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Max Brown 🌱

@euphrasiologist.bsky.social
157 followers 261 following 31 posts

I like plants. Lecturer on plant genetics and ecology at Anglia Ruskin University. Views my own.

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Reposted by Max Brown 🌱
Ketan Joshi @ketanjoshi.co · 02/10/2026
How on Earth did I not read this yet? really interesting and honestly kind of brazen modelling of the entire lifecycle - downstream, data centres, upstream use - of AI. Puts AI industry at 1.1% of total global energy, about the same for global emissions. More than 10x previously stated estimates
Final Results and Concluding Thoughts
Adding it all up, we estimate that the AI sector is responsible for almost 1,900 TWh of global energy consumption in 2026. And after accounting for additional factors that we did not explicitly analyze, like the construction of new electrical substations, robotic-centric warehouses, water reclamation facilities, and other infrastructure specifically designed to support the data center buildout, it’s likely that total AI-driven global energy demand is already closer to 2,000 TWh. Even at 1,900 TWh, the AI share of total global energy use in 2026 would be roughly 1.1%. We also estimate, after adding up all the sectoral numbers and landing at roughly 650 million metric tons of AI-driven CO2 emissions, that the AI share of global GHG emissions in 2026 stands at about 1.2%, with total annual global emissions sitting at roughly 55 gigatons of CO2-eq, albeit with a wide range of figures from EDGAR to UNEP (anywhere from 53 gigatons to 58 gigatons depending on a broad array of different assumptions). As we’ve discussed already, these numbers are much higher than many others in the media and academia have guessed on the basis of simplistic calculations and naïve assumptions.

The projections up to 2030 are obviously far worse and imply a catastrophic impact to global ecological stability. ChatGPT alone “processes approximately 2.5 billion prompts per day worldwide.”122 The scale of AI growth and diffusion globally is truly astounding, and the industry’s corresponding ecological footprint will soon rival that of major countries like India. It's not farfetched at all to think that the AI share of total global energy demand could rise to something like 5% by 2030, rivaling and in some cases surpassing the footprint of established dominant industries. The potential consequences of this extra resource pressure on biodiversity, global warming, freshwater scarcity, and biogeochemical cycles could be absolutely staggering and devastating for the…
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WGDip @wgdip.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
Big congratulations to our ECRs who shared their work through poster presentations at #IPC2026! Great science on display from Annabelle Knutson, Brianna Banting, Emily Haley, Kevin Bird, Morgane Milin & Zoe Vance. Thank you for sharing your work & sparking great conversations #Polyploidy #ECR #WGDip
Image of Dr. Kevin Bird presenting poster titled "Transcriptional buffering as a consequence of dosage-balance selection on allopolyploid Brassica” Image of Dr. Morgane Milin presenting a poster titled “Reconstructing chromosome evolution during rediploidisation in salmonids”
Image of Dr. Zoe Vance presenting a poster titled “Does the rediploidization process impact observed duplicate outcomes following the Saccharomyces whole genome duplication?”
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Alejandro Manzano Marín @amanzanom.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
Please help spread the word! I'm searching for a #PhD student to join my group to work on #Symbiont - #pathogen interactions in #Hemiptera. Fully-funded, 4 years *Full details 👇🏼 besymblab.univie.ac.at/wp-content/u... 🧵 on the project 👇🏼 bsky.app/profile/aman... #ScienceJobs #SymbioSky #MicroSky
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Max Brown 🌱 @euphrasiologist.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
I feel sorry for proper software devs, AI has killed the fun in the sector. At least with bioinformatics we’re somewhat abstracted from the code sometimes…
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Sajad Alipour @sajadalipour98.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
Dianthus hyrcanicus Rech.f. میخک کاسپینی، میخک هیرکانی Endemic of Iran Caryophyllaceae Mazandaran province, Iran August 2026 Elevation 400m #Dianthus #Caryophyllaceae #wildflowers #botany #ecology
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Natural History Museum, London @nhm-london.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
The oldest amber has been discovered in China, and it’s around 385 million years old! 🌳 The discovery pushes the confirmed record of amber back by around 65 million years, showing that plants were producing resin much earlier than previously demonstrated.
