4/ To enable the analysis, we developed cool new methods: (1) impHet, a pipeline that provides high accuracy estimates of heterozygosity for ancient genomes, (2) a new genomic scan for balancing selection in aDNA timeseries data, (3) a simulation pipeline for mimicking biases in aDNA.

3/ We also characterize "peaks" in disease burden, with a major peak at 7000BP in both regions, and a smaller, later peak corresponding to urbanization and the rise of large polities. Interestingly, increases in diversity of immune-related genes is highly correlated between the regions (r=0.91)

2/ We found clear evidence that the answer is YES. We show that the MHC is the genomic region with the most dramatic increases in heterozygosity - 16 and 7 times higher than genome-wide levels, in two regions, Southwestern Eurasia and East Asia). 66% of Het-increasing genes are in the MHC.

🧵 Excited to share a new preprint from our lab looking into signals of disease-burden in aDNA (doi.org/10.1101/2025...)! It has long been speculated that transition to sedentary, agricultural and urbanized lifestyle increases disease burden, but can we see this in aDNA?

Looking at the movment in this phenotypic space, we see a major transition around 70mya, which breached to a new region in the space. This transition was followed by a period of divesification that resulted in a wide range of high-complexity phenotypes of honey bees, stingless bees, and bumble bees.

New paper on the evolution of sociaility in bees by Ohad Peled, with Guy Bloch, is out on Current Biology! We took a data-driven approach to the classification of social level, and studied the evolutionary history of the social phenotpic space. Read all about it: shorturl.at/7J5zx