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C. Brandon Ogbunu

@cbo.bsky.social

3.4K followers 250 following 200 posts

Scientist + Humanist + Pugilist. 70% Smoke. 30% Stack. "Tip your hat; pop the chain; short Joe Louis; then wipe his nose with the hook. It's that simple." (c) Brother Naazim Richardson https://linktr.ee/chike98

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C. Brandon Ogbunu @cbo.bsky.social · Jul 27

Biologist folk (especially in evolutionary biology and/or ecology, but it don’t matter):

Can you give me your favorite examples of trade offs in biology? Organism or system don’t matter. Primary literature or reviews preferred.

Reposted by C. Brandon Ogbunu

J. Doyne Farmer @doynefarmer.bsky.social · 1d

I have a new paper out in @oxrepjournal.bsky.social explaining Agent-based models #ABMs and their advantages and disadvantages in comparison to standard models.

doi.org/10.1093/oxre...

Quantitative agent-based models: a promising alternative for macroeconomics

Abstract. Agent-based models (ABMs) are dynamic computer simulations that abandon utility maximization and instead assume that agents are boundedly rationa

C. Brandon Ogbunu @cbo.bsky.social · 6h

5/5
Lastly, Jurassic Park is cautionary tale of scientific hubris. There are both technical and ethical issues involved that we struggle to adequately confront.

Until we've done so, then many (real world) genome engineering expeditions will be little more than fantasy exercises.

#JurassicPark35

a couple of dinosaurs are standing in the middle of a lush green forest .

ALT: a couple of dinosaurs are standing in the middle of a lush green forest .

media.tenor.com

C. Brandon Ogbunu @cbo.bsky.social · 6h

4/5
Epistasis:
In the dinosaur "de-extinction" project, the scientists overlook epistasis, the non-additive interactions among genes and mutations. As a general rule, genome engineering efforts can be undermined by these non-additive, surprising interactions.

Figure 2 from the preprint. A fictional schematic showing how combinations of mutations can yield "surprising" phenotypes, based on what we know about their individual contributions.

C. Brandon Ogbunu @cbo.bsky.social · 6h

3/5
Pleiotropy:
Also, the novel’s scientists may have overlooked pleiotropy, the tendency of a single gene to affect multiple traits. Edit one locus for appearance, and you may alter behavior, physiology, or fitness. Even in fiction, we learn how genes operate in entangled, nonlinear systems.

Figure 1 from the preprint: Two fictional reaction norms demonstrating how a mutation can affect different phenotypes. This also shows plasticity (note how each trait changes across temperature environment)

C. Brandon Ogbunu @cbo.bsky.social · 6h

2/5
Plasticity:
The novel highlights the concept of plasticity, or the capacity of genotypes to produce different phenotypes across environments.

The fictional project fails not (only) because of bad cloning, but from the mismatch between organism + environment.

A reaction norm, a standard depiction of how phenotypic expression changes across environmental context.

C. Brandon Ogbunu @cbo.bsky.social · 6h

1/5
🦖 Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park (1990) turns 35 in November. In a new preprint, I argue that it was a prescient meditation on evolutionary genetics, complexity, & control. I also examine analogous efforts of today (e.g. “de-extinction.")

Select points below:
ecoevorxiv.org/repository/v...

Reposted by C. Brandon Ogbunu

Ellen Foxman @ellenfoxman.bsky.social · 1d

Happy to share this review just out in Current Opinion in Immunology on innate immunity in the respiratory tract - also check out the other reviews in this collection on Intrinsic Immunity edited by John MacMicking #ImmunoSky #IDSky #pulmsky #MedSky www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Layers of defense: protection from respiratory viruses by epithelial-intrinsic immunity

A central challenge in defending mucosal barriers is protecting against pathogens while also limiting excessive inflammation. Respiratory viruses are …

www.sciencedirect.com

Reposted by C. Brandon Ogbunu

Philip Ball @philipcball.bsky.social · 1d

Sounds potentially controversial, but very interesting if true.

Science Magazine @science.org · 1d

Male mice that exercise can pass their newly gained fitness on to male offspring.

If the same holds true in humans, researchers say, fathers could help improve the health of any future children by staying in shape themselves. https://scim.ag/47igpZm

Well-exercised male mice appear to pass fitness to their male offspring

Surprising epigenetic effect relies on snippets of RNA packaged within sperm

Reposted by C. Brandon Ogbunu

Jordan S. Martin @jsmartin.bsky.social · 1d

New paper out now in Evolution, co-led with Dave Westneat!

Using long-term data on house sparrows, we find that quantity-quality tradeoffs near a local fitness ridge favor more or less canalized clutch size distributions in response to environmental variability.

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

Measuring selection on reaction norms: Lack’s principle and plasticity in clutch size

We applied a novel multivariate analysis to measure linear and nonlinear selection on components of a complex reaction norm that was expected to be shaped

academic.oup.com

Reposted by C. Brandon Ogbunu

Ilya Kashnitsky @ikashnitsky.phd · 1d

I wrapped up my scattered comments on IHME into a blog post

🔗 ikashnitsky.phd/2025/ihme-bibl

tl;dr: avoid getting unwarranted co-authorship recognition and do apply some sort of contribution-weighted thinking when evaluating someone's publication record based on bare numbers

Beyond Fraud: How IHME Distorts Academic Metrics

Dr. Ilya Kashnitsky is a demographer @ Statistics Denmark.

ikashnitsky.phd

Reposted by C. Brandon Ogbunu

John Greally @greally.bsky.social · 3d

My book on Epigenetics: History, Molecules and Diseases

www.amazon.com/Epigenetics-...