Photograph of amber on a green background. The amber is small, irregularly shaped with a translucent amber-yellow centre surrounded by dark, rough outer edges.
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sandraduharcourt.bsky.social @sandraduharcourt.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
Very happy to see our Nature Reviews Genetics article on programmed DNA elimination across eukaryotes out! A fantastic collective effort with an amazing group of colleagues, born from inspiring discussions at the Fondation des Treilles. rdcu.be/tmvKgsPZNhBa @laurarossevo.bsky.social
rdcu.be
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Wayne Maddison @waynemaddison.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
The Tree of Life web project is back! A phylogenetic view of biodiversity way ahead of its time (ca. 1995!), conceived and led by David Maddison, collaborative & human-curated, widely used in teaching. Defunct technology had doomed it until Travis, Danny, and Andrew revived it. 🥳🎉 🧪 #evolbiol
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Matt Bertone @bertonemyia.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
We're looking for a plant pathologist 🌱 🍄 to join our department (cals.ncsu.edu/entomology-a...)! The position is fairly broad/open to different disciplines in plant pathology, but heavy in teaching. Please go to the following link for more info & to apply. jobs.ncsu.edu/postings/233...
A serviceberry twig with leaves and fruit, one of the fruit infested by a rust fungus a purple flowered clover with whitish powdery mildew growth on the leavesA shiny dark green magnolia leaf with lichenized algal leaf spot on it.
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Max Brown 🌱 @euphrasiologist.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
So sad :( amazing botanist and promoter of plants. Will be missed.
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Paul D. Taylor @nhmbryozoa.bsky.social · 13/02/2026
#FossilFriday Cousins in life, companions in death. Belemnite guard by chance preserved in the body chamber of the ammonite Parkinsonia from the Jurassic.
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Nicolas Galtier @nicolasgaltier.bsky.social · 09/12/2025
Happy to hare that the preprint I was advertising below has been published by the Journal of Evolutionary Biology: academic.oup.com/jeb/advance-... Thanks @jevbio.bsky.social for supporting responsible publishing!
academic.oup.com
Time to publish responsibly: DAFNEE, a database of academia-friendly journals in ecology and evolutionary biology
Abstract. The current economics of scientific publishing reveal a profound imbalance: academia pays prices far exceeding the actual costs of publication. R
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Danna Staaf @dannastaaf.bsky.social · 30/01/2026
I can't overrecommend this incredible paper about water skaters (genus Halobates). No one knows how they evolved. No one knows what they eat. They are superhydrophobic, which means water LITERALLY CANNOT WET THEM. Perhaps we should call them anti-water skaters? 🌊🧪 journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...
journals.plos.org
Why did only one genus of insects, Halobates, take to the high seas?
Oceans cover over 70% of the earth’s surface and house a dizzying array of organisms, including five species of the peppercorn-sized ocean-skater Halobates, which live exclusively at the ocean surface...
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Max Brown 🌱 @euphrasiologist.bsky.social · 11/01/2026
Fantastic time going to and presenting at Lille Popgroup. Many new and familiar faces! Always here to talk about plants and mitochondria. Until next year! #popgroup59 #ppg59 #pgg59
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Rob Waterhouse @rmwaterhouse.bsky.social · 15/11/2025
TE dynamics across high-quality #genome assemblies of 75 bee species to quantify their diversity in an evolutionary context link.springer.com/article/10.1...
link.springer.com
A comparative analysis of transposable element diversity and evolution across 75 bee genomes - BMC Genomics
Transposable elements (TEs) are repetitive DNA sequences that can alter their position and abundance within genomes. While TEs are known to have various impacts on genome structure and function, our u...
