Jacob Tennessen
@jacobphd
Scientist errant. Genetics, evolution, whimsy, awe. 🧬🦟🐌🩸👤🦠🍓🐸🧬
Visited here recently. Turns out the real apes were the friends we made along the way. #cladistics
The team of element men remains pretty meager and I think there’s room to add more.
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.
Background info for the audience prior to a production of Taming of the Shrew
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.
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.
Throwback to the time I met Gene Cernan after writing an article about him
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.
Today I head to scenic Newport RI, for the Gordon Research Conference on Biology of Host-Parasite Interactions. Basically this image but about parasites.
In an early scene in this book, a character's minor heroic act hinges on him knowing that snakes can't blink. It's established that biological knowledge like this is an important, positive trait. Later on, some wolf eels are said to blink which in reality they can't do. What am I to make of this?
New paper! How do malaria-transmitting mosquitoes adapt to distinct urban, rural, and forest habitats within a tiny African country? Whole genome sequencing and pop gen reveals their secrets. 🦟🇬🇦🦟 onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1...
This illusion is basically how music works. Why do three major thirds make an octave? It feels like a perfect fit, an elegant natural resonance, but it's really a trick made by bending things so slightly our brains don't notice. The top hypotenuse isn't straight, and the notes don't really add up.
Nick Wade name-dropped me in the NY Times. Two years later he wrote a book claiming racism is scientifically justified. Our work comparing white and Black exomes did not at all support this, but his sinister interest in it was now clear. His book helped launch the alt-right movement and here we are.
I really appreciate the science journalism surrounding our recent South American mosquito paper. I've had several positive interactions with journalists following up and double-checking things to ensure the facts are correct. Contrast that to my 2012 human exome paper (brief thread)...
I am truly grateful for the opportunity to explore this dataset and work with so many fantastic collaborators across three continents. Thanks also to the mosquito which never asked to be a malaria vector and only is one because of colonialism.
If you'll be in Vancouver WA this weekend, come come celebrate the science and humanity of gender at uucvan.org.