Peter Laurin

Colonization, translocation, and evolution of opportunistic pathogens during hospital-associated infections Many commensal bacteria that peacefully reside in the human microbiome are also able to cause acute opportunistic infections. Emerging evidence suggests that within-host evolution contributes to infec...

Is the human microbiome a source for hospital-associated infections (HAI) and are any genetic changes associated with HAI? In our new preprint, we longitudinally reconstruct the evolutionary processes within the human microbiome leading up to HAI: doi.org/10.1101/2025...

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/...

Why are guinea-pigs the colours they are? Sewall's got a DAG for that.

We couldn't not rate this classic early DAG by our beloved collective granddagy, Sewall Wright.

14/10. Ten for the DAG, plus one for each cute guinea-pig node.

From Wright (1920) "The Relative Importance of Heredity and Environment in Determining the Piebald Pattern of Guinea-Pigs"

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

Here are some thoughts about higher education - specifically statistics & research methods - after grading some more papers written with "assistance" from LLMs.

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Congrats @michaelwasney.bsky.social!! 🎉A fab talk as always!

Heritability and target size underlie differences between trait architectures: examples for three traits. Top: Height (blue) and platelet crit (red) have the same heritability per site h2/L, but height has a much higher mutational target size L. This results in many more hits for height (1533) than for platelet crit (648) (2 left panels). However, the marginal distributions of effect sizes, MAFs, and z-scores of hits are nearly identical for the two traits (3 right panels). Middle: Height (blue) and FEV1 (gold) differ in h2/L, but have similar L. Consequently, the joint distribution of z-scores and MAFs of their hits are markedly different (2 left panels), as are the marginal distributions of hit effect sizes, MAFs and z-scores (right). Bottom: After scaling by their respective , and imposing the more stringent scaled significance threshold (corresponding to FEV1) for both traits, the joint distribution of z-scores and MAFs of their hits (2 left panels) and the corresponding marginal distributions (3 right panels) are highly similar.

Genetic architectures of #ComplexTraits vary widely. @yuvalsim.bsky.social @jkpritch.bsky.social @gs2747.bsky.social &co show these diffs arise from mutational target size & heritability per site; when controlled for, all tested traits have similar architectures @plosbiology.org 🧪 plos.io/47mZXqT

Figure 1A from the paper shows the distribution of black-headed (western) and rose-breasted grosbeaks (eastern) throughout North America. Small illustrations of males of each species are shown. Black-headed has a rusty orange breast and black head, while rose-breasted has a small reddish bib with a bright white belly. There is an inset map of South Dakota showing the transect across the hybrid zone

The first Aguillon Lab paper is officially out in early view at Evolution!! Led by postdoc @devonderaad.bsky.social, we’ve explored the hybrid zone between black-headed and rose-breasted grosbeaks in the Great Plains. #ornithology #hybridization #speciation #evolution doi.org/10.1093/evol...

Genomic resistance in historical clinical isolates increased in frequency and mobility after the age of antibiotics Antibiotic resistance is frequently observed shortly after the clinical introduction of an antibiotic. Whether and how frequently that resistance occurred before the introduction is harder to determin...

What was antibiotic resistance like before we ever used antibiotics? How did we change what antibiotic resistance genes looked like over 100 years?

Our paper looking at resistance genes from a century of NCTC historical isolates now out in mGen:
www.microbiologyresearch.org/content/jour...

the crisis in which the University of Chicago is now engulfed -- one entirely of its own making, and which has led to the (hopefully temporary) suspension of admissions into numerous PhD programs in the humanities -- represents I think a seismic event in the history of American higher education

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Antimutator and Mutational Spectrum Effects Can Combine to Reduce Evolutionary Potential in Escherichia coli ΔnudJ Abstract. The rate of spontaneous mutation is a key factor in determining the capacity of a population to adapt to a novel environment, for example, a bact

New paper out @molbioevol.bsky.social on antimutator Ecoli, mutational spectra and the distribution of fitness effects of antibiotic resistance with @knightjar.bsky.social @rokkrasovec.bsky.social and others @mermanchester.bsky.social doi.org/pzfm
Read🧵for highlights and fun stats (1/13)

Prehistoric Global Migration of Vanishing Gut Microbes With Humans The gut microbiome is crucial for health and greatly affected by lifestyle. Many microbes common in non-industrialized populations are disappearing or extinct in industrialized populations. Understand...

Excited to share a new preprint w/ the Sonnenberg lab, led by Matt Carter, @zzzhiru.bsky.social & @mattolm.bsky.social. We analyzed the microbiomes of two non-industrialized populations from opposite sides of the globe to try to reconstruct the recent evolutionary history of our gut microbiota.

Hypermutable hotspot enables the rapid evolution of self/non-self recognition genes in Dictyostelium Cells require highly polymorphic receptors to perform accurate self/non-self recognition. In the amoeba Dicytostelium discoideum, polymorphic TgrB1 & TgrC1 proteins are used to bind sister cells and e...