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Pat Heslop-Harrison @pathh.bsky.social · 23/10/2025
Exciting PhD project with me and @vorontsovams.bsky.social RBG Kew on Grass Diversity, developing a phylogeny using morphology and genomics for the tropical forage grass genus Urochloa. Applications at centa.ac.uk/students... but contacts Bat or me to discuss
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Max Brown 🌱 @euphrasiologist.bsky.social · 27/09/2025
Lightbulb beer in Cambridge. Sheffield did it better @popgroup2026.bsky.social right? @cfcollins.bsky.social @luketdunning.bsky.social 😍
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Brian J. Enquist @bjenquist.bsky.social · 27/09/2025
Genomic divergence across the tree of life 🧪🌐https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2319389122
pnas.org
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...
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Charlotte Wright @charlottewright.bsky.social · 11/09/2025
How many chromosomes can an animal have? In our paper out now in @currentbiology.bsky.social we show that the Atlas blue butterfly has 229 chromosome pairs- the highest in diploid Metazoa! These arose by rapid autosome fragmentation while sex chromosomes stayed intact. www.cell.com/current-biol...
tinyurl.com
Constraints on chromosome evolution revealed by the 229 chromosome pairs of the Atlas blue butterfly
The genome of the Atlas blue butterfly contains ten times more chromosomes than most butterflies, and more than any other known diploid animal. Wright et al. show that this extraordinary karyotype is ...
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Justin Blumenstiel @bdelloid.bsky.social · 16/08/2025
The original circos plot? From the 1947-1948 Carnegie Yearbook, the page prior to McClintock's Mutable Loci in Maize paper.
An old image of a salivary gland chromosome from Drosophila melanogaster, with lines across different segments indicating contact points.
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Max Brown 🌱 @euphrasiologist.bsky.social · 16/08/2025
Headed to #ESEB2025, anyone else headed there? Excited to see all the talks and sessions!
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Max Brown 🌱 @euphrasiologist.bsky.social · 14/07/2025
Euphrasia marshallii, Fair Isle, 2018. What a beaut!
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Science Magazine @science.org · 09/07/2025
The appearance of large language models caused a drastic shift in the vocabulary of academic writing, according to an analysis in #ScienceAdvances of more than 15 million biomedical abstracts published from 2010 to 2024. scim.ag/3IhpoQF
scim.ag
Delving into LLM-assisted writing in biomedical publications through excess vocabulary
Excess words track LLM usage in biomedical publications.
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Steven Robbins @stevenjrobbins.bsky.social · 25/05/2025
Short-read metagenomic sequencing cannot recover genomes from many abundant marine prokaryotes due to high strain heterogeneity and platform-inherent GC bias (likely viruses, too), but Nanopore long reads can address this. A results thread on our recent preprint 🧵.
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Max Brown 🌱 @euphrasiologist.bsky.social · 03/07/2025
It’s a crime that ‘cargo dist’ has run out of funding 😭 github.com/axodotdev/ca...
github.com
GitHub - axodotdev/cargo-dist: 📦 shippable application packaging
📦 shippable application packaging. Contribute to axodotdev/cargo-dist development by creating an account on GitHub.
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Max Brown 🌱 @euphrasiologist.bsky.social · 25/06/2025
Potential Euphrasia vigursii, the Cornish Eyebright from fieldwork with Edinburgh University evolutionary biology PhD students. The Euphrasia work continues!
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Max Brown 🌱 @euphrasiologist.bsky.social · 19/06/2025
Big Orobanche out in the verges. And bright yellow! What a beauty :)
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Paul D. Taylor @nhmbryozoa.bsky.social · 16/06/2025
#MolluscMonday Non-marine bivalves pack a spectacular stone panel in a 16th century fireplace at Hardwick Hall (NT), Derbyshire. This ‘cockleshell marble’ is associated with the Tupton coal seam of Late Carboniferous age.
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Ian Henderson @hendersi.bsky.social · 30/05/2025
A three year postdoctoral position is available in my group, investigating plant centromere structure, function and evolution @camplantsci.bsky.social www.jobs.cam.ac.uk/job/51488/
jobs.cam.ac.uk
Research Assistant / Research Associate (Fixed Term) - Job Opportunities - University of Cambridge
Research Assistant / Research Associate (Fixed Term) in the Department of Plant Sciences at the University of Cambridge.
