iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Rich Meisel @richmeisel.bsky.social · 02/05/2026

Only in Texas do you got a smoker in a public park

040

Rich Meisel @richmeisel.bsky.social · 22/09/2025

Carnivorous plant not doing its job

160

Rich Meisel @richmeisel.bsky.social · 12/07/2025

Need to also be drawing this next to it

040

Rich Meisel @richmeisel.bsky.social · 04/05/2025

I've circled the awesome person

010

Rich Meisel @richmeisel.bsky.social · 03/05/2025

I've circled the badass baller

The governor of Maine, who sued and defeated the USDA for removing funding

020

Rich Meisel @richmeisel.bsky.social · 03/05/2025

I've circled the federal agency that needs a budget INCREASE

040

Rich Meisel @richmeisel.bsky.social · 03/05/2025

I've circled the mass murderer

020

Rich Meisel @richmeisel.bsky.social · 17/04/2025

In case you like using terminology that literally has no meaning, I found the perfect example. Can you find a more unique term?

Hot minute definition. It means both a short and long period of time. Also an unspecified period of time.

270

Rich Meisel @richmeisel.bsky.social · 20/02/2025

Here is the Executive order that is preventing posting to the federal register: www.whitehouse.gov/presidential...

Therefore, in order to improve the administration of the executive branch and to increase regulatory officials’ accountability to the American people, it shall be the policy of the executive branch to ensure Presidential supervision and control of the entire executive branch. Moreover, all executive departments and agencies, including so-called independent agencies, shall submit for review all proposed and final significant regulatory actions to the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) within the Executive Office of the President before publication in the Federal Register.

21913

Rich Meisel @richmeisel.bsky.social · 21/01/2025

Snow man and snow dog on the Gulf

140

Rich Meisel @richmeisel.bsky.social · 21/01/2025

Happy winter in the subtropics to all who celebrate. This is from the second to last time we got some accumulation down on the Gulf.

050

Rich Meisel @richmeisel.bsky.social · 30/12/2024

Went to see wicked. Met the tinman in the bathroom.

040

Rich Meisel @richmeisel.bsky.social · 24/12/2024

Probably want to use ANOVA if you've got a continuous response variable

020

Rich Meisel @richmeisel.bsky.social · 24/12/2024

I want a hippopotamus for Christmas

250

Rich Meisel @richmeisel.bsky.social · 24/12/2024

"You will be visited by three spirits". The three spirits:

C elegans, zebra fish, drosophila melanogaster

1204

Rich Meisel @richmeisel.bsky.social · 20/12/2024

Males expressing an ancestral polo were more likely to sire 0 progeny than males expressing polo-dup1, consistent with testis specialization of polo-dup1. In addition, expression of some of the ancestral polo genes caused males to sire more daughters than sons.

Box plot showing that Drosophila melanogaster males expressing a polo transcript from ovary or the ancestral copy of Drosophila pseudoobscura polo sire more female than male progeny.

100

Rich Meisel @richmeisel.bsky.social · 20/12/2024

We found that there were an excess of amino acid substitutions in polo-dup1 when compared to the ancestral polo on the D. pseudoobscura neo-X. We also showed that that this faster evolution of polo-dup1 is consistent with positive selection driving adaptive changes.

Figure showing that Drosophila pseudoobscura polo-dup1 is evolving fast with an excess of amino acid substitutions.

100

Rich Meisel @richmeisel.bsky.social · 25/11/2024

D. hydei is nice, but bifurca would be awesome

Drosophila bifurca and his testis, which are more than twice as long as the fly. Testes are long because they have long sperm.

120

Rich Meisel @richmeisel.bsky.social · 22/11/2024

Thanks to scholargoggler.com here's a little bit about what i do

word cloud of Rich Meisel's publications

010

Rich Meisel @richmeisel.bsky.social · 15/11/2024

What's also crazy is that you refer to Beltway 8 as "the major loop", but it's not actually THE loop. Beltway 8 is actually a secondary belt, and THE loop is 610, which is also a massive interstate beltway that is perpetually under construction. Here's the 610/10 (Katy FW) interchange, also massive

Arial photo of the I-10/I-610 interchange in Houston, TX

110

Rich Meisel @richmeisel.bsky.social · 11/11/2024

In contrast, there are many situations where multiple different sex determiners segregate on different chromosomes in natural populations, such as the Lake Malawi Cichlids that Tom's lab works on. However, these are viewed as abnormalities or transitional states.

Diagram of the polygenic sex determination system in lake malawi cichlids.

100

Rich Meisel @richmeisel.bsky.social · 11/11/2024

The canonical view of sex determination and many other developmental pathways is a deterministic series of on/off switches initiated by "master regulators". There is also a bias toward identifying large effect regulators in classical genetics approaches.

Schematic representations of the Drosophila and vertebrate sex determination networks.

110

Rich Meisel @richmeisel.bsky.social · 07/11/2024

We then analyzed the climatic features in the nine sampling locations, and we found the frequencies of the two Y chromosomes are correlated with climate features associate with daily temperature ranges within the populations. Ecology therefore affects the evolution of the sex chromosomes.

Graph showing the first two principal components for climate features in the nine sampling locations

130

Rich Meisel @richmeisel.bsky.social · 07/11/2024

Folks in 9 states collected house flies, sent them Jeff Scott in New York, who sent them to me in Texas. Here in Houston, we determined the frequencies of two Y chromosomes (YM and IIIM) and a W chromosome (traD) in each of the nine population.

Graphs showing the frequencies of different Y and W chromosomes across 9 house fly populations.

120

Rich Meisel @richmeisel.bsky.social · 07/11/2024

First, the collaboration, which involves people from ten different states, all of us part of a USDA multi-state project to work together to do science. That makes me happy.

Map of the USA showing locations of collaborators in the project. Sites in California, Texas, Kansas, Nebraska, Florida, Georgia, Tennessee, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania are shown.

120

Rich Meisel @richmeisel.bsky.social · 19/10/2024

Lo and behold , upregulating the homologous gene for the TF in Drosophila makes males mate faster! We named the TF gene speed date (spdt) because you get to proclaim silly gene names in floes

000

Rich Meisel @richmeisel.bsky.social · 19/10/2024

We then used a bunch of RNA seq data to reconstruct the regulatory network responsible for differential expression of the odorant binding protein genes, and we identified a transcription factor in the IIIm Y chromosome that could regulate its expression

100

Rich Meisel @richmeisel.bsky.social · 19/10/2024

We identified a family of odorant binding protein genes differentially expressed between our two male genotypes. Turns out, down regulated the homologous gene in Drosophila makes males mate faster. A promising lead!