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Jean Vila

@jccvila

Microbial evolutionary biologist at Stanford for most of the time. Radically queer leftie for the rest. πŸ‡ͺπŸ‡ΊπŸ³οΈβ€πŸŒˆ They/Them

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21.09.2023
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Latest posts by Jean Vila @jccvila

Registration is open for the inaugural GRC conference in the Function of Evolving Systems. Aug 9-14, 2026, Waterville Valley. Truly stellar speaker lineup. Student/postdoc fellowships are available! Please come join us! www.grc.org/function-of-... @joybergelson.bsky.social

29.01.2026 15:03 πŸ‘ 42 πŸ” 37 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 2
Bruce Springsteen - Streets Of Minneapolis (Official Audio)
Bruce Springsteen - Streets Of Minneapolis (Official Audio) YouTube video by Bruce Springsteen

I wrote this song on Saturday, recorded it yesterday and released it to you today in response to the state terror being visited on the city of Minneapolis. It’s dedicated to the people of Minneapolis, our innocent immigrant neighbors and in memory of Alex Pretti and Renee Good.

Stay free

28.01.2026 17:02 πŸ‘ 97511 πŸ” 40896 πŸ’¬ 4301 πŸ“Œ 5366
Apply - Interfolio {{$ctrl.$state.data.pageTitle}} - Apply - Interfolio

The Abreu lab at NYU is hiring another postdoc! We study microbial ecology and evolution, using yeast/bacteria microcosms, DNA barcoding for evolutionary lineage tracking, and simple mathematical modeling. Apply here: apply.interfolio.com/179949

20.01.2026 17:07 πŸ‘ 20 πŸ” 17 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0

We’re very happy to share the results from the last chapter of my PhD, now out as a preprint on bioRxiv
www.biorxiv.org/content/bior...

14.01.2026 20:24 πŸ‘ 17 πŸ” 8 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 1
Preview
Massively parallel interrogation of the fitness of natural variants in ancient signaling pathways reveals pervasive local adaptation The nature of standing genetic variation remains a central debate in population genetics, with differing perspectives on whether common variants are almost always neutral as suggested by neutral and n...

One of the most exciting works of my career, years in the making. We used high-throughput precision genome editing to test the fitness effects of thousands of natural variants. Our findings challenge the long-held assumption that common variants are inconsequential.

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

22.10.2025 17:45 πŸ‘ 165 πŸ” 85 πŸ’¬ 5 πŸ“Œ 6

1/n 🧡 Excited to share our new paper! We developed a framework to reveal hidden simplicity in how organisms adapt to different environments, particularly focusing on antibiotic resistance evolution. #EvolutionaryBiology #MachineLearning

15.05.2025 14:33 πŸ‘ 38 πŸ” 22 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 2

My NSF PRFB on the genetics of female polymorphism in hummingbirds was terminated yesterday.

I don't have much to say, I'm just sad. We've discovered so much, and could have gone so much further.

If anyone else is in the same boat, esp postdocs, please reach out, it would be good to connect.

26.04.2025 12:06 πŸ‘ 702 πŸ” 218 πŸ’¬ 73 πŸ“Œ 10
5 relative abundance plots arranged to have increasing compositional variability (variability across relative abundance samples, here vertical bars)

5 relative abundance plots arranged to have increasing compositional variability (variability across relative abundance samples, here vertical bars)

1/ Hey y'all, I'm excited to share my latest paper, which is out now in PNAS! We introduce FAVA, a statistical framework to measure compositional variability across microbiome samples. If you want to measure variability across a stacked bar plot, FAVA is for you! Paper: doi.org/10.1073/pnas...

14.03.2025 20:46 πŸ‘ 207 πŸ” 72 πŸ’¬ 5 πŸ“Œ 2
PNAS Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), a peer reviewed journal of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) - an authoritative source of high-impact, original research that broadly spans...

I’m thrilled to share my first ever publication, now published in PNAS! www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

With mentorship from the amazing @ksxue.bsky.social, I looked at how the outcomes of species introductions to microbial communities are influenced by the number of introduced microbes.

11.03.2025 13:22 πŸ‘ 89 πŸ” 31 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 1
Preview
Dominance reversal maintains large-effect resistance polymorphism in temporally varying environments A central challenge in evolutionary biology is to uncover mechanisms maintaining functional genetic variation1. Theory suggests that dominance reversal, whereby alleles subject to fluctuating selectio...

How is functional variation at large-effect loci maintained in natural populations?

Thrilled to share our work showing how beneficial dominance reversal helps fruit flies maintain a resistance polymorphism as selection varies in their environment! A thread 🧡 1/n

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

22.01.2025 19:44 πŸ‘ 37 πŸ” 21 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 5

To measure the selective and dominance effects of the resistant Ace alleles on fitness in a semi-natural context, we used Paul Schmidt & @petrovadmitri.bsky.social powerful system combining field mesocosms with large-scale phenotypic and genomic measurements (Rudman et al 2022) 9/n

22.01.2025 19:44 πŸ‘ 2 πŸ” 2 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0
Preview
Diverse phage communities are maintained stably on a clonal bacterial host Bacteriophages are the most abundant and phylogenetically diverse biological entities on Earth, yet the ecological mechanisms that sustain this extraordinary diversity remain unclear. In this study, w...

Is it β€œwinner-takes all” when the simplest living things compete? Check out my fresh publication on phage coexistence in Science and a thread below🧡 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

12.12.2024 19:22 πŸ‘ 182 πŸ” 98 πŸ’¬ 5 πŸ“Œ 11

Apologies for linking the other place, I wanted to be able to tag everyone who was involved. I'm hoping that as a community we eventually decide that BlueSky becomes the default platform for sharing new results.

30.10.2023 18:08 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
Tweet by @jccvila

Huge thanks to all my co-authors including @mrebolleda.bsky.social and @jgoldford.bsky.social who are on here and all the others who are not . Here's a link to a longer thread explaining this work. twitter.com/jccvila/stat...

30.10.2023 18:03 πŸ‘ 3 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0
| bioRxiv bioRxiv - the preprint server for biology, operated by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, a research and educational institution

1st post on here to share our new preprint: β€˜Metabolic similarity and the predictability of microbial community assembly’. Metabolically similar carbon sources lead to predictably similar growth rates and by-products which leads to predictably similar communities
biorxiv.org/content/10.1... .

30.10.2023 17:59 πŸ‘ 19 πŸ” 9 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0