Yun Deng
yundeng.bsky.social
Yun Deng
@yundeng.bsky.social
Reposted by Yun Deng
How do GWAS and rare variant burden tests rank gene signals?

In new work @nature.com with @hakha.bsky.social, @jkpritch.bsky.social, and our wonderful coauthors we find that the key factors are what we call Specificity, Length, and Luck!

🧬🧪🧵

www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Specificity, length and luck drive gene rankings in association studies - Nature
Genetic association tests prioritize candidate genes based on different criteria.
www.nature.com
November 7, 2025 at 12:05 AM
Reposted by Yun Deng
This preprint shows that the huge recent progress of non-coding effect predictions is likely going to help tremendously in this area. A must read.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
October 29, 2025 at 1:18 PM
Reposted by Yun Deng
The Johri Lab has an open postdoc position. Please send me an email, if interested. Start date is flexible. Please do share! Thank you in advance.
October 28, 2025 at 9:31 PM
Reposted by Yun Deng
How does life evolve to adapt to modern cities?

Out now in Science, my PhD work with @lindymcbr.bsky.social uncovers the ancient origin of the “London Underground mosquito” – one of the most iconic examples of urban adaptation.

🧵(1/n)
@science.org
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.ady4515
Ancient origin of an urban underground mosquito
Understanding how life is adapting to urban environments represents an important challenge in evolutionary biology. In this work, we investigate a widely cited example of urban adaptation, Culex pipie...
www.science.org
October 25, 2025 at 4:46 AM
Reposted by Yun Deng
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/...
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...
journals.plos.org
October 24, 2025 at 1:51 AM
Reposted by Yun Deng
One of the most exciting works of my career, years in the making. We used high-throughput precision genome editing to test the fitness effects of thousands of natural variants. Our findings challenge the long-held assumption that common variants are inconsequential.

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Massively parallel interrogation of the fitness of natural variants in ancient signaling pathways reveals pervasive local adaptation
The nature of standing genetic variation remains a central debate in population genetics, with differing perspectives on whether common variants are almost always neutral as suggested by neutral and n...
www.biorxiv.org
October 22, 2025 at 5:46 PM
Reposted by Yun Deng
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...
docs.google.com
October 20, 2025 at 10:42 PM
Reposted by Yun Deng
If you need more exciting news about Denisovans, check out our paper on Denisovan ancestry in modern humans through time, out today in Current Biology: www.cell.com/current-biol...! #Denisovan #ancientDNA
An early East Asian lineage with unexpectedly low Denisovan ancestry
Yang et al. study Denisovan ancestry in ancient and present-day humans. In contrast to other East Asians, genomic comparisons suggest that the Jomon derived most of their ancestry from a deep lineage…
www.cell.com
October 20, 2025 at 6:14 PM
Reposted by Yun Deng
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
October 15, 2025 at 3:53 PM
Reposted by Yun Deng
New ad for an independent postdoc in mathematics/statistics/machine learning for Biology in my institute at RIKEN (not my lab), ranging from 3 to 7 years. Our institute is entirely English-run, and a good mix of expertise on maths/physics/stats/bio! www.riken.jp/en/careers/r...
Seeking a few Senior Research Scientists, Research Scientists, Postdoctoral Researchers at Division of Fundamental Mathematical Science, RIKEN Center for Interdisciplinary Theoretical and Mathematical...
www.riken.jp
October 20, 2025 at 1:50 PM
Reposted by Yun Deng
Reposted by Yun Deng
Our latest work is out in Nature today. In this paper, we introduce an improved version of NanoSeq, a duplex sequencing protocol with <5 errors per billion bp in single DNA molecules, and use it to study the somatic mutation landscape of oral epithelium in >1000 people www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Somatic mutation and selection at population scale - Nature
A new version of nanorate DNA&nbsp;sequencing, with an&nbsp;error rate&nbsp;lower than five errors&nbsp;per billion base pairs&nbsp;and compatible with whole-exome and targeted capture, enables epidemiological-scale studies of somatic mutation and selection&nbsp;and&nbsp;the generation of high-resolution&nbsp;selection&nbsp;maps across coding and non-coding sites for many genes.
www.nature.com
October 8, 2025 at 4:31 PM
Reposted by Yun Deng
Our paper (Brieuc Lehmann is the first author) is now online in Genetics.

academic.oup.com/genetics/adv...
On ARGs, pedigrees, and genetic relatedness matrices
Abstract. Genetic relatedness is a central concept in genetics, underpinning studies of population and quantitative genetics in human, animal, and plant se
academic.oup.com
October 9, 2025 at 1:47 AM
Reposted by Yun Deng
Now published! Our paper on:
(1) Accurate sequencing of sperm at scale
(2) Positive selection of spermatogenesis driver mutations across the exome
(3) Offspring disease risks from male reproductive aging
[1/n]
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Sperm sequencing reveals extensive positive selection in the male germline - Nature
A combination of whole-genome NanoSeq with deep whole-exome and targeted NanoSeq is used to accurately characterize mutation rates and genes under positive selection in sperm cells.
www.nature.com
October 8, 2025 at 3:51 PM
Reposted by Yun Deng
Excited to preprint our latest work (w/ Drew DeHaas, Zhibai Jia, Leo Speidel) on using ARGs for demographic inference. w/ applications using data from 1000 Genomes Project. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Inference of complex demographic history using composite likelihood based on whole-genome genealogies
Accurate parametric inference on complex demographic models is a continuing challenge in population genetics. Ancestral recombination graphs (ARGs) provide richer information than simple population ge...
www.biorxiv.org
October 8, 2025 at 2:48 PM
Reposted by Yun Deng
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!
October 6, 2025 at 11:14 PM
Reposted by Yun Deng
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)
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
academic.oup.com
October 3, 2025 at 9:54 AM
Reposted by Yun Deng
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)
September 22, 2025 at 5:29 AM
Reposted by Yun Deng
SINGER is a fantastic method for ARG Inference and based on some of the analyses I've seen definitely the best trade off between accuracy and sample size
SINGER, our ARG inference method, is finally published and freely available online:

doi.org/10.1038/s415...

It was a long journey – 16 months from initial submission to acceptance. Is it just me, or has peer review gotten more arduous lately? 4+ rounds of review isn't so unusual these days...
Robust and accurate Bayesian inference of genome-wide genealogies for hundreds of genomes - Nature Genetics
SINGER is a method for creating ancestral recombination graphs to understand the genealogical history of genomes. The method has increased speed, and thus scalability, without sacrificing accuracy.
doi.org
September 11, 2025 at 4:23 AM
Reposted by Yun Deng
SINGER, our ARG inference method, is finally published and freely available online:

doi.org/10.1038/s415...

It was a long journey – 16 months from initial submission to acceptance. Is it just me, or has peer review gotten more arduous lately? 4+ rounds of review isn't so unusual these days...
Robust and accurate Bayesian inference of genome-wide genealogies for hundreds of genomes - Nature Genetics
SINGER is a method for creating ancestral recombination graphs to understand the genealogical history of genomes. The method has increased speed, and thus scalability, without sacrificing accuracy.
doi.org
September 11, 2025 at 3:50 AM