Adam Auton

Who is at #AGBTGM26 ?

Science Bluesky is now much better than Science Twitter is… but I still miss peak pre-pandemic Science Twitter.

Davis Summer Population Genomics Program Want to learn population genetics? Please fill out this form to indicate your potential interest in a 2-week intensive online summer population genetics course taught by Jeffrey Ross-Ibarra and Graham...

Fun news! @gcbias.bsky.social and I are teaching a 2-week online population genetics workshop this summer to raise money for the Center for Population Biology at UC Davis. We're trying to gauge interest -- please fill this out if you might be interested! And please share broadly!

I mean, death from infectious disease clearly has a genetic component related to the immune system… the distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic seems a little slippery.

Clever evolutionary geneticists are liking my post, so I guess I might be on to something…

Heritability of intrinsic human life span is about 50% when confounding factors are addressed How heritable is human life span? If genetic heritability is high, longevity genes can reveal aging mechanisms and inform medicine and public health. However, current estimates of heritability are low...

I haven't thought deeply about this, but ... if heritability is the proportion of the variance attributable to genetics, and I remove some variance attributable to "the environment", then should I be surprised that the heritability goes up? @sashagusevposts.bsky.social help!?
doi.org/10.1126/scie...

We're hiring! We're seeking a talented statistical geneticist to join the team. Come work with the greatest genetic dataset in the world, and help shape the 23andMe Research Institute in our nonprofit era!

23andme.wd5.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/23/det...

Brenna Henn Wanted to Improve Genetic Medicine. Then Her N.I.H. Grant Was Cut. Brenna Henn had a long-term grant to study the genetic diversity of Africans and people of African descent. Then her N.I.H. funding was cut.

Brenna Henn Wanted to Improve Genetic Medicine. Then Her N.I.H. Grant Was Cut.

I've been thinking about the "virtual cell" concept and wanted to write up a few thoughts. Specifically on how I think the prior experience in GWAS informs the most likely way these models will be useful.

andrewcarroll.github.io/2025/12/23/t...

Completely agree. I was lucky to get to work with Richard on the 1000 Genomes. He was always so generous with ideas and insights.

Congratulations to Richard Durbin on being awarded our Genetics Society Medal!

Electric vehicle owners to face pay-per-mile tax Drivers of electric cars will pay a road charge of 3p per mile, while plug-in hybrid drivers will pay 1.5p per mile from April 2028.

Keeping fuel duty at the same level for 15 years, while phasing in a cumbersome-to-implement tax on EV owners seems insane.

www.bbc.com/news/article...

PRSformer: Disease Prediction from Million-Scale Individual Genotypes

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PRSformer: Disease Prediction from Million-Scale Individual Genotypes [new]
Deep learning w/ neighborhood attention predicts disease from million-scale genotype data by learning genetic interactions.

The missing heritability question is now (mostly) answered Not with a bang but with a whimper

I wrote a little bit about the "missing heritability" question and several recent studies that have brought it to a close. A short 🧵

Discovery of 42 genome-wide significant loci associated with dyslexia - Nature Genetics Genome-wide analysis of self-reported dyslexia identifies 42 associated loci, including 27 not previously associated with cognitive traits. Dyslexia shows genetic correlation with ambidexterity but no...

The field has also gained leverage from personal genomics initiatives, as in this study of ~52k adults answering “yes” to “have you been diagnosed with dyslexia?” vs >1 million responding “no”, which found 42 associated loci + high genetic overlap with directly assessed reading/language skills. 10/n

GitHub - 23andMe/PRSformer Contribute to 23andMe/PRSformer development by creating an account on GitHub.

Preprint: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Github: github.com/23andMe/PRSf...

Feedback welcome!

Huge congrats to the team: Payam Dibaeinia, Chris German, Suyash Shringarpure, and Aly Khan on getting this out the door. Come by Poster Session 1 on Wed 3 Dec 11 a.m. - 2 p.m PST at #NeurIPS2025 San Diego!

We show that non-linear gains emerge for immune-
mediated diseases at N > 1M. Harnessing phenome-wide (NxGxD) models seems a fruitful direction to borrow information across traits.

Core design: Neighborhood attention (O(L) complexity/layer) models the genome in ~100kb intervals, akin to LD blocks. By stacking layers, the model learns local dependencies first, then integrates long-range info and makes predictions feasible at genome scale.

We trained PRSformer at 23andMe Research Institute on population scale data (N > 1M persons; G > 100k variants; D > 10 autoimmune/inflammatory traits). PRSformer significantly outperforms linear baselines and summary-statistic methods (LDPred2) derived from the same cohort.

PRSformer: Disease Prediction from Million-Scale Individual Genotypes Predicting disease risk from DNA presents an unprecedented emerging challenge as biobanks approach population scale sizes (N>106 individuals) with ultra-high-dimensional features (L>105 genotypes). Cu...

Delighted to see our method, PRSformer, at #NeurIPS2025! PRSformer is AI model for population-scale disease-risk prediction from individual genomes. It lays the groundwork for phenome-wide risk prediction.

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

PRSformer: Disease Prediction from Million-Scale Individual Genotypes https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.10.26.684578v1

YouTube video by My Robot Teacher How Professors Are Responding to AI: Resistance Is Futile (and Brief) | My Robot Teacher Episode 1

The brilliant Sarah Senk, together with Taiyo Inoue, has just launched a podcast that explores the implications of AI for higher education: My Robot Teacher. Please give it a listen! #MyRobotTeacher #HigherEd www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2Ta...

YOUR 2024/25 CARABAO CUP WINNERS 😍

On the x-axis is every human gene, ranked by number of publications containing mention of the gene name. Lots left to discover...

Postdoc - Autism Research – 23andMe Careers Read about our mission-based culture, look up open positions and check out the perks of working here.

We're hiring a postdoc to help shape our autism research program; please consider applying.

www.23andme.com/careers/jobs...

Opinion | The Science of Blue Zones and Extreme Longevity Is Deeply Flawed Some of the claims behind the longest-lived people are simply improbable.

"the science of extreme longevity continues as an immense joke."

www.nytimes.com/2025/01/20/o...

Scientist / Senior Scientist, Statistical Genetics – 23andMe Careers Read about our mission-based culture, look up open positions and check out the perks of working here.

We're looking for a talented statistical geneticist to come work with us!
www.23andme.com/careers/jobs...

Scientist / Senior Scientist, Statistical Genetics – 23andMe Careers Read about our mission-based culture, look up open positions and check out the perks of working here.

We're looking for a talented statistical geneticist to come work with us!
www.23andme.com/careers/jobs...

Site-saturation mutagenesis of 500 human protein domains - Nature Large-scale experimental analysis of Human Domainome 1, a library containing more than 500,000 missense mutation variants across more than 500 human protein domains, reveals that 60% of pathogenic mis...

Humans tend to inherently believe that context matters. But context doesn’t seem to matter all that much in genetics.

Epistasis between mutations doesn’t seem to influence their stability in this amazing saturation mutagenesis paper.

www.nature.com/articles/s41...