How does human genetics research live in the information ecosystem? Is it misused? Misrepresented? In my paper with @sramach.bsky.social, we tackle this question with 25 years of Wikipedia data, AI chatbot responses, and pages from Grokipedia www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

From Wikipedia to AI: Measuring 25 years of synthesis of human genetics research in the public-facing information ecosystem

Genetics research frequently intersects with ethnicity, nationality, and race, making it uniquely vulnerable to misrepresentation. Yet, 25 years after the initial sequencing of the human genome, there...

biorxiv.org

I am excited to share my first first-author preprint (co-led by Srivi Balaji) with @becca-young.bsky.social and @arbelharpak.bsky.social. We ask if AI can be used for good; specifically, whether we can use AI to grab species trait data from primary literature. (1/11) www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

#PEQG26: The Harpak Lab is coming in hot! 1/10

postdoc alert 🚨! NIH-funded postdoc in my lab to work on Ancestral Recombination Graphs in space. Please spread the word widely in your networks, and please reach out if you're interested! (2-3yr position, start date flexible, pay/benefits good!). details here: careers.umich.edu/job_detail/2...

recruitment

Multiple positions available: ​ Postdoc PhD students

genescape.org

Our paper on recurrent independent duplications in the primate amylase locus is now out in Cell Reports! Huge thanks to @petarpajic, @spit-lab.bsky.social and @gokcumenlab.bsky.social for their support. More about the work in the thread below from when we first shared the preprint last August.

Convergent evolution through independent rearrangements in the primate amylase locus

Structurally complex loci can repeatedly generate similar traits; Karageorgiou et al. established primate amylase locus as a structural variation hotspot, potentially seeded by transposable elements. ...

cell.com

I am delighted to share new work with Simon Myers (www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...), on how genetic variants that influence binding patterns of PRDM9 and slow down the repair of meiotic double-strand breaks impact mammalian spermatogenesis and fertility. 1/n

Great work from Sheel Chandra and Ziyue Gao: “Overall, our findings reveal that the base composition at polymorphic sites is strongly shaped by the interaction between demographic history, mutation bias, and gBGC, and does not represent stable, genome-wide trends.”

bioRxiv Evolutionary Biology@biorxiv-evobio.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Interpreting GC content differences across populations at polymorphic sites https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.05.16.725686v1

Happy to highlight new findings by Vanesa Getseva and Lin Poyraz about the sources of variation in germline mutation rates among humans: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... Joint work with Anastasia Stolyarova and @ipsitaagarwal.bsky.social. 1/n

I am excited to share my first paper, our new preprint: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... with @arbelharpak.bsky.social and @docedge.bsky.social. Family GWAS provides direct genetic effect estimates and is increasingly important. But how much can we trust these estimates? (1/15)

Reposting this old thread on the "Pervasive findings of directional selection" from ancient DNA. While the authors extended their results in various ways, I think many of these points still stand.

Graham Coop@gcbias.bsky.social · 2y ago

My lab read this paper www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... for journal club, and had some thoughts on the strong claims made about the number of signals of selection found.

(1/9) Our work (with @xliaoyi.bsky.social @arbelharpak.bsky.social) exploring the role of genes that escape X-chromosome inactivation in shaping the genetic architecture of sex-specific traits is now officially out in Molecular Biology and Evolution! academic.oup.com/mbe/article/...

@hggadvances.bsky.social sat with Steven Gazal, PhD, in the latest "Inside HGG Advances" to discuss his recently published paper, “Evaluating genetic ancestry inference from single-cell transcriptomic datasets.”➡️ https://bit.ly/4b3MQgn #ASHG #GeneticsDiscoveries

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.

Fun news! @gcbias.bsky.social and I are teaching a 2-week online population genetics workshop this summer to raise money for the Center for Population Biology at UC Davis. We're trying to gauge interest -- please fill this out if you might be interested! And please share broadly!

