Dr. Arun Sethuraman

Last day of this gorgeous cruise around the California/Baja California coast - I am so thankful to be ringing in 40, doing things I didn’t expect to, going places I’ve never been to. Here’s to a year of more fun and destinations.

Bought some argentum in beautiful Ensenada, Baja California today. And maybe one too many tequila shots.

Out now on the cover of @journal-evo.bsky.social!

Led by Sarah Khalil, we took a genomic approach to investigate the hybrid zone between different-colored Red-backed Fairywren subspecies. We found some interesting candidate genes under selection. Check it out! academic.oup.com/evolut/advan...

On a giant boat, and bought myself a labubu in Avalon.

A deep-time landscape of plant cis-regulatory sequence evolution Developmental gene function is conserved over deep time, but cis -regulatory sequence conservation is rarely found. Rapid sequence turnover, paleopolyploidy, structural variation, and limited phylogen...

From @kirkamundson.bsky.social this looks pretty amazing. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Antiviral reverse transcriptases reveal the evolutionary origin of telomerase Defense-associated reverse transcriptases (DRTs) employ diverse and distinctive mechanisms of cDNA synthesis to protect bacteria against viral infection. However, much of DRT family diversity remains ...

1/10 Genome maintenance by telomerase is a fundamental process in nearly all eukaryotes. But where does it come from?

Today, we report the discovery of telomerase homologs in a family of antiviral RTs, revealing an unexpected evolutionary origin in bacteria.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

The 2025 Out100: See the full list The Out100 is our magazine's greatest and most well-known tradition: a prestigious compilation of the year's most impactful and influential LGBTQ+ people.

See the full 2025 #Out100 list here: www.out.com/out100

Aaaahhh! The cat’s outta the bag - I’m officially on this year’s #Out100 list! What an honor to join this illustrious group of LGBTQIA+ artists, educators, innovators, and disruptors, all united in our fights for representation and efforts to amplify queer voices. www.out.com/out100/2025/...

Accurate somatic small variant discovery for multiple sequencing technologies with DeepSomatic - Nature Biotechnology Somatic small variants in cancer genomes are identified in both short-read and long-read data.

Accurate somatic small variant discovery for multiple sequencing technologies with DeepSomatic - @ucscgenomics.bsky.social go.nature.com/4qa6m0d

Distinct haplotypes and reversed dominance at a single-gene balanced polymorphism controlling heterodichogamy in two genera of wingnuts In the angiosperm mating system of heterodichogamy, two hermaphroditic morphs temporally alternate between male and female flowering phases, promoting…

Congratulations to @jeffgroh.bsky.social on the publication of his paper on an ancient balanced polymorphisms controlling heterodichogamy in two genera of wingnuts. The paper shows the putative turnover & reversal of dominance of a mating type polymorphism
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

OUT TODAY: SimHumanity, a SLiM 5 model of the human genome, replete with demography, autosomes, X/Y & mtDNA.

A shared starting point for reproducible evolutionary simulations.

Huge thanks to coauthors Ben Haller, @mufernando.bsky.social & Philipp Messer.
🔗 www.pivotscipub.com/hpgg/5/4/0006

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

Countdown to 40. Figured we’d start with some excellent Mexican margs & noms in El Segundo! I hope that y’all are ready for all the food & celebratory pics this week.

Looks like my USDA project report is up on their portal - it's a relatively small training grant, but I'm so incredibly proud of how much research we've gotten in 3 years from it. Ye experts out there - how do I go about with renewal requests on USDA grants? portal.nifa.usda.gov/web/crisproj...

Out today via @natgenet.nature.com, the first federally funded #Tribal #data repository, a revolutionary approach to data management and applied/operationalization of IDSov @d4itdr.bsky.social. Also, if you are at #ASHG25, come see us this morning in 205ABC
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

I'm recruiting a postdoc for my group (based in beautiful Eugene, OR). Please get in touch if you're interested, esp if you'd like to chat at #ASHG25!

How do spatial population structures affect sweep dynamics and signatures?

Check out this #GENETICS study that uses simulations to pinpoint the need for better accounting for spatial population structure when making inferences about selective sweeps. buff.ly/uEQ3bmZ

Illustration of Burrows-Wheeler Transform and many auxiliary structures from the input string how$now$brown$cow$#

New tool "bwt-svg" for making illustrations of the BWT and the many auxiliary arrays and other structures related to it. Pyodide-based no-installation-necessary interface here: benlangmead.github.io/bwt-svg/. (H/t to @robert.bio for pointing me to pyodide!) Full repo: github.com/benlangmead/....

Forensic genetics in the omics era Nature Reviews Genetics, Published online: 08 October 2025; doi:10.1038/s41576-025-00896-1Recent advances in forensic genetics have improved the range, precision and reliability of forensic information obtainable from biological trace material. The author reviews how non-targeted and targeted omics approaches and methods are improving crime scene analyses being applied for the identification of perpetrators and their relatives or victims, the prediction of phenotypic traits, and the determination of trace characteristics.

ICYMI: New online! Forensic genetics in the omics era

Cal Poly is hiring! We are looking for multiple tenure-track colleagues, including animal physiology, cell biology, and microbiology! Please spread the word. Links in thread. bio.calpoly.edu

Or if Jeff’s too corny for ya, come work with me in more messy plant genomes! ;) JK - I’d run to work with either of us.

North American Guild of Beer Writers Announces 2025 Awards Winners, Honoring the Best in Beer Media The North American Guild of Beer Writers (NAGBW) held its 11th annual awards ceremony October 12, celebrating the best in beer media. This year’s awards were generously sponsored by Athletic Brewin…

Wahoo! Our Molecular Ecology paper on the evolutionary history of domestication in hops won ‘Best Academic Writing’ in the 2025 North American Guild of Beer Writers Awards! Congrats to all my coauthors, and do check out the paper! reportersnotebook.org/uncategorize... Paper: doi.org/10.1111/mec....

Attempted eradication of smallmouth bass promotes rapid evolution. Here's the study that is the focus of the Scientific American article: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

‘Run with default settings’ (on any pop-gen software)

Oh merlot.

a young man is sitting on a plane with his mouth open and a surprised look on his face . ALT: a young man is sitting on a plane with his mouth open and a surprised look on his face .

Took yesterday off to binge watch two new Netflix series - ‘Boots’ and ‘House of Guinness’. Highly recommend ‘Boots’! Plus, it’s kinda neat that we (San Diego Gay Men’s Chorus) sang its theme song. Okay brain has now been re’boot’ed for grant writing!

Also for those of you purchasing big ticket items - our wonderful nation’s tariffs have now increased the ‘actual’ costs significantly. So please budget 10-25% of your total quoted costs for each item.

a woman carrying shopping bags in a parking lot with the words just got a few things above her ALT: a woman carrying shopping bags in a parking lot with the words just got a few things above her

Wow - startup expires soon; fastest $$$$$ I’ve spent, ever! Sorry but I’m not giving my money back to you, any more than what I already do, State of CA. Now we will have enough long and short read genomes to last my lab at least 5 years. And 2 new GPU nodes, 2 CPU nodes and a fancy NFS.

More than 30% of this century’s science Nobel prizewinners immigrated: see their journeys The most common destination for eventual Nobel laureates in physics, chemistry and medicine since 2000 is the United States, Nature has found.

www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Time for me to download Zoho’s Arattai (means banter in my mother tongue Tamizh) methinks. WhatsApp (and Meta) can go to shit for all I care.