Anne Stone
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acstone.bsky.social
Anne Stone
@acstone.bsky.social
1K followers 650 following 150 posts
Prof at ASU, anthropological geneticist, gardener, mom of 1. I dabble in stained glass, embroidery, and print making in my copious free time.
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acstone.bsky.social
A beautiful day at the Deer Valley Petroglyph Preserve! @asubeinghuman.bsky.social
November 1, 2025 at 7:24 PM
acstone.bsky.social
Great “CEMinar” at @evmedasu.bsky.social by @avanzich.bsky.social about her research on the evolutionary history of the pathogens causing leprosy! (& a nice evening afterwards at a local brewpub!)
Members of the Stone lab with Charlotte Avanzi at OHSO brewpub
October 24, 2025 at 3:47 PM
acstone.bsky.social
#NoKings PHX
October 18, 2025 at 6:14 PM
acstone.bsky.social
It’s a great day in PHX to march for democracy! #NoKings
October 18, 2025 at 5:58 PM
acstone.bsky.social
The FRAMERATE: Desert Pulse exhibit at the Desert Botanical Garden is stunning! Go see it! #DBG
October 14, 2025 at 11:48 PM
acstone.bsky.social
Earlier this summer I took a box making class at the Royal School of Needlework and I finally finished the box!
A green box with an embroidered lid. The embroidery is of a nigella flower and the A. I highly recommend the Royal School of Needlework classes (this one was for all levels) and it was held at Hampton Court Palace. A green embroidered box with the lid ajar so you can see the inside. If you look closely you can see some of the stitches are visible…which is something I need to work on!
August 9, 2025 at 5:04 AM
acstone.bsky.social
Yesterday, @rebeccasiford.bsky.social defended her dissertation on genetic research dissemination & views about DNA research, data privacy and governance among Turkana, Borana, Samburu and Rendille of Kenya. Congrats Dr. Siford!!
The newly minted Dr. Siford with committee chair Anne Stone & committee member Jason Robert (committee members Melissa Wilson & Sarah Mathew joined us online)! The cake is vanilla with chocolate icing and shows candy “beads” to represent the beads used in disseminating information about DNA.
July 2, 2025 at 7:41 PM
acstone.bsky.social
It has been a busy couple of weeks in the Stone Lab. Last week Stevie Winingear defended her dissertation research on 🐌 genomics, ancient 🦃 DNA and evaluating online bioinformatics teaching! Congrats Dr. Winingear!!
Anne Stone and the newly minted Dr. Stevie Winingear with a vanilla cake with festive snail, turkey and DNA figures on top
July 2, 2025 at 7:33 PM
acstone.bsky.social
There’s nothing like a Victorian cemetery to show you why vaccination matters
Highgate cemetery in London
June 12, 2025 at 8:29 AM
acstone.bsky.social
If you care about science and innovation in the US, please contact your congresspeople about the budget for FY2026 #SaveScience #SaveNSF
Summary Table showing the proposed changes to the budget for NSF in FY2026 with cuts ranging from 25.9% - 80% across directorates.
May 30, 2025 at 11:04 PM
acstone.bsky.social
The ASU study abroad course “plague pits & body snatchers” is getting started with a tour of the tower! We are ready! @jehnml.bsky.social
May 30, 2025 at 12:53 PM
acstone.bsky.social
The latest under construction!
A stained glass picture frame under construction
May 25, 2025 at 2:32 PM
acstone.bsky.social
Since it is the season of graduation: My traditional gift to my PhD students (and departing postdocs) is a stained glass picture frame. (Basically I inflict my hobby on them!) It is a small thing to send them off into the world, after they have done a big thing! What do other folks do?
A stained glass picture frame in blues and reds
May 25, 2025 at 2:30 PM
acstone.bsky.social
Today @marioapata.bsky.social successfully defended his dissertation! (Co-chairs @sexchrlab.bsky.social and me). Mario's science is complemented by his beautiful illustrations (which I poorly tried to imitate in icing form for the cake!). Congratulations Dr. Apata!!!
Anne Stone and Mario Apata smiling and admiring his cake (which features DNA, teeth, cell culture and an Andean woman in icing form to reflect his dissertation on Ancient DNA and the microbiome in communities from Northern Chile along with functional analyses of regulatory mutations influencing arsenic tolerance in these people.
May 20, 2025 at 2:20 AM
acstone.bsky.social
It is the time of year when we celebrate our wonderful graduates! Congrats to Bianca Obando (amazing undergrad in my lab and class of 2025!)
Bianca Obando, amazing student and 2025 grad, presenting her research at the ISSR symposium at ASU!
May 20, 2025 at 2:10 AM
acstone.bsky.social
A great day to march!
Crowd at the hands off rally at the AZ state capitol in Phoenix
April 5, 2025 at 10:11 PM
acstone.bsky.social
The lab group this year! (Eric M. not shown) with Miriam, Maggie, @rebeccasiford.bsky.social, Erin, me, Maxine, Stevie and @marioapata.bsky.social
The molecular anthropology lab at ASU!
April 4, 2025 at 6:06 PM
acstone.bsky.social
Aardvarks have enamel-less teeth & genetic data shows that this is due to inactivating mutations in 3 enamel matrix protein genes (AMEL, AMBN and EDAM) #RIP #2025MMM bmcecolevol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10....
