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Jacob Tennessen

@jacobphd.bsky.social
441 followers 329 following 732 posts

Scientist errant. Genetics, evolution, whimsy, awe. connects.catalyst.harvard.edu/Profi… 🧬🦟🐌🩸👤🦠🍓🐸🧬

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Jacob Tennessen @jacobphd.bsky.social · 2h
So, Nat'ralists observe, a Flea Hath smaller Fleas that on him prey, And these have smaller Fleas to bite 'em, And so proceed ad infinitum www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
biorxiv.org
MaRNAV-1, an intracellular virus of Plasmodium vivax, is associated with increased parasite transmission and altered host immune response
MaRNAV-1 is an RNA virus recently identified in Plasmodium vivax -infected samples, but definitive evidence that it infects the parasite and influences malaria pathogenesis remains unknown. Here, we ...
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Jacob Tennessen @jacobphd.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
On both the left and right, there is a significant association between genotype (GG / AG / AA) and phenotype (red vs blue). But to odds ratio per allele on the right is more than double that on the left (5.2 vs 2.1), even though visually they don't look all that different.
Hypothetical distribution of genotypes and phenotypes
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Jacob Tennessen @jacobphd.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
It's the Eocene. You're told that in 45 million years all of these lineages will remain but only one figures out DNA sequencing. On whom do you place your bet? And what are realistic odds for each one if you could run the experiment 1000 times?
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Jacob Tennessen @jacobphd.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Hey Olympia, Washington! Come hear me talk about the science and humanity of gender this Sunday: www.ouuc.org
ouuc.org
OUUC – Olympia Unitarian Universalist Congregation
Olympia Unitarian Universalist Congregation
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Jacob Tennessen @jacobphd.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Reviewing another paper. There’s an AI generated figure with at least ten distinct errors easily seen just by comparing it with the accompanying table. It’s just a map of collection sites, nothing sophisticated. If AI is this bad and authors this lazy in these simple cases, what else is wrong?
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Jacob Tennessen @jacobphd.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
Countries that share the last four letters of their name (in English)
World map showing which countries share the last four letters
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Jacob Tennessen @jacobphd.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
I don't believe in astrology but I do think it affects people's behavior when mercury is in scombridae
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Jacob Tennessen @jacobphd.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
Top of Mt St Helens. Named by George Vancouver for the new title his friend (who never visited here) had earned just before he left: Baron St Helens after a village on the Isle of Wight, named for an abandoned church there named for the sainted mother of a roman emperor famous for transporting cats.
Me, in foggy and rainy weather near the crater rim of Mt. St. Helens / Lawetlat'la / Loowit.
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Jacob Tennessen @jacobphd.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
What should we call this protein that affects your fatty acid metabolism? Oh I know
Uniprot entry for THIC_HUMAN
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Jacob Tennessen @jacobphd.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
This week's bittersweet accomplishment: getting a grant proposal approved by a federal agency with no money to actually fund it.
Statement from CDC about our recent proposal, which was approved but cannot be funded at this time.
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Jacob Tennessen @jacobphd.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
Just realized I've peer-reviewed for 75 journals in my career thus far. Feels like a milestone.
Word cloud of journal for which I have been a peer reviewer.
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Jacob Tennessen @jacobphd.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
New paper! We looked at how clinical metrics are correlated with disease severity in a cohort of malaria patients in Goa, India. More parasites = worse disease, but it's not as simple as counting cells in a blood sample since the sneaky parasites hide in other tissues. www.ajtmh.org/view/journal...
Figure showing how parasitemia (count of malaria parasites in blood) is correlated with malaria disease severity.
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Jacob Tennessen @jacobphd.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
“The church says the earth is flat; but I have seen its shadow on the moon, and I have more confidence even in a shadow than in the church.” -Robert Ingersoll
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Jacob Tennessen @jacobphd.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
If you get malaria in Central/Caribbean America, it was likely from Anopheles albimanus. The main research colony STECLA is often misspelled in the scientific literature; annoyingly even the official species reference genome is named wrong. It's for Santa Tecla, El Salvador, in turn for St. Thecla.
Anopheles albimanus reference genomes on NCBI
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Jacob Tennessen @jacobphd.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
When I was a kid, we all knew one fact about Dolly Parton and it had nothing to do with her music or personality. She was the butt of a sexist joke that later entered my field of genetics with the naming of Dolly the sheep. Of course she still took this graciously, saying she was flattered.
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Jacob Tennessen @jacobphd.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
Needless to say, I rejected it
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Jacob Tennessen @jacobphd.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
Reviewing a paper, and I'm pleased to see that they cite me. Less pleased to see it's a paper that I never wrote. Chatgpt is ruining science.
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Jacob Tennessen @jacobphd.bsky.social · 23/08/2026
How ancient diseases were named Italians: This one’s probably caused by the influence of the planets, so we’ll call it influenza. And I bet that one’s from bad air, so it shall be known as malaria Egyptians: I went to pee and blood came out! ĀĀĀ!