#EpigeneticsBook #Epigenetics

Epigenetics: History, Molecules, and Diseases

Buy Epigenetics: History, Molecules, and Diseases on Amazon.com ✓ FREE SHIPPING on qualified orders

Reposted by C. Brandon Ogbunu

Philip Ball @philipcball.bsky.social · 6d

I adored writing this piece. It brings together several of the things preoccupying me right now, like chromatin organization and gene regulation. There's so much more to be said on that. Also, these marine critters look gorgeous.
www.quantamagazine.org/loops-of-dna...

Loops of DNA Equipped Ancient Life To Become Complex | Quanta Magazine

New work shows that physical folding of the genome to control genes located far away may have been an early evolutionary development.

www.quantamagazine.org

C. Brandon Ogbunu @cbo.bsky.social · 7d

www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

In vivo directed evolution of an ultrafast Rubisco from a semianaerobic environment imparts oxygen resistance | PNAS

Carbon dioxide (CO2) assimilation by the enzyme Ribulose-1,5-bisphosphate Carboxylase/Oxygenase (Rubisco) underpins biomass accumulation in photosy...

Reposted by C. Brandon Ogbunu

Stanford University Press @stanfordpress.bsky.social · 13d

Population Biology Modeling & Theory (PBMT) is a peer-reviewed journal reporting advances in modeling and theory within population biology. Its scope spans demography, ecology, epidemiology, evolutionary biology, population genetics, and phylogenetics. PBMT will be online soon.

Reposted by C. Brandon Ogbunu

Vincent J Lynch 🐘🦣🦥 🦇🐋🐢🐍 @devoevomed.bsky.social · 8d

#MammothMonday factoids: A comparison of 23 woolly mammoths (how cool is it to have that many mammoth genomes!) and 28 living elephants identified at least 1.2 million mammoth-specific genetic changes, including 4,786 amino acid substitutions in 3,097 genes 1/n 🧪 🐘 🦣

PMID: 37030294

Reposted by C. Brandon Ogbunu

Dan Larremore @danlarremore.bsky.social · 8d

Wow. Less than six months after Misere Connect Four was solved [1], we now have a solution to Chess on Half the Board! 👏

→ bowaggoner.com/papers/2025/...

[1] arxiv.org/abs/2410.055...

Reposted by C. Brandon Ogbunu

Solomon Kurz @solomonkurz.bsky.social · 8d

In Ch 19 (nyu-cdsc.github.io/learningr/as...) of his 2nd edition, Kruschke used *residual* SD as a standardizer for group differences from a multilevel ANCOVA. Is there any precedent for using a *residual* SD as a standardizer for a standardized mean difference effect size? #RStats

nyu-cdsc.github.io

Reposted by C. Brandon Ogbunu

Ilya Kashnitsky @ikashnitsky.phd · Dec 22

I'm so happy to see this paper published in QSS!

When it comes to MDPI, many people in academia are still playing the lost game of allowing them the benefit of doubt.

This figure had been faithfully killing those ridiculous demagogic attempts for over a year now 🙌

#ScientificPublishing

C. Brandon Ogbunu @cbo.bsky.social · 11d

Red Sox fan friends not answering they phones (again)

Interesting

Reposted by C. Brandon Ogbunu

Ricard Solé @ricardsole.bsky.social · 12d

How dit life originate in our planet? How can we create it in the lab?Our @royalsocietypublishing.org Theme Issue "Origins of Life: the possible and the actual", coedited with @sfiscience.bsky.social C Kempes and Susan Stepney is out! royalsocietypublishing.org/toc/rstb/202... @manlius.bsky.social

Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences: Vol 380, No 1936

royalsocietypublishing.org

C. Brandon Ogbunu @cbo.bsky.social · 11d

It’s not about the order & whether I agree; they really did a nice job of exploring a lot of music.

And ‘’The Infamous’ (#1) is unquestionably one of the most haunting and beautiful albums in music history.

Not mad one bit.

Pitchfork @pitchfork.com · 14d

Presenting the 100 best rap albums of all time

The 100 Best Rap Albums of All Time

We rank the most essential and influential albums of this quintessentially American art form.

C. Brandon Ogbunu @cbo.bsky.social · 12d

True! And then there's this problem.

You submit. Then you make the mistake of taking a look after you hit the button. The typos appear like:

a close up of a feather on a rock with the words `` hello '' written in white letters .

ALT: a close up of a feather on a rock with the words `` hello '' written in white letters .

media.tenor.com

C. Brandon Ogbunu @cbo.bsky.social · 13d

I'm wrestling with one now...I mean EVERY TIME I open the file, I rearrange whole sections...what is happening

C. Brandon Ogbunu @cbo.bsky.social · 13d

Subscribe to my YouTube channel
(Kidding)

C. Brandon Ogbunu @cbo.bsky.social · 13d

When writing an article/book, you may experience the situation where you make a non-trivial change every time you look at it.

This means one of two things:

i) You're on the right track, so keep on editing (and presumably, improving) it.

ii) You should have submitted it a month ago (or longer).