My daughter Maya, who had to wear a scoliosis brace for 2 years, wants to connect with other teens who live with invisible diseases. www.under-the-iceberg.com/about

“Success in US science has come from sustained funding and welcoming the best talent from around the world, yet both of these advantages are in decline” www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

We are in the middle of MCB graduate admissions interviews. It has renewed my sense of hope—there are so many bright, empathic and resilient young people ready to help advance knowledge and make a difference.

It took scientists 11 years to compute 1-2/3=1/3

Balancing selection alert!! 🧬🧪 New preprint where we try to quantify how likely (or rather, unlikely) it is for balancing selection to maintain stable polymorphism, and how easy (or rather, challenging) it is to identify its signatures in genomes. #Popgen #MolecularEvolution #EvoBio #Science

A new preprint from the lab, with postdoc @deboraycb.bsky.social and collaborators @aidaandres.bsky.social and Tim Connallon: “Characterising the detectable and invisible fractions of genomic loci under balancing selection” www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Hey MD/PhD-bound Scholars 👋 Prepare for MSTP Program applications with PROPEL! This is an opportunity you don't want to miss! 📆 Feb 6 – Sign up for AMCAS essay reviews by MSTP grad students (QR code) 📆 Feb 13 – Submit essay draft for review 📆 Feb 20 – Receive Feedback

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.

The meeting will take place at the gorgeous IslandWood Resort on Bainbridge Island, a short ferry ride from downtown Seattle. Registration is free. We will cover travel and lodging for graduate students, and at least partially subsidize those costs for postdocs and assistant professors.

Excited to share our new preprint from the @arbelharpak.bsky.social Lab! How do recruitment into genetic studies and study characteristics impact what we infer about the genetic bases of traits, and what are the consequences? (1/21) www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

How well does TWAS estimate a gene’s direction of effect on a trait? We think of this as an important stress-test for the accuracy of TWAS. In a new pre-print, we find that TWAS gets the sign wrong around 20-30% of the time! doi.org/10.64898/202... 1/n

Here's my latest contribution to the @nytimes "Lost Science" series. Brenna Henn's sweeping study of African genetics has been frozen. Gift link: nyti.ms/3Ypmm1A

Oh come on… it is January SECOND. Who ALREADY broke our cluster?? #Wyntoff

This story is heartbreaking. Brenna Henn is a wonderful scientist, and the work their lab does is truly insightful. Anger and rage… www.nytimes.com/2026/01/02/s...

I'm usually skeptical about AI research tools. But Google's new tool for literature search is fantastic - because it does less, not more. New post: substack.com/home/post/p-...

Putting on my hat as @asn-amnat.bsky.social ASN President for a minute for a string of announcements, please share widely!!! 1. Student research awards are open for applications, to fund research expenses for 10 graduate students ($2000 each) nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com?url=https%3A...

Grateful to share our paper on gene-specific selective sweeps in human gut microbiomes, now out in Nature! It has been a joy to work with @rwolff.bsky.social, whose insights and hard work made this possible. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

What a beautiful paper! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Our latest preprint revisits the classic model of mutation-selection balance. Do human recessive genes fit Haldane's 100-year old model? This work is by the wonderful @jonj-udd.bsky.social, and co-mentored by @jeffspence.github.io www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Normalization of glucose in people with prediabetes, i.e. achieving remission, is linked to halving of major cardiovascular adverse events over ensuing decades www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...

Faculty at OHSU, UIowa, UCSF, UW–Madison, and VCU: Your next amazing mentee could be one 10‑minute conversation away. PROPEL Virtual Matchmaking Event is Jan 30: 9–1 PT. Faculty registration deadline extended to 5pm PT on Wed Dec 10: propelscholars.org/matchmaking-...

"Prebunking works by exposing people to the techniques used to create misleading arguments before they encounter them in the wild."

Amazing to be at the #CAGI7 conference. As a data PRODUCER, no less! Fascinating discussions about variants of unknown significance, and how to get rid of them. Sad they are almost always acronymized as VUS, and only once was it VOUS.

My quote of the day The probability that we may fail in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just. Abraham Lincoln

A study on 1.7 million people in Hong Kong shows superior hybrid immunity to Covid in people who got vaccinated before infection vs. people who got infected first. "Our findings are a direct rebuttal to arguments for natural immunity," the authors write. doi.org/10.1016/j.va...