Text on schistosomiasis in ancient Egypt
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Jacob Tennessen @jacobphd.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
A couple of books I’ve read recently that made me believe, not in God, but in humanity and our path forward
The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley RobinsonA God that Could be Real by Nancy Abrams
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Jacob Tennessen @jacobphd.bsky.social · 15/08/2026
Visited here recently. Turns out the real apes were the friends we made along the way. #cladistics
Sign for Ape Cave National Volcanic Monument. Not my pic.
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Jacob Tennessen @jacobphd.bsky.social · 15/08/2026
“What’s your Myers–Briggs?” “Oh, I’m non-hexadecimal”
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Jacob Tennessen @jacobphd.bsky.social · 09/08/2026
Made some buttons with kids this morning
Button with a mushroom that says Fun Guy
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Jacob Tennessen @jacobphd.bsky.social · 06/08/2026
Mosquito population genomics continues to deliver bad news. Please keep funding us if you want additional discouraging updates! www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
science.org
The origin, history, and resistance architecture of an invasive urban malaria mosquito in Africa
The invasive urban malaria vector Anopheles stephensi threatens 126 million city dwellers in Africa. Controlling An. stephensi requires greater understanding of its origin, invasion dynamics, and inse...
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Jacob Tennessen @jacobphd.bsky.social · 06/08/2026
The team of element men remains pretty meager and I think there’s room to add more.
Goldman Sachs CEOTin manIron ManSarah Silverman
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Jacob Tennessen @jacobphd.bsky.social · 05/08/2026
When I was in elementary school it would have seemed laughable to teach “smoke” alongside rain, snow, etc. as a standard type of weather. Now it seems laughable not to.
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Jacob Tennessen @jacobphd.bsky.social · 01/08/2026
When I was a kid, a friend rejected evolution because he equated "mutant" with "diseased" and didn't want to descend from a "sick monkey". But now that "sick" has a positive slang meaning, maybe we should embrace the term. I'm proud to be descended from a sick (complimentary) monkey!
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Jacob Tennessen @jacobphd.bsky.social · 29/07/2026
iNaturalist just updated the genus Bison to merge with Bos, as in cattle, reflecting recent genetic analysis and the fact they can readily interbreed. In fact all living American bison are directly descended in part from domestic cattle; the original wild bison is gone, and only Bos hybrids remain.
Bos bison, with sprinkling of Bos taurus, in Yellowstone
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Jacob Tennessen @jacobphd.bsky.social · 25/07/2026
In a single generation, the default repetitive melody associated with sharks has changed from dun-dun dun-dun dun-dun to doo-doo doo-doo-doo-doo.
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Jacob Tennessen @jacobphd.bsky.social · 23/07/2026
Background info for the audience prior to a production of Taming of the Shrew
A slide at Oregon Shakespeare Festival that asks, What’s a shrew?
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Jacob Tennessen @jacobphd.bsky.social · 19/07/2026
A suctorial organism lives by sucking. That is, its whole strategy for life is just to suck. Consider adding this word to your regular vocabulary.
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Jacob Tennessen @jacobphd.bsky.social · 18/07/2026
Two of the most iconic Pacific Northwest species are the Pacific chorus frog (Pseudacris regilla) and the Douglas fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii). Both are “false” (pseudo-). It’s the land of real organisms with fake names.
Pacific chorus frogDouglas firs
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Jacob Tennessen @jacobphd.bsky.social · 18/07/2026
Hello, I am a brain. I crave dopamine above all things. I can freely administer dopamine to myself and I alone control it. However I can only do this according to arbitrary rules I have made up. Sometimes my rules don’t allow me to give myself as much as I want. This is the source of all anguish.
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Jacob Tennessen @jacobphd.bsky.social · 15/07/2026
With cyclosporiasis in the news, note that the only treatment is trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole, an antibiotic, i.e. something that targets bacteria and shouldn’t even work on a eukaryote but somehow sort of does. It will probably evolve resistance, so we need more options tailored to this taxon.
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Jacob Tennessen @jacobphd.bsky.social · 13/07/2026
I mourn poetry's prominent role That internet acronyms stole. Because I don't know how To pronounce "lmao" So I can't write a verse with it, lol.
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Jacob Tennessen @jacobphd.bsky.social · 13/07/2026
I just commented on the OMB's Regulation for Federal Financial Assistance and you can too (due TODAY)! If enacted, I'd lose my first amendment right to even make these comments, since I'd live in fear that I'd lose my grant-supported salary if I said the wrong thing. www.aps.org/initiatives/...
aps.org
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Jacob Tennessen @jacobphd.bsky.social · 12/07/2026
Yellowstone used to hand these out
Flyer warning about bison
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Jacob Tennessen @jacobphd.bsky.social · 12/07/2026
I enjoyed Percival Everett's “James” (Huck Finn from Jim’s viewpoint). Has anyone done this with Kipling’s “Kim” from Teshoo Lama’s view? The two classic novels are very similar, but Twain’s story was already anti-slavery while Kipling’s is pro-colonialism so there is more room to subvert it.
