1/ 🚨New paper in Nature Genetics Genetic factors are associated with the educational fields people study, from arts to engineering. Article: www.nature.com/articles/s41... FAQ: www.thehastingscenter.org/genomic-find...

My house, @dr-appie.bsky.social’s house, @dirksmit.bsky.social’s house and the BGA 2026 venue are in this shot.. if you go to the conference I’ll pull up in my own boat and we’ll do boatrides!!

Nice commentary by @fctropf.bsky.social reflecting on our study on not having sex: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... (for full study, see quoted tweet below)

A study of over 500,000 Brits and Australians finds that people who never have sex are more educated, less likely to use alcohol and smoke, more nervous, lonelier, and unhappier. Regions with high income inequality had more sexless residents. In PNAS: www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1...

🧬💥 Do the genetics that make you develop a disease also help you survive it? Not much. Our new study in Nature Genetics including 9 disease and 7 biobanks shows: • Susceptibility variants ≠ survival • PRSs for onset weak at predicting progression • Lifespan PRS predicts survival better

#Sexlessness: Why do some people never have #sex, even later in life? A new study, conducted by @amsterdamumc.bsky.social and the University of Queensland alongside researchers of our Institute, explores this fascinating question. Check out the @pnas.org paper here: doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2418257122

Within-family heritability estimates for behavioural and disease phenotypes from 500,000 sibling pairs of diverse ancestries https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.09.17.25336022v1

Apply to do a PhD with me, Laura Corbin, Gareth Hawkes and George Davey Smith ( @mendelrandom.bsky.social) in Bristol on identifying rare effects on health using new and innovative methods. Amazing team, great educational environment, lovely city. Forward to your undergrads wrapping up!

Loved hosting @essgn.bsky.social in Oxford including @dr-appie.bsky.social & family (& the rest of the ESSGN family as well) - read the post and links below to hear about this great event

We welcomed the next generation of @essgn.bsky.social social science genomics researchers in Oxford! ✨ Speakers from industry (deCODE, Genomics), data (UKBiobank), experts from Oxford & beyond + an Editor from Nature Human Behaviour! 📸 More here 👉 www.demography.ox.ac.uk/news/lcds-ho...

🔍 Behind the Paper: 'A Love Letter to Social Science Genetics'. 🧬 Some people call social science genetics a minefield. Others call it dangerous, even irresponsible. We call it the most promising field in life sciences. 🔗 bit.ly/46hwnBD @dr-appie.bsky.social @natureportfolio.nature.com #PsycSci

The largest study on late life virginity, based on >400k individuals, out now in @pnas.org Open access link: pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... Shoutout to shared first author @laurawesseldijk.bsky.social ❤️ Thread below 👇🏽

"Social science genetics encompasses the longest causal chain in science: from DNA to human culture."

A great read👇 Some social science genetics papers are among the most interesting and methodologically rigorous I've read. From biology to mating choices and inequalities, they deal with very fundamental concepts of what makes as humans.

A Love Letter to Social Science Genetics communities.springernature.com/posts/a-love...

"Part of maturing as a field is to recognize its history: to decide what to keep, & what we must outgrow, both in how we train the next generation of researchers & in how we help the public make sense of our past." @dr-appie.bsky.social's nuanced take on social science genetics, well worth a read.👇🧪

It was an absolute joy to create visuals for Abdel and to see how these keep supporting his stories. I also appreciate social science genetics in a totally new way now 💙

Thoughtful piece by Abdel on social science genetics - I am definitely taken by “one person’s confounder is another person’s signal”. Also humble about dark histories here and his own perspective

Like reading my own thoughts...Thanks Abdel!

Some people call it a minefield. Others call it dangerous, even irresponsible. I call it the most promising field in life sciences. My love letter to social science genetics: communities.springernature.com/posts/a-love...

Aboard the HMS Hardy-Wijnberg with @dr-appie.bsky.social and @margotvdweijer.bsky.social

If someone you know buys into claims about "genetic optimization" of embryos using polygenic scores of cognition, just send them our 2024 paper on Beethoven & musicality. We wrote it to help communicate limits of individual-level genetic predictions & complexity of links between DNA & behaviour. 🧪👇

✅ Published in @natureportfolio.nature.com today, the paper describing the initial whole-genome sequencing analysis of 500,000 UK Biobank participants. Read here: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

New pre-print online: Imputing parental genotypes through Mendelian Imputation: Ethical and Legal Considerations osf.io/preprints/ps...

Psychiatric Genetics Beyond Heritability: Q&A with Michel Nivard ( @michelnivard.bsky.social ) “We look for genes as a means to an end—biology, epidemiology, and etiology of complex human outcomes.” www.psychiatrymargins.com/p/psychiatri...

Link to walk-up songs picked by attendees from the Musicality Genomics Consortium in 2023. I won't release who's who. Only unlinked suspects @profsimonfisher.bsky.social @musiccognition.bsky.social @mehr.nz @dr-appie.bsky.social @laurawesseldijk.bsky.social ... open.spotify.com/playlist/7rU...

