We investigated how sympatric species maintain their phenotypic distinction despite high gene flow. Unlike other very cool studies in very cool systems, we find that phenotypic divergence is polygenic and although inversions are a part of the story, they sure aren't the whole story!
Sophie Jean Walton
@sophiejwalton.bsky.social
Stanford Biophysics PhD Student with Dmitri Petrov and Ben Good. evolution, ecology, genomics, microbiomes, biophysics :) she/her https://sophiejwalton.github.io
uchicago.wd5.myworkdayjobs.com/External/job... The Kreiner and Carley Lab groups are hiring a shared Research Analyst to help lead wet lab protocol development and management. We're a fun group and would love to hear from you :) Get in touch with questions!
Research, Analyst
Department BSD E&E Carley Lab About the Department The Kreiner Lab (kreinerlab.com) and Carley Lab (carleylab.uchicago.edu) in the Department of Ecology & Evolution at The University of Chicag...
uchicago.wd5.myworkdayjobs.com
A few months ago, @elena-romero.bsky.social published a paper showing that HIV escape from broadly neutralizing antibody 10-1074 is driven by very recurrent mutation. In her latest, she asks - just how soft are the signatures of these sweeps? www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
Haplotype and diversity signatures of ultra-soft selective sweeps in HIV-1
Many urgent medical and agricultural challenges are driven by resistance evolution via soft selective sweeps of multiple simultaneous mutations. Standard approaches to detect these mutations involve g...
biorxiv.org
Dear microbiome enthusiasts: I'm excited to be moving my lab to New York University this fall (& the NYU Institute for Engineering Health); with joint-appointment @isbscience.org I'm hiring a postdoc @ NYU to look at diet-driven evolution in the gut: apply.interfolio.com/189980 Please share! 🦠🤓
Apply - Interfolio {{$ctrl.$state.data.pageTitle}} - Apply - Interfolio
apply.interfolio.com
A fundamental question in disease ecology remains unresolved: How can an acute, immunizing virus persist in nature? Theory says viruses like measles need huge pools of susceptible hosts. Our new preprint offers an answer. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
Persistent, Multi-Species Outbreaks and Long-Range Transmissions of a Measles-Like Virus
Canine distemper\---|a measles-like disease with high mortality and presently without a cure\---|poses a major threat to wild and domestic carnivores globally. Domestic dogs are generally considered t...
biorxiv.org
Cannot be more excited about the lineup for the inaugural Function of Evolving Systems GRC conference I am co-organizing with the amazing Joy Bergelson. Less than a month away: August 9 - 14, 2026. Still a few spots left! And do check out the amazing list of speakers: www.grc.org/function-of-...
2026 Function of Evolving Systems Conference GRC
The 2026 Gordon Research Conference on Function of Evolving Systems will be held in Waterville Valley, New Hampshire. Apply today to reserve your spot.
grc.org
Highly recommended working with Stepfanie— she is an amazing scientist and mentor! bsky.app/profile/s-m-...
Interested in joining a growing lab in LA? We’re hiring a postdoc!! Please spread the word to folks in your network and feel free to get in touch with any questions recruit.apo.ucla.edu/JPF11142
Super excited to share new work with my advisor @nanditagarud.bsky.social! We re-examine the rapidity of adaptation in the human gut microbiome and begin to characterize the adaptive architecture of selective sweeps spreading across human guts. www.biorxiv.org/content/10... 1/n:
Complex adaptive architectures constrain the pace of adaptations sweeping across human gut microbiomes
Recent work has shown that commensal gut bacteria can evolve rapidly within hosts on short timescales of days to months, fueled by the enormous mutational input generated daily in the microbiome. Yet ...
biorxiv.org
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
Excited to be at #PEQG26! I have a poster tonight on measuring selection on intraspecies variation in large microbial communities (415W), would love to hear what folks think!
Excited to share new work on two sex-linked pigment traits in Xiphophorus! This project was led by undergrad @lagiven.bsky.social, who’s worked with me for the last 3(!) years. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
Two melanic pigment patterns are associated with a sex chromosome-linked oncogene in the mountain swordtail Xiphophorus nezahualcoyotl
Sex-linked traits are widespread, but their genetic architecture has been challenging to characterize, due in part to the repetitive and structurally complex nature of sex chromosomes. In swordtails a...
biorxiv.org
Preprint of some of my postdoctoral research with @mfrederickson.bsky.social examining the evolution of beneficial microbial symbionts in duckweed www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
biorxiv.org
Awesome paper from the Moeller lab on diesentangling the influence of geography and host ancestry to gut bacterial strain divergence www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Isolation by distance promotes gut microbial strain divergence in wild mouse populations - Nature Ecology & Evolution
Analysis of gut bacterial and mitochondrial genomes from wild populations of small rodents across the USA shows that geographic distance mediates early stages of bacterial strain divergence between co...
nature.com
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
Thrilled to present my dissertation research at the Hamilton Symposium! We used approaches including GWAS, long-read sequencing, phylogenetic methods, and behavior experiments to uncover the genetic basis and evolutionary history of a shared polymorphism. Can’t wait to share what we’ve learned!
Join us at virtual #Evol2026 this Friday to hear from the finalists for the SSE Hamilton Award for Outstanding Student Presentation! This symposium is in 3 sessions starting at 11 am Eastern.