Davis Summer Population Genomics Program

Want to learn population genetics? Please fill out this form to indicate your potential interest in a 2-week intensive online summer population genetics course taught by Jeffrey Ross-Ibarra and Graham...

docs.google.com

Reminder that the abstract deadline for the Biology of Genomes meeting at CSHL is on Feb 13! We have a fantastic lineup of keynote speakers (Janet Kelso and Jonathan Pritchard) and session chairs. Submit your best science to this exciting and engaged meeting! meetings.cshl.edu/meetings.asp...

The Biology of Genomes

Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Meetings & Courses -- a private, non-profit institution with research programs in cancer, neuroscience, plant biology, genomics, bioinformatics.

meetings.cshl.edu

New preprint from our big collaborative evolution experiment in 9 whole lakes in Alaska, written by McGill grad student @lucaseckert.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... What happens if you put a mixture of multiple source populations together to complete & evolve in multiple new lakes?

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.

Homepage - 2026 Population, Evolutionary, and Quantitative Genetics Conference

Visit our website to learn more.

genetics-gsa.org

Our work on the generalizability of polygenic scores (PGS) from the @arbelharpak.bsky.social Lab is now officially out! We examine the accuracy of PGS predictions at the individual level. We make 3 observations that expose gaps in our understanding of PGS “portability.” rdcu.be/e0LAr (1/27)

Three open questions in polygenic score portability

Nature Communications - Genetic predictors of health outcomes often drop in accuracy when applied to people dissimilar to participants of large genetic studies. Here, the authors investigate the...

rdcu.be

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...

Representation in genetic studies affects inference about genetic architecture

Knowledge of a trait's "genetic architecture," namely the joint distribution of allele frequencies of causal variants and the direction and magnitude of their effects, is essential to understanding it...

biorxiv.org

I am looking for a postdoc to develop high-performance algorithms in computational genomics. Email or DM me if interested. For more information, see hlilab.github.io/vacancies. RTs appreciated!

I’m very excited to share our new preprint with @arbelharpak.bsky.social! We meta-analyze male-female allele frequency divergences across studies (gnomAD, UKB, AoU) and ask what drives the observed differences. (1/12) www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

I wrote about the bizarre case of Herasight, the embryo selection company going all in on eugenics.

Embryo selection company Herasight goes all in on eugenics

...

open.substack.com

"What James Watson got wrong about DNA" By the great Sohini Ramachandran (@sramach.bsky.social) and your boy for The Boston Globe (@bostonglobe.com). www.bostonglobe.com/2025/11/14/o...

What James Watson got wrong about DNA - The Boston Globe

The science he helped pioneer consistently undermines his view that genes determine everything about us.

bostonglobe.com

My department at UT Austin is looking to hire an Assistant Professor in Evolutionary Biology, broadly defined. Feel free to reach out to me with any questions you may have. apply.interfolio.com/177547

An empirical approach to evaluating the prevalence of long-lived balancing selection in humans--and important limitations. Work by @hannahmm.bsky.social

bioRxiv Evolutionary Biology@biorxiv-evobio.bsky.social · 9mo ago

Revisiting the evidence for long-lived balancing selection in humans. https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.11.10.687682v1

@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...

John Benning@jbenning.bsky.social · 9mo ago

We're excited to share the final version of our paper, where we demonstrate how confounding remains a thorny problem for claims about causal genetic influences on human behavioral and socioeconomic outcomes. (w/ @jedidiahcarlson.com @oliviarxiv.bsky.social Ruth Shaw @arbelharpak.bsky.social) 🧵👇

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/...

Simple scaling laws control the genetic architectures of human complex traits

Genome-wide association studies have revealed that the genetic architectures of complex traits vary widely. This study shows that differences in architectures of highly polygenic traits arise mainly f...

journals.plos.org

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)

The Length of Haplotype Blocks and Signals of Structural Variation in Reconstructed Genealogies

Abstract. Recent breakthroughs have enabled the accurate inference of large-scale genealogies. Through modelling the impact of recombination on the correla

academic.oup.com

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.