Happy holiday season, science people!

Ribosomal RNA (rRNA) genes are found in hundreds of copies in the human genome. Do sequence variations in these paralogs change the ribosome function? Yes! I am excited to share our new preprint @mbarnalab @jkpritch in collaboration with Calico: www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1... 1/8

Here's to something beautiful to start the day this Halloween Friday. I thought you might enjoy my spooky beautiful cat(tleya). ♥️

Today is the our @jacksonlab.bsky.social scientific symposium and faculty retreat, and I'm excited to hear about research being conducted by JAX trainee's and our institution's scientific trajectory. Love my research communities here in central Connecticut and Bar Harbor.

On the last day of #ASHG25, attending a telomere session entitled "end results" seems fitting. It's been a great meeting talking with vibrant young geneticists, and on this note, I'm hiring a postdoc! thejacksonlaboratory.wd503.myworkdayjobs.com/External_JAX...

I want to try something again at #ASHG25 this year: I'll block some time on Thursday and Friday afternoons to meet with trainees who would be interested to chat on any topic. I did this last year and it was great to meet a whole bunch of new people, at all career stages!

Kicking off the Annual Society of Human Genetics meeting in drizzly Boston with a program committee meeting! Welcome to #ASHG25, and hope to see your smiling, brilliant faces!

IT IS TIME.

My work today is sponsored by...

Hey Drosophilists: Might you maintain Fuyama's original gynogenetic "gyn-F9" (BDSC #5353) stock in your library? The current stock from Bloomington is not producing progeny with ms(k81) males. Thank you!!!

It's exciting to see the continuing legacy of T2T sequencing methods being discussed on @scifri.bsky.social ! 🧬 Complete genomes are helping us understand more and more about genetic function and diversity in areas of our DNA that were unreadable just a few years ago.

This was both fun and terrifying to tape! Awesome to talk with @glennislogsdon.bsky.social and @aphillippy.bsky.social about our sequencing data / paper, the improvements to large-scale sequencing projects, and what this means for our understanding of our DNA!

Someone asked me just today if RSS is “still a thing”. Friends, it definitely is! Though I will always sigh for google reader, RSS remains a fantastic way to pull in news from the sources you want to read, without “the algorithm” sucking you into rage and despair.

My wife assembled two complete human genomes and we couldn’t get that published anywhere.

Lovely write up on our paper from @jacksonlab.bsky.social. It's been <4 years since I joined the HGSVC, and together with Peter Audano and Parithi Balachandran in my lab, @tobiasmar.bsky.social, @glennislogsdon.bsky.social, and many others, we've done a lot. Here's to great collaborators!

Check out our latest work co-led by @dcsoto.bsky.social and @jmuribescr.bsky.social identifying hundreds of human duplicated gene families using the new T2T-CHM13 assembly, with a focus on those potentially contributing to brain evolution 🧪: authors.elsevier.com/a/1lTQtL7PXu...

Are you bravely deciding to do a postdoc in the US? And also interested in some combination of genomics, immunology, and transposons? If so, consider applying to my lab at the BioFrontiers Institute in Boulder, Colorado! jobs.colorado.edu/jobs/JobDeta... 🧪🧬 #TESky #interferosky

Very happy to share our protocols paper for CELLO-seq. This will make single cell long read RNA-seq more accessible and provides analysis guidelines. We hope this helps the #transposon #TEsky community and folks working on #singleCell isoform and allelic #gene expression. doi.org/10.1038/s415...

I has a monarch growing in my garden. That and the fireflies tonight have made my day more tolerable. What is keeping your head above water?

They finally made the milk from that hotel

I am thrilled to announce that in January 2026 I will be starting my own lab at NYU Biology! Soon enough I will be recruiting postdocs and students! Please reach out if you are interested with a CV and description of your research interests, or if you know of people who could be interested! 🧬🗽 🦊

🧬🌽 Happy Transposon Day! 🌽🧬 Today we celebrate the birthday of Barbara McClintock - scientist extraordinaire and discoverer of jumping genes. Still the only woman to have an unshared Nobel Prize in the biomedical sciences #TransposonDay2025

Completely germane to absolutely nothing, schadenfreude is my favorite Freud when it comes to certain people.

There's only ~1 week left for abstract submission for #ASHG25! Get your best stories submitted so we have more fun planning the program. Looking forward to seeing a ton of you genetics researchers in Boston this fall.

