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Gunnar De Winter

@gunnardewinter.bsky.social
1.6K followers 277 following 1.2K posts

Biologist and semi-philosopher | science (and fiction) writer | plays with words and ideas 🌍 Belgium (for now) 🙋‍♂️ gunnardewinter.com

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Gunnar De Winter @gunnardewinter.bsky.social · 15h
🎉🥳
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Gunnar De Winter @gunnardewinter.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
My essay in the anniversary(!) issue of Clarkesworld, among an all-star cast of writers, in emoji: 🐉👀🧠🪽🚀 #science #writing #biology 👉 clarkesworldmagazine.com/dewinter_10_...
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Trends in Biotechnology @cp-trendsbiotech.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
Online now: Toward adaptive cyborg tissues
dlvr.it
Toward adaptive cyborg tissues
Organoids and engineered tissues have emerged as powerful models of human biology, yet their development and function are often characterized through endpoint measurements that provide only static snapshots of dynamic biological processes. Recent advances in stretchable mesh electronics, developmental biointegration, and organoid engineering have enabled the creation of cyborg tissues with embedded sensing, stimulation, and computational capabilities. This review highlights recent progress in developmental bioelectronic integration, multifunctional tissue mapping, biological state reconstruction, and artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled cyborg systems. We discuss how embedded bioelectronics can be combined with molecular and spatial profiling technologies to characterize tissue function, developmental trajectories, and biological states. These advances establish cyborg tissues as biologically integrated platforms for regenerative medicine, disease modeling, drug discovery, and adaptive biotechnology.
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Gunnar De Winter @gunnardewinter.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
Solarpunk future is coming.
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Gunnar De Winter @gunnardewinter.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
My essay in the anniversary(!) issue of Clarkesworld, among an all-star cast of writers, in emoji: 🐉👀🧠🪽🚀 #science #writing #biology 👉 clarkesworldmagazine.com/dewinter_10_...
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Jaz @jaz.sh · 27/09/2026
Okay so I've built a new Atlas, this time it lets you explore the conversations on Bluesky over the past 7 days graphically. It should update every ~6 hours and help you navigate the information environment that exists on here. I've learned a LOT about what people do here today... atlas.jazco.dev
atlas.jazco.dev
Atlas
A living map of what Bluesky is talking about: the past week's conversations, grouped into topics and regions and rebuilt every six hours.
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Gunnar De Winter @gunnardewinter.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
Our ghost ancestry, the geometry of the genome, and metaphor madness. I know, I know, surely a post can't have it all? #science #biology #genetics #evolution
subtlesparks.substack.com
Ghosts, Genomes, and Geometry
Your DNA is full of stories
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Gunnar De Winter @gunnardewinter.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
Incendiary discovery... (I'll let myself out.) "We isolated a geothermal amoeba, Incendiamoeba cascadensis, that divides at 63°C and is motile up to 64°C." #science #biology
cell.com
A geothermal amoeba sets a new upper temperature limit for eukaryotes
The amoeba Incendiamoeba cascadensis demonstrates that eukaryotic life can withstand temperatures beyond what was thought possible and sheds light on molecular strategies for survival in extreme heat.
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Gunnar De Winter @gunnardewinter.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
"The central question is, therefore, whether societies should accept a future in which reproductive opportunities, parental obligations and children’s life chances are increasingly organized around genetic optimization, private purchasing power and corporate profit."
nature.com
Embryo screening and the new reproductive divide - Nature Human Behaviour
Nature Human Behaviour - Embryo screening and the new reproductive divide
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Gunnar De Winter @gunnardewinter.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
You've heard about CRISPR, but have you heard about its little known (likely older) sibling VIPR? VIPR, a CRISPR-ish system, "evolved from ancient conflicts between competing viruses and introduce a new programmable tool for controlling gene expression." #science #biology #genetics #evolution
science.org
A viral origin for RNA-guided immunity
Ancient viral warfare could be at the root of modern class 1 CRISPR bacterial defense systems
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Gunnar De Winter @gunnardewinter.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Let me add new (well, kind of) penguins
news.berkeley.edu
Scientists split gentoo penguins into four species, one totally new to science. Three of them are already threatened. - Berkeley News
Biologists argue that gentoo penguins should be divided into four separate species, including a newly recognized “cryptic” species. The habitats of three of them are imperiled by climate change.
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Gunnar De Winter @gunnardewinter.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
Dragons, druids, and a delightfully kind story review!
