Gavin Woodruff

Graph of award probability of R35 and R01 from NIH factbook as a function of review rank percentile. As is apparent, 2025 is a significant departure, with lower award probabilities at all scores <40 and significant departures from norm, where even being in the top 10% is no longer a nearly certain indicator of success. Data source: https://report.nih.gov/nihdatabook/report/302

The data is in: the NIH goalposts have shifted.

What were once almost certain fundable scores have become coin flips and what used to be likely grants have become aspirational, leading to fewer awards.

Another manifestation of how HHS policies have led to fewer awards and less science.

Here is the "effective payline" for each institute, estimated (by Claude) as the percentile where one can expect 80% probability of funding from a logistic regression fit. The effective payline has gone from a historic ~12% to 6% in 2025.

Two complementary articles from the lab of Anming Meng and Katie McDole discussing the history and biology of organizer in 🐟, 🐸, and 🐭. Even after more than 100 years since its discovery, major questions remain, especially for mammals.
doi.org/10.1016/j.cd...
doi.org/10.1016/j.cd...

Parasite defense covaries with reproductive timing, not with resistance

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Final version @nature.com of our paper describing unconventional multicellular development in a choanoflagellate inhabiting an extreme environment. A ton of new data since the first @biorxivpreprint.bsky.social preprint (which we've kept updating).

A brief 🧵 (carried over from the old place)

Intracellular buffering enables developmental robustness after genome doubling in C. elegans embryos Genome doubling challenges animal embryogenesis. Using single-cell phenotypic analyses, Yang et al. show that tetraploid C. elegans embryos preserve developmental fidelity and molecular homeostasis by...

!

Intracellular buffering enables developmental robustness after genome doubling in C. elegans embryos

www.cell.com/cell-reports...

So I pleased to announce the conceptual spawn of FigTree: PearTree (acronym still to be finalised). If you want to dive right in it is hosted as a web app here: artic-network.github.io/peartree (click the “Example...” button for immediate candy and then click every button you can find).

New blog post:

"Higher orders need higher standards"

skewed.de/lab/posts/hi...

I discuss our current work disentangling misconceptions around "higher-order" networks: arxiv.org/abs/2602.16937

Explainer thread for the paper here: bsky.app/profile/tiag...

Repeated evolution of supergenes on an ancient social chromosome Lajmi et al. describe a novel supergene associated with social structure in desert ants. Surprisingly, this supergene evolved on an ancient chromosome that also evolved an analogous supergene in fire ...

📄 Repeated evolution of supergenes on an ancient social chromosome 🐜🧬

⬇️
www.cell.com/current-biol...

A symbiotic origin of the ribosome? Abstract. The origin of life is one of the great mysteries of science. Of the multiple unsolved problems, the origin of the translation system (the means b

A symbiotic origin of the ribosome?
#OriginsOfLife #scienceSky

academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/ar...

The molecular evolution of vertebrate organs Nature Ecology & Evolution - This Review discusses recent advances in the molecular evolution of vertebrate organs, including rates of evolution of organs and cell types, molecular mechanisms...

Our internal organs are evolutionary marvels. New technologies are transforming our understanding of the evolution of vertebrate organs. You can find more by reading here:
rdcu.be/e5EgU
#EvoBio #EvoDevo 🐟🦎🐢🦇🐊🦜

Beyond metaphor: quantitative reconstruction of Waddington landscape and exploration of cellular behavior Abstract. Originally proposed as a conceptual metaphor, the Waddington landscape was used to illustrate the directional nature of embryonic development and

Beyond metaphor: quantitative reconstruction of Waddington's landscape and exploration of cellular behavior academic.oup.com/bib/article/... - really nice review of how big data and new computational methods and reviving an old conceptual framework

Low agreement among reviewers evaluating the same NIH grant applications | PNAS Obtaining grant funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) is increasingly competitive, as funding success rates have declined over the p...

Oh please do, I don't think I'm familiar with that one!

I can share a few of my favorites, starting with this Molly Carnes paper showing very low levels of agreement between
reviewers in their evaluations of the same grant applications

www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Another group at Madison also found very low agreement among reviewers across all dimensions of NIH’s official rubric, and further suggested that very little of the difference in reviewer opinion was attributable to proposal content

osf.io/preprints/ps...