Kicking off Biology of Genomes with opening remarks by @tuuliel.bsky.social! @cshlnews.bsky.social #bog25

“This doesn't feel like a strategic plan to reorganize and make the NIH better and more efficient. It feels like a wrecking ball,” says an NIH insider, who asked 60 Minutes to protect his identity due to his concern about reprisal. https://cbsn.ws/3EKcER9

So long, and thanks for all the wonderful science discussions, Ann Arbor! It was so fun going back to the department I earned my PhD from to give a seminar. ♥️

As a recipient of federal grants from #NIH (for now! 😭) that funds research in my lab, I'd like to sincerely thank American taxpayers on #TaxDay for investing in scientific research that lays the foundation for medical and technological innovation in this country and keeps us all safe and healthy

Thesis defenses are a giant spot of joy any day. Today is a good science day for @ryan-englander.bsky.social and his amazing mentors @olgaanczukow.bsky.social and Karolina Palucka, who are both fabulous near peer faculty mentors too. Congratulations, all!

Everyone who told me "what's the harm in hyping de-extinction technology that doesn't work" can choke on a bag of black-footed ferret dicks www.washingtonpost.com/climate-envi...

Nature research paper: Complete sequencing of ape genomes https://go.nature.com/3EfWwqk

Connecticut showing up with a great crowd and great signage. I Think You Should Leave is somehow a perfect thing to quote.

Looking forward to attending #ACMG25 for the first time! Any fellow science nerds here in LA?

1/ Transposable elements are often called "jumping genes" because they mobilize within genomes. 🧬 But did you know they can also jump 𝘣𝘦𝘵𝘸𝘦𝘦𝘯 cells? 🤯 Our new study reveals how retrotransposons invade the germline directly from somatic cells. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... A short thread 🧵👇

a must read for retrovirus, ERV, piRNA and transposon aficionados. see also recent work from the group of @astridhaase.bsky.social on the importance of transposon insertions downstream of host genes for for piRNA-based immunity.

A beautiful blustery day in Hartford Connecticut to gather in support of scientific funding and research. Great that @blumenthal.senate.gov showed up, too!

Stunned at every firing, but when I saw Dr. Andy Hazelton among them, I knew this was madness. He is literally a voice of expertise, patriotism, and knowledge for us all during hurricane season

Imagine if every time a patient received a treatment they were given reminders of the role of NSF/NIH in enabling that treatment.

This is my 20 year old cat, Rita- With me since grad school, she has gotten saltier and less tolerant of people of unknown quantity in her old age. I feel the same these days, girl.

DOGE By The Numbers theonion.com/doge-by...

I’ll keep pushing this line of analysis because I’m increasingly convinced the clearest path out of this mess is for Dems to adopt a relentless anti-corruption, anti-inequality, anti-oligarchy, pro-democracy platform. The Dem leadership hasn’t realized it yet, but they’re now a reform party.

The 5 calls app on your phone +15 minutes of your time == your voice, heard. Let people that can affect change know the nuance of how, precisely, the power of the legislative branch is being subverted by this move. This is a power citizen voters can wield. When have faculty not used their voice?

Major U.S. health agencies, including the NIH and the CDC, are firing thousands of probationary employees this afternoon. Follow Science’s coverage of President Donald Trump’s impact on U.S. research and science globally. ⬇️ scim.ag/40XtSSi

Did you know that human immunoglobulin constant genes are crazy diverse? It's got me thinking...Proud of Uddalok Jana! And grateful for collabs @guryaari.bsky.social @williamlees.bsky.social @ayeletperes.bsky.social @e-engelbrecht1.bsky.social @yscientist.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

In a scientific lecture to start the day, and feeling really happy. Focus on the science if you can; for me this is joy.

🧬🦠🧠🥼🧪📈🟦 @ebi.embl.org: Many scientists are worried that vital biomedical data housed in U.S. government databases is at risk. Which aspects of NCBI are mirrored on EMBL-EBI? Do you plan to back up more U.S. data? @altcdc.bsky.social @altnih4science.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/d41...

As a program committee member, give us some great proposals for Featured Symposia! I look forward to reading them all.

If you see this, quote with flowers from your gallery.

New plant shelf, a phalaenopsis in bloom, and a delicious coffee to keep me warm on this cold Saturday.

Review: Diversity and consequences of structural variation in the human genome https://www.nature.com/articles/s41576-024-00808-9 (read free: https://rdcu.be/d64zN) 🧬🖥️🧪