Last UGI seminar of the academic year from Mengzi Chen presenting her #PhD work on inferring shared sources of admixture across populations, implemented in the tool SOURCEFINDMulti.

We are advertising a 3-year Evolution Education Trust funded #PhD studentship at @ugiatucl.bsky.social UCL to investigate the genomic history of infectious diseases preserved within historical pathology collections. Details: www.findaphd.com/phds/project.... #findaphd #EET

Unlocking the Genomic History of Pathogens Through Pathology Archives at University College London on FindAPhD.com

PhD Project - Unlocking the Genomic History of Pathogens Through Pathology Archives at University College London, listed on FindAPhD.com

findaphd.com

Cedric Tan summarising the body of work shaping his PhD on the Eco-evolutionary drivers of viral host-jumps. Wishing him luck in his viva in a few weeks! You can see some of Cedric's PhD work published here: pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC... www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Congratulations to PhD Student Cameron Ferguson for winning the best presentation at the annual postgraduate research symposium for his talk on "The Genomic Landscape of Post-Black Death Epidemics in Northern Europe and the Caucasus".

If you're you have experience in working in animal / pathogen #aDNA and are interested in a postdoctoral position as part of my ERC Project HERDPATH, please DM/email me kevin[at]palaeome.org

S13: Perspectives on paleo-omics: defining functional evolution of ancient viruses in the era of big data 🗓️ Wed Jul 1, 1:20pm 🔗 smbe2026.org/programme

🚨 PhD Studentship Alert 🚨 4-year DPhil in Genomic Medicine and Statistics, funded by the Royal Society *Reconstructing the evolutionary history of pathogens using ancient DNA* ☠️🧬🦠🐕🐖🐇 🇬🇧 UK/home students 📍 Centre for Human Genetics, University of Oxford ⏰ Fri, 17 July tinyurl.com/gms-rs-dphil

We welcomed Professor Anne Stone @acstone.bsky.social for our latest UGI seminar discussing genetic perspectives on population history and health of pre-Columbian populations in the South-Central Andes.

Just published our new paper: “The reliability of inferred archaic segments” 🎉🧬💀 www.pivotscipub.com/hpgg/6/2/000... We systematically compare several published methods and our new method "cp-archaic" using simulations and 1000 Genomes data

Fantastic seminar from @deboraycb.bsky.social discussing some of the challenges and limitations of detecting balancing selection from genomic data and her ongoing work on developing a new ARG-based approach. See preprint here: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6....

A full house for @nancybird1.bsky.social UGI seminar marking the culmination of her many years of work at #UGI on human population genetics and the development of haplotype-based methods. Wishing Nancy all the best as she goes on to an exciting new senior post-doc position.

Job alert: open position for a Professor or Associate Professor of Computational Genomics in Health and Disease at University College London. Based in the Department of Genetics, Evolution and Environment of UCL, and UGI, and funded by the UCL Health Strategy. www.ucl.ac.uk/work-at-ucl/... 🧪

Henrik Salje from the University of Cambridge joined us to give a fantastic seminar on the genetic and antigenic diversity of dengue virus.

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 · 6mo 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🫁🦠

Today we welcomed Dr Verity Hill @viralverity.bsky.social to present her work on disease control in the genomics age. She gave examples of her work on mosquito-borne viruses, such as dengue, to illustrate how we can use virus genomes to better control and understand virus evolution and transmission.

See UGI's Dr Marina Escalera Zamudio (Rosetrees Fellow) and Dr Cenk Celik (Research Fellow) @cenkcelik.bsky.social presenting at the Norwich Science Festival @niscifest.bsky.social session on "Reimagining Health with Big Data". norwichsciencefestival.co.uk/whats-on/rei... #NISF26

Reimagining Health with Big Data | Norwich Science Festival

Dr Marina Escalera Zamudio and Dr Cenk Celik will share the ways in which big data and AI are transforming medicine.

norwichsciencefestival.co.uk

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... It's finally out! Meriam Guellil expertly led this project from the first HHV6 detection to the final paper. We found both human herpesviruses 6A and 6B in ancient remains going back 2500 years.

Tracing 2500 years of human betaherpesvirus 6A and 6B diversity through ancient DNA

First ancient HHV-6 genomes reveal 2500 years of phylogenetic continuity and provide insights into the endogenization of HHV-6A.

science.org

Charlotte Houldcroft@virologyhouldcroft.bsky.social · 7mo ago

New paper coming out 7pm UK/2PM US Eastern time... 🤫

1/ In a recent @britishacademy.bsky.social video @rebeccasear.bsky.social from @brunelpsy.bsky.social takes a clear-eyed look at the 21st‑century rise of eugenics - an ideology that should have been left behind, yet is now re‑emerging in a number of troubling ways ⚠️🧬 🧪 Watch the full talk here 🎥👇

The 21st Century Resurgence of Eugenics

YouTube video by The British Academy

youtube.com

Great talk from @ugiatucl.bsky.social post-doc @cenkcelik.bsky.social presenting his work developing new approaches to explore the spatial patterns of cancer evolution. Preprint 👉 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... Thanks for giving our last seminar of the year!

