www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... Insights into human evolution from large genetic biobanks

Huge congratulations to all three Nobel Laureates, and especially Peter Hegemann! 👏 His seminal work on the green alga Chlamydomonas 🦠 laid the foundation for optogenetics. Thank you for putting Chlamy in the spotlight! ✨ Proof that groundbreaking discoveries don't always come from animal models! 🔬

Nobel Prize@nobelprize.org · 3w ago

BREAKING NEWS The 2026 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine has been awarded to Karl Deisseroth, Peter Hegemann and Georg Nagel “for their discoveries concerning light-gated ion channels and optogenetics.”

Excited to share our preprint on the spread of megaliths in Neolithic Europe. Trade networks formed in the wake of migrations, and megaliths then spread within those networks. On their own, migration and cultural diffusion tell an incomplete story. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Migrations facilitated the cultural diffusion of megaliths in Neolithic Europe

Around 6700 BP (years before present), Neolithic Europe saw the emergence of megalithic monuments in northern France, followed by a rapid spread to the rest of the continent1. However, whether this wa...

biorxiv.org

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Genomic insights into natural selection in recent human history - Nature Reviews Genetics

Advances in genome-wide selection scans and ancient DNA have greatly expanded our ability to study human evolution. This Review discusses the conceptual and statistical challenges in identifying and i...

nature.com

Must-know numbers in human genetics -- As many of you know, I'm writing a free online textbook in human genetics. In this blog post I cover a key skill for genome scientists from that book: how to use mental math to figure out key genome properties. jkpritchard.substack.com/p/on-fermi-p...

On Fermi Problems in Human Genetics

and some very useful numbers about human genomes to get you started!

jkpritchard.substack.com

New paper (from my colleagues @cpgsthlm.bsky.social!) showing children in Viking-Age & Medieval Sweden were buried in gendered ways, but those buried together were rarely close biological relatives. A great example of how #AncientDNA sheds new light on childhood, kinship & social organization 🧬

Equal in death: Ancient genomic analysis of children’s early Christian burials

Ancient genomes challenge views of close kinship in multiple Christian burials, revealing flexible traditions around children.

science.org

Hey #SMBE2026! Come check out poster #303 in Arkaden 6 during today’s session A to learn about our lab’s ongoing research collaboration with the Afro-Peruvian community of San Luis de Cañete. Together we are using aDNA to investigate the African diaspora to Peru 🇵🇪 🧬💀

A paper in Nature describes plague outbreaks dating back to around 5,500 years ago documented in hunter-gatherer communities from southeast Siberia. The findings, based on an analysis of ancient DNA, may be the oldest-known evidence of the plague and could shed light on its origins. 🧬🏺🧪

Lethal plague outbreaks in Lake Baikal hunter-gatherers 5,500 years ago - Nature

Analyses of ancient DNA from hunter-gatherers near Lake Baikal in southeast Siberia around 5,500 years ago indicate that highly virulent Yersinia pestis emerged earlier than previously estimated, far from the next known cases of infection in Late Neolithic Europe.

go.nature.com

Headed to #PEQG26 next week? The Sethuraman Lab will be presenting a buncha recent work! Come find us at both poster sessions, and DM/message me if you'd like to chat about the open postdoc position in my lab.

I’m looking to hire one or two postdocs - possible projects include pop gen theory, methods development, and human evolutionary inference. Please share, and email if you are interested. More info: evoldir.net/brian/evoldi...

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

Postdoctoral job announcement: come to Cambridge and work on population genetic modelling with environmental and ancient DNA, jointly with @gamzeandgursoy.bsky.social and me. Details at www.jobs.cam.ac.uk/job/55580/ - applications by June 16th.

Such an amazing honor! Thanks to my students, colleagues, collaborators and mentors for making science so fun!

Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution@official-smbe.bsky.social · 6mo ago

Anne C. Stone, Regents Professor @arizonastateuni.bsky.social has been awarded our Lifetime Contribution Award. @acstone.bsky.social Visit our website to learn more about the SMBE Faculty Awards 🔗 smbe.org/faculty-awards #society

🚨 We're hiring! Postdoctoral positions in modeling of development and evolution at @stockholm-uni.bsky.social & @scilifelab.se Focus: dynamical systems, time-series, phylogenetics, dimensionality reduction 📍 Stockholm 🕒 2+1 years 🔍 Details: su.varbi.com/en/what:job/... Please share!

Applications welcome to be a PhD-student in my ancient DNA research programme at @crick.ac.uk: 🏰 Ancient human history in Europe and beyond. ⚕️ Statistical genetics to understand human biology with ancient genomes. 🦠 Pathogen genomics of past infections. Apply at www.crick.ac.uk/careers-and-...

