We are looking forward to welcoming #VanesaVillalbaMouco to #HEASVienna for a #HEASSeminar in #AncientGenomics online and in-person in the #UBB at @univie.ac.at
More information and registration on our website 👇🔗
Reproduced from From A. E. Mourant et.al., The Distribution of the Human Blood Groups and Other Polymorphisms, 2nd ed. (1976). Source: Wikipedia, Muntuwandi • CC BY 2.5.
Forgot to say. Where do we find the highest prevalence of B alleles in the World? The Steppe! Or Central Asia more broadly. Oh surprise, surprise.
Blood type genotypes based on 12 ABO SNPs, but you can also confidently predict ABO types with only 3 of those SNPs. The 300 samples used for this test were from the SGDP dataset.
If there's something I know, cause I played with the ABO during my PhD (back in 2019) is that all European HG were type O. You only see the first A alleles by the Neolithic in samples with Anatolian farmer ancestry. Never seen B alleles before Bronze Age. Of course sample size was smaller in 2019.
What's more, somewhat misleadingly the text implies it's just the A dropping in freq. It's not just A, also O. Unavaoidable step to make room for a new phenotype in the population. Are both A and O being selected against at the same time? Not impossible but very unlikely. In my humble opinion.
Excerpt from Akbari et al., 2026
Supplementary figure from Akbari et al., 2026
Very basic figure (Fig. S21) from mt thesis (2020): evolution of steppe-related ancestry % through time in Iberia with. One point = 3 samples C14 dates rolling average with 2 sample overlap.
I'm sure they've done all the necessary statistical contortions to account for migration but, oh boy, I'm having a hard time believing time rise B is positive selection. It tracks the rise of Steppe-related ancestry to a tee! I'm barely able to follow the ms so surely I must be missing something.
📢 Next #HAAMeeting at #ICP2026! @palaeogenomics.bsky.social
🗓 June 22
📍Stockholm 🇸🇪 (hybrid)
🎤 Poster presenters + no-talk attendees: apply for a flash talk by May 27:
docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...
More info coming soon 👀
haam-community.github.io/events/2026/...
#ancientDNA #paleogenomics
Dr Victoria Mullin (Zoology, TCD) and Professor Daniel Bradley (Genetics, TCD) are advertising a funded PhD studentship in ancient genomics based at Trinity College Dublin.
This is one of the most elegant done aDNA papers ever. Still one of my fav even after so long. It was so ahead of its time in terms of approach to analysis/methods. doi.org/10.1371/jour...
The insane amount of work behind this, it's amazing.
Game changer!
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.
That was a long read. The sentiment of refs improves from the initial "important but unconvincing" to mixed aproval I guess. But let's be honest, this was always going to get published one way or another. Claims are overinflated imo. But probs I don't have the knowledge to judge properly...
Can you believe that until now there were more genomes sequenced for the woolly mammoth than for living African elephants?
Today, we bring you the first genomic, continent-scale analyses of 232 high-quality genomes of both species, the savanna and forest elephant.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
The adoption of agriculture kicked off a very active period in human evolution, geneticists argue in a new @nature.com study. “Everything has changed about the way we live," says @harvard.edu geneticist Ali Akbari, "and that’s reflected in our genome and how it’s trying to catch up.” @science.org
I still feel some degree of statistichal swindlery in all this.
Abstract from manucript
At least they include this disclaimer right away in the abstract.
There's undeniably a huge amount of work behind this but I remember reading the preprint and being strongly unconvinced about many things. doi.org/10.1038/s415... Let's see how a second read feels.
Very excited to share our study of an ancient environmental genome extracted from lake sediment! It originates from a brown bear that lived around 9,600 years ago close to the last ice-sheet remains in northern Sweden, and has an unexpected mitochondrial haplogroup. 1/7 www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
From DNA to discovery: what are the steps of HiFi sequencing? 🧬
This blog breaks down the 5-step PacBio workflow, covering everything from Nanobind sample prep to real-time data analysis on the Revio and Vega systems.
See how it all comes together: bit.ly/4vDRhGW
#PacBio #HiFisequencing #Genomics
Just discovered ggmagnify hughjonesd.github.io/ggmagnify/re.... love it! But quite probable that I will overuse slightly creating figures for my next talk. You have been warned.
Next Thursday (April 16th) the @aarc-community.bsky.social is hosting an online workshop on #ancientDNA #imputation and #relatedness with @jolijnerven.bsky.social!
Keen to sign up? Here's the link! docs.google.com/forms/d/1kUg...
The resemblance is uncanny 😆
New @cpgsthlm.bsky.social paper! Unofficial title according to me: "Lemmings mirror geography within Fennoscandia" Wink, wink 🤓
🦗 Animal #982 🐢
I figured it out in 4 guesses!
🟥🟥🟧🟩
🔥 1 | Avg. Guesses: 4
metazooa.com
#metazooa
Mixtum results for Otzi
Previous Otzi results
An example of a quick replication of Otzi's profile. Go read the doc for the deets.
Mixtum out now! A graphical tool for two-way admixture analysis in population genetics based on f-statistics. Our small contribution to make admixture modelling simpler for everyone. Includes software with user friendly GUI. We open to feeback for mid-term support. doi.org/10.1093/bioi...
How did catastrophic black death and myxomatosis outbreaks on an isolated island affect the genomes of humans & rabbits, respectively?
And how did the microbes evolve in response to this?
PhD position @cpgsthlm.bsky.social with Anders Götherström and me as supervisors!
su.varbi.com/en/what:job/...
