A short rebuttal to Akbari et al.'s analysis of our 2024 Nature paper:

Why are Dutch people so tall? This has been a long-standing debate in genetics, with earlier studies questioned due to unaccounted for confounding. Great to be involved in a new study (link below) using within-family GWAS; we confirm that height has been under positive selection.

Celtic languages are now limited to NW Europe, but they were once far more widespread. How did they spread? I'm excited to have contributed to this new ancient DNA study led by @hmcccoll exploring exactly that. 🧬 1/n www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Tracing the Spread of Celtic Languages using Ancient Genomics

Celtic languages, including Irish, Scottish Gaelic, Welsh and Breton, are today restricted to the Northern European Atlantic seaboard. However, between three and two thousand years before present (BP)...

biorxiv.org

Our research was recently covered in the MIT Technology Review! My quote: “I think the whole lesson of this work is... we are living with immune systems that we have inherited from our past. And we’ve plunged it into a completely new, modern environment which is often sanitary.” shorturl.at/DtvQS

Adventures in the genetic time machine

Ancient DNA is telling us more and more about humans and environments long past. Could it also help rescue the future?

technologyreview.com

Hi Bluesky! I've just made the leap from Twitter (a little late I know) and I'm looking to find the aDNA/genetics/prehistory group here. I'll be posting about my work and what I find interesting. Drop me a message! Cheers, Will