A genome-wide comparison of #gene regulatory sequences & embryonic gene expression in arachnids - new insights into the impact of the arachnopulmonate whole #genome duplication academic.oup.com/gbe/article/... #biodiversity #genomics

Very excited to share the capstone of my postdoc work with @stepheniwright.bsky.social, co-led by Wright lab grad student Cassandre with contributions from many others. We combined new methods with high-quality Rumex assemblies to dive into the remarkable history of rearrangement in this genus.

New Dialogue and Debate from #G3Journal: Réka Howard and Alexander Lipka argue for simpler models in genomic selection and question whether complexity undermines scientific validity. Read more: buff.ly/CW7psYB

Whoo-whee! 4 new ONT Testudine & 4 new PacBio Fagaceae genomes just landed in my inbox right before the holidays! I'd call that a santa-stic present! That's just a fraction of new genomes that my lab will be assembling, annotating, and doing some fun evo-genomics with in 2026. Happy holidays y'all!

Preprint up now! With @ferrisifolius.bsky.social, we found positive selection on leaf shape plasticity across the altitudinal range of the cutleaf monkeyflower. This experiment was a HUGE personal undertaking. If you give it a read, I’d love to hear your thoughts! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Now accepted in Genetics! academic.oup.com/genetics/adv... We ask why and when rescaling of forward simulations in population genetics is not accurate. There are some interesting results for people performing simulations with selection.

Happy to highlight an essay I wrote together with @marcdemanuel.bsky.social, @natanaels.bsky.social and Anastasia Stolyarova, trying to think through what sets the mutation rate of a cell type in an animal species: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... 1/n

Salmonids reveal principles of regulatory evolution following autotetraploidization https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2025.12.18.695160v1

My favorite event of the year! Thank you to everyone who made it to the poster session for my research methods class at White Labs Brewing Co! Such a great group of students! Watch for several upcoming publications from all the cool experiments we did in 15 weeks.

We're hiring @sandiegostate.bsky.social in interdisciplinary border/indigenous studies - broadly defined! Work in our border and binational communities (e.g. trans-border flora/fauna, rural/urban issues, food security in desert communities, etc.)? Consider applying! careers.sdsu.edu/en-us/job/55...

Very happy to share that I just published a new paper from my thesis! 🎉 We analysed 546 species of ant to understand how extreme specialisation into reproductive and non-reproductive roles evolved.  Key discoveries in thread🧵 👇 Full paper here: academic.oup.com/evolut/advan...

Re-upping this for San Diego friends on here - do join us!

Have you ever wondered: just how strong *is* the evidence for Muller's ratchet on mtDNA? Well, wonder no more! (Project led by Yu Mo, with @smishra677.bsky.social and @yadirapga.bsky.social) "No molecular evidence for Muller's ratchet in mitochondrial genomes" www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Fun collab w an awesome group of ecologists, led by Jenn Williams and Tom Miller! Linking Climate and Demography to Predict PopulationDynamics and Persistence Under Global Change dx.doi.org/10.1111/ele....

Absolutely thrilled to share the latest work from my lab focused on the variation and evolution of human centromeres among global populations! We assembled 2,110 human centromeres, identifying 226 new major haplotypes and 1,870 α-satellite HOR variants. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Seasonal adaptation leaves genome-wide signatures across all traits, while food quality drives narrower, oligogenic responses—showing populations can track multiple environmental axes at once. Now out in Evolution Letters academic.oup.com/evlett/artic...

Preprint online right before the holidays! Excited to share the first piece of work from the Zhang Lab, led by my absolutely stellar postdoc Michelle Kim! In this work, we ask how admixture, selection and demography shape complex trait genetics and GWAS performance www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Population-scale long-read datasets, involving sequencing and de novo assembly of multiple individuals within a species, are better at capturing the full spectrum of structural variants, but such datasets are rare outside of humans www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... #biodiversity #genomics

Aaah! What a joyful weekend, singing my heart out with the San Diego Gay Men’s Chorus at the historical Balboa Theatre, featuring special guests - Senator @schiff.senate.gov, and my lab! ❤️

Now TWO great new papers on why frequencies of disease genes rarely match expectations Here was the first: 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...

Re-read ‘The Road’ (first time was back in 2007) for book club!

