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

Another sunset in Tucson.

It's the home stretch teaching undergrad Evolutionary Genetics with @aneil-agrawal.bsky.social using my Primer of Mol Pop Gen text! Grateful it's free for all 67 of our students courtesy @uoftlibraries.bsky.social LMK if you use it and suggestions for improvements! global.oup.com/academic/pro...

Nothing like a nap in the sun.

Happening today! Join us to learn more about CAMBIUM NRT Fellowships!

📖Latest from the lab: Evo. characterization #antiviral #SAMD9/9L across #kingdoms🚶‍♀️🦍🦠🧫🖥️: ancient #convergence + #adaptations @natecoevo.nature.com Led by amazing Alexandre Legrand +major contributions by Rémi Demeure & Amandine Chantharath @ciri-lyon.bsky.social 1/n www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Resending this, please RT!

Excited to share our new preprint on BioRxiv! A collaborative effort spanning many years and several labs to uncover what the germline chromosomes of Paramecium really look like. 🔗 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... 1/5

Community competitions help benchmark approaches in computational biology. Struck et al. now present GHIST 2024 - The First Genomic History Inference Strategies Tournament, for the inference of evolutionary history from genome data. 🔗 doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msaf257 #evobio #molbio #compbio #popgen

If you're looking for a faculty position at the intersection of ecology and computing (both broadly defined), please apply to this joint search between the CEE Department and the College of Computing at MIT: cee.mit.edu/people/share...

Join us on Nov 18 at 2:30 PM MST to learn about CAMBIUM grad fellowships in biodiversity informatics & climate change @uarizona.bsky.social. For incoming Fall 2026 students interested in big data, ecology, evolution, climate adaptation & more. Register: events.trellis.arizona.edu/en/f44lNu67/... 🌵🧬🌐

Also addresses the problem of studying positive selection in the presence of constraint. Many observed differences in + sel. are in fact just differences in selective constraint and the space it leaves for + sel., thus masking the true correspondence between + sel. and selective pressures.

just in time for #batweek --Phylogenetic and ML analyses show that viral epidemic potential is not uniform among bats: virulence, transmissibility, and death burden cluster within distinct clades.🦇@carolinecummings.bsky.social @colincarlson.bsky.social @viralemergence.org go.sn.pub/acnbg1

This preprint shows that the huge recent progress of non-coding effect predictions is likely going to help tremendously in this area. A must read. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

The Johri Lab has an open postdoc position. Please send me an email, if interested. Start date is flexible. Please do share! Thank you in advance.