“A Song in a Minor Scale” by Gunnar De Winter. Had to put this one first; though it’s from the last issue, it’s easily my favorite of all of them. A tale of a girl given the name Lyra, a druid named Braze, and a dragon whose name is likely not Ormir.
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Gunnar De Winter @gunnardewinter.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
Ooh, nice! Thanks for tagging me!
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Kazuhiro Maeshima @kazu-maeshima.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
🧬 Our “Behind the Paper” is now online at Nature Communities: “Active chromatin is not simply open—it forms compact domains that cohesin keeps from mixing.” 📖 A short story behind our recent @natgenet.nature.com paper. communities.springernature.com/posts/active... www.nature.com/articles/s41...
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Pawel Burkhardt @pawelburkhardt.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
Lovely to see several pieces of our ctenophore work featured in this beautiful new story from @quantamagazine.org 🪼 Great piece by @mstarling.bsky.social, also featuring work by @stevehaddock.bsky.social, @arnausebe.bsky.social & @hejnol.bsky.social. www.quantamagazine.org/ctenophores-...
quantamagazine.org
Ctenophores Aren’t Just Beautiful. They’re Biological Wonders. | Quanta Magazine
Comb jellies are helping answer fundamental questions in biology, from how the earliest nervous systems evolved to how bioluminescence works.
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Gunnar De Winter @gunnardewinter.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
"The narratives typically used by AI doomers also misdirect responsibility." This does not get enough attention.
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Gunnar De Winter @gunnardewinter.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
Title. That is all. #science #reading #writing
newscientist.com
Reading for pleasure boosts memory, empathy and mental health | New Scientist
Fewer people are reading for pleasure, but getting lost in a good book has repeatedly been linked to substantial cognitive benefits
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Miguel Clavero @chikichanka.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
Japanese team have observed directly, for the first time, noctule bats hunting birds The images they provide astonishingly resemble that painted by Brueghel over 400 years ago... maybe he had actually seen the hunt!! Paper: esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/... @ebdonana.bsky.social
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Ricard Solé @ricardsole.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
Where are all the intermediate forms between animals & plants? Our new paper with @jordiplam.bsky.social suggests evolution can split sharply between sessile, photosynthetic and mobile, sensing strategies. If so, what does this imply for claims of plant intelligence? www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
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Gunnar De Winter @gunnardewinter.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
Hear hear!
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Philip Ball @philipcball.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
OK, so AI can apparently solve the puzzles of the Navier-Stokes equation. But can it solve the puzzles of the universe, in the way that Einstein did? My latest news feature for @nature.com looks into the question of how far AI can go towards scientific discovery. www.nature.com/articles/d41...
nature.com
The Einstein test: what happens when AI tries to rediscover relativity?
Scientists are probing whether language models trained on historical data can reproduce creative breakthroughs.
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Philip Ball @philipcball.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
LLMs are cognitive viruses that can depress collective cognitive competence. But by the same token, immunization is possible. arxiv.org/abs/2609.03344
arxiv.org
Large-Language Models as a Cognitive Virus
Large-language models (LLMs) are rapidly becoming part of human culture, reshaping how information is produced, transmitted, and used. Here we propose that their diffusion can be understood through a ...
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Gunnar De Winter @gunnardewinter.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
Yet another tantalizing clue that our ancient roots may be found in Asgard(ian archaea)! #science #biology #evolution #microbiology
cell.com
An Asgard archaeon from a modern analog of ancient microbial mats
A novel Asgard archaeon, Nerearchaeum marumarumayae, is present in microbial mats in Shark Bay, Australia. Combining genomic and structural analyses, together with high-resolution electron cryotomogra...
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Elle Cordova @ellecordova.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
Rough Draft vs Final Draft
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Quanta Magazine @quantamagazine.org · 03/09/2026
Sarah Demers, chair of the physics department at Yale University, sees potential for the use of AI in physics. But she refuses to use it to write her emails. Read her interview: www.quantamagazine.org/in-an-age-of...
quantamagazine.org
In an Age of AI, a Physicist Seeks What Endures | Quanta Magazine
Sarah Demers, chair of the physics department at Yale University, sees the potential for large language models to both help and harm her field.