I'm excited to announce our new biorxiv preprint, wherein we investigate the evolution of the weirdest genetic locus I've ever seen! Behold the tgr genes of the social amoeba, which mediate self/non-self discrimination during facultative multicellularity 🐅 🧵 1/
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Text from an FAQ in Okbay et al 20222: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41588-022-01016-z a similar same statement is made in an FAQ in 2025: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.05.14.653986v1.supplementary-material Text reads: "The results of SSGAC studies have sometimes been used by online platforms, including some companies, to predict individual outcomes. We recognize that returning individual genomic “results” can be a fun way to engage people in research and other projects and to feed or stoke their interest in genomics. But it is important that participants/users understand that these individual results are not meaningful predictions and should be regarded essentially as entertainment. Failure to make this point clear risks sowing confusion and undermining trust in genetics research"

It is depressing, but all too predictable, how swiftly we’ve gone from the Social Science Genetic Association Consortium offering reassurances about the uses of behavioural polygenic scores to one of their lead authors marketing embryo selection for IQ

Breaking: NSF is suspending roughly 300 grants with UCLA, following a DOJ finding on Tuesday that the university violated Title VI by "creating a hostile educational environment for Jewish and Israeli students."

M O I L A B - Join us! Join us! Our lab is based at the University of California, Berkeley, embedded in the vibrant and multicultural San Francisco Bay Area, surrounded by astonishing nature!

Network, we are looking for PhD students and Postdocs on evolutionary and ecological genomics in 2025/2026

Join our diverse and welcoming lab at UC Berkeley & HHMINEWS!

Check job ads-> www.moilab.science/team/join-us

We are on the lookout for postdocs for two different projects at the intersection of ecology, evolution, and the human microbiome.

See thread for more information and reach out!

I am seeking a postdoc for my group at UCLA. We work at the intersection of population genetics x microbiome (garud.eeb.ucla.edu). If interested, please message me!

Consider supporting WVPB, with 19% of its funding at risk, and the very endangered WVMR, with over 60% of its funding at risk!

Both operate close to my partner's hometown, and WV is important to both of us ❤️

wvpublic.org/ways-to-give...

www.alleghenymountainradio.org

Nearly 100 people killed seeking aid in Gaza on Sunday, Palestinian officials say Dozens of Palestinians were killed across Gaza on Sunday as they tried to get food aid, according to local health authorities, one of the deadliest days in recent months for those seeking assistance.

Dozens of Palestinians were killed across Gaza on Sunday as they tried to get food aid, according to local health authorities, one of the deadliest days in recent months for those seeking assistance.

By Joe Hernandez, @danielestrin.bsky.social and Anas Baba

Junior, Assistant, or Associate Specialist – Xue Lab University of California, Irvine is hiring. Apply now!

The Xue lab at UC Irvine is looking for a staff scientist to support our work investigating how microbes interact and evolve in the gut microbiome! Open to a wide range of previous experience levels, see ad for more.
recruit.ap.uci.edu/JPF09601

News article covering our story/research here from Matt Wood!
biologicalsciences.uchicago.edu/news/soil-mi...

New paper in @nature.com! With @kiseokmicro.bsky.social , Siqi Liu, Kyle Crocker, Jojo Wang, Mikhail Tikhonov & Madhav Mani — a massive dataset and simple model reveal a few conserved regimes that capture how soil microbiome metabolism responds to perturbations. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

New paper! Combining epidemiology and experiments uncovers surprising drug-host-microbiome-pathogen interactions. Congrats @amankumar25.bsky.social, Robyn Tamblyn, and the rest of the team.

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

It's finally out!🎉

We known that the #microbiome confers colonization resistance against #pathogens, we know that some meds 💊 affect gut microbes 🦠

So, do 💊 alter colonization resistance? It turns out that some do! If you wanna know more, check out our latest work www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Schematic of the key prediction tested in this work. As the transversion (Tv) mutation bias of WT E. coli is shifted away from the ancestral bias, the resulting distribution of fitness effects (DFE) is predicted to change. Specifically, it should shift left with a bias reinforcement, with a lower fraction of beneficial mutations. In contrast, reversing the ancestral bias is predicted to cause right-shifted DFEs with higher proportions of beneficial mutations.

Mutations generate variation, critical for #evolution, but #MutationBias restricts the choice of mutation type. @deepaagashe.bsky.social &co use #Ecoli strains with different mutation biases to show that changing an old bias should yield more beneficial mutations @plosbiology.org 🧪 plos.io/46LjCRt

Our paper demonstrating that within-species warfare interactions are ecologically important on human skin is now published in Nature Micro! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Here Is All the Science at Risk in Trump’s Clash With Harvard More than 900 research grants worth $2.6 billion are in jeopardy. So is the 80-year-old model of American science.

An 80-year-old model of American science is under threat.

www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

A general substitution matrix for structural phylogenetics. Abstract. Sequence-based maximum likelihood (ML) phylogenetics is a widely used method for inferring evolutionary relationships, which has illuminated the

New paper from the lab from Sriram Garg in my group. We introduce a general substitution matrix for structural phylogenetics. I think this is a big deal, so read on below if you think deep history is important. academic.oup.com/mbe/advance-...

🚨By a 6–3 vote, the Supreme Court UPHOLDS Tennessee's ban on gender-affirming care for minors, concluding that it does NOT discriminate on the basis of sex, is not subject to heightened scrutiny, and survives rational basis review. All three liberals dissent. www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24p...