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I’ve seen trees you people wouldn’t believe. Deep branches collapsing off the shoulder of a saturated site, unresolved. I watched long-branch attraction glitter in the dark near the root of the Archaea. All those topologies will be lost in time… like tips in a polytomy.

Take a few minutes to read. This is the next in my series about what we learn from evolutionary biology. Free to read, as always. open.substack.com/pub/profmcin...

Interesting study: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Paul Nurse responds to the changes in scientific leadership in the uk today: royalsociety.org/news/2026/07...

Changes to government science department | Royal SocietyThe new Prime Minister has merged the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology into a new Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade.royalsociety.org

Another Friday slow read. Modularity and what it could mean. As always it is free, so please subscribe. open.substack.com/pub/profmcin...

ModularityWhy is everything not an integrated, undifferentiated system?open.substack.com

The latest in my “what has four billion years of evolution taught us” series. Always free. Always about evolution. Take a look. open.substack.com/pub/profmcin...

Drift and LuckIn 1968, a Japanese geneticist named Motoo Kimura published a paper that changed how every evolutionary biologist thought about evolution.open.substack.com

I'm mostly doing "Slow Reads" over on substack (it's always free), so you might get through a cup of coffee reading this one. Make sure you read to the end. profmcinerney.substack.com/p/good-enough

Good enoughWhat we have learned from absurd evolutionprofmcinerney.substack.com

New Post: Genomes are models of the world. Click here -> open.substack.com/pub/profmcin...

Genomes are models of the worldWhat machine learning revealed about predictability in a bacterial pangenomeopen.substack.com

in case you missed it: profmcinerney.substack.com/p/the-pangen... "The Pangenome Is Not A Parts List"

The Pangenome Is Not a Parts ListThe pangenome is the total genetic repertoire of a group of organisms. It is a property of populations, maintained by evolutionary processes.profmcinerney.substack.com

I took this photo of E. O. Wilson on this day in 2013, when he gave a short talk in Harvard (I was a visitor there for a year). It was a fun evening, though he was clearly in ill health, he was lovely and charismatic.