🧬 NEW JOB: @york-bioarch.bsky.social is hiring a Postdoc in Ancient DNA
Work on the RoBMobS project to explore mobility and diversity in Roman Britain using genomic data.
💰 £37k - £39k
⏳ 34 months
📍 York, UK
📅 Apply by 24 March 2026
jobs.york.ac.uk/vacancy/post...
Are you interested in human DNA from ancient sediments? Do you want to do a PhD in Vienna? We have two open positions in our group! You can learn more and apply here (scroll down to the very bottom, ours are the last two listings): careers.univie.ac.at/en/praedoc/s...
Can safely way this is the craziest and coolest study I have led. We chart the evolution of sheeppox virus, finding it in the Eurasian steppe ~3700 years ago, and also in a LOT of parchment from medieval Europe (made from a range of animals skins!) #aDNA
Really excited to share our new paper on the Early Iron Age mass grave at Gomolava (9th c. BCE), a study I had the pleasure to work on during my PhD with an amazing group of co-authors across multiple disciplines. Open access link: www.nature.com/articles/s41... 🧵👇
🧬SedaDNA Postdoc position💥 2 years Starts 2026, apply by 1st March.
Join Aleks Pluskowski at Reading & me at NHM. jobs.reading.ac.uk/Job/JobDetai...
The story the evolution of height in populations of Europe has been a bit of rollercoaster, veering between natural selection or admixture with populations who had a higher genetic propensity to be taller by chance. This preprint goes back to natural selection...
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
Why are Dutch people so tall? This has been a long-standing debate in genetics, with earlier studies questioned due to unaccounted for confounding. Great to be involved in a new study (link below) using within-family GWAS; we confirm that height has been under positive selection.
A new study from Anthropic finds that gains in coding efficiency when relying on AI assistance did did not meet statistical significance; AI use noticeably degraded programmers’ understanding of what they were doing. Incredible.
I had intended to post something about this new Google DeepMind paper that appeared yesterday in Nature, but the press coverage has added to what there is to say. So this is a long 🧵
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Heritability = a statistical description of sources of interindividual variation in a specific set of people under a specific set of environmental conditions. It doesn't index a fixed underlying feature of human biology. A few lines in this paper acknowledge that but its overall framing may mislead.
Our work on the generalizability of polygenic scores (PGS) from the @arbelharpak.bsky.social Lab is now officially out!
We examine the accuracy of PGS predictions at the individual level. We make 3 observations that expose gaps in our understanding of PGS “portability.”
rdcu.be/e0LAr
(1/27)
Cow Tools!
We have lived alongside cows for nearly 10,000 years.
We breed them and exploit them
It is now, only now, that we have discovered THEY CAN USE TOOLS
Here I describe our study
(paper) www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... in @currentbiology.bsky.social
with @auersperga.bsky.social
Excited to share our new preprint from the @arbelharpak.bsky.social Lab!
How do recruitment into genetic studies and study characteristics impact what we infer about the genetic bases of traits, and what are the consequences? (1/21)
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
I am looking for a postdoc to develop high-performance algorithms in computational genomics. Email or DM me if interested. For more information, see hlilab.github.io/vacancies. RTs appreciated!
While stories of singular DNA changes that drove evolution of human brain/behaviour remain seductive, advances across multiple fields of biology cast doubt on such simplistic narratives of our origins. A new paper from my lab shows how biobanks may speak to this fundamental question.🧪
Explainer🧵👇1/n
I've spent all day struggling to write a single page of a popular science article. I bang away at a word processor; give up; start diagramming on paper. Take some notes; draft a few sentences in pen; return to the computer...and very slowly I figure out what I was trying to say in the first place.
Lovely to work with @blevinske.bsky.social, @paleogenomics.bsky.social & Verena Schuenemann on " Ancient DNA insights into diverse pathogens and their hosts"! Read it at rdcu.be/eSVPN
Our new ancient DNA paper has just been published!
We present 28 new genomes from southern Africa - several of them high-coverage whole genomes.
Exciting to be moving towards population-level representation of ancient southern African genetic diversity!
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Congratulations!
Our paper in the PNAS Special Feature on 🐕 is out!
We demonstrated the accuracy of imputing ancient canid genomes, looked at inbreeding levels over the past 10,000 years and found genomic regions resistant to ROH which were enriched for immunity and chemosensory genes.
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
What's that? 5 ancient doggy papers in 10 days is too many dogs?
Can I interest you in some cats?
Perhaps a complete retelling of cat domestication, dispersal, and replacement across Eurasia?
As you wish!
Science
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
Cell Genomics
www.cell.com/cell-genomic...
A PNAS Special Feature exclusively about dogs? Woof!
Here are 3 of the 8 that we were involved with. Congrats to @lachiescarsbrook.bsky.social & @undeaddandy.bsky.social
Dingoes!
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
German Shepherds!
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
Imputation!
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
🚨 PNAS Special Feature 2 🐕
We used ancient DNA and dietary isotopes to show that landscape modification and the introduction of European dogs impacted dingo populations across Australia.
🔗 Full paper here: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
🚨 PNAS Special Feature 🐕
We analysed genomes of historical German Shepherds to reveal how bottlenecks linked to WWII and the use of popular sires led to significant declines in genomic health. We also found an early 20th century wolf-dog hybrid!
🔗 Full paper here: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
Our paper is out! Although wolves and dogs can interbreed and produce fertile offspring, hybridization between the two is rare. We found that most dogs today have low but detectable levels of post-domestication wolf ancestry that has shaped their evolution in human environments. tinyurl.com/yt4x4r7n
This is such an exciting time to be working at the interface between ancient DNA and human health! www.newscientist.com/article/2500...
The invention of agriculture (around 9,000 years ago) spurred the rise of early states? NO. Our research www.nature.com/articles/s41... (with @drqueue.bsky.social) in @nathumbehav.nature.com supports an alternative theory that States almost invariably formed in societies that grew cereal grains.
Very thankful to the @royalsociety.org for the opportunity to start my own research group at the Big Data Institute, @ndm.ox.ac.uk, as a Royal Society University Research Fellow! royalsociety.org/news/2025/11...
Lastly, we demonstrated the accuracy of imputation for ancient canids, paving the way for future studies to leverage the greater information content of phased haplotypes.
We observed remarkable stability in inbreeding over the past 10 Kya, until the beginning of modern breed formation, which led to a substantial increase in the number and length of ROH segments. We also found that genomic regions resistant to ROH are enriched for immunity and taste receptor genes.
