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Marc Tollis

@marcanthonytollis.bsky.social
319 followers 440 following 52 posts

Evolutionary biologist from Queens. Genomes, phylogenies, TEs, cancer. Musician/drummer, dinosaur. I got kids. Former museum educator. Associate professor at Northern Arizona University

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Reposted by Marc Tollis
bioRxiv Genomics @biorxiv-genomic.bsky.social · 08/01/2026
Disagreement among Genomic Markers Profoundly Influences Phylogenetic Inference in Squamates www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/20…
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Marc Tollis @marcanthonytollis.bsky.social · 08/01/2026
New lab preprint! PhD work of @drsimonegable.bsky.social - 12 million base pairs of DNA ✅🧬 - hundreds of species of lizards and snakes ✅🦎🐍 - biological, molecular, and artifactual factors confounding phylogenetic inference ✅💻 - most ‼️ for your 🦌➡️ protein-coding genes www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
biorxiv.org
Disagreement among Genomic Markers Profoundly Influences Phylogenetic Inference in Squamates
Phylogenomic-scale studies of the same clades using different markers and methods often support highly confident yet different species trees, obscuring many phylogenetic relationships and hampering co...
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Marc Tollis @marcanthonytollis.bsky.social · 22/12/2025
New in BMC Genomics! Genome size in anurans (frogs and toads) ranges from 0.5Gb to 10.0Gb of DNA. John Neddermeyer and I teamed with Andrew Rubio and @adamstuckert.bsky.social and found one type of retrotransposon active over the last ~30my is the likely culprit: link.springer.com/article/10.1...
link.springer.com
Anuran genome size evolution is driven by relatively recent retrotransposon activity and by life history - BMC Genomics
BMC Genomics - Transposable elements (TEs), often referred to as ‘selfish genetic elements’, hijack their host’s genetic machinery to replicate themselves within the host genome,...
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Marc Tollis @marcanthonytollis.bsky.social · 14/12/2025
I’ve been playing with a now popular A.I. scientific manuscript review tool and it’s cool but imo it seems built on a “keep adding experiments if you want to get this into Nature” mindset. It reads like that kind of reviewer. I wish there was a society journal reviewer option 🤣
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Reposted by Marc Tollis
Tiago Simões @trsimoes.bsky.social · 21/11/2025
Awesome week meeting with our whole team investigating the genomic basis of phenotypic evolution across all squamates at @princetonupress.bsky.social and @amnh.org with my fellow PIs @marcanthonytollis.bsky.social and Frank Burbrink and all our students and postdocs in this enterprise!
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Marc Tollis @marcanthonytollis.bsky.social · 08/10/2025
I love how there is a point in every kid's life where in their daily quest for sugar they realize they ain't got time for no Teddy Grahams
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Marc Tollis @marcanthonytollis.bsky.social · 02/10/2025
Makin moves over here
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Marc Tollis @marcanthonytollis.bsky.social · 17/09/2025
no I will not be navigating to your electronic calendar to schedule a meeting with you. You can just tell me when you are available 🤣 unless you are like a dean or a provost, then I get it. But another professor? Cmon
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Reposted by Marc Tollis
E. Yağmur Erten @yagmurerten.bsky.social · 16/09/2025
New paper out! 🤩 "Shrinking to bird size with dinosaur-level cancer defences: Evolution of cancer suppression over macroevolutionary time" with @kokkonut.bsky.social and @marcanthonytollis.bsky.social. doi.org/10.1371/jour... A short thread:
doi.org
Shrinking to bird size with dinosaur-level cancer defences: Evolution of cancer suppression over macroevolutionary time
Author summary Humans are not the only species suffering from cancer, yet cancer does not impact all life equally. Body size is relevant because maintaining a large number of cells in a tumour-free st...
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Marc Tollis @marcanthonytollis.bsky.social · 07/09/2025
Check out our awesome review of squamates, covering fossils, phylogenetics, and genomics!
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Marc Tollis @marcanthonytollis.bsky.social · 05/09/2025
bsky.app/profile/marc...