🔔 LGN Summer Lecture! Wed 16 Jul @ UCL Bloomsbury. @dr-appie.bsky.social (Amsterdam UMC) on “Genetic Architecture of a Social Construct”. ☕ 15:30 coffee | 16:00 talk | 🤝 17:00 networking. Members: check your email for the invite from the LGN mailing list.

Sasha writes about our new study (led by bluesky-less Nikolai Eftedal) where we show how simple genetic models don't adequately fit correlations between multiple types of relatives. The mismatch between observed and expected correlations are interesting, which are explained well in his blog post:

That’s all my scicomm talks for my trip done! Thank you for hosting me at Amsterdam @dr-appie.bsky.social

How does art contribute to science? My friend @eliza-coli.bsky.social and I 'talked' about this in a comic! I'm preparing some lectures for my trip to NL to talk about visual scicomm and this is such a nice excuse to look back at my body of work rather than just the current deadline.

I'm in London in a couple of weeks giving a special lecture for the London Genetics Network @ldngenenet.bsky.social The event is open to members of the London Genetics Network, who can sign up here: www.eventbrite.com/e/lgn-specia...

What's going on in psychiatric genetics? The @pgcgenetics.bsky.social have now published our latest progress review in @thelancetpsych.bsky.social, highlighting discovery, and laying out a map for moving forwards! www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...

📣📣 Preprint just out from the awesome Xilin Jiang, Yujie Zhao & co! Pleiotropic heritability quantifies the shared genetic variance of common diseases www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1... The overlap of disease aetiologies is surprisingly pervasive... ~50% of common disease heritability is pleiotropic!

Anyone have any feedback on this yet? New and hopefully improved version coming soon! 🎲🧬

Research by van den Berg et al improves the usefulness of the UK Biobank (450,000 individuals) in understanding the genetics of measures of intelligence, leading to the discovery of many more cognition-related genetic variants. 🧵 by coauthor @dr-appie.bsky.social: buff.ly/iaZDK4c

I'm so excited to see this online now in TRENDS IN GENETICS: Advancing GWAS of Human Communication. I review latest developments in genetics of speech and language and highlight opportunities for research on genetics and evolution of human communication. authors.elsevier.com/a/1lHgMcQbJF...

Many subjects in UKB don't report their fluid intelligence scores. @hilarycmartin.bsky.social @dr-appie.bsky.social and colleagues impute these missing scores using correlated factors (e.g. income, health) to increase sample size and mitigate selection bias. www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1... #BioMed

Highly recommend this superb forum article on genomics of human communication traits, free to read in @cp-trendsgenetics.bsky.social. Beautifully succinct & accessible overview by @rosagisladottir.bsky.social on where the field is now & where it's heading. 🗣️💬🧠🧬🧪 www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Thanks to all co-authors particularly co-first authors David van den Berg (Abdel's group), Wei Huang (Matt's group) and Daniel Malawsky (my group) - none of whom are yet on bluesky!

For a lay-language summary and FAQ containing additional context, see the Supp www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1.... Thanks to @ewanbirney.bsky.social for his help on this.

Innovative methods produce interesting new genetics of intelligence. Integrated phenotyping improved power and careful imputation reduced ascertainment bias. New rare variants implicated in developmental disabilities may lead to new treatments. Excellent work in a difficult area.

New preprint - collab with the groups of @mehurles.bsky.social and @dr-appie.bsky.social. We imputed missing fluid intelligence test scores into ~170k @ukbiobank.bsky.social indivs & showed how this reduces bias and increases power for rare+common variant analyses. www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...

Studying the genetics of intelligence measures can help us understand the neurobiology of cognition and neurodevelopmental conditions 🧬🧠 We estimated missing intelligence test scores in @ukbiobank.bsky.social to reduce bias and boost power. Preprint: www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1... Thread 👇

1/🧵 Even more nature-nurture for school performance in @pnas.org! Nikolai Eftedal examined family resemblance in school performance in nearly 1 million students across their Norwegian relatives. doi.org/10.1073/pnas...

Our new paper was just published! It has all the right ingredients: - Behavioural genetics ✅ - Assortative mating ✅ - Discussions about nature-nurture of social outcomes ✅ - "Things are complicated"-conclusion ✅ - Summary statistics available for reanalysis! ✅ See Eivind's thread for more.

The comic based on @dr-appie.bsky.social recent paper in @nathumbehav.nature.com , introduces the idea that social structures and genetics shape each other. We made a LOT of creative decisions to tell this story - this thread is about my approach to visual storytelling.

🎤New #GENEAmsterdam interview online! Read about @meikebartels.bsky.social work on genetic & environmental influences on wellbeing, including her views on where the next 15 years will take us: www.geneticsnetworkamsterdam.org/blog/2025/06...

Excited about our new preprint: 1st successful genome-wide study of >61,000 panic attack and 29,000 panic disorder cases. www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1... We find 17 associations & evidence that peripheral neurons in eye, lungs and heart are involved in panic & other psychiatric disorders 1/n

🧵 THREAD: Preprint from @chrisrayner.bsky.social reveals how to fix selection bias in the Norwegian #MoBa study using population-wide registry data! For the first time, we can quantify and adjust for selection bias in this major epidemiological resource. Spread the good news! osf.io/preprints/os...