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nikogeldner.bsky.social @nikogeldner.bsky.social · 30/05/2025
We have a unique opportunity for a junior researcher, PhD student or postdoc, to use a revolutionary technique for mineral nutrient imaging and tracing in plants. Please re-post! Interested candidates should apply through the portal at the link below: career5.successfactors.eu/career?compa...
career5.successfactors.eu
Career Opportunities: Postdoc or PhD student position in Plant Physiology (22260)
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Enrique Gonzalez Duran @egonzalezduran.bsky.social · 26/05/2025
There's a press release for our new @natplants.nature.com article! Plants use fast DNA repair to guard against risky gene transfers from their own organelles—the lessons might go beyond plant biology Release tinyurl.com/prnpegrb by @mpi-mp-potsdam.bsky.social Paper: www.nature.com/articles/s41...
mpimp-golm.mpg.de
Why Plants Patch Broken DNA So Fast
Researchers uncover how rapid DNA repair protects genomes from internal threats, with implications for cancer biology
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Pablo Castro Sánchez-Bermejo @castretis.bsky.social · 12/05/2025
My PhD dissertation is now available here: dx.doi.org/10.25673/118... In the thesis, I showed that trait expression, intraspecific and intraindividual trait variability depend on forest composition and species diversity. Further, they are components that matter for measuring functional diversity
dx.doi.org
Share_it: Patterns of intraspecific and intraindividual trait variation in trees along experimental diversity gradients
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Matthew Hahn @3rdreviewer.bsky.social · 10/04/2025
Not really my announcement to make--I am but a lesser co-author--but IQ-TREE 3 has just been released! (Most credit to Minh Bui and @roblanfear.bsky.social and their labs) ecoevorxiv.org/repository/v...
ecoevorxiv.org
IQ-TREE 3: Phylogenomic Inference Software using Complex Evolutionary Models
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WGDip @wgdip.bsky.social · 04/04/2025
We are excited to announce the 'official' start of our BBSRC funded sLoLa project, where we aim to uncover the role of rediploidisation in shaping evolution after genome duplication events across the tree of life! Find out more: www.rediploidisation.org vet.ed.ac.uk/roslin/news-... #WGDip #BBSRC
vet.ed.ac.uk
Experts examine DNA changes that shaped life on Earth
Four-year collaborative project seeks to understand key process linked to evolution.
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Max Brown 🌱 @euphrasiologist.bsky.social · 04/04/2025
We are mid Daffodil (Narcissus) season in the UK. Go out and see what you can find, these daffs are across 3 divisions but there are 12 to find :)
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Alex Mackintosh @thymelicus.bsky.social · 12/12/2024
My and Derek Setter's work on gene flow is now published in the latest issue of Genetics. We show that it is possible to detect past gene flow between two populations by summarising the asymmetry in pop-specific external branch lengths. 1/2 tinyurl.com/5ff8ch9e
tinyurl.com
Genealogical asymmetry under the isolation with migration model and a two-taxon test for gene flow
Abstract. Methods for detecting gene flow between populations often rely on asymmetry in the average length of particular genealogical branches, with the A
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micamer.bsky.social @micamer.bsky.social · 11/03/2025
We would love feedback on a new NCBI-BLAST service we are launching today: sky-blast.com Under the hood it's the same BLAST executable and databases provided by NCBI, with a replica of the NIH's interface - providing an alternative to the US gov service that's less congested, faster & more reliable
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Aaron Vogan @fungage-lab.bsky.social · 07/03/2025
We did it! We caught Starship #transposons moving between #fungal species in the lab, including between species separated by ~100my. We think Starships are a mediator of HGT in fungi, akin to conjugative elements in bacteria. Check out the preprint. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Illustration depicting the ways in which fungi can exchange genetic material with each other. Starship mediated HGT is confirmed experimentally in this preprint.
