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Ben Auxier

@benauxier.bsky.social
230 followers 201 following 121 posts

Fungal geneticist interested in how fungi recognize themselves, and each other. Asst. Professor at WUR

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Dermot Lynott @dermotlynott.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
As I’ve said before, I prefer the term “language researcher”
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Ben Auxier @benauxier.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
More amazing work from Andrew in unravelling these enigmatic genetic elements. Combining sequencing with molecular biology to track this circular stage!
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Andrea Lathrop @cabernet.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
Anxiety is All You Need: Neuroticism in Protocol Droids Improves Human-Droid Interaction
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Kevin Mitchell @wiringthebrain.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
With a little time now past, I'm wondering what pop gen peeps make of this paper... do the findings seem solid?
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Weill Institute for Cell & Molecular Biology @weillinstitute.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
We're pleased to welcome Dr. Edgar Medina Tovar to @weillinstitute.bsky.social and @cornelluniversity.bsky.social! Edgar brings an exciting research program exploring cellular evolution and fungal pathogenesis, and we’re thrilled to have him join our community. Looking forward to what's ahead! 🔬 🍄‍🟫 🍄
news.cornell.edu
Medina Tovar joins Weill Institute to study cellular evolution, pathogenesis of fungi | Cornell Chronicle
Edgar Medina Tovar joins the Weill Institute for Cell and Molecular Biology and the College of Arts & Sciences as an assistant research professor in September. He will begin as an assistant professor ...
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Matthew Meyer 🍄‍🟫 @0mgem0.bsky.social · 29/07/2026
If you predict or annotate genes from whole genomes, what would you like current software to do better? What's still missing, unnecessarily difficult, or hard to trust? I'm interested in problems that matter in real projects, including the unglamorous ones. #Bioinformatics #GenomeAnnotation
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John Lees @johnlees.bacpop.org · 27/07/2026
What is an 'everyday task' and what is a 'complex problem' in bioinformatics software engineering? Feels more important use the right model now they're not so heavily subsidised! I did a small comparison on an optimisation task: johnlees.me/posts/ska2-c... Small/cheap model wasn't good enough
johnlees.me
Credit use of AI models for bioinformatics: a tiny benchmark
Agentic coding models such as codex and claude code are really useful for software engineering tasks. We sadly (and unsurprisingly) seem to be exiting the era of highly subsidised costs to get us hook...
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Matthew Cobb @matthewcobb.bsky.social · 23/07/2026
Tragic and - according to scientists quoted in the article — avoidable.
science.org
Exclusive: Death of girl in Chinese gene-editing trial was never made public
Parents want accountability after study went disastrously wrong, Science and Retraction Watch investigation reveals
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Ursula Oggenfuss @oggenfussursula.bsky.social · 20/07/2026
I am happy to share that my NWO Veni project was awarded 🍄🧬🔻! In this project, I will study how transposons shape genome folding, evolution, and adaptation in a fungal salamander pathogen. I am incredibly thankful for all the support and look forward to this next chapter #fungi #transposons #TEsky
A sketch of two salamander species, with a zoomed in picture of a fungal fruit body releasing spores, leading to a small stretch of DNA which ends in a folded chromosome with many green triangles indicating transposon insertions
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Costa Samaras @costasamaras.com · 19/07/2026
Could Excel be conscious? We surveyed more than Jan 1 1900 people to find out.
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Cat Manning @catacalypto.bsky.social · 14/07/2026
deeply annoying that creative breakthroughs don’t come on schedule from direct work but from things like “open-ended conversations with interesting people” and “doing nothing”
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Rebecca Drummond 🍄 @therad-lab.bsky.social · 10/07/2026
I'm thrilled that Novo Nordisk Foundation will be funding us for the next 6 years. This grant establishes a new consortium between UK, Denmark and Uganda to drive discoveries into fungal meningitis. Lots of positions soon available - watch out for announcements! novonordiskfonden.dk/en/news/no-e...
novonordiskfonden.dk
No easy answers: European research consortia take on major challenges - Novo Nordisk Fonden
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Atlas Shvitzed @therafischwartz.bsky.social · 08/07/2026
Unfortunately, a stunned Paris is how they all got into this whole mess to begin with
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Maitreya Dunham @maitreya.bsky.social · 07/07/2026
Got myself some new business cards from the wonderful Letterpress pdx!
