Onur Özer

We’re getting so many journal submissions from people who think ‘it kinda works’ is the standard to aim for.

I wish I had done this at the beginning (lessons learned) but I am wondering if I can upload this manuscript as a preprint at this stage, given the need to show that I actually did some work...

That might have been a reasonable timeline after several rounds of revision with 3+ reviewers, but that's not even the case. Comments received in mid-June and we resubmitted in August. I can even see that both reviewers sent further comments in September but total crickets since then.

I started working on a project in January 2024 and submitted the manuscript in October 2024. Now, after 15 months and a single round of revision, we are still waiting for the editorial decision.

My new year resolution might be to withdraw this manuscript and submit somewhere else.

We are very excited to be organising this symposium at SMBE @official-smbe.bsky.social next year! We look forward to your abstracts and to being in Copenhagen!

Tenured US professor fired over pro-Palestinian protests contests dismissal Sang Hea Kil is first tenured faculty member fired from a public university in connection to the protests

This is incredible - even now in the US - this story of a tenured prof losing her job over protests is worse than I have come to expect.
She participated in a peaceful protest against the genocide in Gaza.

www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

The current landscape of adaptive immune receptor genomic and repertoire data: OGRDB and VDJbase Abstract. Accurate characterization of adaptive immune receptor repertoires through high-throughput sequencing is critical for understanding immune respons

New manuscript out in NAR! tinyurl.com/4rrbuesn
🧬 VDJbase and OGRDB now support 3000+ IG/TR samples across human and rhesus macaque with curated AIRR-seq and long-read genomic data. From population analysis to precision annotation. @guryaari.bsky.social @cdubsig.bsky.social @williamlees.bsky.social

HLA-DRB1*15:01 is associated with a reduced likelihood of longevity in northern European men - Genome Medicine Background Prior research on the genetics of human longevity has identified only a few robust associations. While these studies highlight the importance of metabolic processes for longevity, the contr...

A new paper about #longevity and #HLA: Men with HLA-DRB1*15:01 might be among the unlucky ones...

“HLA-DRB1*15:01 is associated with a reduced likelihood of longevity in northern European men”

It was great to work with Nicolas on that paper!

genomemedicine.biomedcentral.com/articles/10....

HLA-DRB1*15:01 is associated with a reduced likelihood of longevity in northern European men - Genome Medicine Background Prior research on the genetics of human longevity has identified only a few robust associations. While these studies highlight the importance of metabolic processes for longevity, the contr...

Ahhh... Thanks for the warning. Unfortunately, I cannot edit the post. I will make a new post with the correct link. In the meantime, here it is:

genomemedicine.biomedcentral.com/articles/10....

Join Our Citizen Science Project!

We are mapping the house mouse hybrid zone in Schleswig-Holstein, DE, and you can help. Visit our House Mouse Hybrid Zone Project website to learn more jwinternitz.github.io/mouse-hybrid.... Funded by @dfg.de at @uni-hamburg.de

#DFG #musmusculus #wildmice

Direct effect of genetic ancestry on complex traits in a Mexican population Human populations differ in disease prevalences and in average values of phenotypes, but the extent to which differences are caused by genetic or environmental factors is unknown for most complex trai...

Brilliant paper by Visscher et al.

Populations differ in traits/disease burden. Are these differences due to genetics?

Comparing single variants or polygenic scores between populations is biased due to environmental confounders correlated with the variants.

1/3

www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...

I remember back when I was learning Python, a computer engineer mentioned objects and I asked "What is an object?" The answer was: "What do you mean? Everything is an object in Python!" and he continued without expanding.

I wish more explanations like this were available back then...

Out-of-Anatolia: Cultural and genetic interactions during the Neolithic expansion in the Aegean West Anatolia has been a crucial yet elusive element in the Neolithic expansion from the Fertile Crescent to Europe. In this work, we describe the changing genetic and cultural landscapes of early Hol...

Happy to share our new study from my PhD on the spread of farming across Anatolia and into the Aegean and then into Europe. @compevohumang.bsky.social

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

👇🏽

A Matriarchal Society Existed in Çatalhöyük During the Neolithic More Than 10,000 Years Ago, Researchers Find On the Anatolian plains, more than ten thousand years ago, one of humanity’s first major farming communities flourished, burying its dead beneath the floors of its homes. Now, two recently published s...

