C. Brandon Ogbunu

Jacket design for new book The Man Who Broke Reality (US edition).

OK, I have a US jacket design now. I think it looks rather handsome.
The book is published in the autumn, in both the UK (Little Brown) and US (University of Chicago Press).

AI can write genomes — how long until it creates synthetic life? Nature - The Evo2 genomic language model can generate short genome sequences, but scientists say further advances are needed to write genomes that will work inside living cells.

This AI model is trained on trillions of DNA letters from organisms across the tree of life

go.nature.com/409tb8r

Hoping for a ‘perfect’ baby? Genetic testing startups lur... Fertility experts say strict UK laws are no bar to accessing a booming industry that has led to concerns about eugenics

Pretty good overview of the non-medical uses of polygenic screening in IVF - good to see comments from Peter Thompson and Sarah Norcross. The legal position is indeed now hard to enforce in the UK, as the article explains. One thing I'd like to see emphasized more...
observer.co.uk/news/nationa...

A screenshot of the article title: Reframing oxytocin as a behavioral flexibility hormone

Scientific claims in biobehavioral oxytocin research are dependent on a “derivation chain”. Theoretical models are the beginning of this chain, which are dependent on a theoretical core supported by auxiliary hypotheses. Efforts to improve biobehavioral oxytocin research have tended to focus on auxiliary hypotheses related to experimental models (e.g., improving oxytocin delivery to the brain, polygenic approaches for genetics studies), and statistical auxiliary hypothesis (e.g., appropriate sample sizes for research). However, even if these issues are addressed, a poorly specified theoretical core (and associated auxiliary hypothesis) can lead to unreliable scientific claims

Oxytocin is typically described as a "social" hormone. In our new article, we propose that it should instead be viewed a hormone that modulates behavioral flexibility

doi.org/10.1016/j.ne...

In this @frontiersin.bsky.social in #Ecology & #Evolution review we compile 280 studies showing empirical evidence of natural selection occuring at the levels:

- Genetic elements
- Nuclei
- Cells
- Clones
- Individuals
- Groups (demes, colonies, agreggates)
- Communities

doi.org/10.3389/fevo...

A sickening society is clear in these statistics

So why is it not in the news?

Powerful wake-up call from @chakrabortty.bsky.social www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Some public-health experts and science commentators were saying this at the time. For all the wonders of rapid tests and then vaccines, we could not science our way out of problems that were not science problems at their core.

Leipzig U and the MPI for Evolutionary Anthropology (MPI-EVA) have an open faculty position (W2) in evolutionary population genetics! This position is tenured and comes with generous core funding. We are eager to welcome a new colleague! Deadline March 11.
www.uni-leipzig.de/en/newsdetai...

Reflections on the Human Genome Diversity Project: a conversation with Marcus W. Feldman, Henry T. Greely, and Mary-Claire King Abstract. The Human Genome Diversity Project (HGDP) began in 1991 as an initiative to study genetic variation from human populations worldwide. In 2002, th

If you research or are simply interested in human genetic variation, ancient and modern, read my and Noah Rosenberg's latest in GENETICS academic.oup.com/genetics/art... 1/2

Quantifying the spatiotemporal dynamics of the first two epidemic waves of SARS-CoV-2 infections in the United States Author summary In this work, we developed a set of tools and methods designed to produce high-resolution visualizations, as well as to quantify the complex and intricate patterns associated with the s...

We are published! We quantifying the spatiotemporal dynamics of the first two major waves of SARS-CoV-2 in the USA is online now!

By mapping the infections we were able to quantify the spread of SARS-CoV-2 over the contiguous US and we also estimated the speed of spread! tinyurl.com/y87tjnmd

‘I love midges because I know what their hearts look like’: is the passion for taxonomy in danger of dying out? Insect taxonomist Art Borkent has described and named more than 300 species of midges but fears his field of science is dying out, despite millions of insects, fungi and other organisms waiting to be discovered

‘I love midges because I know what their hearts look like’: is the passion for taxonomy in danger of dying out?

Salty start: How early-life stress and age change future reproductive investment Upama Aich, Khandaker Asif Ahmed, Meng-Han Joseph Chung, Bob B. M. Wong, Michael D. Jennions This is a plain language summary of a Functional Ecology research article which can be found here. Clima…

📰Published📰Salty start: How early-life stress and age change future reproductive investment🐟️

buff.ly/YB74uJO

🧪🌍️

Does early-life environment stress affect future reproductive investment? 🌊🐟
Our new paper found that when raised in fluctuating salinity, mosquitofish females produce eggs with lower protein, while older males had higher ejaculate glycogen content!

Read the full paper here doi.org/10.1111/1365...

Based on a 2025 study by the great @jazlynmooney.bsky.social & colleagues

What the ‘Birthday Paradox’ Can Teach Us About Black History Opinion | Statistics can help fill in historical gaps, revealing surprising and empowering things about the past and present.

New for @undark.org

On: "The Birthday Paradox," the transatlantic slave trade, ancestral bonds, and the hidden power of statistics.

"Family is family, whatever our genetic relationship. Impressively, the birthday paradox study captures this possibility."

undark.org/2026/02/27/o...

Is a ‘selfish gene’ making a Utah family have twice as many boys as girls? Genealogy study claims first conclusive case of sex ‘distortion’ in humans — but not all researchers are convinced.

