My department (Biology at Emory) is hiring for a teaching track position! These are stable, well-respected, long-term positions with a path to promotion and ppl often staying for decades. The dept is wonderfully supportive and filled with amazing humans (faculty + staff) apply.interfolio.com/191814

📣📣📣 The University of Gothenburg (Sweden) is recruiting 25 (yes, 25!) Assistant Professors in a wide range of disciplines (from arts to education to geology to maths), two of these at our Faculty. Happy to talk to anyone interested in knowing more about Sweden, Gothenburg or GU!

Gothenburg Global Scholars Initiative

The University of Gothenburg is launching the Global Scholars Initiative – a coordinated international recruitment effort comprising 25 research positions across a broad range of disciplines and facul...

gu.se

Excited to have this out in the world! @lacefieldlab.bsky.social and I discuss meiotic checkpoints, with a focus on how they may be tuned both in and across systems to reflect the mechanistic trade-offs, evolutionary constraints and unique goals and innovations of meiosis. 🧪

Soni Lacefield@lacefieldlab.bsky.social · last mo.

Excited to share this review that @needhibhalla.bsky.social and I wrote on meiotic checkpoints! www.annualreviews.org/content/jour...

What does an ovary actually look like as it ages—one oocyte at a time? We mapped >85,000 oocytes in >100 intact mouse ovaries, in 3D, across the reproductive lifespan. And the ovary turned out to be much more organized than we expected. 🧵 1/5 www.nature.com/articles/s43...

Three-dimensional mapping of intact ovaries reveals the aging dynamics of the ovarian reserve - Nature Aging

The spatiotemporal dynamics of the depletion of the ovarian reserve remain incompletely understood. Combining whole-ovary imaging, AI and modeling, the authors mapped over 85,000 mouse oocytes and fou...

nature.com

+ scale_fill_viridis_c()

Excited for @gabrielesgarlata.bsky.social’s new preprint on the Genome-Wide Effect of Drift and Selection over a Single Generation 1/n www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

The Genome-Wide Effect of Drift and Selection over a Single Generation

The relative importance of genetic drift versus selection to evolutionary change has long been debated. This debate has mainly focused over long-time-scales (e.g. hundreds of thousands of generations)...

biorxiv.org

I’m thrilled to share that our search for a tenure-track colleague in my *truly wonderful and collegial* Genetics, Genomics, Evolution and Development Division in the MCB Department at Berkeley @berkeleymcb.bsky.social is live! Please share this broad search widely: aprecruit.berkeley.edu/JPF05481

Assistant Professor -Genetics, Genomics, Evolution, and Development - Molecular and Cell Biology

University of California, Berkeley is hiring. Apply now!

aprecruit.berkeley.edu

Very cool pair of papers demonstrating little link between amount of additive genetic variation and amount of nucleotide variation within species: journals.plos.org/plosbiology/... www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Levels of additive genetic variation vary substantially between species

Adaptive potential determines how populations respond to environmental change. This study compiles evolvability estimates from over 170 multicellular species, revealing substantial variation across th...

journals.plos.org

Amazing to see this online today! A very fun project over the past couple of years (made all the better by a great team of people to work with!)

Yulin Zhang@yulinzhang.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Good news! Our paper (with @aabiddanda.github.io @sarahaj34.bsky.social @codushlaine.bsky.social and Priya Moorjani) is now officially online! www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

New preprint from Shendure Lab on Locus-Scale aka Long-@$$ MPRAs led by the amazing Abby McGee & @carinabiar.bsky.social Most MPRAs test ~300 bp fragments next to a promoter. But real enhancers are bigger, act combinatorially and from a distance. 1/n www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Beautiful work!

Yulin Zhang@yulinzhang.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Good news! Our paper (with @aabiddanda.github.io @sarahaj34.bsky.social @codushlaine.bsky.social and Priya Moorjani) is now officially online! www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Interesting twist in a new paper: Introgression deserts aren't actually deserted. “Our findings suggest that ghost ancestry is often present in previously defined archaic deserts, providing additional context to putative Homo sapiens–specific selection.” www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Recovering signatures of archaic hominin introgression using ancestral recombination graphs

Admixture between modern humans and extinct hominins has shaped the genomes of present-day individuals, but reconstructing this history has been constrained by the scarcity of archaic samples and unad...

science.org

In this collaboration with the Gokcumen lab, @alberaqil.bsky.social developed a method based on interchromosomal linkage disequilibrium to detect false positive trans-eQTLs, showcased on GTEx and MAGE. The approach could be used to filter other trans molecular QTLs, which may be similarly impacted.