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Marc Tollis @marcanthonytollis.bsky.social · 05/09/2025
New lab preprint! Vahid Fard looked across mammals and found that species with more recently active LINE and SINE retrotransposons in their genomes also get more cancer, supporting a model where genome instability promotes neoplasia and malignancy
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Marc Tollis @marcanthonytollis.bsky.social · 28/08/2025
never forget what they stole from you
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Marc Tollis @marcanthonytollis.bsky.social · 15/08/2025
Yeah I’ll be skipping my usual conference not because it overlaps with the first week of classes (it always does) but rather the Knicks are coming to town that weekend
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Marc Tollis @marcanthonytollis.bsky.social · 13/08/2025
#PopGen #PopulationGenomics #PopulationGenetics
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Marc Tollis @marcanthonytollis.bsky.social · 13/08/2025
For a project, we needed a tool that will batch download phylogeographic DNA samples (like mtDNA and nucDNA) for lots of species, which have just been sitting on NCBI since the PCR and Sanger-sequencing era (ca. 2003-2015) and can still be hella useful, so I wrote one. It aligns the sequences, too 👍
github.com
GitHub - marctollis/macrogenetics: Fetching and alignment of population-level sampling for DNA genetic markers from NCBI
Fetching and alignment of population-level sampling for DNA genetic markers from NCBI - marctollis/macrogenetics
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Marc Tollis @marcanthonytollis.bsky.social · 10/05/2025
Has anybody been consulted on the NSF “shakeup”? Should PIs not bother submitting proposals at this point? I mean odds for funding were always low but are we just throwing effort into the wind now?
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Marc Tollis @marcanthonytollis.bsky.social · 22/03/2025
Sophie Matthews’s lovely paper on gene copy number and cancer prevalence across mammals has been published in Molecular Biology and Evolution @official-smbe.bsky.social, check it out! academic.oup.com/mbe/advance-...
academic.oup.com
Variable gene copy number in cancer-related pathways is associated with cancer prevalence across mammals
Abstract. Cancer is a disease of multicellularity, observed across the tree of life. In principle, animals with larger body sizes and longer lifespans shou
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Marc Tollis @marcanthonytollis.bsky.social · 24/01/2025
Morale is pretty low among scientists given the new regime. Funding scenarios are up in the air, many MDs and PhDs are unsure of their status. But don’t despair! Put the energy into your students. Teach like a MFer, light the fire, they will be ready when the smoke clears.
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Marc Tollis @marcanthonytollis.bsky.social · 16/01/2025
Haha Gen X has no complaints, just “whatever”
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Marc Tollis @marcanthonytollis.bsky.social · 16/01/2025
Fellow parents: amirite, it’s one thing to step on a lego but it’s even more infuriating to step on a cheerio
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Marc Tollis @marcanthonytollis.bsky.social · 23/12/2024
Here mt Xmas playlist ive been building for more than 10 years. Enjoy! open.spotify.com/playlist/0Qn...
open.spotify.com
Xmas mix
Playlist · Marc Tollis · 187 items · 11 saves
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Marc Tollis @marcanthonytollis.bsky.social · 18/12/2024
the only time I want someone to be over-bubbly and friendly in an email is when they have to respond to my dumb question. Please be nice!
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Marc Tollis @marcanthonytollis.bsky.social · 18/12/2024
I’ve enjoyed reading my student evaluations and have tried to use them as opportunities to improve my teaching but around year 4 or 5 you realize if you cross out every “lectures were bad-lectures were great” pair of comments you’re not left with much to work with
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Marc Tollis @marcanthonytollis.bsky.social · 13/12/2024
Me seeing my January-February research-related travel schedule overlaid upon my spring teaching schedule
media.tenor.com
a cartoon character named roger rabbit wearing red overalls
ALT: a cartoon character named roger rabbit wearing red overalls
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Marc Tollis @marcanthonytollis.bsky.social · 13/12/2024
Happy birthday, T-Dubs!!!
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Marc Tollis @marcanthonytollis.bsky.social · 12/12/2024
No bookmarking on this site?
