Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Reposted by Murillo R.

Roshni Patel @roshnipatel.bsky.social · 1d

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!

Roshni Patel @roshnipatel.bsky.social · Aug 6

We'll primarily work at the intersection of statistical and population genetics, and we also have active projects related to the ethical and social implications of human genetics (ELSI). Please get in touch if that's a combination that sounds interesting to you!

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Graham Coop @gcbias.bsky.social · 1d

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

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paris martineau @paris.nyc · 2d

my latest investigation for @consumerreports.org is based on months of reporting and 60+ lab tests of leading protein supplements

we found that most protein powders and shakes have more lead in one serving than our experts say is safe to have in a day (🧵)

www.consumerreports.org/lead/protein...

Protein Powders and Shakes Contain High Levels of Lead - Consumer Reports

CR tests of 23 popular protein powders and shakes found that most contain high levels of lead.

www.consumerreports.org

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Joshua G. Schraiber @jgschraiber.bsky.social · 10d

Just an absolutely horrific self own, depleting the US of amazing students from all over the world who contributed to what used to make America great: its diversity, its openness, and its leadership in education.

The New York Times @nytimes.com · 10d

The number of international students arriving in the U.S. in August fell by 19% this year compared with last year — the largest decline on record outside of the pandemic.

Nearly 20 Percent Fewer International Students Traveled to the U.S. in August

The data shows the steepest decline in August international student arrivals since the pandemic.

nyti.ms

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Murillo R. @mufernando.bsky.social · 11d

Because we are historians ourselves?

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Drug Monkey @drugmonkey.bsky.social · 21d

This may be the most important paper ever published about NIH funded research.

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

What if NIH had been 40% smaller?

Replaying history with less NIH funding shows widespread impacts on drug-linked research

www.science.org

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Murillo R. @mufernando.bsky.social · 20d

I just had to hop through 5 papers to find the original methods (2025 -> 2018 -> 2014 -> 2013 -> 2005). what is your highest score? 🤯

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Matt Rockman @wormsrock.bsky.social · 22d

C. elegans is a real animal and we set out to understand how it comes to have its distinctive biogeography. Its ancestral center of diversity is in the higher elevation forests of Hawaii. Its closest relatives are spread across east Asia. Did they travel from Asia? [Preprint 🧵]

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Rafaela ❤️‍🔥 @rafavnt.bsky.social · 23d

I literally spent 10 min translating Lula’s speech about Palestine to English. I just need every single one of my gringo friends to listen to this man in order to maybe restore their faith in politics. This right here is a politician. This is why we voted for him. And personally, I’ll do it again.

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Yun S. Song @yun-s-song.bsky.social · 24d

We are excited to share GPN-Star, a cost-effective, biologically grounded genomic language modeling framework that achieves state-of-the-art performance across a wide range of variant effect prediction tasks relevant to human genetics.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
(1/n)

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marilou boddé @mariloumercedes.bsky.social · 28d

Our paper Genomic diversity of the African malaria vector Anopheles funestus was published in Science today! It features inversions, selection in action, museum specimens and putative new ecotypes. doi.org/10.1126/scie...

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Micah @rincewind.run · Sep 11

evergreen

Squidward looking out window meme

Squidward captioned USA
SpongeBob captioned Brazil
Patrick captioned South Korea

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Murillo R. @mufernando.bsky.social · Sep 10

It's 2025, so I feel like it's a stretch to slice the analyses of the same handful of genomes into three or more papers...

Murillo R. @mufernando.bsky.social · Sep 9

this keeps me up at night. I can’t imagine monkeys surviving the 2800km trip from Africa to South America…

Fabio A. Machado @fmachado.bsky.social · Sep 9

Mammals rafting across the ocean to reach South America and Madagascar

I mean, I can buy reptiles and turtles (low metabolism), but mammals have to constantly eat and drink water? I just don't buy it.

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Jeffrey Ross-Ibarra @jrossibarra.bsky.social · Sep 3

Save the date! #PEQG26 June 9-12 2026 in Asilomar, CA. Happens only every 2yrs, but is my favorite conference. Full website coming soon, and registration and abstract submission opens November 14, but I'm allowed to tease that keynotes will be @jnovembre.bsky.social @jennytung.bsky.social and me!