Did you publish with researchers outside your lab during grad school? Or published as faculty with a student not under your supervision? I’m collecting examples of cross-lab collaboration in graduate training. Please share your experience & this post! Repository: bit.ly/4pT66BE

The era of coding agents is here. How do we approach this as scientists? Wednesday Dec 10th at 9am PT I'll livestream an interactive demo of what I have learned (matsen.group/agentic.html) about how to leverage agentic coding to do rigorous science. www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rbhs...

"I love Slate! Everything is so intuitive and seamless!!" - No grad program director or program manager I've ever met... For those who attempted to submit your apps to PhD programs and have gotten strange errors, my apologies for the added stress... Folks are working hard to resolve issues!! 🤞🏽

I have a new preprint demonstrating a genome-architecture-aware approach to inferring species trees and introgression landscapes from a small number of genomes. If you are interested in phylogenomics, birds, or hybridization, this is for you! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

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...

Reminder to everyone - mental health issues and depression generally do not just magically go away - it is important to be vigilant if you or ones you love have or are going through such issues www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/...

I wrote a little bit about the "missing heritability" question and several recent studies that have brought it to a close. A short 🧵

PROPEL builds community in science! Hear directly from our scholars at our 5th annual PROPEL Symposium!

For the first time in my career, I can’t tell people to trust what the CDC website says. And that is an incredibly sad and devastating place for this country to be.

I wrote about the recent autism-microbiome paper, why I think it's the most important microbiome paper this year, and what it says about the field open.substack.com/pub/blekhman...

The 2026 EMBL symposium 'Reconstructing the human past using ancient and modern genomics' is live with a fantastic invited speaker lineup! Abstract deadline 9 June. If work is ongoing, plan for Heidelberg in September😉. Organised by Maanasa Raghavan, @matejahajdi.bsky.social, Choongwon Jeong & me.

WE JUST KEEP WINNING. (UC President's Postdoctoral Fellowship Program RESTORED!!!!)

I'm a longtime fan of Affinity Designer as an affordable Illustrator-killer for figures, and... it's now free?! www.canva.com/newsroom/new... Highly recommended if you're sick of paying Adobe $. Maybe Canva can buy NPG too and get rid of the OA fees.

Judge bars Trump from fining University of California over discrimination : NPR share.google/ZrIFMLciT7ct...

Can confirm. I am okay and more motivated than ever to speak up. Nothing scares this administration more. Their power lies in our silence.

I wish more people would understand that real progress and innovation lies in using everyone’s potential, not just the few…that is where the real strength lies. The question is always, who is really benefiting from the status quo…let’s follow the money, shall we?

Powerful conversation on Next Question with Katie Couric from September: The Real Reason DEI Programs Failed According to Civil Rights Icon Bryan Stevenson. www.youtube.com/watch?app=de....

How do GWAS and rare variant burden tests rank gene signals? In new work @nature.com with @hakha.bsky.social, @jkpritch.bsky.social, and our wonderful coauthors we find that the key factors are what we call Specificity, Length, and Luck! 🧬🧪🧵 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

If you've ever rolled your eyes about research claiming that complex traits (from chocolate preference to socioeconomic status) have simple genetic explanations, check out this great paper from @jbenning.bsky.social @jedidiahcarlson.com @oliviarxiv.bsky.social Ruth Shaw @arbelharpak.bsky.social 🧪🧬

A devastating set of decisions on the part of UC leadership to withdraw support from our nationally recognized postdoc program that prioritizes research excellence combined with addressing our university public service mission. www.insidehighered.com/news/faculty...

The President's Postdoctoral Fellowship Program is one of the most coveted & prestigious positions for UC graduates. It gives a hiring incentive to campuses who hire recipients for a tenure track position. What a DAMN travesty. This is capitulation to Trump's demand letter & anti-diversity agenda.

And we have now progressed from data analysis to policy recommendations. I told her that we'd calculate the cash value of her candy haul, that I'd ask her to raid her piggy bank and donate 1/3 the candy cash value to a local food bank, and that I'd add on a 5X match.

Zara Weinberg passed away earlier this week. She joined my lab earlier this year when her postdoc lab formally closed. She was a brilliant scientist, supportive mentor, dear friend, avid music fan, rabid believer in public transit, open science champion, and above all just an amazing human.

Why PROPEL? Hear directly from our scholars at the 5th Annual PROPEL Symposium!