Okay I’m kinda embarrassed to be posting this but I’ve received a lot of ‘hate’ messages about my last post about thanking your admin/janitors. Yikes. Yes I’m too poor to do more than $20, yes I’m too ‘rich’ to do more. Folks - it’s not the $. Just be nice please. Wow.

Welcome aboard! Looking forward to another awesome year of working with these phenomenal colleagues at @genetics-gsa.bsky.social!

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🧵:

Oh, look! My friends around Magdalena Fraser & Federico Sanchez-Quinto et al have a new study analyzing more high-coverage Neolithic #aDNA genomes from the Baltic island of Gotland (including pathogens!!!) 👀 🧪 🏺 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

I’m so speechless at this meaningless cruelty and disrespect for the best of our citizens who often had to QUIT TENURED JOBS to serve our country instead. Way to make us great again I guess 🤬

1/4 Thrilled to be sharing new work published today in Nature describing the third wave of results from the PGC Cross-Disorder Group. This reflects a massive group effort to examine shared and unique genetic signal across >1 million cases for 14 psychiatric disorders. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

I for one, don’t care for Times New Roman or Calibri either. Arial, Comic Sans, or Wingdings. Nothing in between.

1/28 New preprint up, which I think is the best theoretical idea I've ever had. We asked a simple question: what are the costs of investment into non-reproductive somatic cells? Turns out these costs decrease with the *logarithm* of organism size! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Yay - Monday evening grant rejection. This job is so giving…tis the season 😿

The UC Davis Ecology and Evolution in Working Landscapes REU provides undergrads with research experience in ecology and evolution in natural and managed landscapes. Apply now through Feb 15 via etap.nsf.gov Contact me or @clhom.bsky.social for questions!

It us - your awesome @genetics-gsa.bsky.social Board of Directors, staff, & colleagues at the annual Board meeting in PIT. So proud of serving our community of genetics to ‘design’ our next year at G3, Genetics, Worm, Dros, Yeast, Fly, and other meetings.

Dated gene duplications elucidate the evolutionary assembly of eukaryotes www.nature.com/articles/s41... #jcampubs

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...

My heart! ❤️

San Diego area friends - students from my Fall '25 BIOL 596 Research Methods class will present posters from their semester-long projects on Thursday, 12/18 from 4-6 PM at White Labs Brewing Co. (across from the MCAS in Miramar). Deets in the flyer! Do join us and stay for pizza and "hoppy" hour.

Nothing could be better than bedtools. But maybe something could be bedder…

Sure, the federal government can derecognize World AIDS Day, but I’m so glad to live in this beautiful city where our elected officials understand that the HIV epidemic is still upon us, & that we will not rest until we get to zero, provide equitable access to PreP/PeP, treatment, & end the stigma.

Whoop! New preprint has dropped - led by the amazing @trevormugoya.bsky.social. We developed a SV-calling and benchmarking platform called SaVor and test it on 1,165 Arabidopsis thaliana short read whole genomes. Do check out the paper, and try SaVor on your own data: github.com/ChabbyTMD/Sa...

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...

Happy holidays from my very gay queer academic group to ya!

How do new centromeres evolve while staying compatible with the division machinery? Discover it in our new Nature paper! We show centromeres transition gradually via a mix of drift, selection, and sex, reaching new states that still work with the kinetochore. 👉 doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-09779-1

The last work of my PhD is finally out: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...! This work is about accurately estimating branch length in the Ancestral Recombination Graph (ARG), which is achieved by a really simple framework with minimal assumptions. (1/n)

Embarrassing - meanwhile, if I didn’t have a pertussis vaccine (or a gamut of other vaccines), I would have been refused entry into the United States as an immigrant. Meaningless deaths, almost entirely preventable by vaccines, which our CDC should insist and ensure that that every child receives.

Ever wondered whether dogs are a different species from wolves? On an ecological, and behavioral basis, I think so. The Dec 2 issue of PNAS will be interesting! www.pnas.org/toc/pnas/122... and the introductory article to the issue: doi.org/10.1073/pnas... . Here: my daughter, my son, and our dog:

New paper just posted with @rschley.bsky.social et al: doi.org/10.1111/nph.... (1/n)

This is among the silliest ones by Larson, but always makes me smile.

How and for whom can genetics education reduce beliefs in genetic essentialism? pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41267401/ "We also find that the 3 intervention curricula are highly effective across sociodemographic group characteristics [...] we offer evidence-based strategies for curriculum development"