@jbenning.bsky.social @jedidiahcarlson.com et al. exemplify how confounding can lead to flawed inference on genetic causality. In studies of human behavior and social outcomes, the cost of downplaying this problem can be steep. royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/epdf/10.... bsky.app/profile/jben...

Why do complex traits differ in their genetic architecture? In our new PLOS Biology paper, we will try to convince you that two simple scaling laws drive differences in the number, effect sizes and frequencies of causal variants affecting complex traits. Thread: journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...

If you are at #ASHG2025 and would like to chat in person, please reach out! My lab is looking for curious scientists to join us, especially (but not limited to) postdoctoral researchers.

Delighted that our paper about the distribution of genomic spans of clades/edges in genealogies (ARGs), and using this for detecting inversions and other SVs (and other phenomena that cause local disruption of recombination) is out in MBE academic.oup.com/mbe/article/... (1/n)

Bittersweet to be leaving @docedge.bsky.social after a wonderful postdoc, but excited to share that I'm joining @uoregon.bsky.social next month as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Data Science.

1/13 In a new preprint, we (with @xliaoyi.bsky.social‬ in the ‪@arbelharpak.bsky.social‬ lab) find that expression from the “inactivated” X (Xi) is consequential for both female-male differences in gene expression and variation among females in disease and physiology: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Applications for the 2026 Stengl-Wyer Scholars Program are open! The program provides up to 3 years of support for talented postdoctoral researchers in the broad area of the diversity of life and/or organisms in their natural environments. Learn more here: utexas.infoready4.com/CompetitionS...

Amidst all the terrible and terrifying news, so lovely to hear of @jkpritch.bsky.social's election to the National Academy of Sciences. Congratulations!

a quick note on my paper with @jeffspence.bsky.social and @jkpritch.bsky.social on conditional frequency spectra, now out in a @genetics-gsa.bsky.social special issue: doi.org/10.1093/genetics/iyae210

More recently, Smith et al. (biorxiv.org/content/10.1...) proposed an estimator of polygenic score confounding that can be directly attributable to stratification/ancestry. They show that it is present in target data from Europe, other continents, even ancient DNA!

I wrote about how population stratification in genetic analyses led to a decade of false findings and almost certainly continues to bias emerging results. But we are starting to have statistical tools to sniff it out. A 🧵:

BREAKING The Trump administration is maintaining a funding freeze at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in defiance of two federal court orders. The ongoing freeze was confirmed by an NIH official and internal correspondence reviewed by Popular Information.

"One thing is certain: The changes we make ourselves will be healthier than the ones our adversaries demand." New work for @undark.org: undark.org/2025/02/06/o...

Think of a polygenic score you care about. Are direct genetic effects driving variation among people in this predictor? Or perhaps other, confounding factors? We at the @arbelharpak.bsky.social & @docedge.bsky.social Labs developed a method to tackle this question. [1/n]

“The distribution of highly deleterious variants across human ancestry groups”. Preprint with Anastasia Stolyarova and @gcbias.bsky.social: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Undergrads: apply to NYU's Summer Undergraduate Research Program in Biology! 10 weeks of research in a structured setting, featuring terrific mentors, exciting biology, housing in New York, and a stipend. as.nyu.edu/biology/outr...

If you’ve been directly impacted by a pause or cancellation of an NIH study session, we @forbes.com would like to talk to you

I am excited to share the first first-author paper of my PhD describing work with Changde Cheng, Mark Kirkpatrick and @arbelharpak.bsky.social has been published at AJHG! We ask if sex-differential gene expression drives sex-differential selection in humans. (1/14) www.cell.com/ajhg/fulltex...

My lab (aprilweilab.github.io) continues to develop GRG and ARG related methods & more. We are looking for a postdoc to join us.

Would you like to see @biorxivpreprint.bsky.social add a share to blue sky button?! I know I would! Share this post to let @richardsever.bsky.social @erictopol.bsky.social and others at bioarxiv know!

Three open-rank positions at UT Austin: Cluster in Advances in Artificial Intelligence and Data Science for Environmental Systems Apply here: apply.interfolio.com/158908

For many traits there is a correlation between the number of duplications or loss-of-function (LoF) mutations someone carries, and their phenotype. Curiously, for most traits, these effects are aligned in the SAME direction. Why?

Thread of some really great works out this week in the world of countering naive genetic thinking (e.g. hereditarianism, genetic determinism, scientific racism)

Clark, PNAS 2023 (C23) argued that people’s social status is largely determined by genetic variation. Here, we show these claims are unsubstantiated & that C23 tells us nothing about the contribution of genetics to status @jedidiahcarlson.com @arbelharpak.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...