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S. Lorena Ament @loreament.bsky.social · 07/07/2026
Me trying to run minigraph-cactus to be like the cool pangenome kids #Pangenome #genomics
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Amelia Barber @ameliabarberphd.bsky.social · 30/06/2026
Exciting news! After a wonderful four years at @uni-jena.de, I'm excited to announce the next chapter as a group leader at @fzborstel.bsky.social and professor at @uni-kiel.de.
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Aydan Bulut-Karslioglu @bulutkarslioglu.bsky.social · 26/06/2026
I have been thinking since yesterday about why I find the 1% thing so, so disturbing. It's a visceral reaction of 'just no', which goes beyond the general yuck towards the enshittification of/via AI. I have finally put my finger on it: it is the feeling you get when
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MwahahahahahadScientist @mads100tist.bsky.social · 24/06/2026
Motion to collectively call this the Slop Factor 🧪
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Grantham Research Institute at LSE @granthamlse.bsky.social · 23/06/2026
We regret that our event on Extreme Heat: Improving governance and strengthening action around the world has been cancelled due to the red extreme heat warning issued by the UK Met Office. Our apologies to everyone who was planning to attend the event.
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Susan Johnston @susanjohnston.bsky.social · 01/06/2026
📣🧬 Postdoc Alert🧬📣 We are hiring a 2+ year NERC-funded postdoc at Edinburgh Uni investigating causes and consequences of sex differences in recombination in house sparrows in Norway. Informal enquiries welcome at Susan.Johnston@ed.ac.uk 🙂 Details here: elxw.fa.em3.oraclecloud.com/hcmUI/Candid...
A female and male sparrow stand on a wooden post. Photo by Peter S. Ranke.
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The Onion @theonion.com · 28/05/2026
Listerine Leaves 0.1% Of Germs Alive To Spread Message Of Terror Throughout Microbial Community theonion.com/listerine-leaves-0-1-o…
Listerine Leaves 0.1% Of Germs Alive To Spread Message Of Terror Throughout Microbial Community
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MPI for Evolutionary Biology @mpi-evolbio.bsky.social · 27/05/2026
Congratulations to Prof. Eva Stukenbrock on her appointment to the Leopoldina. Her research on fungal pathogens helps us better understand evolution and protect crops. www.evolbio.mpg.de/3882989/eva-... #EvolutionaryBiology #Leopoldina
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Alison Feder @alisonfeder.bsky.social · 26/05/2026
I’m excited to share a new paper about HIV escape from broadly neutralizing antibody monotherapies! In it, we describe the most highly recurrent adaptation I have ever seen. A close collaboration with Lillian Cohn (FHCC) led jointly by Elena Romero and Abby Clyde. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
pnas.org
PNAS
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), a peer reviewed journal of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) - an authoritative source of high-impact, original research that broadly spans...
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Annie Hatmaker, Ph.D. @annemakerofhats.bsky.social · 26/05/2026
I shared on LinkedIn already, but I wanted to post here as well since I've got a different audience: I will be joining the Department of Plant Pathology at the @universityofga.bsky.social as an Assistant Professor on Aug 1!! I will keep studying #Aspergillus & #Fusarium that infect plants & humans 🥰
A white woman stands in front of a gray stone sign that says "State Botanical Garden of Georgia" and is wearing a red hat with the letter "G" in black which is the logo for the University of Georgia. Under the "G" is the word "Georgia" in white. She is wearing sunglasses and a black shirt and has brown hair past her shoulders.
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Altrincham Dry Cleaners @altydrycleaners.bsky.social · 02/04/2026
MASSIVE fan of this one:
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Daniel Lakens @lakens.bsky.social · 25/05/2026
New blog post: Evaluating Dr. Cuddy’s Claim that the Debunking of Power Posing is a Myth. daniellakens.blogspot.com/2026/05/eval... On an AI generated description of a non-existent study, incorrectly citing findings from studies, and the importance of scientific criticism.
daniellakens.blogspot.com
Evaluating Dr. Cuddy’s Claim that the Debunking of Power Posing is a Myth
In this blog post I will analyse the arguments that Dr. Amy Cuddy provided in a blog post “The "Power Posing Was Debunked" Myth: What the Re...