A Matriarchal Society Existed in Çatalhöyük During the Neolithic More Than 10,000 Years Ago, Researchers Find www.labrujulaverde.com/en/2025/06/a...

Have you recently registered as a blood marrow donor and got your HLA genotyped?
Why don’t you try this little app I built?

HLA PCA Viewer is a Shiny app that plots your HLA genotype onto a PCA space derived from the 1000 Genomes Project.

onur-ozer.shinyapps.io/hla-pca/
github.com/onur-ozer/HL...

I am honored and humbled to receive the Jon van Rood Award for Best Abstract at EFI 2025! My first EFI was amazing and I am looking forward to many more ahead! #EFI2025 #immunogenetics

#EFI2025 is about to kick off in beautiful Prague! 🇨🇿

I’ll be presenting in the Best Abstracts session on Saturday, sharing our work on ancient HLA diversity in Europe. Super excited for a week of science, new connections, and fresh ideas!

#HLA #AncientDNA #Immunogenetics #MHC

Anyway, I will cut it short. The people of Turkey are suffering under a crushing economic decline, political oppression, censorship, a degrading quality of education and a collapsed electoral system. We are digging under the rubble with the hope of seeing the light.

Resistance against the current regime is nothing new. I began my bachelor's in 2010, and my entire university life was marked by pepper spray, batons, water cannons, and plastic bullets. Yet, at the time, the regime was being praised in Europe for its supposed "democratic" values.

Sadly, all of this was not only supported by the usual suspects of the far-right, but also by liberals, greens, social democrats, etc. Anyone can be accommodated, even praised, as long as they are useful. This has been the case for the regime in Turkey for a long time.

Syria was handed over to an ISIS commander with a million-dollar reward on his head just a few months ago. Taliban leaders are quietly being removed from terrorist lists. The rabid far-right government of Israel gets unconditional support for its massacre of Palestinians.

Authoritarianism is on the rise across the globe, paving the way for extremist governments. In our interconnected world, ignoring the suffering of ordinary people is no longer an option. Unfortunately, the Western world has recently failed many tests in this regard.

Anybody who dares to speak up against the party-state feels "the Iron Heel". Hundreds of citizens -students, journalists, politicians- are under arrest, websites are blocked, TV channels are getting broadcast bans. All to ensure the continuation of a corrupt regime.

Turkey Resists By arresting İmamoğlu, Erdoğan banks on public apathy. He's getting the opposite.

This is not an isolated case, of course. If you have been following the news, you are likely aware of the ongoing political crackdown in Turkey. Here is a summary of the situation (from 5 days ago). Since then, the crackdown only escalated.

kulturkampftr.substack.com/p/turkey-res...

Polica in Turkey kicking a student who carries a Turkish flag

I have always been proud of my university ODTÜ in Turkey, not only for its academic success but also for the political stance of students. Right now, this is the treatment faced by students who stand up for democracy.

(photo credit unknown for now)

Leadership is busy beating their own best & brightest at universities right now. Plus, the stance that Turkey's ruling regime has adopted regarding Palestine is only performative, aimed at consolidating their voter base. They would shout a few words for that lady if they see benefit, nothing more.

I will present some results of this study together with our other projects on ancient #HLA diversity in Europe at the 38th European Immunogenetics & Histocompatibility Conference #EFI2025

#MHC #immunogenomics #ancientDNA

More importantly, we don't know if that haplotype was already common in WHG or not. Having some frequency data would allow us to estimate expected frequencies after the admixture and test whether the observed frequency can be explained solely by admixture or not.

What could be the reason for this excess WHG ancestry across the MHC region? Our pathogen screening did not provide any obvious target. There are some associations between DRB1*08:01-DQB1*04:02 alleles and some pathogens, notably the hepatitis-B virus. But was it enough to drive such a signal?

Combining targeted HLA genotyping with the genomewide data, we found that LF individuals carrying DRB1*08:01-DQB1*04:02 haplotype had an excess of WHG ancestry across the MHC region, suggesting that this haplotype introgressed from the hunter-gatherers.