Reposting this old thread on the "Pervasive findings of directional selection" from ancient DNA. While the authors extended their results in various ways, I think many of these points still stand.

(1/9) Our work (with @xliaoyi.bsky.social @arbelharpak.bsky.social) exploring the role of genes that escape X-chromosome inactivation in shaping the genetic architecture of sex-specific traits is now officially out in Molecular Biology and Evolution!

academic.oup.com/mbe/article/...

Steven Gazal, PhD

@hggadvances.bsky.social sat with Steven Gazal, PhD, in the latest "Inside HGG Advances" to discuss his recently published paper, “Evaluating genetic ancestry inference from single-cell transcriptomic datasets.”➡️ https://bit.ly/4b3MQgn #ASHG #GeneticsDiscoveries

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.

Davis Summer Population Genomics Program Want to learn population genetics? Please fill out this form to indicate your potential interest in a 2-week intensive online summer population genetics course taught by Jeffrey Ross-Ibarra and Graham...

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!

The Biology of Genomes Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Meetings & Courses -- a private, non-profit institution with research programs in cancer, neuroscience, plant biology, genomics, bioinformatics.

Reminder that the abstract deadline for the Biology of Genomes meeting at CSHL is on Feb 13! We have a fantastic lineup of keynote speakers (Janet Kelso and Jonathan Pritchard) and session chairs. Submit your best science to this exciting and engaged meeting!
meetings.cshl.edu/meetings.asp...

New preprint from our big collaborative evolution experiment in 9 whole lakes in Alaska, written by McGill grad student @lucaseckert.bsky.social
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
What happens if you put a mixture of multiple source populations together to complete & evolve in multiple new lakes?

no pain no gain

Homepage - 2026 Population, Evolutionary, and Quantitative Genetics Conference Visit our website to learn more.

PEQG! My favorite conference ever*. Single session, fantastic talks, great discussions. Only once every 2 years. And in the best conference location too! Abstract deadline coming up Feb 5!

*Disclosure: I am required to say it's the best conference because it is and I told my mom I wouldn't lie.

Three open questions in polygenic score portability Nature Communications - Genetic predictors of health outcomes often drop in accuracy when applied to people dissimilar to participants of large genetic studies. Here, the authors investigate the...

Our work on the generalizability of polygenic scores (PGS) from the @arbelharpak.bsky.social Lab is now officially out!

We examine the accuracy of PGS predictions at the individual level. We make 3 observations that expose gaps in our understanding of PGS “portability.”

rdcu.be/e0LAr

(1/27)

Representation in genetic studies affects inference about genetic architecture Knowledge of a trait's "genetic architecture," namely the joint distribution of allele frequencies of causal variants and the direction and magnitude of their effects, is essential to understanding it...

Excited to share our new preprint from the @arbelharpak.bsky.social Lab!

How do recruitment into genetic studies and study characteristics impact what we infer about the genetic bases of traits, and what are the consequences? (1/21)

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

I am looking for a postdoc to develop high-performance algorithms in computational genomics. Email or DM me if interested. For more information, see hlilab.github.io/vacancies. RTs appreciated!

I’m very excited to share our new preprint with @arbelharpak.bsky.social! We meta-analyze male-female allele frequency divergences across studies (gnomAD, UKB, AoU) and ask what drives the observed differences. (1/12)

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Embryo selection company Herasight goes all in on eugenics ...

I wrote about the bizarre case of Herasight, the embryo selection company going all in on eugenics.

What James Watson got wrong about DNA - The Boston Globe The science he helped pioneer consistently undermines his view that genes determine everything about us.

"What James Watson got wrong about DNA"

By the great Sohini Ramachandran (@sramach.bsky.social) and your boy for The Boston Globe (@bostonglobe.com).

www.bostonglobe.com/2025/11/14/o...

My department at UT Austin is looking to hire an Assistant Professor in Evolutionary Biology, broadly defined. Feel free to reach out to me with any questions you may have.
apply.interfolio.com/177547

An empirical approach to evaluating the prevalence of long-lived balancing selection in humans--and important limitations. Work by @hannahmm.bsky.social

@jbenning.bsky.social @jedidiahcarlson.com
et al. exemplify how confounding can lead to flawed inference on genetic causality. In studies of human behavior and social outcomes, the cost of downplaying this problem can be steep. royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/epdf/10.... bsky.app/profile/jben...

Simple scaling laws control the genetic architectures of human complex traits Genome-wide association studies have revealed that the genetic architectures of complex traits vary widely. This study shows that differences in architectures of highly polygenic traits arise mainly f...

Why do complex traits differ in their genetic architecture?
In our new PLOS Biology paper, we will try to convince you that two simple scaling laws drive differences in the number, effect sizes and frequencies of causal variants affecting complex traits.

Thread:
journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...

If you are at #ASHG2025 and would like to chat in person, please reach out! My lab is looking for curious scientists to join us, especially (but not limited to) postdoctoral researchers.

Not necessarily a bad thing: perhaps your subscribers could use a little more boring in their lives.

The Length of Haplotype Blocks and Signals of Structural Variation in Reconstructed Genealogies Abstract. Recent breakthroughs have enabled the accurate inference of large-scale genealogies. Through modelling the impact of recombination on the correla

Delighted that our paper about the distribution of genomic spans of clades/edges in genealogies (ARGs), and using this for detecting inversions and other SVs (and other phenomena that cause local disruption of recombination) is out in MBE academic.oup.com/mbe/article/... (1/n)

Bittersweet to be leaving @docedge.bsky.social after a wonderful postdoc, but excited to share that I'm joining @uoregon.bsky.social next month as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Data Science.

Escape from X inactivation drives sex differences and female trait variation X chromosome inactivation (XCI) partially balances gene dosage between sexes, yet expression from the inactive X (Xi) is variable across genes. In this study, we investigate whether gene-level Xi expr...

1/13 In a new preprint, we (with @xliaoyi.bsky.social‬ in the ‪@arbelharpak.bsky.social‬ lab) find that expression from the “inactivated” X (Xi) is consequential for both female-male differences in gene expression and variation among females in disease and physiology: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Applications for the 2026 Stengl-Wyer Scholars Program are open! The program provides up to 3 years of support for talented postdoctoral researchers in the broad area of the diversity of life and/or organisms in their natural environments. Learn more here: utexas.infoready4.com/CompetitionS...

Amidst all the terrible and terrifying news, so lovely to hear of
@jkpritch.bsky.social's election to the National Academy of Sciences. Congratulations!

Characterizing selection on complex traits through conditional frequency spectra Abstract. Natural selection on complex traits is difficult to study in part due to the ascertainment inherent to genome-wide association studies (GWAS). Th

a quick note on my paper with @jeffspence.bsky.social and @jkpritch.bsky.social on conditional frequency spectra, now out in a @genetics-gsa.bsky.social special issue: doi.org/10.1093/genetics/iyae210

More recently, Smith et al. (biorxiv.org/content/10.1...) proposed an estimator of polygenic score confounding that can be directly attributable to stratification/ancestry. They show that it is present in target data from Europe, other continents, even ancient DNA!

How population stratification led to a decade of sensationally false genetic findings Stratification makes environments look like genes

I wrote about how population stratification in genetic analyses led to a decade of false findings and almost certainly continues to bias emerging results. But we are starting to have statistical tools to sniff it out. A 🧵:

Variable prediction accuracy of polygenic scores within an ancestry group The prediction accuracies of polygenic scores in humans vary depending on the characteristics of the samples, as well as based on the study design, within a single ancestry group.

elifesciences.org/articles/48376

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

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...