A genealogy study claims first conclusive case of sex ‘distortion’ in humans — but not all researchers are convinced. go.nature.com/4aZqc7x

Why does every decade promise a method, a language, or now #AI that will “fix” #software #complexity?

Software never behaved like an engineered artifact.

Our research shows it evolves like an #ecosystem.

A thread ↓

This new issue of #PhilTransB expands the field of cultural #evolution and shows why it matters for today’s biggest challenges. It highlights research funded by the @culturalevolsoc.bsky.social's Transformation Fund, which focused on #DEI: royalsocietypublishing.org/rstb/issue/3...

The Vatican Museums' Bramante Staircase provides a striking visual metaphor for a vicious feedback cycle in scholarly publishing: rising paper submissions across an expanding landscape of journals strains the limited supply of volunteer peer review labor, which in turn makes editorial decisions less predictable and encourages authors to submit their work more ambitiously, increasing the burden on peer reviewers further still. Image credit: Carl T. Bergstrom

The process of #PeerReview is vital to contemporary science, but is also under enormous strain. @carlbergstrom.com & Kevin Gross use mathematical models to dissect the threats to the long-term viability of peer review, suggesting ways to stabilize it @plosbiology.org 🧪 plos.io/4kR02bo

What We Inherit Debating the use of genomic tools and their societal impact

#Introduction: Bioethicist. Adversarial Collaborator (the friendly kind). Writer. Mother to a tiny human and cat.

I study: the ethics of genomic technologies.

Book: WHAT WE INHERIT (2026) tinyurl.com/4m2uu7xu

Website: daphnemartschenko.com

Never thought about this e-mail point before...yup.

The Misplaced Incentives in Academic Publishing Opinion | Scientists who spend time peer-reviewing manuscripts don’t get rewarded for their efforts. It’s time to change that.

"We appear to be in the midst of a 'peer-review meltdown' in which the peer-review system is becoming woefully overtaxed by the volume of manuscript submissions."

As the authors highlight, the lack of incentives to conduct peer review is...a problem.

undark.org/2024/07/04/o...

Should biology put complexity first? The dictum “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler” poses a problem for biology. How simply can it be told without doing dama…

Should biology put complexity first? www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... - excellent essay by @philipcball.bsky.social. I would add epistasis to polygenicity and pleiotropy as a ubiquitous and fundamental phenomenon, not some optional complication that we can try to account for afterwards

Pace of ecology drives the tempo of visual perception across the animal kingdom Laughlin, S. B. The metabolic cost of information—a fundamental factor in visual ecology. In Ecology of Sensing (eds Barth, F. G. & Schmid, A.) 169–185 (Springer, 2001); https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-22644-5_9 Land, M. F. & Nilsson, D.-E. Animal Eyes (Oxford Univ. Press, 2012). von Uexküll, J. in Instinctive Behavior 5–80 (International Univ. Press, 1934). Donner, K. Temporal vision: measures, mechanisms and meaning. J. Exp. Biol. 224, jeb222679 (2021). Reeves, A. in Handbook of Perception and Action (eds Prinz, W. & Bridgeman, B.) Vol. 1, 11–24 (Academic, 1996). Brozek, J. & Keys, A. Changes in flicker-fusion frequency with age. J. Consult. Psychol. 9, 87–90 (1945). Misiak, H. Age and sex differences in critical flicker frequency. J. Exp. Psychol. 37, 318–332 (1947). Chatterjee, P., Mohan, U., Krishnan, A. & Sane, S. P. Evolutionary constraints on flicker fusion frequency in Lepidoptera. J. Comp. Physiol. A 206, 671–681 (2020). Inger, R., Bennie, J., Davies, T. W. & Gaston, K. J. Potential biological and ecological effects of flickering artificial light. PLoS ONE 9, 98631 (2014). Petie, R., Hall, M. R., Hyldahl, M. & Garm, A. Visual orientation by the crown-of-thorns starfish (Acanthaster planci). Coral Reefs 35, 1139–1150 (2016). Kelly, D. H. Visual responses to time-dependent stimuli. I. Amplitude...

Pace of ecology drives the tempo of visual perception across the animal kingdom
->Nature | More on "Animal visual perception speed ecology" at BigEarthData.ai

Humbled by Evolution Understanding the history and diversity of life inspires awe and wonder.

1. I’m quite happy with this popular piece that Lee Dugatkin and I wrote recently. For the next two weeks it’s free to read on the American Scientist website.

Now this is a goddamn paper

AlphaGenome: On the Promise and Limits of AI in Science PHILIP BALL | According to the old story, we once thought that all this other DNA was just “junk,” a term coined in this context in the 1970s. It was accumulated over the course of evolution, for exam...

“It would be foolish to suppose that black box AI can save us from the daunting task of understanding how genomes work. But who would want to forego that anyway, given the intellectual richness & beauty that, for all its messiness, modern molecular biology is revealing?” @philipcball.bsky.social 🙌🎯🧪

"Historians of science interested in the 1980s [...] can profitably learn from one another by comparing how scientists of different stripes moved through the greedy waters they swam in."

Joseph Martin's review of Greedy Science: link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Excellent opportunity!!

Is the Fundamental Theorem of Natural Selection of any use? Abstract. There have been many recent discussions of the Fundamental Theorem of Natural Selection, with an emphasis on its mathematical accuracy. It is arg

"There is still life in the old dog."

Brian Charlesworth on Fisher's Fundamental Theorem in @journal-evo.bsky.social

doi.org/10.1093/evol...