To analyze millions of genetic variants, we need tools that are fast and memory efficient. Some of the most efficient tools have problems with numerical instability on dense sets of snps. Bercovich et al. figured out how to overcome a common source of instability: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Sex differences in transcription-associated mutagenesis in the human germline https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.09.18.677082v1

To predict genetic risk for an individual, which score should you use? The one learned from a cohort that best matches by ancestry? Or by sex, or age, or environment? Shadi Zabad proposes to combine scores taking all these into account. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

The RCMP surreptitiously collected DNA from random individuals at a Kurdish festival based on the inferred Kurdish ancestry of a suspect, in search of a relative. www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/artic... RCMP: "Police will use all tools available." Let's make this tool unavailable.

Preprint out: A multi-ancestry genetic reference for the Quebec population. 2173 WGS and 29k genotyping arrays in a longitudinal biobank. www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...

Delighted to see this paper out, investigating factors affecting human germline mutation in a cohort of 10,000 families from the UK 100k Genomes Project. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

If you’re interested in moving your lab to beautiful Montreal Canada, this program offers chairholders funding of up to 1M$ a year for 8 years. See link for details. www.nature.com/naturecareer...

My sister Élise will get her doctorate without a single peer reviewed paper! She'll be getting a doctorate, honoris causa, from @uqam.ca for her contributions to children's literature. Her books are often engaged, often silly, and always good reads. Very well-deserved ❤️🍉!

Une présentation de la Dre Liu à NYU annulée pour faits dérangeants. Son commentaire plein de nuance ici www.ledevoir.com/opinion/idee.... A conference by Dr Liu at NYU cancelled for including unpleasant facts. Her thoughtful commentary (in French): www.ledevoir.com/opinion/idee....

Grundler et al propose a new method to infer the geographic position of all our genetic ancestors www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... building on a method by Wohns et al www.science.org/doi/10.1126/.... My thoughts on the approach: www.science.org/doi/epdf/10.....

Ancestral Recombination Graphs are an amazing tool to study genetic variation. In this preprint, Alejandro Mejia-Garcia shows that ARGs are surprisingly good at identifying founder variants, and help us pick apart their geographic distribution and phenotypic effect. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

A faculty position in Synthetic biology at Concordia University in Montreal, with possibility of funding from a Canada Research Chair: www.concordia.ca/artsci/about... .

Faculty position opening in bioinformatics at the University of Montreal! There is a great bioinfo and comp bio community in Montreal. www.umontreal.ca/carrieres/pr...

📢New Perspective from Hatchell et al. 📰Experience using conventional compared to ancestry-based population descriptors in clinical genomics laboratories www.cell.com/ajhg/fulltex...

I posted a couple days ago about our new paper on building causal graphs from genetic associations + Perturb-seq. Here I want to expand on the value of using DIRECTIONAL information contained in LoF burden tests.🧵 [work led by @minetoota.bsky.social ] bsky.app/profile/jkpr...

Extremely fast bayesian PRS calculation, by Shadi Zabad. Lots of clever tricks to improve memory efficiency, multithreading, and numerical robustness of WGS statgen analyses. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1....

A beautiful news story on the Silent Genomes Project (in French) ici.radio-canada.ca/info/long-fo...

I'm getting a massive and sustained uptick in spam emails that are either 1-invitations to submit a book manuscript 2-offers to ghost write book manuscripts for me. Do others see this, or did my email just reach an old spam list? Wondering if this is a new GPT-based ghostwriting model.

A leading grad school asked to rank a student by "emotional maturity", and options included "top 1%", "Top 3%", etc. I already have all interns compete in the marshmallow delayed gratification experiment, but more than 3% succeed. Help!

A TT position in biostatistics and medicine at McGill University: mcgill.wd3.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/mcgill... En français: : mcgill.wd3.myworkdayjobs.com/fr-CA/mcgill...

On Friday, @alexandr.bsky.social successfully defended a wonderful thesis on modelling high-dimensional genetic data. A must-read if you are working with UMAP or genetic clustering, or if you just like well-written and thoughtful scientific writing. Congratulations!

Have geospatial genomic data and want to hammer out landscape analyses? Check out this new swiss army knife that does it all from @chamberea.bsky.social et al, built to handle California Conservation Genomic Project scale data onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

TT position in UQ Chicoutimi in genomic medicine. Welcomes human popgen with large genealogies. UQAC hosts the world's best genealogical resource for human popgen and genomic medicine (IMO). www.uqac.ca/emploi/emplo...