Douda Bensasson

Flatlining of US Science. Massive self inflicted wound.

Low level contamination confounds population genomic analysis Abstract. Genome sequence contamination has a variety of causes and can originate from within or between species. Previous research focused on contaminatio

Thrilled that work from collaborative efforts by the @dbensasson.bsky.social & @mcmomany.bsky.social labs has been accepted by G3 and is available to read now! Population geneticists beware - low-level contamination has greater impact on analyses than you might expect. doi.org/10.1093/g3jo...

The collision of two genomes threatens global food security Human activity alters selection pressures and species' ranges, creating opportunities for hybridisation through secondary contact. Ancient hybridization has enabled adaptive radiation, but its role in...

Excited about our new preprint showing bidirectional adaptive introgression between invasive and native crop pests over ecological timescales www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

A new paper and video about levels of drug resistance in different countries

I am so happy to share a new paper and a new video (see below). The paper describes a simple mathematical model that describes levels of drug resistance. I called the model the Resistance-Acquisition-Purifying-Selection…

We're very happy to release our new database Metalog metalog.embl.de ! It offers manually curated and harmonised contextual data for 110k metagenomics samples across the globe, incl. precomputed taxonomic profiles, for interactive browsing and for download 🧵 1/7

#microsky

Environment and disease have tissue-specific effects on the tree microbiome Trees are essential for ecosystem function, but due to their long lifespan, are disproportionately impacted by climate change and disease. Tree-associated microbiota are critical for tree health and r...

🧵 New preprint alert!

From the Future Oak project, led by @cenococcum.bsky.social

Landscape-scale impacts of environment and disease on the tree microbiome 🌳🦠
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Jacqueline Peña @jjpena-ecoevo.bsky.social asks if humans 👥🍺🍷🍞 left an impact on wild yeast 🌳

They estimate that S. cerevisiae spread across the global after the last glacial maximum

Looks like wild strains are NOT independent of human movement

Lab of @dbensasson.bsky.social #Evol2025 #Evol25

Audrey Ward @audreykward.bsky.social from the Bensasson lab @dbensasson.bsky.social explores the pop genomics of the yeast 🧫🧽 L. thermotolerans 🍷

They find five major divergence groups and intercontinental migration ✈️

#Evol2025 #Evol25

❄️ Cool it! Are wild yeast locally adapting to higher 🔥 temperatures?

Work from Douda Bensasson @dbensasson.bsky.social shows large standing variation within yeast species for growth at high temps

#Evol2025 #Evol25

Senior Research Associate in Population Genomics (RA2327) in University of East Anglia - UEA Senior Research Associate in Population Genomics (RA2327) in University of East Anglia - UEA

A 4-year postdoc in red fox population genomics is open at the University of East Anglia, starting Dec 2025. Role involves genomic data analysis. Salary from £38,249. More info: https://vacancies.uea.ac.uk/vacancies/1593/senior-research-associate-in-population-genomics-ra2327.html #postdoc

Hi Fungal friends! I’m looking for postdoc positions or job opportunities in NC, GA or remote! My skills are mostly in bioinformatics and phylogenetics. Any leads are appreciated! My references include @mcmomany.bsky.social and @dbensasson.bsky.social !
#fungi #postdoc

Congratulations Dr Jacque Peña!

I now have my PhD!!! My committee members @mcmomany.bsky.social @kdyerlab.bsky.social Jill Anderson and Marin Brewer
and my advisor @dbensasson.bsky.social have been instrumental to my growth as a scientist and as a person!! I'm also thankful to have wonderful lab mates, friends, and family!!

Congratulations Dr Audrey Ward - nice work! We will miss your infectious enthusiasm for Lachancea thermotolerans populations and everything else.

Many US students don’t know how to seek opportunities outside the US. With some help from our colleagues in EU and Canada, we could put together a consolidated website of PhD opportunities and scholarships outside the US, organized by field. There might still be time for this year in some places.

Firings happening right now at the NSF.

Join a protest on #President’sDay. Musk not our President!! We object to actions taken to steal our country by #ElonMusk. #Indivisible
12:00 Monday, 2/17 AT ATHENS GA CITY HALL
Wear Black
Signs will be provided

Trump admin threatens to rescind federal funds over DEI In a sweeping and unprecedented letter issued over the weekend, the Office for Civil Rights declared race-based scholarships, cultural centers and even graduation ceremonies illegal.

This does away with awards based on underrepresentation, student support services based on race, scholarships, etc. Let me explain, pre coffee (wrote this morning, no time to update, you're getting a cut n paste), why this is a bad idea. 🧵

www.insidehighered.com/news/diversi...

Letter from the SSE/SSB/ASN councils on the scientific understanding of sex and gender, pls RT

White House budget proposal could shatter the National Science Foundation “This kind of cut would kill American science and boost China.”…

The US government has been turned over to a group of extraordinarily ignorant people, and they are working to destroy science in this country. Cutting over half the NSF budget would save < 0.1% of the federal budget, but do incalculable harm. Simply heartbreaking.

arstechnica.com/science/2025...

Intraspecific Diversity in Thermal Performance Determines Phytoplankton Ecological Niche Temperature impacts species of phytoplankton in biogeochemically important ways which can be modelled. We conducted a series of culture experiments that demonstrate that intraspecific diversity impac...

Paper out in Ecology Letters from @akrinos.bsky.social : onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

Exploring intraspecific diversity of thermal performance of G. huxelyi in lab experiments and ocean ecosystem models 🧪🌊🌡️#protistsonsky

Ten Black Scientists That Science Teachers Should Know About Help your students see the possibilities of careers in STEM fields by providing them with diverse role models.

Not only is today #Science #Trivia #Saturday, but it’s the start of #BlackHistoryMonth! Today I honor a #Black #Scientist whose name we should all know: George Washington Carver, #Botanist, #Inventor, & #Teacher. He discovered many uses for #Peanuts & developed methods to prevent #Soil #Depletion. 🧪

Musk's Junta Establishes Him as Head of Government Imagining how we'd cover overseas what's happening to the U.S. right now

A Junta can be efficient, just not in the way that most people want...

Analysis in the form of a foreign dispatch via @vermontgmg.bsky.social, journalist & Pulitzer Prize finalist for his book on Watergate.

www.doomsdayscenario.co/p/musk-s-jun...

Using B-allele frequency plots, we now screen our genome data for contamination as well as aneuploidy

Phylogenetic trees were wrong for in silico contaminated data from 2 different fungal species - S. cerevisiae and A. fumigatus - and using multiple tools (incl. NJ and ML approaches).

Surprisingly, even 5-10% contamination can lead to incorrect tree topologies.

Phylogenetic tools usually treat heterozygous sites as missing data, so we imagined this would not be a problem. By contaminating genome data in silico, we checked.

Unsurprisingly, contamination raised levels of “heterozygous” base calls, and strains appeared genetically admixed.

Visualization of SNPs in an aneuploidy screen showed low level intra-species cross contamination in public genome data - mostly 5-10% contaminant.

Low level contamination confounds population genomic analysis Genome sequence contamination has a variety of causes and can originate from within or between species. Previous research focused primarily on cross-species contamination or on prokaryotes. This paper...

Our accidental finding that "Low level contamination confounds population genomic analysis” is on bioRxiv - a fun collaborative project with the @mcmomany.bsky.social lab
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...