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Sasha Gusev @sashagusevposts.bsky.social · 23/05/2026
I assigned random gender/ethnicity labels to scientific abstracts from the literature and then asked Claude to do a thematic analysis. Claude identified a clinical versus computational split for female/male authors and a DEI focus for Black/URM authors. All in completely random data.
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Jennifer Davis @jmd5120.bsky.social · 18/05/2026
This Is Just To Say I have taken the space that was in the -80 and which you were probably saving for an emergency Forgive me it was convenient so open and so cold
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Brian Nosek @briannosek.bsky.social · 07/05/2026
Best evidence yet that LLMs can match human capabilities in doing science.
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Sam @mardiroos.bsky.social · 05/05/2026
You are a skilful and trusted vizier. You will advise me wisely on how best to rule the kingdom. You will not scheme or plot. You will not inveigle my other courtiers into turning against me. You will not lie to me about scheming or plotting. If you scheme or plot against me, you have to tell me,
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Angie Rasmussen @angierasmussen.bsky.social · 03/05/2026
Juliet Morrison & I reviewed this article about whether these AI redteamers ACTUALLY made a bioweapon when it spit out a sequence & talked about balloons. www.nytimes.com/2026/04/29/u... Also: our favorite virus recipes. Join us: open.substack.com/live-stream/...
nytimes.com
A.I. Bots Told Scientists How to Make Biological Weapons
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Vincent J Lynch 🐘🦣🦥 🦇🐋🐢🐍 @devoevomed.bsky.social · 30/04/2026
Screaming to the abyss: #ColossalBio did not resurrect the dire wolf and they're probably just going to make an antelope with methemoglobinemia to give it a bluish color. Their #DeExtinction #DisInformation campaign is just a pyramid scheme because #ExtinctionIsForever 🧪
An image from Time magazine, which I screen-shot from Colossal Biosciences’ Instagram account of a bluish antelope in a presumably African grassland (that is almost certainly AI-generated). This will likely be flagged as a DCMA violation and taken down.
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Tami Lieberman @contaminatedsci.bsky.social · 01/05/2026
It's official-- my promotion to Associate Professor with Tenure has been approved by the Executive Committee of the MIT Corporation!! This is a surreal moment and I owe my deepest gratitude to the members of my lab, collaborators, mentors, and colleagues who made this possible. Thank you!
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chasingmicrobes @chasingmicrobes.bsky.social · 30/04/2026
👀
dewitt-lab.github.io
Additivity is all you need?
Arc Institute’s “MULTI-evolve” learns a classical additive model, not epistasis.
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Ben Auxier @benauxier.bsky.social · 30/04/2026
Word has a "Read Aloud" function. It is surprisingly helpful in the later stages of editing.
image showing the Review panel of Microsoft Word, with the Read Aloud button
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Bird account @dialecticbio.bsky.social · 30/04/2026
I'm so happy that someone has finally described the game plan of this little cottage industry so clearly. It's one more example of the scam economy we all live under now.
Importantly, in order for polygenic scoring to become a profitable and transformative industry, it doesn’t need to work. That is, these metrics do not need to pick out a class of people with a genuine propensity for virtue or vice, nor does screening an embryo for higher scores need to improve intelligence or law-abidingness. This biotech grift could become the latest trend in conspicuous consumption simply because enough people believe it works. It’s a question of our faith in predestination.


An “ethics” industry has grown up around this prospect, focused on the fear that granting limited access to this technology (only to those who can afford it) will create a separate race of tall, athletic, beautiful, brilliant, and virtuous children, who would cordon themselves off from the dysgenic masses. The true function of such alarmism, as with discourses of “AI safety” and “existential risk,” is to reinforce the false inevitability of these technologies’ success.


In fact, the stratified society being prophesied already exists—the children of the wealthy already live in a world apart. Everything from their healthcare to their schooling and experiences with the criminal justice system are fundamentally different from the realities of those with fewer resources. At no point in the present or future will maintaining this stratification require the wealthy or their children to be inherently healthier, more intelligent, or more virtuous. Hierarchy is a function of power, amassed within social, historical, and political structures, and resistance requires challenging the belief that social elites are truly the Elect.
