Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Reposted by Zach B. Hancock

Eric Turkheimer @ent3c.bsky.social · 1d

In 2018, Charles Murray challenged me to a bet: "We will understand IQ genetically—I think most of the picture will have been filled in by 2025—there will still be blanks—but we’ll know basically what’s going on." It's now 2025, and I claim a win. I write about it in The Atlantic.

Your Genes Are Simply Not Enough to Explain How Smart You Are

Seven years ago, I took a bet with Charles Murray about whether we’d basically understand the genetics of intelligence by now.

www.theatlantic.com

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Mark Peifer (He, him) @peiferlabunc.bsky.social · 1d

If you're on the job market and are working in any area of Plant Molecular Biology, check this out. We have a very strong group: Jeff Dangl, Joe Kieber, Greg Copenhaver, Jason Reed, Zack Nimchuk, and an incoming new assistant professor starting in January
bio.unc.edu/people/facul...

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Rebecca Sear @rebeccasear.bsky.social · 2d

“the manosphere generates its own untested and speculative evolutionary hypotheses, or “just-so stories”, about men, women, and society…

..we reflect on implications for evolutionary scholars and for the field as a whole, in terms of ethics and public image”

www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

A Hundred and Two Just-So Stories: Exploring the Lay Evolutionary Hypotheses of the Manosphere | Evolutionary Human Sciences | Cambridge Core

A Hundred and Two Just-So Stories: Exploring the Lay Evolutionary Hypotheses of the Manosphere

www.cambridge.org

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Jeremy BOO! Yoder 🎃💀🕷️ @jbyoder.org · 8d

Really interesting quantitative genetic data/modeling work in @evolletters.bsky.social: Predicting the contribution of single trait evolution to rescuing a plant population from demographic impacts of climate change

doi.org/10.1093/evle...

Predicting the contribution of single trait evolution to rescuing a plant population from demographic impacts of climate change

Abstract. Evolutionary adaptation can allow a population to persist in the face of a new environmental challenge. With many populations now threatened by e

doi.org

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Matthew Hahn @3rdreviewer.bsky.social · 8d

The most important paper in evolutionary biology I'd never heard of:

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www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

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Ana Ignatieva @anaignatieva.bsky.social · 11d

Delighted that our paper about the distribution of genomic spans of clades/edges in genealogies (ARGs), and using this for detecting inversions and other SVs (and other phenomena that cause local disruption of recombination) is out in MBE academic.oup.com/mbe/article/... (1/n)

The Length of Haplotype Blocks and Signals of Structural Variation in Reconstructed Genealogies

Abstract. Recent breakthroughs have enabled the accurate inference of large-scale genealogies. Through modelling the impact of recombination on the correla

academic.oup.com

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Stefan A. Rensing @rensingstefan.bsky.social · 12d

...and if you missed it, here are 60 phylogenetically diverse brown algae genomes
www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...

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Daniel Bolnick @danielbolnick.bsky.social · 15d

NSF unexpectedly changed (at the last minute) who is eligible to apply for the Grad Research Fellowship, dropping 2nd year students. We started a petition to reverse this unfair change, Sign here:
laurenkuehne.github.io/grfpChanges/
and please spread the word!!!!

Petition to NSF to Restore Eligibility for the 2026 Graduate Research Fellowship Program Competition

laurenkuehne.github.io

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👻Sewall Fright🎃 @stairwaytokevin.bsky.social · 16d

New — with @joannarifkin.bsky.social, @jotlovell.bsky.social, @spicybotrytis.bsky.social, and many more — we created seven new high-quality genomes and explored pangenomic variation in the emerging oilseed crop pennycress (Thlaspi arvense). 1/

Structure and sequence evolution in the pennycress (Thlaspi arvense) pangenome

Summary · Eukaryotic genomes harbor many forms of variation, including nucleotide diversity and structural polymorphisms, which experience natural selection and contribute to genome evolution and biod...

www.biorxiv.org

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Emily Josephs @emjo.bsky.social · 17d

Another year using @kitchensjn.bsky.social + @gcbias.bsky.social's intuitive circle plots to discuss human genetic variation in my undergrad genetics class james-kitchens.com/blog/visuali...

Visualizing Human Genetic Diversity

A key insight from human genetics is that, as a species, we are all very genetically similar to one another and share much of our genetic variation. Our genome can be depicted as a string of letters (...

james-kitchens.com

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Brian J. Enquist @bjenquist.bsky.social · 17d

Genomic divergence across the tree of life 🧪🌐https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2319389122

Genomic divergence across the tree of life | PNAS

Nucleotide sequence data are being harnessed to identify species, even in cases in which organisms themselves are neither in hand nor witnessed. Bu...

www.pnas.org

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Henry North @henrylnorth.bsky.social · 18d

k-mer-based diversity scales with population size proxies more than nucleotide diversity in a meta-analysis of 98 plant species.

academic.oup.com/evlett/artic...

k-mer-based diversity scales with population size proxies more than nucleotide diversity in a meta-analysis of 98 plant species

Abstract. A key prediction of neutral theory is that the level of genetic diversity in a population should scale with population size. However, as was note

academic.oup.com

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Economic Policy Institute @epi.org · 19d

The US has been leaving school teachers behind for nearly 30 years.

In 20 states, teachers made 25% less than their peers.

What’s the teacher pay gap in your state?

Find out here: www.epi.org/publication/...

