Deeply interesting comment on a paper on compensatory evolution following "host" adaptation to a selfish genetic element. Reminescent of our finding of compensatory protein stability evolution after ancient viral epidemics. #evolution www.nature.com/articles/s41...

It is unfortunate that this has to be reminded so much to reviewers at all steps: doing this things right or at least as well as possible IS in itself a strong innovation.

You know you have great collaborators when they bring your own enthusiasm back at times when it has been vacillating. You know who you are :).

A bad case of using a non official gene/protein name that makes it even worse by introducing ambiguity with another gene name. This makes curation efforts far more difficult: pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC...

1/2) #bioinformatics people interested in #genome alignment, has anyone tried to do "adaptive seeding throttling" where after a long run time a lastz job would go into an adaptive mode where it detects that a specific repeat is initiating too many seeds, which would trigger lastz to mask it?

I have now heard repeatedly from non-US PIs they stopped to go to American confs because the PIs there being socially exclusive and not including much anyone else in social interactions. I have also seen it, I find it disconcerting to this day.

@pratikkatte.bsky.social and I just released Lorax 🌲, a tool for interactive exploration of biobank-scale ancestral recombination graphs (ARGs). If you’ve ever wanted to scroll across the ancestries of thousands of genomes… this is for you.

Recently we're working with SNPs from whole genome assemblies to estimate ARGs. It's a pain to go from alignment files to vcf, keeping track of masked and invariant sites. So we wrote a snakemake/SLURM pipeline. Hope it's useful to others, and don't hesitate to post issues if there are problems!

The Goldberg lab at UCLA is hiring one or more postdocs. Flexible start date. We develop methods to study population genetics of humans, our primate relatives, and our pathogens. www.goldberglab.org/join

Have you ever wondered how many archaic populations contributed DNA to modern humans? We know about Neanderthals and Denisovans, but the fossil and genetic evidence suggests a much more complex history! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Excited to share our new preprint! 🍇🧬 We analyzed 639 genomes across 48 grape species to understand how hybridization drives adaptation. • ~14% of average Vitis genome is introgressed • Most parallel adaptations are shared via gene flow • Two "hybrid species" are actually hybrid swarms

For those interested, a new version (v3.1.0) of poolfstat is now on CRAN, including new functions and updates, new stats (Fh, Fd, FdM) implemented in sliding.windows.fstat; and a revised vignette. [https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/poolfstat/index.html](cran.r-project.org/web/packages...)

To add one thing: if you have the data to run both classic dN/dS tests and MK tests, choose the latter. dN/dS tests are blind to positive selection in the important, constrained proteome, while MK test will work regardless of constraint, if DFE well estimated. #evolution #adaptation #popgen

1/5) Re-reading this excellent paper on using mutation-selection balance models to quantify positive selection. The discussed lack of congruence between MK approaches and classic dN/dS test is entirely unsurprising, see thread below. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Always a great feeling when the new labs in the EEB Department @uofa-eeb.bsky.social each attract multiple fantastic new grad students. Very happy to see younger colleagues succeed.

Great news for anyone using ARGs in non-model species: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Happy to share our last study on how age, biological sex and genetics affect not only the extent of antibody responses against viruses but also the specific viral epitopes recognised. Thanks to Axel Olin @EtiennePatin @LabExMI @institutpasteur @cdf1530 @CNRS www.nature.com/articles/s41...

I am seeking a postdoc to join my group at UCLA -- ideally the candidate would have some experience in either population genetics or microbes/microbiome (computational background needed). We have a range of projects and are happy to tailer to your interests. Please dm/email me if interested.

Are you interested in human DNA from ancient sediments? Do you want to do a PhD in Vienna? We have two open positions in our group! You can learn more and apply here (scroll down to the very bottom, ours are the last two listings): careers.univie.ac.at/en/praedoc/s...

Counting publications is such a poor proxy for scientific productivity. Counting discoveries, with a bonus for discoveries that were not anticipated, and important insights is a much better proxy. I am wondering if there are standardized, systematic ways of quantifying this.

That looks great! To avoid errors due to starting with spotty gene annotations (gene loss vs. not annotated), I would suggest re-annotating every genome used with TOGA2 from the Hiller lab: github.com/hillerlab/TO... Many annotations out there are not optimal and TOGA2 has great power and accuracy.

Calling all OrthoFinder users! We’ve just released GLADE, a tool to infer gene gains, losses, duplications, and ancestral genomes across a phylogeny. GLADE runs directly on OrthoFinder results. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... github.com/lauriebelch/... (1/10)

📣 *Abstract submission by January 31st* "Host adaptations to viral infections” International Meeting May 10th-13th 2026 @cnrs.fr Station Biologique Roscoff, Brittany, France Register & Join us +amazing international speakers! #CNRS @cnrsbiologie.bsky.social #IRP www.insb.cnrs.fr/fr/evenement...