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Gunnar De Winter @gunnardewinter.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
Somehow, this one went from genetic drift to superferrets and caffeinated gremlins. #science #biology #evolution #psychology #mentalhealth
subtlesparks.substack.com
Drift
Lightning, leaves, and anchors
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Gunnar De Winter @gunnardewinter.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
Snake embryos are little spirals! That is all. Carry on. #science #biology #animals #development
cell.com
How snake embryos coil
Snake embryos coil, but how and why they corkscrew remains unexplored. Weber et al. find that the embryos wind up clockwise via buckling of the rapidly elongating axial body against the slow-growing, ...
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Gunnar De Winter @gunnardewinter.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
Congrats, Thomas! 🥳
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Science Magazine @science.org · 29/08/2026
When stressed, this comb jelly reverts to a larval form, then matures again when favorable conditions return. Learn more: scim.ag/4gmdt2J #ScienceMagArchives
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PLOS Biology @plosbiology.org · 29/08/2026
Why do some #bacteria #evolve #antibiotic resistance more readily than others? This study shows that naturally occurring single nucleotide polymorphisms in the PhoQP system change how readily E. coli evolves trimethoprim resistance and which mutations enable it. 🧪 #AcademicSky plos.io/4qCDXQM
Proposed model for the contribution of polymorphisms towards evolvability of resistance, and the role of fitness cost of TMP resistance in determining the optimal level of PhoQ activity during evolution.
A: Polymorphisms influence evolvability under drug pressure if they have epistatic interactions with adaptive mutations. Positive epistasis between pre-existing polymorphisms and adaptive mutations promotes the evolution of resistance, i.e., enhances evolvability of resistance. In contrast, negative epistasis diminishes evolvability. In addition, polymorphisms with negative epistasis can also drive adaptation to antibiotics through novel mutational paths. B: PhoQP signalling pathway across different mutants from the present study. The impact of PhoQ activity on trimethoprim resistance due to DHFR expression is correlated with fitness cost due to RpoS cross-activation. Genetic variation in the pathway is brought about by naturally occurring polymorphisms or drug-selected adaptive mutations. These genetic changes in the pathway activate signalling to different extents at the molecular level, thereby altering global transcriptome to different extents. Scaling of trimethoprim resistance level and fitness cost leads to changes in the concentration of antibiotic required to select for different levels of PhoQ/PhoP pathway activity. The presence of a hypersensitising allele of DHFR drove E. coli towards a high activity, high cost PhoQ mutant demonstrating how polymorphisms can change the mutational landscape of adaptation to antibiotics
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Gunnar De Winter @gunnardewinter.bsky.social · 29/08/2026
New obsession unlocked: ghosts in our DNA. #science #genetics #evolution
science.org
Recovering signatures of archaic hominin introgression using ancestral recombination graphs
Admixture between modern humans and extinct hominins has shaped the genomes of present-day individuals, but reconstructing this history has been constrained by the scarcity of archaic samples and unad...
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Nature @nature.com · 28/08/2026
Geochemical clues hint that worm-like creatures in the Ediacaran period benefited from symbiosis with bacteria go.nature.com/4gDTwTU
go.nature.com
Animal-microbe partnerships date back to the dawn of complex life
Geochemical clues hint that worm-like creatures in the Ediacaran period benefited from symbiosis with bacteria.
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Gunnar De Winter @gunnardewinter.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
This is an unacceptable timeline.
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Gunnar De Winter @gunnardewinter.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
Distractor -> tractor <- protractor
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Gunnar De Winter @gunnardewinter.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
"... what I do want to rescue is the sense that the future can be different: the sense that science-fiction writers have always had that yesterday and tomorrow don’t need to be the same. Capitalism has captured the future, and is now commodifying it and selling it back to us..."
aeon.co
Superlative projects are made possible by great collective efforts | Aeon Essays
Superlative things were done in the past century by marshalling thousands of people in the service of a vision of the future
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Rashmi Priya @rashmi-priya.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
A perspective in @natmethods.nature.com on Why forces are fundamental to understanding how life comes into being - by us, @campaslab.bsky.social @yanlanmao.bsky.social @sarawickstrom.bsky.social Miguel Concha, Alba Diz-Muñoz and @streichan.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/s41...
nature.com
The physics of sculpting a living creature - Nature Methods
Cell biologists have long known that mechanical forces, such as tension and compression, influence tissue differentiation. Now, advanced methods are letting them observe and manipulate these forces in...