We're excited to be recruiting an NSF funded postdoc to work in the Villanea lab at CU Boulder. We're specifically interested in candidates who want to work at the intersection of population genetics, ancient DNA, and computer modeling. Please RT jobs.colorado.edu/jobs/JobDeta...

We sequenced #ancientRNA from an 18th-Century human lung and recovered a rhinovirus genome. Take a look at our preprint. Feedback welcome.

Daniel Blanco-Melo@dbm003.bsky.social · 9mo ago

Excited to share our work on #AncientRNA from alcohol-preserved lungs, recovering the oldest human RNA virus genome (an 18th-century rhinovirus). Our study shows that viral RNA remnants persist in centuries-old tissue, opening new ways to study virus evolution and historical disease #Paleovirology🫁🦠

New preprint! and my first single-author paper, so bear with me. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... Malaria population genetic studies have found some puzzling patterns: Ne estimates spanning orders of magnitude, genome-wide negative Tajima's D, and over a quarter of genes with πN/πS >1 1/n

Rare variation in malaria parasites biases population-genetic inference

Understanding how pathogens evolve is fundamental to disease control and is a basic question in evolutionary biology, yet pathogens with complex life cycles violate assumptions of classic evolutionary...

biorxiv.org

UMN Anthro PhD student Jaime Zolik and Prof. Maria Nieves Colón @mitopr.bsky.social were interviewed on Ep. 66 the @anthrobiology.bsky.social podcast about their aDNA research with community partners in Peru. Listen now: anthrobiology.com/episodes/ #umncla #umnproud

Labsgiving + Diwali 2025 - Zaidi Lab 🥳✨

Arslan Zaidi@aazaidi.bsky.social · 11mo ago

Our first labsgiving/Diwali celebration 🪔!

✨Thrilled to share that the first chapter of my Ph.D. thesis is NOW OUT in Science Advances! ✨🥳🎉 🧬. This couldn't have been possible without the support of everyone involved @genscapelab.bsky.social, @nirajrai.bsky.social, ‪@cdelafc.bsky.social‬, @jaurban2204.bsky.social, @mootspoints.bsky.social

GenSCAPE (aka Raghavan) Lab 🧬@genscapelab.bsky.social · 12mo ago

1/n Delighted to share our newly published work in Science Advances, investigating human genetic histories at the northern frontier of the Himalayas 🧬🏔️: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Happy to share our recent ancient DNA based article. Dynamic human admixture histories over the past ~1300 years at the northern Himalayan frontier | Science Advances www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Dynamic human admixture histories over the past ~1300 years at the northern Himalayan frontier

Ancient and present-day human genomes shed light on ~1300 years of genetic admixture and continuity in the northern Himalayas.

science.org

Come and check @eshabandyopadhyay.bsky.social super cool project now live in Science Advances! Glad to have contributed a bit into this fun project!

GenSCAPE (aka Raghavan) Lab 🧬@genscapelab.bsky.social · 12mo ago

1/n Delighted to share our newly published work in Science Advances, investigating human genetic histories at the northern frontier of the Himalayas 🧬🏔️: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

A hearty Denisovan stew ripe with stories of mixing and more mixing, even with a third more ‘archaic’ hominid. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

A high-coverage genome from a 200,000-year-old Denisovan

Denisovans, an extinct sister group of Neandertals who lived in Eastern Eurasia during the Middle and Late Pleistocene, are known only from a handful of skeletal remains and limited genetic data, incl...

biorxiv.org

If you need more exciting news about Denisovans, check out our paper on Denisovan ancestry in modern humans through time, out today in Current Biology: www.cell.com/current-biol...! #Denisovan #ancientDNA

An early East Asian lineage with unexpectedly low Denisovan ancestry

Yang et al. study Denisovan ancestry in ancient and present-day humans. In contrast to other East Asians, genomic comparisons suggest that the Jomon derived most of their ancestry from a deep lineage…

cell.com

🎖️Congratulations to the ASHG 2025 Lifetime Achievement Awardee Harry (Hal) Dietz, MD, and Mentorship Awardee Carole Ober, PhD! Learn more about the award and their work here: www.ashg.org/membership/a... #ASHG25

We're excited to be recruiting an NIH funded postdoc to work in the Coop lab at UC Davis. We're specifically interested in candidates who are want to work at the intersection of human genetics, GWAS, and population genetics modeling. Please RT

We will be at #ASHG25 this year! Some presentations from our group, please stop by! :

Excited to present my poster, “Tissue-Related Heterogeneity in Genetic Architecture of mtDNA Copy Number” (Board 5081), on Wednesday at #ASHG2025 !

Excited to be presenting my poster “Residual Stratification and Increased Genetic Diversity in Multi-ancestry GWAS”, Board 1062T on Thursday, October 16 from 2:30pm-4:30pm at #ASHG2025!