Matt Rockman

You beautiful, slinky worm, you! A Xenacoela - I don’t know much about these guys, but I think this one is gorgeous! Thanks @microbe_guru for the ID.
#marineplankton 🦑

We have a new postdoc position available in the Promislow lab at the HNRCA at #Tufts in #Boston, to work on the #systemsbiology of #aging in #Drosophila. Come join us! For info on the position and to apply, see promislowlab.org/wp-content/u...

A one story L-shaped building in San Antonio Texas. The right side is 1950s International Style including signage reading Rico’s Products Co., but the left side is clad in preposterous fake white stone and somehow the whole thing is impossibly beautiful? The Tower of the Americas sticks up from behind the building, and power lines cross from middle left side to top right corner.

Cathedrals everywhere for those with eyes to see

Parallel Evolution of X Chromosome-Specific Structural Maintenance of Chromosomes Complexes in Two Nematode Lineages Abstract. Mechanisms of X chromosome dosage compensation have been studied in model organisms with distinct sex chromosome ancestry. However, the diversity

Aharonoff et al. show that dosage compensation mechanisms continue to evolve in species with shared X chromosome ancestry, and that the process of evolving chromosome-wide gene regulatory mechanisms is constrained.

🔗 doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msaf270

#evobio #molbio #celegans

Research Associate-Fixed Term - East Lansing, Michigan, United States Position Summary The Lowry Lab at Michigan State University is searching for a postdoctoral research associate to conduct molecular and physiological experiments to understand the causes of genetic va...

I am currently searching for a new postdoctoral researcher to study the evolution, genetics, and physiology of cold acclimation and freezing tolerance in switchgrass at Michigan State University. This work will be funded by a newly funded five-year DOE grant. careers.msu.edu/jobs/researc...

I am looking to hire a postdoc interested in combining genetics and evolution to understand why telomeres vary so much in plants. My group has been developing Mimulus a genetic model for studying plant telomeres and we have really cool research brewing. Please check ad for detail. Deadline is 12/31.

SAVE THE DATE: the yearly NY Population Genetics meeting will be back on March 9 2026, generously hosted by the
@simonsfoundation.org. Details to follow. Please RT.

Google streetview image of a UPS truck, with images stitched together badly so that it reads “worldwiddwide services” and synchronizirhonizing the world of commerce”

Reminds me of this amazing homeotic mutant I found on google streetview

Mario Cuomo Bridge is now Mahmood Mamdani Bridge, that’s how it works 🗽🗽🗽🗽🗽🗽

New York City “I Voted” sticker

LFG NYC!

New preprint! We unexpectedly discovered that some Caenorhabditis species delete parts of their somatic genome early in development, which fragments their chromosomes and eliminates key germline genes. Multiple lines of evidence suggest this bizarre process was present in the ancestors of C. elegans

For what it’s worth, The Wyoming Worm lab has funding for 5 years along with exciting projects with solid foundations. We are is still looking for capable, dedicated, and fun-to-work-with lab members at all career stages. davidfay@uwyo.edu

scholar.google.com/citations?us...

James Turrell sky space at the friends’ school on East 16th St. a glowing blue square in a glowing pink ceiling

Giant tile mural in the lobby of the AT&T Building, 1932. Map of the globe, extremely Mercator, reads “telephone wire and radio unite to make neighbors of nations”

Tiny sculpture of Cass Gilbert, architect of the Woolworth Building (1913), tucked into a corner of the ceiling in the Woolworth lobby. He’s wearing glasses and holding a model of the building

A view of the Woolworth Building (green roof) and the rest of Manhattan from the 60th floor bar at Manahatta. This isn’t part of Open House— just a bar that apparently isn’t crowded on Sunday mornings and has a nice view

Another amazing Open House New York weekend full of usually-hidden art

Crowd with flags and signs in Times Square, looking North

Crowd with flags and signs in Times Square, looking South

No Kings filling up Times Square

Distinct haplotypes and reversed dominance at a single-gene balanced polymorphism controlling heterodichogamy in two genera of wingnuts In the angiosperm mating system of heterodichogamy, two hermaphroditic morphs temporally alternate between male and female flowering phases, promoting…

Congratulations to @jeffgroh.bsky.social on the publication of his paper on an ancient balanced polymorphisms controlling heterodichogamy in two genera of wingnuts. The paper shows the putative turnover & reversal of dominance of a mating type polymorphism
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

From genotype to phenotype with 1,086 near telomere-to-telomere yeast genomes Nature - A newly compiled atlas of species-wide structural variants and gene-based and graph pangenomes derived from highly complete assemblies of genomes from 1,086 natural isolates enable...

