Doc Edge

Reflections on the Human Genome Diversity Project: a conversation with Marcus W. Feldman, Henry T. Greely, and Mary-Claire King Abstract. The Human Genome Diversity Project (HGDP) began in 1991 as an initiative to study genetic variation from human populations worldwide. In 2002, th

If you research or are simply interested in human genetic variation, ancient and modern, read my and Noah Rosenberg's latest in GENETICS academic.oup.com/genetics/art... 1/2

Stanford researchers help trace ancestry for African Americans A group of Stanford researchers is offering a mathematical model to help link family connections up to 410 years ago.

Excited that our work was featured on the local (Bay Area) news for their Black History month series. Interview with Noah and clips from my interview with @dornsife.usc.edu and CGSI talk in the article below

www.nbcbayarea.com/discover-bla...

Jeff and I already discussing tunes for the lounge act

Promises to be poppin (🍿)

BUT SRSLY PLEASE REGISTER, WE ARE SO EXCITED!!!!!!!!!!!!

bringing my guitar @jnovembre.bsky.social

New work from the lab: Miles @milesroberts.bsky.social tried out machine learning to estimate sweep times to fixation and (spoilers) it didn't really help www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... As always, we'd appreciate any feedback!

I think you need a 4 instead of a 2 in that case. Imagine a fully additive-heritable trait scaled to have variance 1. The full-sib covariance will be 1/2, and the half-sib covariance will be 1/4. Then 4*(1/2-1/4) will get you back to 1

The Guerrero Lab at NC State University seeks a postdoc in computational evolutionary genetics. Ideal candidates have quantitative skills. Apply by March 10, 2026, via rfguerre@ncsu.edu. More info: rguerrer.org #postdoc

Huge Aristotle W

Congrats @jeffgroh.bsky.social et al. Some avocado trees open female-phase flowers in the morning & then male in afternoon. Others show complementary pattern (m->f), to synchronize pollination of two types. Jeff show this to be a >45Mya polymorphism at a transcription factor across 100s of species.

What sets the mutation rate of a cell type in an animal species? Germline mutation rates per generation are strikingly similar across animals, despite vast differences in life histories. Analogously, in at least one somatic cell type, mutation rates at the end of l...

Happy to highlight an essay I wrote together with @marcdemanuel.bsky.social,
@natanaels.bsky.social and Anastasia Stolyarova, trying to think through what sets the mutation rate of a cell type in an animal species: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... 1/n

Allele Frequencies at Recessive Disease Genes are Mainly Determined by Pleiotropic Effects in Heterozygotes https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2025.12.05.692665v1

It was a total pleasure to work with @roshnipatel.bsky.social on this, who really led the charge in all respects. Anyone interested in learning about the intersection of population genetics and statistical genetics should check out her new lab in Oregon!

Observational epidemiological studies can mitigate genetic confounding with the genetic relatedness matrix Observational studies are commonly used in psychology and epidemiology to identify risk factors correlated with health outcomes. However, these studies are vulnerable to confounding when shared geneti...

Excited to share work from my postdoc with @docedge.bsky.social and collaborators Matt Pennell and @jgschraiber.bsky.social, newly out over the weekend: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... (1/6)

Intracellular competition shapes plasmid population dynamics From populations of multicellular organisms to selfish genetic elements, conflicts between levels of biological organization are central to evolution. Plasmids are extrachromosomal, self-replicating g...

Hot off the press! Our latest paper led by @fernpizza.bsky.social, understanding how plasmids evolve inside cells. These small, self-replicating DNA circles live inside bacteria and carry antibiotic resistance genes, but also compete with one another to replicate. 1/
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

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...

This joke drives >55

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

Excited to share our latest work on the factors that determine what genes we find (and don't find!) in GWAS and burden tests.

We describe a critical concept that we call *specificity*.

Led by Jeff Spence and Hakhamanesh Mostafavi:

It was charming, but it would have been even more fun to watch all the dads getting agitated had the dodgers fallen behind and lost the series

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/...

www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-4v...

Distinct haplotypes and reversed dominance at a single-gene balanced polymorphism controlling heterodichogamy in two genera of wingnuts In most species within the walnut family, two genetically determined morphs alternate between male and female flowering phases in time. Groh et al. identify a distinct locus for this dimorphism in two...

Sharing our new paper, "Distinct haplotypes and reversed dominance at a single-gene balanced polymorphism controlling heterodichogamy in two genera of wingnuts". Genomics & evolution of a mating type system involving two morphs with alternating sexes in walnut relatives www.cell.com/current-biol...

Distinct haplotypes and reversed dominance at a single-gene balanced polymorphism controlling heterodichogamy in two genera of wingnuts In the angiosperm mating system of heterodichogamy, two hermaphroditic morphs temporally alternate between male and female flowering phases, promoting…

Congratulations to @jeffgroh.bsky.social on the publication of his paper on an ancient balanced polymorphisms controlling heterodichogamy in two genera of wingnuts. The paper shows the putative turnover & reversal of dominance of a mating type polymorphism
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Just skimmed the title---the two genera of wingnuts are you and @jeffgroh.bsky.social?

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

The "You gotta keep 'em separated" line in "Come Out and Play" was inspired by his bench work (for real) www.facebook.com/watch/?v=113...

This is a great opportunity!

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!