Homepage - Population, Evolutionary, and Quantitative Genetics Conference

Visit our website to learn more.

genetics-gsa.org

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Chase W. Nelson 倪誠志 @chasewnelson.bsky.social · Sep 3

Announcing SimHumanity, a baseline SLiM 5.0 model of the full human genome, replete with demographic history, autosomes, X/Y, and mtDNA. A shared starting point for reproducible evolutionary simulations. We’d love your feedback! #SLiM #evolution #genomics www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

SimHumanity: Using SLiM 5.0 to run whole-genome simulations of human evolution

The reconstruction of human evolutionary history has undergone repeated advances, each made possible by methodological innovations. In recent decades, genetic and genomic data played a central role in...

www.biorxiv.org

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Molly Przeworski @mollyprz.bsky.social · Sep 2

In these dark times, it comes as a rare pleasure to highlight @natanaels.bsky.social ‬ & @marcdemanuel.bsky.social's work on germline and somatic mutations in humans. 1/n
www.biorxiv.org/cgi/content/...

Collateral mutagenesis funnels multiple sources of DNA damage into a ubiquitous mutational signature

Mutations reflect the net effects of myriad types of damage, replication errors, and repair mechanisms, and thus are expected to differ across cell types with distinct exposures to mutagens, division ...

www.biorxiv.org

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Laura K Hayward @lkhayward.bsky.social · Aug 23

Why do males and females often differ in traits?
The expected answer: selection.
But our new paper in GENETICS shows that genetic drift alone can generate sexual dimorphism — even when male & female optima are the same

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Gregg Gonsalves @gregggonsalves.bsky.social · Aug 28

#NIH is hanging by a thread. The #CDC has been decimated. #RFK Jr. and Russell #Vought are psychopaths--I don't say this frivolously--they are cold, calculating, inflicting violence on millions through public policy. It is where we are right now. These men are not normal. 1/

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Murillo R. @mufernando.bsky.social · Aug 27

I think Andy/Scott/Angel were looking into linked short reads (universalsequencing.com/pages/tell-s...) for phasing barnacle genomes (high diversity, not as messy, probably).

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Jeffrey Ross-Ibarra @jrossibarra.bsky.social · Aug 27

Genomics hivemind: I want to genotype a bunch of diverse, heterozygous diploids with a messy genome (🌽 -- who'd have guessed?) but I care about phase. Computational phasing doesn't really cut it, so wondering what the cheapest alternatives are -- nanopore to 10-20X? Linked shortreads?

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James Kitchens @kitchensjn.bsky.social · Aug 19

Excited to share our new preprint for the tskit_arg_visualizer Python package! ARGs can sometimes feel like a black box, so
@yanwong.bsky.social and I have been developing a method to programmatically drawing these graphs.

🔗 arxiv.org/abs/2508.03958

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tskit_arg_visualizer: interactive plotting of ancestral recombination graphs

Summary: Ancestral recombination graphs (ARGs) are a complete representation of the genetic relationships between recombining lineages and are of central importance in population genetics. Recent brea...

arxiv.org

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Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · Aug 19

1. The philosophy of science sometimes gets an unearned reputation as a purely academic exercise that offers little by way of concrete tools for advancing research.

This is wrong.

And today, as we grapple with how AI is changing the nature of scientific activity, it's desperately wrong.

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Peter Sudmant @psudmant.bsky.social · Aug 13

The Sudmant lab at UC Berkeley is seeking a postdoc to work on a fully funded NIH project to understand differences in DNA repair and somatic mutation across the primate tree of life. Please spread widely to those who may be interested aprecruit.berkeley.edu/JPF05052

Postdoctoral Scholar – Genomics, Aging, Somatic Mutation, Structural Variation, Evolution , Cancer – Integrative Biology

University of California, Berkeley is hiring. Apply now!

aprecruit.berkeley.edu

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Joshua G. Schraiber @jgschraiber.bsky.social · Aug 13

Incredibly proud of this work where we developed a method for understanding the information contained in millions of genomes. Another example of NIH funded research.

The American Journal of Human Genetics @ajhgnews.bsky.social · Aug 13

📣Online NOW!
📄Estimation of demography and mutation rates from one million haploid genomes
🧑‍🤝‍🧑 @jgschraiber.bsky.social @jeffspence.github.io @docedge.bsky.social

Estimation of demography and mutation rates from one million haploid genomes

Samples of millions of genomes provide substantial information about recent demography and mutation, but standard population-genetic methods make assumptions not met in these data. We introduce DR EVI...

www.cell.com

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