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briandilkes.bsky.social
Takes things apart to figure out what's inside.
717 posts 687 followers 382 following
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Hi #evol2025, our paper came out yesterday and I'd love to chat about it. We used an underused tool for studying parasite local adaptation, the Host Reciprocal Transplant, to study switchgrass and its fungal rust. doi.org/10.1111/nph....

submitted 10 hours ago • 4 comments

Excellent new paper out this week led by former postdoc (now NC State Assistant Professor) @aceraceae.bsky.social. "Local adaptation of both plant and pathogen: an arms-race compromise in switchgrass rust." nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

submitted 10 hours ago • 1 comment

Basic science is essential. "Most drugs don’t begin with research intended to make that drug. In fact, the results of their study showed that 80% of the medicines on their list led back to a discovery from basic research without any intention of creating a new drug" www.chronicle.com/article/in-d...

submitted 11 hours ago • 1 comment

On sabbatical in fall and wandering for science. Cannot wait to share the adventures of an: elder postdoc; D.O.V.E.; data janitor. For now, "hello" from the heat dome from this weird little maize mutant!

submitted 1 day ago • 0 comments

Just to be crystal clear: bombing Iran is completely illegal.

submitted 2 days ago • 2096 comments

Yay! @genomeofforrest.bsky.social work published today in PLoS Genetics. Forrest took a large maize common garden dataset and asked whether Environmental GWAS was actually useful for predicting which individuals would have highest fitness. Turns out, the answer is no. 1/2

submitted 7 days ago • 3 comments

After yesterday’s BII news, today my university told me they’re self-terminating my foundation-funded DEI grant and I woke up with a brown-tail moth rash all over my lower and middle back.

submitted 7 days ago • 19 comments

🧬🌽 Happy Transposon Day! 🌽🧬 Today we celebrate the birthday of Barbara McClintock - scientist extraordinaire and discoverer of jumping genes. Still the only woman to have an unshared Nobel Prize in the biomedical sciences #TransposonDay2025

submitted 8 days ago • 5 comments

"...the threat of deportation by abusive spouses is louder than ever and allows abusers to wield greater power and control over their victims." www.cbsnews.com/news/alleged...

submitted 8 days ago • 3 comments

🎉 Congratulations to our director Gwyneth Ingram, awarded the 2025 CNRS Silver Medal! A well-deserved recognition of her outstanding research in plant developmental biology. 🌱 👉 More info: www.cnrs.fr/fr/actualite... 👉 Her profile: www.insb.cnrs.fr/fr/personne/...

submitted 8 days ago • 1 comment

Here’s a New York Times photo of the Chicago “No Kings” rally. NYT said the march that followed spanned at least 10 blocks.

submitted 10 days ago • 156 comments

just watched this netflix documentary on the oklahoma city bombing and once again i'm struck by how so many of the popular media takes on this event just avoid entirely the connection to organized white supremacism

submitted 10 days ago • 593 comments

The day started with tragedy with political violence in MN and instead of being scared, neighbors SHOWED UP to stand together at No Kings Twin Cities. We packed the Capitol Mall all the way to the Cathedral. Estimate 80,000+ right now. So proud of our state. #nokings #indivisible

submitted 10 days ago • 307 comments

Pulitzer prize for this Jay L. Clenendin image of LAPD stormtroopers in front of Barbara Kruger's "Untitled (Questions)"

submitted 13 days ago • 25 comments

"Gift Article" Promises made. Promises kept. "On average, audits of individuals with high incomes return substantially more money to the government, so proponents have argued they are the most effective way for the tax agency to collect more revenue." www.nytimes.com/2025/06/05/u...

submitted 13 days ago • 0 comments

Four years ago, Jesse Bloom announced the recovery of SARS-CoV-2 sequences and suggested they could come from very early COVID-19 patients. Zach Hensel and I found out that Bloom's claim relied on the deliberate omission of a January 30, 2020 collection date contradicting his narrative. 🧪 #PopGen

submitted 14 days ago • 4 comments

My great aunt Edith purposefully gave the quartermaster general of the occupying NAZI force fleas when he forced himself into her house and made her his maid. The POS had a very itchy time in France. Not a lot of sleep. Resistance comes in lots of forms.

submitted 14 days ago • 0 comments

Make your own maize mutants! Raj Khangura, Norman Best and I contributed maize pollen and seed EMS mutagenesis protocols for the new maize handbook! Updated practices 1/n cshprotocols.cshlp.org/content/earl... cshprotocols.cshlp.org/content/earl... cshprotocols.cshlp.org/content/earl...

submitted 15 days ago • 1 comment

A full Tejano band in a big truck rolled into the Olvera St, the lead singer has a Fuck ICE shirt on, and this protest is now a dance party

submitted 15 days ago • 115 comments

Reminder: Nobel-prize winning PCR (1983), used in basically all genetic tech today, was only possible because of extremophile bacterium discovered in 1964 in Yellowstone funded by a small ~$80k NSF grant with no obvious application at the time. #science 🧪 www.richmondscientific.com/how-a-discov...

submitted 16 days ago • 22 comments

Hell of a photo

submitted 17 days ago • 404 comments

Harvard author Steven Pinker appears on podcast linked to scientific racism

submitted 17 days ago • 117 comments

Let’s be clear: ICE injured and detained the president of SEIU California for peacefully observing. ICE picked the wrong side. The wrong state. The wrong person. and the wrong union. David Huerta stood up. And now 750,000 SEIU workers are standing up behind him. seiuca.org/press-releas...

submitted 18 days ago • 327 comments