Pangenome analysis reveals families of ubiquitin-ligase adaptors as key genomic divergence drivers that lead to hybrid incompatibility

genome.cshlp.org/content/earl...

🪱Worm-friends! Join us this summer in Madison for the C. elegans topic meeting(s) - MAPSS *and* DevCell 🪱

Early birds get the you-know-what, and the early registration deadline is THIS FRI: conferences.union.wisc.edu/ceaging/

It's buy-one-get-one, and who out there doesn't love a deal?? 🙌

This will realize 20 years of EvoWorm, held every two years since its inception in 2006!

Are you ready for *the* meeting about the evolutionary biology of Caenorhabditis and other nematodes??

EvoWorm 2026 will be held at McMaster University from June 16–19

Abstract submission deadline: April 15

Registration deadline: June 1

Further details can be found at evoworm.org

Collect #NeuralCrest Cells for #SingleCell #RNAseq from any vertebrate.

Our new paper, present an antibody-guided #FACS method to collect NCCs. No trans-genesis or in ovo manipulation required.

Demonstrated in wall #lizard #embryos using #microscopy, #RTqPCR and #scRNAseq.

doi.org/10.1111/ede....

Agouti integrates environmental cues to regulate paternal behaviour - Nature Expression of agouti signalling protein in neurons in the medial preoptic area is increased by group housing and negatively associated with care, and overexpression of Agouti reduces care and enhances...

Why are some males caring toward infants while others are neglectful or abusive? I'm so pleased to share work that my colleagues and I @princeton.edu have just published @nature.com (an explanatory thread to follow!) (1/8)

Bacterial diet influences mutation rate in Pristionchus pacificus Abstract. Mutation is a major force of evolution and its accumulation is suggested to be influenced by environmental and genetic factors in both unicellula

Bacterial diet influences mutation rate in Pristionchus pacificus

academic.oup.com/g3journal/ad...

How does the piRNA pathway solve the self vs. non-self problem? 🧬

Since piRNAs come from single-stranded RNA, how does the cell choose the right ones? For years, "piRNA clusters" were seen as THE privileged source. But are they really special and earmarked for biogenesis? (1/19)

!

Cryptic species are widespread across vertebrates Abstract. Many species delimited by morphological data contain two or more species that are distinct based on molecular data (i.e. cryptic species). Crypti

A very interesting and well-executed study.

royalsocietypublishing.org/rspb/article...

Evolutionarily conserved behavioral plasticity enables context-dependent mating in C. elegans Susoy and Samuel describe a new context-dependent behavior in C. elegans. When cultured on solid surfaces and in liquid, C. elegans males adopt different behavioral strategies—parallel and spiral mati...

Evolutionarily conserved behavioral plasticity enables context-dependent mating in C. elegans

www.cell.com/current-biol...

The Hallmarks of Cancer Enter the Multiverse

www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...

Advancing regulatory variant effect prediction with AlphaGenome - Nature AlphaGenome, a deep learning model that inputs 1-Mb DNA sequence to predict functional genomic tracks at single-base resolution across diverse modalities, outperforms existing models in variant effect...

I had intended to post something about this new Google DeepMind paper that appeared yesterday in Nature, but the press coverage has added to what there is to say. So this is a long 🧵
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Back to Chromatin: ENCODE and the Dynamic Epigenome - Biological Theory The “Encyclopedia of DNA Elements” (ENCODE) project was launched by the US National Human Genome Research Institute in the aftermath of the Human Genome Project (HGP). It aimed to systematically map t...

For historical and conceptual context of understanding the genome as a dynamic reactive system, may I suggest our paper in @biologicaltheory.bsky.social link.springer.com/article/10.1...

An ancient genome duplication event drives the development and evolution of spinnerets in spiders A genome duplication event during the Silurian played a crucial role in the evolutionary emergence of spinnerets in spiders.

Chromosome-scale #genomes from newly sequenced spiders & the whip scorpion, the genetic basis of spinneret emergence in spiders & the complex history & functional importance of arachnid genome #evolution www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... #biodiversity #genomics

Neural crest contribution to craniofacial structures and phenotypic variation

#DBfeature

Bones, brains, and bias—neural crest cell contribution to craniofacial structure

Active Learning Assignments for craniofacial perception & normal phenotypic variation

by Jeffrey Carmichael, Diane Darland et al
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...