Gokcumen Lab@gokcumenlab.bsky.social · 2mo ago

New paper with @rajivmccoy.bsky.social @ajhgnews.bsky.social. Bottom line: Polymorphic gene duplications absent in the reference genome can produce spurious trans-eQTLs, and we propose a method to identify these false positives. authors.elsevier.com/c/1nWChgeXHnOF

📢 #TOPMed e/sQTL atlas is out in @science.org today! Happy to contribute to this amazing team effort and rich resource for the genomics community: 69k cis-eQTL + 35k cis-sQTL across 6 tissues/cell types and diverse ancestries. Still more to discover 😉🧬 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Cross-cohort analysis of expression and splicing quantitative trait loci in TOPMed

Most genetic variants associated with complex traits are hypothesized to regulate gene expression. To understand the genetics underlying gene expression variability, we characterized 14,324 RNA-sequen...

science.org

Hi everyone! I'm excited to announce that our lab at UW will soon be recruiting a postdoc to work on DNA methylation signatures in rare disease. This will be a mostly computational position. Please share and reach out if interested! millerlaboratory.com

Thank you to the Burroughs Wellcome Fund for supporting our research to understand the genetic causes of human pregnancy loss.

Johns Hopkins Arts & Sciences@jhuartssciences.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Congratulations to biology professor @rajivmccoy.bsky.social on being selected as a 2026 Next Gen Pregnancy Initiative recipient from the @bwfund.bsky.social for his project: Uncovering genetic mechanisms of pregnancy loss across parental and fetal genomes. www.bwfund.org/news/bwf-ann...

Excited to see @jonj-udd.bsky.social's fantastic work out @genetics-gsa.bsky.social. Selection in _heterozygotes_ is the primary force shaping allele frequencies of loss-of-function mutations in humans, even in genes only associated with purely recessive diseases. 🧪🧬 doi.org/10.1093/gene...

Allele Frequencies at Recessive Disease Genes are Mainly Determined by Pleiotropic Effects in Heterozygotes

Abstract. The classic theory of mutation-selection balance predicts the equilibrium frequency of genetic variation under negative selection. The model pred

doi.org

bioRxiv alert! CoPhasing resolves haplotype-specific 3D chromatin structures from GAM data, revealing extensive structural heterogeneity between human homologous chromosomes and its interplay with histone modifications and gene expression! Thanks to all coauthors! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

I wrote about AI in academia. "PhD-level thinking", LLM bias, grunt work, alignment, AGI, data center water use, AI politics -- something for everyone.

Thoughts on AI in academia

PhD-level thinking, LLM bias, alignment, AGI, data centers, and AI politics

open.substack.com

Our preprint on the genetic regulation of mtDNA gene expression in collaboration with @shwetaramdas.bsky.social and @rajivmccoy.bsky.social .

A few years ago, using palaeoproteomics, we identified a tiny hominin bone from Denisova Cave and named it Denisova 17 (D17). A rather unremarkable sliver. At the time, I wondered, could it be Denny’s sibling (the Neanderthal/Denisovan hybrid we had just reported)? Well, turns out: no. 🧵1/4

Today we launch The Australian DNA Bridge, a study focused on individuals with mixed ancestries to help us make genetic discoveries that are more accurate, inclusive, and equitable across all populations. Want to learn more? Follow the link. [https://australiandnabridgestudy.org/]

📣Our paper is out! 🤩 We found that local modification of H3K9me3 using CRISPR/dCas9 at hotspots changes crossover activity, bringing us closer to targeted recombination in plants.🌱 Huge thanks to @szymanskalejman.bsky.social, Wojtek, Ania, and Karolina! www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Modifying meiotic recombination by targeting chromatin regulators to crossover hotspots in Arabidopsis

Targeting chromatin modifiers to DNA hotspots reveals causal link between histone marks, transcription, and meiotic recombination.

science.org

Our paper is now out in Nature: “Ancient co-option of LTR retrotransposons as yeast centromeres” www.nature.com/articles/s41... A short thread on how retrotransposons helped give rise to yeast point centromeres. 1/14

Ancient co-option of LTR retrotransposons as yeast centromeres - Nature

Evolutionarily related ‘proto-point’ centromeres providing resolution to the evolutionary origins of point centromeres are identified in yeast, and comparison shows they evolved in an ancestor with re...

nature.com

The last chapter of my PhD is finally out !!!! In the same species, on neighboring islands, we see radically different warning colors emerge. Evolution in action: Selection-driven color variation in the aposematic strawberry poison frog, Oophaga pumilio: Current Biology www.cell.com/current-biol...

Selection-driven color variation in the aposematic strawberry poison frog, Oophaga pumilio

Aguilar-Gómez et al. use exome sequencing of 347 strawberry poison frogs to uncover the genetic basis of color variation. They identify that kit, ttc39b, and bco1 underlie blue-red, yellow-red, and gr...

cell.com

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.

Please check out these amazing women! They are fantastic scientists, committed mentors, supportive friends and honestly super stars! 🤩@bradylabs.bsky.social @mydennis.bsky.social @ucdavis.bsky.social www.ucdavis.edu/news/podcast...

2 First-Gen Scientists on Curiosity, Community and Discovery

Megan Dennis, associate professor in Biochemistry and Molecular Medicine, and Siobhan Brady, professor in the Department of Plant Biology and the Genome Center, are more than an just office neighbors ...

ucdavis.edu

New paper out in PNAS!!! 🎉 Do more plasmid copies mean faster evolution? 🧵 Dive into the story www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Plasmid mutation rates scale with copy number | PNAS

Plasmids are extrachromosomal DNA molecules that spread by horizontal transfer and shape bacterial evolution. Plasmids are typically present at mul...

pnas.org

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)