Piper Below

6 members of my lab already expressed interest (and counting) ❤️🙋‍♀️

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!

YouTube video by PBS NewsHour WATCH: Minneapolis resident and U.S. citizen Aliya Rahman describes being detained by ICE

This is incredibly powerful testimony.

Ms. Rahman is very tough and clear and was treated horribly.

Warning: I can't watch it without tears of rage.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrcW...

Common variation in meiosis genes shapes human recombination and aneuploidy - Nature Analysis of data from pre-implantation genetic testing sheds light on the genetic basis of meiotic-origin aneuploidy, the leading cause of human pregnancy loss, identifying common genetic variants ass...

Pregnancy loss is common in humans, and chromosomal abnormalities are the leading cause. Using genetic data from ~140,000 IVF embryos, we show that maternal variation in meiosis genes influences recombination and aneuploidy risk.

First authors: @saracarioscia.bsky.social & @aabiddanda.github.io

Come work with us! Phenomenal opportunity to work with VUMCs recently whole genome sequenced biobank (300k patients) that is associated with extensive health record data.

apply.interfolio.com/177945

I was honored to speak up with my colleagues from across the government to demand Congress fight for the American people.

Annet Kirabo named “Top Scholar” in hypertension Annet Kirabo, DVM, MSc, PhD, has been ranked as a 2025 Top Scholar by the global academic analytics platform ScholarGPS.

Annet Kirabo named “Top Scholar” in hypertension news.vumc.org/2025/12/23/a...

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

First-of-a-kind study shows encouraging data for trans kids who socially transition Ninety-four percent of participants in a new study stood firm in their trans identity after five years, and "detransitioning" is rare.

The name "Popular Science" doesn't mean we shift our coverage depending on public opinion. It means we cover relevant subjects that are rigorously researched, reliable, and grounded in reality.

And trans lives are grounded in reality.

We see y'all. No matter what.

www.popsci.com/science/tran...

Embryo selection company Herasight goes all in on eugenics ...

I wrote about the bizarre case of Herasight, the embryo selection company going all in on eugenics.

Celebrating the retirement of my wonderful mentor and PhD advisor Doug Bishop @biz3000.bsky.social after more than 30 years at the University of Chicago studying homologous recombination! An incredible mentor to more than 50 grad students, postdocs, and other trainees

More missing heritability discourse mutability, twins, and "hereditarianism" versus "nurturism"

I rounded up some of the missing heritability discussions from the past few weeks and got the last word in (for now).

Excited to share our new FinnGen single-nucleus multiome preprint! 🧬

We profiled ~10M PBMCs (snRNA-seq + snATAC-seq) from 1,108 Finnish donors to map how genetic variants drive complex disease through chromatin and gene regulation 🧵👇
🔗 Link: www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...

Great culture can save lives. Literally.

Amazing letter in today’s @thetimes.com about Tom Stoppard

TODAY IS THE DAY!

GET OUT AND VOTE. Polls are open 7 AM - 7 PM

WE GOT THIS!!!!!!

Are you looking for a collaborative international community of leaders in genetics, epidemiology, statistics, biology, and related biomedical disciplines? Then it's a great time to join IGES!

Sign up by January 31 using the code 2026EarlyRate to unlock full membership benefits at our lowest price.

How and for whom can genetics education reduce beliefs in genetic essentialism? pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41267401/
"We also find that the 3 intervention curricula are highly effective across sociodemographic group characteristics [...] we offer evidence-based strategies for curriculum development"

🧬 🦠 🏙️
Urban vs rural lifestyles create dramatically different gut microbiomes. But how do these different gut microbiomes affect the host?

Excited to share our new paper: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

We are reading it right now too! My children have been demonstrating what it would be like if their pillows were actually made of marshmallow.

Spread the word! There is a professor position opening at our University @upcite.bsky.social. There are several possible (great) labs to join, but if you are interested in DNA methylation and epigenetics in mammals, don't hesitate to contact me directly!

'Washington Post' editorials omit a key disclosure: Bezos' financial ties Three times in the past two weeks, editorials at the 'Washington Post' failed to disclose that they focused on matters in which owner Jeff Bezos had a material interest.

Three times in the past two weeks, editorials at the 'Washington Post' failed to disclose that they focused on matters in which owner Jeff Bezos had a material interest.

How my stutter is teaching me humility—in science and beyond “I will always face the burden of coaxing my body to do what comes naturally and effortlessly for most,” this assistant professor writes

I can relate.

I have been a stutterer since I was a child. I hated being the only one who did. Figuring out the best way to work a sentence w/o stuttering is still exhausting.

Graduate school forced me to work extra hard on presentation skills. I got better.

🧪 www.science.org/content/arti...

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 great opportunities at UNC-Chapel Hill, in a very strong biology department.

Staff Scientist About EMBL-EBI EMBL’s European Bioinformatics Institute is a data powerhouse, utilised on a global scale to advance scientific discovery through bioinformatics and solutions to some of the world’s mos...

I am hiring! - looking for a Staff Scientist to co-run my research group with me. Staff Scientist is a senior professional scientist role at EMBL. Please forward to people you might know who could be interested! embl.wd103.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/EMBL/j...

A reminder that the PhD program for EMBL is open for winter recruitment round. If you want to understand life at a molecular level and have a quantitative science (you don't have to have done biology - we love our mathematicians/physcists/chemists!) apply www.embl.org/about/info/e...

COMPADRE: Combined pedigree-aware distant relatedness estimation for improved pedigree reconstruction Designing powerful and unbiased genomic studies requires accurate assessment of familial relatedness even when this information is not captured from p…

Big day in Lab- one grad student defended (so proud)! Another lectured for me (90 min!) because I had to give a talk for a consortium. Another gave an hour talk for the dept. Another is away getting married. Another had his thesis paper come out today! Phew! www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

So happy to see this out! Please feel free to contact me if anyone wants to roll COMPADRE out in their data and wants help/advice!!

This work, led by my excellent graduate student Grahame Evans, was so much fun to do. we expanded the PRIMUS/PADRE relatedness tool suite to a new and improved all-in-one, scalable and user friendly tool, COMPADRE. Tools for genetic relatedness will always be one of my most fav parts of our work.

Our paper on clonal expansions in Sperm is out in Nature www.nature.com/articles/s41...
If you are interested in working at an intersection of Mendelian genomics/Population genetics/Clonal expansions +Cancer genetics/ and of course mutagenesis, please rich out about postdoc in my lab