Incredible new paper from @schacherer.bsky.social et al rdcu.be/eLcTH

A favorite:

Thanks!

This is my first time seeing alive lernanthropid copepod (possibly Lernanthropus latis)!

Sea urchin metamorphosis is maybe one of the most radical event in developmental biology. In just about an hour, these little pluteus larvae completely reorganize their entire body plan.

Very happy that this video got awarded an honorable mention by #NikonSmallWorld 😃

We're on a roll: Super proud of this paper lead by Dr. Megan Frayer & GS Hagar Soliman (with a major contrib from GS Pia Schwarz): Introgression and Parental Conflict Shape Repeated Occurrences of Postzygotic Isolation @hybridzones.bsky.social @hagarsoliman.bsky.social @pfschwarz.bsky.social

Deep sampling of Hawaiian Caenorhabditis elegans reveals high genetic diversity and admixture with global populations Hawaiian Caenorhabditis elegans harbor high levels of genetic diversity that might represent the complex patterns of ancestral diversity in the species prior to human influence.

Yeah, it's weird! Tim Crombie and @erikandersen.bsky.social & co. have characterized global C. elegans population genetics and the pattern is pretty clear. A key paper:

Thanks! Africa is definitely undersampled. Modest efforts in Ethiopia, Kenya, South Africa, Cabo Verde, and a few other places have turned up the cosmopolitan species, but there are no doubt tons more endemics like C. afra in the rainforests.

Thanks!

Thanks!

A view of Sokehs Ridge from the northwest edge of Kolonia. A thatched-roof shelter is at right. From the foreground the land drops down, over some banana plants, toward the lagoon. Sokehs Rock, a basalt monolith 200m high, looms in the distance. The picture doesn't show the endemic serehd lorikeets or pwehk flying foxes, but they're in there.

Finally, Pohnpei is one of the most fascinating and delightful places imaginable - spectacular scenery, unique biology, and most of all, exceptionally generous people and culture. It was an incredible privilege to visit and work there.

Caenorhabditis diversity on Pohnpei, Micronesia, provides evidence that the Elegans Supergroup has its roots in the Americas and diversified in the Pacific en route to Asia The microscopic nematode Caenorhabditis elegans stands unrivaled as a model for developmental biology, neurobiology, and genetics, but fundamental aspects of its ecology, biogeography, and natural his...

That is, Oceania looks like a source for Asian species, not the reverse! Here’s the preprint.

Biogeographic ancestral area reconstruction, with pie-charts at the nodes of a phylogeny indicating estimated marginal probabilities for each region. This phylogeny excludes a bunch of species whose distributions reflect human activity and whose pre-anthropogenic-movement distributions are unknown. The main result is that there's a lot of red (Oceania) in the deeper nodes of the Elegans Supergroup. There's other colors too, to be sure.

Surprisingly, the phylogeny implies (equivocally, to be sure) that the Elegans Supergroup of species, which includes C. elegans, is derived from American ancestors, and that a lot of the groups diversification may have taken place in Oceania, prior to subsequent invasions of Asia.

A phylogeny of 70 Caenorhabditis species, based on protein sequences for 2955 genes. Adjacent to each species name is a set of colored circles indicating which continents each species is known from, with Remote Oceania included as its own region. Names of the nine species found in Pohnpei are bolded.

The goal was to understand biogeography, so we sequenced transcriptomes for the new species, and several others, and built the largest-yet Caenorhabditis phylogeny. The most common Pohnpeian species (C. pwilidak sp nov) is sister to a Hawaiian endemic clade!