Our new paper: We measured changes in the effect of all possible mutations across 700 million years of protein evolution. Our goal was to comprehensively characterize epistasis, contingency and evolutionary predictability. Out today in @ScienceMagazine.🧵 science.org/doi/10.1126/sc… Epistatic Drift was pervasive. The substitutions that happened during history changed the functional effect of other possible mutations, causing evolution to become fundamentally unpredictable.

Our new paper on experimental evolution of reconstructed ancestral proteins: Historical contingency is the dominant factor in evolution of protein sequence variation, even under strong selection. Out today in @eLife. 1/
elifesciences.org/articles/67336 Our postdoc (and co-first author) Brian Metzger @bphmetz realized that we could quantify chance, contingency, and necessity in protein evolution by launching replicated experimental evolution trajectories from a series of reconstructed ancestral proteins. 2/

With the incredible Hazel Johnson, the “mother of the environmental justice movement” and founder of People for Community Recovery, Altgeld Gardens, Chicago, in 1990. #environmentaljustice In these photos, Hazel and I were blockading a hazardous waste incinerator on Chicago’s Southeast Side. Tireless activism by Hazel and others shut down this facility and scores of similar incinerators during the next decade.

Our new paper on the evolutionary persistence of useless molecular complexes, out today in @Nature. 1/6 nature.com/articles/s4158… Incredibly creative work by @KaHochberg, who found a universal principle of evo biochemistry in a detailed experimental case study. 2/6