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Gunnar De Winter @gunnardewinter.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
This is neat! Mapping chromosome mix-ups to find evolutionary 'highways'. Also, for some reason, I'm not surprised that ctenophores are being weird again. #science #biology #evolution #genetics
science.org
Topological mixing and irreversibility in animal chromosome evolution
Animal chromosome homology can persist over hundreds of millions of years, despite fusions and translocations. The frequency, pace, and impact of these changes remain unclear. We develop a multiscale ...
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Jente Ottenburghs | Avian Hybrids @jenteo.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
🚨New paper in Biology Letters! 🥳 Hybridization events in Squamata support the viviparity-driven conflict hypothesis royalsocietypublishing.org/rsbl/article... Based on the MSc thesis of David Broek. Hybridization is also interesting in other taxonomic groups, not just birds. 😉
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PLOS Biology @plosbiology.org · 25/08/2026
What are the genetic mechanisms for the #evolution of novel traits? This study by @brhopkins92.bsky.social &co links #Drosophila sex comb teeth to expression changes within ancestral cells, leading to diverged metabolic/developmental rates, and a novel structure. 🧪 #AcademicSky plos.io/4gQOnZK
Graphical abstract on the gain of a novel trait in Drosophila. The teeth of the recently evolved, male-specific Drosophila sex comb evolved from a more ancient organ, the mechanosensory bristle. We show that changes in the expression of genes that are shared between mechanosensory bristle and sex comb teeth cells lead to changes in a variety of fundamental cellular processes that together enable the morphological transformation.

The photo, phylogeny, general design are those of the corresponding author(s). They made the bristle schematics in biorender and the fly silhouette is their modified drawing of D. melanogaster from SciDraw (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3925939).
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Gunnar De Winter @gunnardewinter.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
Me trying to work on story and essay ideas before another kicks in. #writing #writingcommunity
static.klipy.com
Baloo Jungle Book
Alt: Scene from The Jungle Book in which Bagheera tries to grab Mowgli only to have a door slammed in his face by a dressed-up Baloo.
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Gunnar De Winter @gunnardewinter.bsky.social · 22/08/2026
Juvenile pterosaurs are called flaplings. You're welcome.
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Philip Ball @philipcball.bsky.social · 21/08/2026
The recent paper in Science by Bill Martin's team on a vent form of LUCA and a possible "dual origin of life" got some coverage last week. I took a somewhat deeper dive for @sciam.bsky.social www.scientificamerican.com/article/life...
scientificamerican.com
Life’s ‘last universal common ancestor’ may predate life itself
A groundbreaking study hints at a hazy boundary between “life” and “non-life,” as well as two distinct origins of biology on Earth
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Gunnar De Winter @gunnardewinter.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
Look, I did not plan to end with the Fermi Paradox when I started this post about bumblebee brains; it just happened. #science #biology #behavior #neuroscience #evolution
subtlesparks.substack.com
The Bumblebee Paradox
Bee brain, bee bright, and the point(lessness) of (human) intelligence
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Gunnar De Winter @gunnardewinter.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
Look, I did not plan to end with the Fermi Paradox when I started this post about bumblebee brains; it just happened. #science #biology #behavior #neuroscience #evolution
subtlesparks.substack.com
The Bumblebee Paradox
Bee brain, bee bright, and the point(lessness) of (human) intelligence
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Gunnar De Winter @gunnardewinter.bsky.social · 17/08/2026
👀
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Ricard Solé @ricardsole.bsky.social · 16/08/2026
Can AI discover General Relativity? No, not yet. A provocative new paper argues that LLMs can master induction and deduction, but not the crucial abductive “jump” that allows us to invent entirely new principles. A fascinating question about the limits of AI openreview.net/challenge?re...
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Gunnar De Winter @gunnardewinter.bsky.social · 16/08/2026
"... we predict that Musk’s brain will communicate with the computer at about 10 bits/s. Instead of the bundle of Neuralink electrodes, Musk could just use a telephone, whose data rate has been designed to match human language, which in turn is matched to the speed of perception and cognition."
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MIT Technology Review @technologyreview.com · 12/08/2026
Scientists have deliberately turned male mouse embryos into females for the first time. A team based in Japan used a CRISPR-based approach to remove the Y chromosome from male cells and create female clones of male mice.
trib.al
Scientists just created female clones of male mice
The sex reversal technique could be used to help rescue endangered species, say the researchers behind the work.
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Gunnar De Winter @gunnardewinter.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
Way down she goes. (The details and shading are stunning!)
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