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Luke Dunning @luketdunning.bsky.social · 27/02/2025
Looking for a PhD? Come work with us on Horizontal Gene Transfer in crops! Deadline 14th March www.findaphd.com/phds/project...
findaphd.com
Horizontal gene transfer and its role in crop adaptation and evolution at University of Sheffield on FindAPhD.com
PhD Project - Horizontal gene transfer and its role in crop adaptation and evolution at University of Sheffield, listed on FindAPhD.com
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NPR @npr.org · 26/02/2025
The plant, formally known as Ovicula biradiata, is especially notable for being the simultaneous discovery of a new species and genus. It was found with help from the community science app iNaturalist. By @jamesdoubek.bsky.social
npr.org
Meet the 'wooly devil,' a new plant species discovered in Big Bend National Park
The plant, formally known as Ovicula biradiata, is especially notable for being the simultaneous discovery of a new species and genus. It was found with help from the community science app iNaturalist...
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Jessica Thomas Thorpe @jessthorpemas.bsky.social · 20/02/2025
I'll be talking about my #ProcB isopod phylogenomics paper in the Royal Society Publishing Ecology & Evolution Online Seminar Series, live (with Q&A) next Weds 26th Feb 2pm (UK). Please reshare to reach all the lovers of #isopods (& #phylogenomics), who might be interested in their #evolution! 🧪
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Jane Langdale 🌱 🌾 @janelangdale.bsky.social · 18/02/2025
A curious, modest man with an encyclopaedic knowledge. No ego but a quiet self-confidence that inspired many. No doubt many publications in the coming years will report innovative ideas that he thought of decades ago….
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KamilSJaron.bsky.social @kamilsjaron.bsky.social · 14/02/2025
With @katiejenike.bsky.social and a bunch more of our fellow k-mer enthusiasts, we put together a manuscript on k-mers in biodiversity genomics. A guide if you will, that covers k-mers from basics to some really funky stuff... genome.cshlp.org/content/35/2...
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Max Brown 🌱 @euphrasiologist.bsky.social · 02/02/2025
The telomere identification toolkit now has a publication: academic.oup.com/bioinformati... We used simple algorithms and fast tooling. The telomere database comes with ~500spp too!
academic.oup.com
tidk: a toolkit to rapidly identify telomeric repeats from genomic datasets
AbstractSummary. tidk (short for telomere identification toolkit), uses a simple, fast algorithm to scan long DNA reads for the presence of short tandemly
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Max Brown 🌱 @euphrasiologist.bsky.social · 30/01/2025
Some spent Epipactis from Glasgow Necropolis a few weeks ago :)
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PuckerLab @puckerlab.bsky.social · 28/01/2025
The first pan-plastome study with collaborators at Bielefeld University / CeBiTec and TU Dresden: doi.org/10.1186/s128... @bpucker.bsky.social @toheitka.bsky.social #Genomics #Evolution 2/🧵
Phylogeny of species in Beta based on their plastome sequences. Reference: https://doi.org/10.1186/s12864-022-08336-8
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Max Brown 🌱 @euphrasiologist.bsky.social · 20/01/2025
New lab website up at euphrasiologist.github.io It’s bare bones as it’s just starting really!
euphrasiologist.github.io
Home - Brown Lab
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Max Brown 🌱 @euphrasiologist.bsky.social · 18/01/2025
Interesting opportunity for early career plant scientists!
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Rob Waterhouse @rmwaterhouse.bsky.social · 12/01/2025
Protein Sequence Assessment Using a Reference ORF Network - PSAURON assigns a score to coding DNA or protein sequence that reflects the likelihood that the sequence is a genuine protein-coding region. academic.oup.com/nargab/artic... #genome #gene annotation
academic.oup.com
PSAURON: a tool for assessing protein annotation across a broad range of species
Abstract. Evaluating the accuracy of protein-coding sequences in genome annotations is a challenging problem for which there is no broadly applicable solut
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