PEQG! My favorite conference ever*. Single session, fantastic talks, great discussions. Only once every 2 years. And in the best conference location too! Abstract deadline coming up Feb 5! *Disclosure: I am required to say it's the best conference because it is and I told my mom I wouldn't lie.

This is shaping up to be a great workshop. There is still time to register before the deadline! Please RT! #evolution #viruses #pathogens

I forgot using tags again: #evolution #genomics #machinelearning #CNNs

1/5) After months scratching our heads (Is this why I am bald?) when analyzing the performance of CNNs to find sweeps in real genomes, postdoc Jesus Murga Moreno figured out that training with simulations with recombination that closely reflects the distribution of recombination in the real genome

Very interesting alternative to maximum likelihood to reconstruct ancestral sequences.

Interesting to think about in the context of mass extinctions. Is there evidence of very large but phenotypically homogenous species having greater extinction probability?

New preprint! and my first single-author paper, so bear with me. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... Malaria population genetic studies have found some puzzling patterns: Ne estimates spanning orders of magnitude, genome-wide negative Tajima's D, and over a quarter of genes with πN/πS >1 1/n

Registration deadline is fast approaching for the "Host adaptations to viral infections” Meeting May 10th-13th, 2026, at the CNRS Station Biologique de Roscoff, Brittany, France! JOIN US and the many amazing speakers! JOIN US! sites.google.com/berkeley.edu...

Just sharing new tool written by Vincent Ranwez to view and manipulate sequences and alignments directly in your terminal github.com/ranwez-searc... Pretty convenient!

Congratulations to the winners of the 2025 Genomic History Inference Strategies Tournament challenges! Among the 9 challenges, we had five winners: @alwaysrong.bsky.social, @adaigle.bsky.social, @andrewhvaughn.bsky.social, @thymelicus.bsky.social, @rgollnisch.bsky.social

Final version of paper with @smishra677.bsky.social now published in a wonderful issue of GENETICS! academic.oup.com/genetics/art...

Excited about our new preprint showing bidirectional adaptive introgression between invasive and native crop pests over ecological timescales www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

This headline is wrong and misleading, and the brief text below it is not much better. Whatever might constitute a full explanation of the differences between sapiens and other hominins, we remain confident that 'genes' will be central to it. www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Check the latest preprint from the lab, #Virus, #evolution, #VirusEvolution, armchair #virology

The number of RTs for this preprint that took an absolutely massive amount of work and conceptual effort is interesting to say the least. Probably time to try other avenues of dissemination.

Stuck in the cell: trapping viruses in infected cells was a frequent adaptation strategy in human hosts https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2025.12.12.693836v1

🦇 Two PhD positions available on our new ARC Discovery Grant: "From Diversity to Disease: Viral Ecology, Evolution and Persistence in Bats" The project will investigate how viral diversity evolves and persists, with a particular focus on recently discovered henipaviruses in Australian flying foxes.

Join us on Tuesday!

1/3) PhD student Mary Reed Weston analyzed virus-driven human adaptation across the viral replication cycle based on ~8,000 annotated proviral and antiviral effects manually curated from the virology literature. The steps of entry and release clearly stand out: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Yes: deleterious recessives aren’t completely recessive! An important study confirming intuitions from at least some of us.

I am proud to share a new paper out of our lab. We showed that our antimicrobial works with copper and zinc to kill MRSA & Staph epi. It can function through mature biofilms they form and on multiple surfaces. This outstanding work was led by Yamil Sanchez-Rosario. journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/...

GWAS has been an incredible discovery tool for human genetics: it regularly identifies *causal* links from 1000s of SNPs to any given trait. But mechanistic interpretation is usually difficult. Our latest work on causal models for this is out yesterday: www.nature.com/articles/s41... A short🧵:

The Sudmant Lab & Wilsterman Lab are hiring a postdoc! Come work on the genetics and evolution of the placenta and dissecting genetic adaptations to altitude in deer mice! Check out more details here: evol.mcmaster.ca/brian/evoldi... www.sudmantlab.org www.thewilstermanlab.com Please Share!

Yay! Joy & excitement for the #science ahead & for our #team @ciri-lyon.bsky.social, who is getting @erc.europa.eu #Consolidator grant support to work on the FUNctional EVOlution of mammalian innate immunity #FUNEVO ! So thankful to #ERC and #everyone who contributed & provided support along the way

Popgen folks, Jiseon, Nate, and Andy, along with Yuxin Ning and Franz Baumdicker, just released a really cool new method for simulation based inference (think ABC) using normalizing flows. It seems to work really well! full joint posteriors ftw! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Our new ancient DNA paper has just been published! We present 28 new genomes from southern Africa - several of them high-coverage whole genomes. Exciting to be moving towards population-level representation of ancient southern African genetic diversity! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Abstract submission & Award applications for SMBE 2026 are now open! Submit your research and apply for SMBE awards via the submission portal. 📝 Read more & submit here: smbe2026.org/abstracts And symposium selection is now finalized! 👉 See all accepted symposia: smbe2026.org/programme #SMBE2026