Lovely is the right adjective. Writing this was so enjoyable in the company of @acstone.bsky.social @blevinske.bsky.social and Verena Schuenemann. Hope you enjoy.

Anne Stone@acstone.bsky.social · 8mo ago

Lovely to work with @blevinske.bsky.social, @paleogenomics.bsky.social & Verena Schuenemann on " Ancient DNA insights into diverse pathogens and their hosts"! Read it at rdcu.be/eSVPN

We’re recruiting a PhD student as part of the AI-Intervene DTP to join FlightPath, an exciting project combining viral genomics, bird migration data, and AI-powered phylodynamics to forecast how avian influenza evolves and spreads. Project Details 🦠🧬🦅🦆🌎: tinyurl.com/2v4xaxmx.

FlightPath: Predicting Avian Influenza Evolution through AI-Powered Phylodynamics and Bird Migration Modelling at University of Reading on FindAPhD.com

PhD Project - FlightPath: Predicting Avian Influenza Evolution through AI-Powered Phylodynamics and Bird Migration Modelling at University of Reading, listed on FindAPhD.com

findaphd.com

🚨 PNAS Special Feature 2 🐕 We used ancient DNA and dietary isotopes to show that landscape modification and the introduction of European dogs impacted dingo populations across Australia. 🔗 Full paper here: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Despite my insomnia, I'm very happy to share our preprint: a multi-disciplinary assessment of a sheep mass mortality event from ~18th century France. We report the first ancient sheeppox virus (think smallpox) and the Taenia hydatigena (nasty roundworm) genomes. #aDNA

Evidence of sheeppox in 17th-19th century France: a multi-disciplinary investigation of a sheep mass mortality assemblage

Epizootic outbreaks posed major threats to food security, economic stability, and animal welfare in past communities. While these events and their impacts are well documented in historical records, ve...

biorxiv.org

UK science and technology is suffering from a lack of investment, a hostile immigration system, and fragile university finances, reports @cathleenogrady.bsky.social 🧪 #scipolicy www.science.org/content/arti...

U.K. science sector is ‘bleeding to death,’ lawmakers say in report

House of Lords committee urges government to stem exodus of science and technology companies

science.org

Our manuscript on bovine deep-time paleogenomics at Denisova Cave and in the broader mid-latitude Asia is online! doi.org/10.1093/gbe/... 🦬🦴🧬 Main findings in the 🧵 below ⬇️ @cpgsthlm.bsky.social @genomebiolevol.bsky.social #aDNA

Paleogenomics Reveals a Loss of Bovine Lineages in Mid-latitude Asia Over the Last 200,000 Years

Abstract. Bovines have a complex yet poorly understood evolutionary history that is characterized by admixture and diversity loss during the Late Pleistoce

doi.org

a life changing opportunity made possible by the Nobel Prize funds awarded to John Sulston -- the @sangerinstitute.bsky.social runs the Sanger Prize scheme, open to an undergrad from any LMIC to spend 3 months here learning all about genomics. more details here www.sanger.ac.uk/about/study/...

The Sanger Prize

The Sanger Prize is an outreach competition aimed at undergraduate students who live and study in low or middle income countries

sanger.ac.uk

Wellcome Sanger Institute@sangerinstitute.bsky.social · 9mo ago

Have you heard of the Sanger Prize? It is a three-month undergrad placement at the Institute, and applications are open. Hear from our current Sanger Prize holder Beatriz Rodrigues Estevam, here ⤵️ https://sangerinstitute.blog/2025/11/20/unravelling-the-mysteries-of-the-worm-through-bioinformatics/

Briefly, we identified three extinct mitochondrial bovine lineages in mid-latitude Asia: aurochs basal to haplogroup C, bison clade X, and a previously unknown yak-like clade X sister to all known yak diversity. This yak X mitochondrial lineage diverged around 675,000 years ago from modern yak!

What an incredible resource for those starting out in ancient DNA! Thanks once again @oskolkov.bsky.social for being our first #AaRCademy speaker

Nikolay Oskolkov@oskolkov.bsky.social · 9mo ago

youtube.com/watch?v=-nWo...

New online! Insights into infectious diseases through ancient pathogen genomics

Insights into infectious diseases through ancient pathogen genomics

Nature Reviews Microbiology, Published online: 17 November 2025; doi:10.1038/s41579-025-01259-7In this Review, Kocher, Krause and Spyrou explore how ancient pathogen genomics is providing new perspectives on the history and evolution of infectious agents. They show how ancient DNA has revealed the aetiology and unfolding of historic outbreaks, pathogen evolutionary timescales, patterns of dissemination and functional evolution, and discuss existing limitations and perspectives of the field.

nature.com

A PhD project on historical genomics in the declining red squirrel in Britain is available in my group, through the @aries-dtp.bsky.social. Use historical genomes to track the effects of decline and genetic rescue in this charismatic species. aries-dtp.ac.uk/studentships...

Historical genomics of the declining red squirrel in Britain | Aries

Dr Anders Bergström, School of Biological Sciences, University of East Anglia Professor Cock van Oosterhout, School of Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia Dr Selina Brace…

aries-dtp.ac.uk