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Jennifer Anderson @jandbio.bsky.social · 26/04/2026
Fungi get <0.2% of conservation $ Almost all ⬆️ $ is for 🍄 mushrooms <10% of fungi form 🍄 At the Fungal Conservation in Europe Conference @funaction.bsky.social, @mostfun.bsky.social & @iucnaquafungi.bsky.social brought aquatic micro-fungi to the fore. It's time to be included in conservation!
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Kenneth Loi @kenjmloi.bsky.social · 27/04/2026
Excited to share our discovery of a new programmable RNA-guided DNA-targeting system hiding inside bacteriophages that predates CRISPR. We call it VIPR (Viral Interference Programmable Repeat), and it uses an entirely new logic to find its targets. Thread + link below.
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Rachel W. Martin @rwmartin.bsky.social · 26/04/2026
Me: “I want everyone to be interested in peptides!” *monkey's paw curls*
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SORTEE @sortee.bsky.social · 22/04/2026
Would you like to join a welcoming community that is passionate about improving transparency, rigour, and equity in science? 👀 Check out SORTEE! You can join for free, if you like. Your support goes a long way in growing our impact 💚 👉 sortee.org/join/ #openscience #SORTEE
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Dialectical Systems @dialecticalsys.bsky.social · 21/04/2026
The dialectical underpinnings of multilevel selection Evolution isn’t flat: new levels arise through conflict and then reshape the very dynamics that brought them into being
dialecticalsystems.eu
The Dialectics of Multi-Level Selection in Evolutionary Biology - Dialectical Systems
Introduction Dialectical thinking in biology has famously been put forward by the eponymous book of Levins and Lewontin (1985). Much of the book was dedicated to the interpenetration between organisms...
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Simon Hammann @simonhammann.bsky.social · 20/04/2026
Don't be shy to take on a little two-week side project. These five months will be the most precious three years of your academic journey.
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Alex Gao @algao.bsky.social · 19/04/2026
Great summary by @philipcball.bsky.social! Our findings certainly don’t invalidate the central dogma, but rather demonstrate an unexpected (and cool!) structural mechanism by which a sequence-specific DNA is created in a cell. (1/6)
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Sarah Pinsker @sarahpinsker.bsky.social · 19/04/2026
This is just to say I have let in the duck that was on the doorstep and which you were probably hoping would stay out Forgive me he was persuasive so scary and so loud.
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Philip Ball @philipcball.bsky.social · 18/04/2026
Feels like this paper on protein-templated DNA synthesis by a natural enzyme warrants some comment. So here's a 🧵. /1 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
science.org
Science | AAAS
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Carl Zimmer @carlzimmer.com · 18/04/2026
A fair-skinned red-head person who has discovered he has a predisposition for melanoma only after unleashing AI agents on his genome.
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Craig Kaplan @triggerloop.bsky.social · 17/04/2026
I do feel like this is not protein sequence to DNA sequence, which I think is what the Crick diagram means. Still a very cool result
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Ben Auxier @benauxier.bsky.social · 17/04/2026
If anyone wants a clear explanation of The Central Dogma, @matthewcobb.bsky.social has some good insights (hint: this ain't it)
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A. Murat Eren (Meren) @merenbey.bsky.social · 16/04/2026
How every layer of science's "self-correcting machinery" failed when Iva Veseli and I simply wanted to reproduce the findings of a high-profile study on gut microbiome and autism: merenlab.org/2026/04/15/u...
merenlab.org
Unfalsifiable by Design: A Year of Trying and Failing to Reproduce a Human Microbiome and Autism Study
The myth of open data, reproducibility, responsibility, and accountability in science, and your role in it
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Richard Sever @richardsever.bsky.social · 16/04/2026
HHMI CEO: "diamond funding should be deployed to sustain repositories [i.e. preprint servers] and connective infrastructure that focus on researcher-shared outputs" zenodo.org/records/1960...
zenodo.org
Realigning incentives for biomedical researchers and journals through researcher-shared outputs
In this preprint the authors propose a shift in what counts in the biomedical sciences: researchers should be recognized for what they choose to share on their own terms and timeline (for example as p...
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