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Marc Tollis @marcanthonytollis.bsky.social · 05/12/2024
PI doing bioinformatics
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Marc Tollis @marcanthonytollis.bsky.social · 02/12/2024
If a person on FB Marketplace making plans to buy something from me says “see you on the morrow”, they are not real are they
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Marc Tollis @marcanthonytollis.bsky.social · 01/12/2024
GIF where you’re from
media.tenor.com
two men in tuxedos are talking to each other in a library .
ALT: two men in tuxedos are talking to each other in a library .
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Marc Tollis @marcanthonytollis.bsky.social · 30/11/2024
‘Tis the season. You know how we do up in here
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Marc Tollis @marcanthonytollis.bsky.social · 27/11/2024
My explanation is that each member of the voting public is capable of making decisions that are completely detached from your own concept of reality, right or wrong, which is impossible to predict at certain times, and Trump benefitted from that variance
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Marc Tollis @marcanthonytollis.bsky.social · 27/11/2024
I’d delete Twitter but my bookmarks are quite valuable
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Marc Tollis @marcanthonytollis.bsky.social · 26/11/2024
Optimist: the cup is 1/2 full Pessimist: the cup is 1/2 empty Bioinformatician: hold on, core dumped and I don’t know why
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Marc Tollis @marcanthonytollis.bsky.social · 25/11/2024
I love all the classic Vince Guaraldi Peanuts music but less known are the bangers on the Thanksgiving special soundtrack. Took a turn into some electric jazz funk and fusion for the old favorites but also some Herbie Mann- and Return to Forever-type stuff like this track. Give it a listen!
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Marc Tollis @marcanthonytollis.bsky.social · 23/11/2024
I love the smell of **massively parallel branch-site tests** in the morning
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Reposted by Marc Tollis
Dr. Arun Sethuraman @arunsethuraman.bsky.social · 17/11/2024
New pub out from my lab today in MBE, led by my PhD student Tamsen. We develop a forward time polyploid genome simulator, build an inference model, test it on empirical datasets to show that a majority of plant genomes are of allopolyploid origin. Do check it out! doi.org/10.1093/molb...
doi.org
Accurate Inference of the Polyploid Continuum using Forward-time Simulations
Abstract. Multiple rounds of whole-genome duplication (WGD) followed by diploidization have occurred throughout the evolutionary history of angiosperms. Mu
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Marc Tollis @marcanthonytollis.bsky.social · 20/11/2024
Me and the fam after I point out a red-tailed hawk predation event on the side of the road
media.tenor.com
a red truck is flying through the air near trees
ALT: a red truck is flying through the air near trees
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Marc Tollis @marcanthonytollis.bsky.social · 20/11/2024
Kind of not surprised it’s hard to find a herpetology-oriented group on here
media.tenor.com
a man in a suit is standing in a room
ALT: a man in a suit is standing in a room
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Marc Tollis @marcanthonytollis.bsky.social · 19/11/2024
Great preprint. We’ve been looking into this when it comes to phylogenomics and have been shocked - SHOCKED - at how some high “impact” results (i.e. in Science papers) are driven by alignment errors and other artifacts. Moral of the story: if you want to trust your results, start from scratch
biorxiv.org
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Marc Tollis @marcanthonytollis.bsky.social · 19/11/2024
Post a perfect album from the 90s that isn’t Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, or Alice in Chains.
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Marc Tollis @marcanthonytollis.bsky.social · 19/11/2024
If you’ve “left Twitter”, does that mean you’ve deleted your account and all its data? We still have to talk about that place here, for a while, it was kinda important what happened
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Marc Tollis @marcanthonytollis.bsky.social · 19/11/2024
Comparative genomics people: about RERconverge: it has helped develop lots of hypotheses. But someone recently explained to me that the method is “invalid”, and “it’s just published now so everyone just uses it” (paraphrasing). Are there any established critiques? academic.oup.com/mbe/article/...
academic.oup.com
RERconverge Expansion: Using Relative Evolutionary Rates to Study Complex Categorical Trait Evolution
Abstract. Comparative genomics approaches seek to associate molecular evolution with the evolution of phenotypes across a phylogeny. Many of these methods
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Marc Tollis @marcanthonytollis.bsky.social · 16/11/2024
what's it like over here
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