Map of the US titled: “How big is the teaching penalty in your state?” Map shows the relative teacher pay penalty for each state, ranging from 38.5% to 10%

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bioRxiv Evolutionary Biology @biorxiv-evobio.bsky.social · 29d

Genetic assimilation and accommodation shape adaptation to heat stress in a splash pool copepod https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.09.09.675189v1

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Dmitri Petrov @petrovadmitri.bsky.social · 29d

Very excited to see this work in press! I think there is a reason to believe that this is a common means of stabilizing large-effect polymorphisms in general and might be an important reason for why diploidy is so common. news.stanford.edu/stories/2025...

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Camille Roux @crouxevo.bsky.social · Sep 12

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

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Bryan Gitschlag @bryangitschlag.bsky.social · Sep 8

NEW PAPER! Some kinds of genetic mutations are more likely to arise than others. Such "biases" in mutation vary between species.

Analyzing data from 14 species, we show that this variation explains species differences in the genetics of adaptation!

(1/3)

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Graph showing a positive correlation between "bias in adaptive outcome" on the vertical axis and "mutation bias" on the horizontal axis, with 14 data points representing 14 respective species, with a line of best fit equal to a slope of 0.82 on the log-scale axes. Each data point contains horizontal and vertical error bars to illustrate the uncertainty in both the mutational and adaptive data. The 95% confidence interval of the slope is shown in parentheses (0.44 to 1.24), based on 10,000 simulated data sets, where the simulated data sets are based on statistical resampling of the empirical data (i.e. "bootstrap" data sets). Regression lines based on these bootstrap data sets are shown as light gray lines.

The type of bias reported here refers to the ratio of transitions versus transversions, where transitions are a DNA mutation that preserves the basic structure of the DNA base (i.e. a purine-to-purine or pyrimidine-to-pyrimidine mutation), and transversions are mutations that alter the structure of the DNA base at a particular site (i.e. replacing a purine with a pyrimidine or vice versa). In other words, this graph shows that transitions contribute more toward adaptive evolution in species where transitions arise at a higher rate.

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tomomi parins-fukuchi @tomopfuku.bsky.social · Sep 5

Excited to share a new paper! "Sorting of ancestral polymorphism and its impact on morphological phylogenetics and macroevolution". Part of some work I've been doing on modelling the evolution of polymorphic traits in fossil echinoderms.

academic.oup.com/evolut/advan...

Sorting of ancestral polymorphism and its impact on morphological phylogenetics and macroevolution

Abstract. Intraspecific phenotypic variation provides the basic substrate upon which the evolutionary processes that give rise to morphological innovation,

academic.oup.com

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Genome Biology and Evolution @genomebiolevol.bsky.social · Aug 26

In a new GBE Review, @cpuentelelievre.bsky.social @proteinmechanic.bsky.social & J. Douglas give an overview on protein structural phylogenetics, how to obtain evolutionary insights from structural data, and key applications and future directions.

🔗 doi.org/10.1093/gbe/evaf139

#genome #evolution

Puente-Lelievre et al. have systematically reviewed how protein structures can be used to trace evolutionary histories. This rapidly advancing field has not yet caught up with the burgeoning databases of high quality protein structure predictions provided by AlphaFold and other tools.

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Jeffrey Ross-Ibarra @jrossibarra.bsky.social · Aug 25

Last lecture of summer popgen:"Evolutionary QuantGen: why (almost) everything we learned is (kinda) wrong". how selection on traits affects alleles. Architecture, stabilizing selection, popgen on gene sets, corn example & a shiny app from @mgstetter.bsky.social mgstetter.shinyapps.io/quantgensimA...

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Simon Fisher @profsimonfisher.bsky.social · Aug 7

If someone you know buys into claims about "genetic optimization" of embryos using polygenic scores of cognition, just send them our 2024 paper on Beethoven & musicality. We wrote it to help communicate limits of individual-level genetic predictions & complexity of links between DNA & behaviour. 🧪👇

Notes from Beethoven’s genome

Wesseldijk et al. compare the genomic information collected from Ludwig van Beethoven with population-based datasets used to quantify musical achievement.

www.cell.com

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The American Journal of Human Genetics @ajhgnews.bsky.social · Aug 13

📣Online NOW!
📄Estimation of demography and mutation rates from one million haploid genomes
🧑‍🤝‍🧑 @jgschraiber.bsky.social @jeffspence.github.io @docedge.bsky.social

Estimation of demography and mutation rates from one million haploid genomes

Samples of millions of genomes provide substantial information about recent demography and mutation, but standard population-genetic methods make assumptions not met in these data. We introduce DR EVI...

www.cell.com

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Jeffrey Ross-Ibarra @jrossibarra.bsky.social · Aug 11

Our paper showing that variation in transcription factor binding sites underlies the majority of additive genetic variance for phenotypic variation in maize is finally out!

Sadly they didn't use our suggested cover image below (made by the inimitable Andi Kur).

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

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bioRxiv Evolutionary Biology @biorxiv-evobio.bsky.social · Aug 11

SLiM 5: Eco-evolutionary simulations across multiple chromosomes and full genomes https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.08.07.669155v1

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Molecular Biology and Evolution @molbioevol.bsky.social · Jul 28

Chen et al investigate deleterious mutations and purifying selection in 17 stickleback populations, finding that inbreeding predicts realized loads of deleterious mutations, and genomic consequences of isolation in small populations are predictable.

🔗 doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msaf110

#evobio #molbio

Dynamics of Deleterious Mutations and Purifying Selection in Small Population Isolates

Abstract. The genomic consequences of prolonged population decline and isolation are increasingly recognized, but quantitative assessments of mutation load

doi.org

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