Timetree of edentulous and enamelless amniote taxa for which genomic sequences are available (Ensembl, PreEnsembl, NCBI) with a mapping of inferred inactivating mutations (frameshifts, premature stop codons, splice site mutations) in three EMP genes to particular branches in the tree. Branches with inactivating mutations are marked by vertical bars (pink = ENAM [E], blue = AMBN [B], green = AMEL [A]). Extinct stem taxa with teeth (Odontochelys, Ichthyornis, Eomaia) are also shown. Mutations were mapped to branches by Fitch parsimony with delayed transformation optimization. Teeth with enamel, teeth without enamel, and edentulism are denoted with black, gray, and white-filled circles, respectively, at terminal and internal nodes. In combination with fossil evidence, dN/dS ratios and frameshift mutations in ENAM suggest that enamel was lost independently in the common ancestor of Pilosa (sloths and anteaters) and in multiple armadillo lineages, including Dasypus[2]. Remnants of AMBN and ENAM were not recovered from the Pelodiscus genome. References for divergence dates and fossil ages are provided in Methods.
March 25, 2025 at 2:05 AM
acstone.bsky.social
Don't let their distinctive looks fool you! Genetic studies revealed that Aardvarks are part of the Afrotheria superorder which contains elephants, manatees, & hyraxes! This unexpected family tree highlights Africa's unique role in mammalian evolution. #2025MMM pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC...
Representatives of the 6 orders of mammals comprising the Superorder Afrotheria: (Upper Left) African forest elephant (Loxodonta africana); (Upper Right) Golden-rumped elephant shrew (Rhynchocyon chrysopygus); (Middle Left) Aardvark (Orycteropus afer); (Middle Right) Streaked tenrec (Hemicentetes nigriceps); (Lower Left) Eastern tree hyrax (Dendrohyrax validus); and (Lower Right) Dugong (Dugong dugon). [Images of tenrec & dugong reproduced with permission from Andromeda Oxford Limited (18); other images reproduced with permission from Jonathan Kingdon.]
March 25, 2025 at 1:46 AM
acstone.bsky.social
Sometimes the most dangerous species are tiny.
Genetic sleuthing shows humans gave sun bears tuberculosis at a wildlife rescue center.
Maybe now future transmission can be prevented? Science saves sun bears! #2025MMM www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Detailed review of the Lineage 2 Mycobacterium tuberculosis outbreak. Human case is "Hu". Each yellow circle represents a node of isolates separated by no single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs); a line connecting two yellow circles represents a difference of one SNP; a solid black circle is added to represent each additional SNP difference. The arrow indicates the position of the root of the tree.
March 25, 2025 at 1:45 AM
acstone.bsky.social
How does Thorold’s deer survive 5,000 meters up? Clue might be to look down. Way down.
Weddell seals dive to 1000 meters deep. Tolerate extreme low-oxygen for 1.5 hours. Do deer and seals share genetic changes? #RIP #2025MMM pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC...
(a) SUMO2 and (b) EP300 gene structures with locations of Weddell seal–associated regions (WedARs). Each panel shows the human sequence, conservation across 100 vertebrates, and sequence differences for sheep, dog, and pinnipeds. Weddell seal–specific mutations (red bars) and transcription factor binding sites (TFBS) within WedARs are highlighted.
March 25, 2025 at 1:39 AM
acstone.bsky.social
Gelada is in the tangled family tree of Old World monkey tribe Papionini. Liedigk et al. (2014) analyzed mtDNA genomes but found it hard to resolve whether gelada, or black crested mangabey is closest to baboons because of rapid divergences ~5 mya. #2025MMM www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2148/14...
Figure 2 from Liedigk et al. (2014) Densitree showing the posterior probability of 25,000 trees taken from the Bayesian divergence age analysis in BEAST. Blue represents the most frequent tree topology, red represents the second and green the third most frequent topology.
March 25, 2025 at 1:29 AM
acstone.bsky.social
Thorold's deer and its relatives have a complicated genetic history. DNA from 21 Cervus subspecies finds gene flow between populations, and surprising diversity within populations. #2025MMM link.springer.com/article/10.1...
Migration events between species of the genus Cervus estimated by TreeMix. Population differentiation and mixing were estimated by TreeMix based on genome-wide allele frequency, 2–5 gradients were set respectively, combined with D statistical results, we found that there might be 2 migration events among 5 species in the genus Cervus. The direction of migration events are shown by arrows, and intensity is represented by color depth. Both migrations started from a common ancestor of C. eldii and C. unicolor, some of the ancestors migrated to C. albirostris, and another part migrated to the common ancestor of C. nippon and C. albirostris
March 25, 2025 at 1:26 AM
acstone.bsky.social
Wild yaks are thought to be extinct in Nepal but recent animal sightings suggest they might still be around! mtDNA from a few bones, hair, & dung piles suggest some might be related to wild yaks from the Tibetan Plateau while others are likely domestic yaks. #2025MMM #RIP doi.org/10.1002/ece3.7660
A haplotype network of mitochondrial (mtDNA) D-loop sequences of wild (WY), domestic (DY), and unknown (UY) yaks from Nepal and China. Circle color corresponds to sample’s geographic location and size is proportional to the frequency of the mtDNA haplotype.
March 25, 2025 at 1:23 AM
acstone.bsky.social
Comparing the genomes of mountain zebras w/their sister 🦓 species—the plains zebra + the Grevy’s zebra—reveals that the 3 species began diverging ~1.3 mya. After, mountain and Grevy’s zebras remained at relatively small pop sizes while plains zebras rapidly ⬆️ #2025MMM doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aaq0392
Reconstruction of the demographic history (i.e., effective population size change over time) over the last 3 million years for the mountain zebra (Equus hartmannae; orange), the Grevy’s zebra (E. grevyi; green), and the Burchell’s plains zebra (E. burchellii; purple).
March 25, 2025 at 1:18 AM