@anjansun has written an illuminating piece on "Why the World's Deadliest wars go unreported" https://t.co/TgQnKIW4GA

Epistasis makes it to the New York Times! https://t.co/McFcAaoGC4

Nice piece on fitness landscapes and SARS-CoV-2 from one of my favorite magazines, Quanta Mag. https://t.co/uu0YujcNU9

Epistasis!

🦠 There’s a lot we don’t yet understand about Omicron, including its impact on immunity and what it means for vaccines. New data will be emerging over the next few wks, which could be misinterpreted w/o context. What we might expect & how to interpret the emerging data? 🧵(1/n)

Whatever the answer is to Haiti’s acute crisis, it will have to come from within Haiti: not the English-speaking business elite nor the corrupt class of politicians the United States has spent decades elevating, writes @KatzOnEarth. https://t.co/BiPHEOnwbG

Why are there so many X-linked immunodeficiencies (bruton's, SCID, wiskott-aldrich, CGD...)? Is there an evolutionary reason so many important immune genes are on the X? Is this related to the stronger immune responses or higher rates of autoimmunity in women? #SpeculationRounds

If I asked all the questions I had on the biology of disease during rounds, we'd never see all our patients. And pubmed doesn't always have an answer. So I'll ask twitter instead-plz reply w/ answers, articles, speculation, or more questions!#SpeculationRounds ala @CuriousClinPod

Part of our policing demands involve cutting ties with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which should be a no-brainer. Why don't you follow @Penn's lead, @UMich? #StrikeForSafeCampus #UMMakesUsSick

Thanks so much to my coauthors @ZhengtingZou, Haiqing Xu & Jianzhi "George" Zhang. Would love to hear your thoughts given your foundational work @RELenski @MichaelMDesai @skryazhi @vscooper and others!

We show how these general trends in evolution can emerge from randomness due to biological complexity, or the "idiosyncrasy" of epistasis...And without (+) or (-) epistatic bias in the fitness landscape. Peruse the paper to see how!

It’s as if the fitness landscape or the route taken going up a fitness peak is different from the landscape or the route going down. Why would they be different? And why are these patterns so universal in the first place?

...observations with detrimental mutations seemingly suggest the opposite - a bias towards (+)epistasis in the fitness landscape. Such mutations exhibit increasing costs with fitness (@skryazhi) while fitness decline slows during extreme drift/mutation accumulation

Why do so many organisms show diminishing returns among beneficial mutations and slowing fitness increase during adaptation as in the LTEE (@RELenski)? This is generally thought to indicate a bias towards (-)epistasis in the fitness landscape, but...

New in @NatureEcoEvo we explain general yet seemingly contradictory evolutionary patterns: (-)epistasis/diminishing returns among beneficial mutations & during adaptation but (+)epistasis/increasing costs w/ detrimental mutations & mutation accumulation1/6 https://t.co/NMHnND9bow

Thanks @lauringlab this is awesome! And for my med school graduation I'd like that hot dog couch.

How Climate Change Is Contributing to Skyrocketing Rates of Infectious Disease

I'm defending my thesis tomorrow, virtually! "Finding General Patterns in Fitness Landscapes." DM me for a link.

I am deeply haunted by this letter that the chief of surgery at @nyphospital sent to colleagues today. (h/t @BillAckman)

Important thread from Trevor Bedford. Long term mitigation depends on surveillance at massive scale and case-based strategies. If we can couple to an antiviral for advanced disease and antibody prophylaxis for highest risk we can manage life with #COVID19 until we have a vaccine.