Max Telford

Bookplates For 2025: last day to request bookplates is December 1st. Thanks! Giving one of my books? I’d love to send you a signed bookplate (free). Here are the options: Bookplate options: Art Deco bor…

Giving one of my books as a gift? I'd be absolutely thrilled to send you a (free) signed and customized bookplate. Here's how to get one: dghaskell.com/custom-bookp...
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ONE STEP BEYOND!

We are recruiting!

If you like evolutionary biology, microbial genomics, and host-pathogen interactions we have a PhD opening at @ugiatucl.bsky.social using population-scale metagenomics to map global phage diversity and uncover evolutionary signatures that could point to new antimicrobials.

Me three. And yet I hate subtitles (unlike my kids with their excellent hearing and eyesight)

Bookmarking, #bookmark

Fireside Books in Chagrin Falls, OH.

@maxjtelford.bsky.social and @matthewcobb.bsky.social in good company.

Thanks!

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00239-025-10277-1 Conceptual overview of hierarchical orthologous groups. An example of one HOG, or gene family. A Species tree with four taxa: plant (green), fish (blue), human (orange), and mouse (yellow), each with one or more genes. B The implied gene tree, dubbed “HOG tree,” and inferred nested HOG composition. Duplication nodes (red) can be deduced based on the species tree topology and clusters of homologous genes at each level. Ancestral genes from which the HOGs descended are shown in gray. C HOGs returned at different taxonomic levels. Consider a gene family that was present in the last eukaryotic common ancestor (LECA). At this level, a single HOG encompasses all genes descending from that ancestral gene. At the Vertebrata level, this gene underwent duplication, leading to two distinct copies, i.e., HOGs. At the Mammalia level, a second duplication further subdivides one of these HOGs, showing how deeper HOGs split into nested subHOGs at more recent levels. The HOG composition implies that a loss event occurred after the mammalian speciation

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00239-025-10272-6 Summary of the QfO8 meeting. a Hot topics and future directions in method development and applications within the QfO community, namely artificial intelligence, protein domains, protein structure, RNA and splicing isoforms. b Definition of orthology and paralogy, including various paralogous subtypes (e.g. in-paralogs and out-paralogs). c Duplications and functional divergence. d Applications of orthology

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00239-025-10271-7 Overview of the OrthoXML File Format (simplified). A schematic representation of an OrthoXML file, a standardized XML-based format for representing orthology data. OrthoXML follows a hierarchical structure where elements are enclosed within opening < tag > and closing </tag > tags. < orthoXML > is the root element enclosing other elements. The < species > element contains information about genes. An OrthoXML file can include a < taxonomy > element, which specifies the species tree used to generate the file. Additionally, the < groups > element encapsulates the orthology and paralogy relationships among genes

Our trilogy of orthology publications is online!
Review on Hierarchical Orthologous Groups doi.org/10.1007/s00239-025-10277-1

OrthoXML-Tools doi.org/10.1007/s00239-025-10271-7

A great community effort on Quest for Orthologs in the era of Data Deluge and AI doi.org/10.1007/s00239-025-10272-6

🚨🦜🐧Cover reveal! Thrilled to show off the cover of my upcoming book: The Story of Birds!

Coming April 28. The whole history of birds, from their dinosaur origins to colossal extinct penguins & terror birds, to the 10,000+ species today. From @marinerbooks.bsky.social

Preorder 👇

THE WONDER OF LIFE ON EARTH is published 5 Feb 2026 and is available for pre-order. For more details inquire within: www.panmacmillan.com/authors/henr...

Come and do a PhD in my research group. Fully Funded! The topic is electronic waste and the repair economy. Details and how to apply here: www.ucl.ac.uk/engineering/...

North American edition of The Tree of Life spotted in its natural habitat.

Team fish - we need your help! We are trying to build a database of all the fish chromosome-scale genomes where sex chromosomes have been identified. Have you build one or some? Do you know someone who has? Can you post the link in the comments? Please spread the word and repost! Thank you!

PhyloWeaver – Interactive phylogenetic tree editor Edit and visualize phylogenetic trees directly in your browser. PhyloWeaver lets you interactively rearrange tree topologies and export high-quality figures for publications and presentations.

I’ve released a tool to sketch and edit phylogenetic trees!
yawak.jp/PhyloWeaver/

Load a Newick file and intuitively add/remove/resize branches.
Useful for quick conceptual trees, extracting subtrees, or turning ideas into Newick.

It’s publication day! Spread the word. The perfect Christmas gift for the pessimist in your life.

There’s a big story the book covers – the origins of life – but if you’re someone who studies molecular life, this excerpt of this "little story" from The Tree of Life captures the sort of thing you live for ⬇️

(The Tree of Life is the second book reviewed in the linked article.)

Err not very good at this. Lovely new review of THIS...

www.amazon.com/Tree-Life-So...

www.amazon.co.uk/Tree-Life-So...

"At times, The Tree of Life gave me the same awe-struck feeling I get when I see a photograph of deep space that’s filled with thousands upon thousands of galaxies. It’s hard not to feel dumbstruck by the scale and scope of what’s in front of you."

Thank you @michaelpbrady.bsky.social

Reviews: 8 new books in November Andrew Miller’s “The Land in Winter,” two books by Monique Wittig, and more.

Lovely new review of the Tree of Life

"The Tree of Life is an elegant and compelling exploration of how scientists have pieced together the story of life on Earth.."

"What could have been a dry, academic treatise is instead elevated to a engrossing mystery..."

bradymp.substack.com/p/reviews-8-...

Got home from #svp2025 to find a shiny advance copy of THE WONDER OF LIFE ON EARTH. It’s published in February and I’ll be launching it at the #norwichsciencefestival - but why wait? You can pre-order a copy now www.panmacmillan.com/authors/henr...

It's a bit "we've been inundated with a letter from North Wales. From a Mrs Trellis...."

A fan letter from Australia for my book. Made my day.

Francis Crick’s life and legacy A new biography offers a definitive account of the DNA decoder

There’s a terrific review of CRICK in @science.org tonight, thanks to @adrianwoolfson.bsky.social. The PDF isn’t working right now; I’ll post a screenshot later. Here’s the paywalled html link:

Congratulations to Joe Felsenstein on being awarded the 2026 Mendel Medal!

My review of #Crick by @matthewcobb.bsky.social has been published online by @science.org. The book is lucid, beautifully crafted, and compelling. It will instantly become the definitive guide to this extraordinary individual’s life and work.

Just gonna put this here for now
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
bsky.app/profile/jlst...

🎉 Happy Publication Week! 🎉 The following Next Big Idea Club Must-Read authors got to celebrate the publication of their books yesterday--congratulations to them all! 📖 Join us in reading and… | Next... 🎉 Happy Publication Week! 🎉 The following Next Big Idea Club Must-Read authors got to celebrate the publication of their books yesterday--congratulations to them all! 📖 Join us in reading and discuss...

My book The Tree of Life is featured as "Next Big Idea Club Must-Read."

www.linkedin.com/posts/heleo-...

Lovely (paywalled) reviews of CRICK in New Scientist [https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg26835692-000-surprising-new-biography-of-francis-crick-unravels-the-story-of-dna/] & the Times [https://www.thetimes.com/culture/books/article/crick-professor-matthew-cobb-review-9bc6dv6hf]. 1/2

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)🧪

I’m feeling super guilty in case anyone thought my picture was real. I thought the snow made it an obvious joke. Truth is I’m insanely envious of all of you seeing aurora! Maybe tonight?