
🔍👀

Today at the @iec.cat , @matteoagazzi.bsky.social gave an update on our coral reference genomes project🪸, part or the @catbiogenoma.bsky.social. It was great to see what everyone is working on within the @catbiogenoma.bsky.social effort! #corals #genomes

Phylogenomic Discordance: Patterns, Processes, and Solutions Phylogenomics, the study of evolutionary relationships using genomic data, has revolutionized our understanding of the Tree of Life. As a field, phylogenomics h

If you're interested in understanding discordance in phylogenomic analyses, the @evojlinnsoc.bsky.social's special issue 'Phylogenomic Discordance: Patterns, Processes, and Solutions' is for you!

tinyurl.com/v2eces3s

I'll be sharing a few articles a week until we're through the issue! (1/n)🧪

Come and Join Us.
Not only will it be fun, but you will be learning a lot of methods & travel some more ;)!

Hahaha I hadn’t thought of it this way…

There must be someone out there who finds R's tryCatch function intuitive. I'd like to take a look into their unique brain.

That title feels like a little rollercoaster.