Fun news! @gcbias.bsky.social and I are teaching a 2-week online population genetics workshop this summer to raise money for the Center for Population Biology at UC Davis. We're trying to gauge interest -- please fill this out if you might be interested! And please share broadly!
Posts by James Kitchens
Can’t say I expected to do a foray into linguistics during my PhD - a fun study collaborating with Sam and many passionate undergrads (who have gone on to do incredible things of their own!)
I will have a poster at MGC later this month on this work - stop by and chat about it with me!
New paper! From Sam Snodgrass and @genomeofforrest.bsky.social, w/ @druncie.bsky.social, @gcbias.bsky.social, and a collaboration with Andres Moreno and @santiagogmm.bsky.social. Can we quantify the impact of humans on maize dispersal?
Plant yourself in a comfy chair and lend me your ear:
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Did you know there are 2 types of avocado varieties? A-types switch from female to male, B-types male to female, within a single day. This reciprocal sex alternation promotes cross-pollination and has a simple genetic basis. Read more in this recent preprint from the final chapter of my PhD thesis 🥑
Congrats @jeffgroh.bsky.social et al. Some avocado trees open female-phase flowers in the morning & then male in afternoon. Others show complementary pattern (m->f), to synchronize pollination of two types. Jeff show this to be a >45Mya polymorphism at a transcription factor across 100s of species.
🧬 Just out in Bioinformatics Advances: “tskit arg visualizer: Interactive plotting of ancestral recombination graphs.”
Read the full paper here: https://doi.org/10.1093/bioadv/vbaf302
Authors include: @kitchensjn.bsky.social, @yanwong.bsky.social
The UC Davis Ecology and Evolution in Working Landscapes REU provides undergrads with research experience in ecology and evolution in natural and managed landscapes. Apply now through Feb 15 via etap.nsf.gov
Contact me or @clhom.bsky.social for questions!
Super proud of @alyssa-phillips.bsky.social 's paper, now out on biorxiv! She resolves the origin(s) of polyploid big blue-stem, a dominant species in the midwest tall-grass prairie. Her common garden analysis also informs on environmental adaptation and hints at the impacts of polyploidy.
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)
Super excited about our schedule for BAPG at stanford on Dec 6. bapg2025.github.io/bapg2025stan... Amazing talks, a fabulous keynote, a lively poster session. A brilliant and interactive community. What’s not to love? 1/2 @sophiejwalton.bsky.social
Latest in #GENETICS: @petrelharp.bsky.social and the team show how non-coalescing haplotypes can be inserted into ancestral recombination graphs (ARGs), resulting in ARGs that are smaller, faster to compute with, and have additional ancestral information. buff.ly/X801LTO
Wisconsin Evolution is accepting applications for our Seminar Series' Early Career Scientist Award. Come share your evolution research and visit UW-Madison's evolution community. Open to grad students and postdocs (<5 yrs post PhD) from outside UW-Madison.
Apply by Dec 15th here: shorturl.at/4a4O6
Hello bluesky community!
I'm hiring a postdoc to do machine learning in population genetics.
Starting to build up a lab at Indiana University Bloomington where I just started a faculty position.
Apply with the below link: indiana.peopleadmin.com/postings/30325
Yes! And also we have an exciting announcement - we are so lucky to have the privilege of having Brenna Henn give the keynote. hennlab.ucdavis.edu
Donate to the UC Davis pantry give.ucdavis.edu/FASA/322731 & Yolo foodbank yolofoodbank.org?form=foodfirst if you can
With @aconga.bsky.social we wrote a short Dispatch to highlight two awesome companion papers in @currentbiology.bsky.social by @jeffgroh.bsky.social, @gcbias.bsky.social and by Liu et al. on how the control of heterodichogamy is going nuts in the Juglandaceae :
www.cell.com/current-biol...
Writing a letter for a great undergrad researcher in the lab. Check out their awesome GitHub repo on the transposable element simulations they wrote in slim! github.com/vibhachand/s...
Marine bio folks: Does anyone know of any non-toxic aquarium safe paint that could be used to tag crustaceans?
I have been supergluing sequins onto the carapace of a mantis shrimp, but it falls off after several days. Looking for something a bit longer term/
Please RT!
Bumping this up one last time. I'm looking to hire graduate student(s) to work on an NSF-funded project to study elevational range shifts among dragonflies here in Colorado. @cudenverclas.bsky.social 🧪🌍🐙
Applications will be considered until Nov 1. See post below for more details
Hey Yaniv Brandvain is not on Bluesky but his most recent biostats ebook is live ybrandvain.github.io/biostats/. His stats resources have been so helpful to me as I develop my own stats course, so check it out. Github repo here: github.com/ybrandvain/b...
Anyone looking for an undergrad research assistant this coming summer? I have a truly phenomenal undergrad with expertise in genetic mapping, long read sequencing & bioinformatics who wants experience in another lab before grad school. She has been in our lab for 3 years & writing her first paper!
I'm recruiting a postdoc for my group (based in beautiful Eugene, OR). Please get in touch if you're interested, esp if you'd like to chat at #ASHG25!
For population genetics and evolutionary biology folks in the Bay Area: the next BAPG will be hosted by Stanford CEHG and the Petrov lab at Stanford on 12/6.
Registration is free but required. The deadline for talk submission is Nov. 16. Hope to see you soon! Pls RT!
docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...
Sharing our new paper, "Distinct haplotypes and reversed dominance at a single-gene balanced polymorphism controlling heterodichogamy in two genera of wingnuts". Genomics & evolution of a mating type system involving two morphs with alternating sexes in walnut relatives www.cell.com/current-biol...
Congratulations to @jeffgroh.bsky.social on the publication of his paper on an ancient balanced polymorphisms controlling heterodichogamy in two genera of wingnuts. The paper shows the putative turnover & reversal of dominance of a mating type polymorphism
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
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
Our paper (Brieuc Lehmann is the first author) is now online in Genetics.
academic.oup.com/genetics/adv...
I want to try something again at #ASHG25 this year: I'll block some time on Thursday and Friday afternoons to meet with trainees who would be interested to chat on any topic.
I did this last year and it was great to meet a whole bunch of new people, at all career stages!
Excited to share a new pre-print in collaboration with @sebastianschreiber.bsky.social, "Using Modern Coexistence Theory to understand community disassembly"! We set out to understand how techniques used to study coexistence can be extended to understand community disassembly. (1/X)