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Jacob Tennessen @jacobphd.bsky.social · 10/07/2026
Got my beach reading
Hidden Creatures by Dino Martins at a seaside setting
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Jacob Tennessen @jacobphd.bsky.social · 10/07/2026
Two separate congressional candidates in my district, one Democrat and one Republican, have hit upon an issue to unify Americans on both sides of the aisle: Aliens. I say we need to rule out whether any organism currently on Earth is an alien, so fund basic biology research and we'll go from there.
Candidate statement about aliensCandidate statement about aliens
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Jacob Tennessen @jacobphd.bsky.social · 10/07/2026
Read about cyclosporiasis outbreak? Wondering what exactly is this organism causing an uptick in explosive bathroom visits? Cyclospora is in the Weed clade as I define it here: adaptivediversity.wordpress.com/2026/06/13/t... So think of it alongside malaria parasites, seaweed cousins, and plants. 🪴
adaptivediversity.wordpress.com
The Energetic Branches
I recently attended a parasitology conference, which has me thinking about ancient evolution. A lot of medically important parasites come from far-flung branches in the tree of life, weird groups o…
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Jacob Tennessen @jacobphd.bsky.social · 04/07/2026
“Mammoth” (well, “maimanto”) originally meant the animal not “generically large” and the coiner was a Russian who have known these fossil tusks for centuries. The person who popularized the “large” meaning also wrote some other words we celebrate today: “We hold these truths to be self-evident…”
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Jacob Tennessen @jacobphd.bsky.social · 03/07/2026
Throwback to the time I met Gene Cernan after writing an article about him
Photo of Gene Cernan and myself in 1994, plus a newspaper column by me about Cernan’s astronaut career and Cernan’s autograph
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Jacob Tennessen @jacobphd.bsky.social · 02/07/2026
Three excellent books about fungus I've read this year: 🍄The Mushroom at the End of the World by Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing 🍄How to Change Your Mind: The New Science of Psychedelics by Michael Pollan 🍄Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds & Shape Our Futures by Merlin Sheldrake
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Jacob Tennessen @jacobphd.bsky.social · 01/07/2026
A got to deliver a UU sermon last week, and you can hear my words here: uucvan.org/services/the...
uucvan.org
The Empirical Divine – Unitarian Universalist Church of Vancouver
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Jacob Tennessen @jacobphd.bsky.social · 30/06/2026
Another excellent Anopheles pop genomics paper! www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
science.org
The origin, history, and resistance architecture of an invasive urban malaria mosquito in Africa
The invasive urban malaria vector Anopheles stephensi threatens 126 million city-dwellers in Africa. Controling An. stephensi requires greater understanding of its origin, invasion dynamics, and insec...
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Jacob Tennessen @jacobphd.bsky.social · 26/06/2026
It’s so amazing that a snail carries its home everywhere it goes! -Me, a brain that rides around in a skull
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Jacob Tennessen @jacobphd.bsky.social · 25/06/2026
Promising new program for modeling population history from genomic data, mrpast joins MrBayes and Msms in the family of evolutionary genetics software with formal gendered honorifics.
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Jacob Tennessen @jacobphd.bsky.social · 24/06/2026
Coincident with the life of Dolly the sheep (1996-2003), cloning was a hot topic infused in the culture. And then abruptly we all decided it’s not actually that worrisome or interesting. Now it’s hard to even explain the earlier obsession to those who didn’t live through it.
Attack of the Clones posterAustin Powers poster (the one with Mini-Me)The 6th Day posterMultiplicity poster
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Jacob Tennessen @jacobphd.bsky.social · 20/06/2026
The algae in the Reflecting Pool are mostly Desmodesmus, which happens to be the only chlorophyll-containing organism that can infect and parasitize human flesh. It's not really dangerous, but it's a pretty on-the-nose metaphor that nature is delivering to us. www.nejm.org/doi/10.1056/...
nejm.org
Infection with a Chlorophyllic Eukaryote after a Traumatic Freshwater Injury | NEJM
Infections with chlorophyllic algae are uncommon. Invasive infection with Desmodesmus armatus developed in two patients independently after they each sustained a penetrating freshwater injury.
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Jacob Tennessen @jacobphd.bsky.social · 18/06/2026
I get to lead another UU church service in Vancouver, WA! Come join us! The Empirical Divine: A scientific mindset doesn’t strip sacredness from the world, but allows us to see it more clearly. Come rekindle your awe at the miracle of existence in an astonishing universe. uucvan.org/services/the...
uucvan.org
The Empirical Divine – Unitarian Universalist Church of Vancouver
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