Indigenous researchers and communities are reshaping how Western science thinks about data ownership. Learn more during #AANHPIHeritageMonth. ⬇️ https://scim.ag/4txYYMC
‘Not a free-for-all’: Indigenous communities want limits on how their data are shared
Push for “data sovereignty” could reshape how scientists share information
scim.ag
New paper out now in Theoretical Ecology, led by @theogibbs.bsky.social in collaboration with me, @kjmd.bsky.social, @cynthiasilveira.bsky.social, and Lisa McManus 🥳🕺
Coexistence of bacteria with a competition-colonization tradeoff on a dynamic coral host - Theoretical Ecology
Many macroscopic organisms enter tightly linked symbioses with microbial communities. Although experimental work has demonstrated the importance of these symbioses, a theoretical understanding of stab...
link.springer.com
Dr. Indra Gonzalez Ojeda gave a great thesis defense this morning, including some wisdom for starting PhD students, or frankly, anyone.
Please share widely! We will imminently be posting a technician position in our lab group since @rheasood.bsky.social is off to grad school 🙌! If you know of anyone excited about molecular biology, evolution, and functional genomics please have them reach out (schumer at stanford). Start date ~June
I am hiring a popgen postdoc! Looking for a creative scientist to join us at USC to investigate recessive variation and complex traits in model or non-model species. The project is funded by a multi-year NIH grant, contract can be renewed. Job add & details 👇🏽 usccareers.usc.edu/job/los-ange...
Really excited that this major work from my PhD is finally published in @plosbiology.org ! In it, we were trying to tackle a fundamental question in evolution - how do genetic mutations map onto evolutionary fitness? (1/n) journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...
Genotype-fitness mapping of adaptive mutants reveals shifting low-dimensional structure across divergent environments
Predicting the effect of a genetic mutation on fitness is a major challenge in evolutionary biology. This study uses fitness effects of a large collection of adaptive yeast mutants in multiple lab env...
journals.plos.org
Really excited to see this work out now in Ecology Letters! May be particularly interesting to those thinking about life-history trade-offs and eco-evolutionary feedbacks, and how those may interact to maintain variation within natural populations. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
Pervasive Fitness Trade‐Offs Revealed by Rapid Adaptation to Shifting Population Densities in Large Experimental Populations of Drosophila melanogaster
Trade-offs are an inherent feature of organismal biology and fundamental to the evolution of natural populations. Using experimental evolution in large, genetically diverse populations of Drosophila ...
onlinelibrary.wiley.com
Our new experimental evolution study across 30+ locations using the plant Arabidopsis thaliana —— we direct "see" adaptation and extinction to different climates at the genetic as it happens! Read it in Science dx.doi.org/10.1126/scie... @ucberkeleyofficial.bsky.social @hhmi-science.bsky.social
Please share far & wide - the bestest, most heart warming thing you’ll see all day. Kakapo-Cam - watch one of the fattest, greenest, least able to fly, most endangered parrots in the world care for her young. Thnx @digs.bsky.social #kakapo #wildlife 🧪🧪 www.discoverwildlife.com/animal-facts...
“Viewers have been absolutely hooked.” Over 100,000 tune in to watch rare New Zealand parrot raising her chicks | Discover Wildlife
Reality TV meets conservation – Kākāpō Cam is the most heartwarming thing you'll see all day.
discoverwildlife.com
A health check for #kakapo chick Tiwhiri-A3 two nights ago. This is a genetically valuable (rank = gold) chick, so it gets more frequent health checks. It’s doing well. #kakapo2026 #conservation #parrots
Proud that this work is now published! We hope it helps orient future #Nanopore long-read sequencing studies hunting for structural variants Also really happy to share eight new high-coverage (>100x) long-read read pools and assemblies with the #Drosophila community! doi.org/10.1093/g3jo...
Manual validation finds ultra-long-read sequencing best enables faithful, population-level structural variant calling in Drosophila melanogaster euchromatin with nanopore
Abstract. The increasing accessibility of long-read sequencing and the rapid development of automated variant callers are promoting the generation of popul
doi.org
Excited to share the first manuscript from my PhD in which we leveraged ultra-long Nanopore sequencing, D. melanogaster inbred lines, and a ton of manual validation to investigate the effects of long-read length on population-level structural variant (SV) calling accuracy! doi.org/10.1101/2025...
The Goldberg lab at UCLA is hiring one or more postdocs. Flexible start date. We develop methods to study population genetics of humans, our primate relatives, and our pathogens. www.goldberglab.org/join
Amy Goldberg, PhD - Join
The Goldberg lab is moving to UCLA summer 2025, and recruiting postdocs and graduate students. We are a computational lab with occasional wet lab or field collaborators. We will be located in the Depa...
goldberglab.org
The next BAPG has been announced! April 11 at Davis organized by the inimitable @jrossibarra.bsky.social! bapg-conference.github.io
BAPG Spring 2026
Bay Area Population Genomics Conference
bapg-conference.github.io
An NIH-funded postdoctoral position is available in my lab. The project focuses on the structural and mechanistic basis of antibody recognition of M and M-like proteins of Strep A (Streptococcus pyogenes).
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.