@DocEdge85

Assistant professor in quantitative and computational biology @USC. Genetics, evolution, and a bit of statistics.

edgepopgen.github.io/edgelab/
Joined November 2015
  • Tweets3.3K
  • Following2.8K
  • Followers4.3K
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Please repost: My department (quantitative and computational biology at the University of Southern California) is hiring a teaching-track faculty member. The new hire will focus on teaching statistics courses to biology students. Apply by Dec 1 usccareers.usc.edu/job/los-a…
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I'm seldom on here anymore, but feel free to email me with questions.
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Happy to announce our paper on a new genotyping algorithm, ctyper. nature.com/articles/s41588-0… . This is amazing work by Walfred Ma, someone you will want to keep on your radar for future contributions to science.

Genotyping sequence-resolved copy number variation using pangenomes reveals paralog-specific global...

Nature Genetics - Ctyper is a genotyping method for copy number variation and complex genes that produces sequence-resolved genotypes by directly comparing sequencing reads to pangenome haplotypes,...

nature.com
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Murray and most of race twitter has apparently been fooled by this completely fabricated analysis purporting to show African ancestry is associated with IQ. People lie on twitter all the time, but this is both more revealing and more disturbing than usual. A 🧵
Charles Murray
@charlesmurray16 Sep 2025
Proposition: Everything that has been learned about the nature of the B/W difference in the subsequent 56 years of research is consistent with Jensen’s expectations in 1969. I stand ready to be corrected.
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Another genetic genealogy case from the US where the FBI used the MyHeritage DNA database without the consent of their users. The prosecution are also refusing to provide discovery of the relevant information. masslive.com/news/2025/08/fb…

FBI used prohibited genealogy site in Boston rape investigation, defense lawyer claims

A defense attorney for Matthew Nilo said she intends to try and suppress key DNA evidence in his case.

masslive.com
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Scientific tragedy
Perrimon Lab@PerrimonLab13 Aug 2025
thetransmitter.org/community…

Exclusive: Harvard University lays off fly database team

The layoffs jeopardize this resource, which has served more than 4,000 labs for about three decades.

thetransmitter.org
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Doc Edge retweeted
AJHG@AJHGNews13 Aug 2025
📣Online NOW! 📄Estimation of demography and mutation rates from one million haploid genomes 🧑‍🤝‍🧑 @jgschraiber @DocEdge85 & co cell.com/ajhg/abstract/S0002…
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This is a really good lay article on embryo selection but IMO is overly credulous of risk reductions that emerge as a consequence of statistical assumptions rather than actual disease etiology. The disease model *really* matters ...
Shai Carmi@ShaiCarmi31 Jul 2025
Replying to @anshulkundaje @SashaGusevPosts
Here's our magazine article (w/ @ToddLencz): aeon.co/essays/embryo-risk-s… It's not paywalled, language as accessible as possible, very balanced based on the latest research as of writing.

Embryo risk screening is already here. What are the ethical risks? | Aeon Essays

Embryo risk screening could lower the odds of illnesses ranging from depression to diabetes. Can it be ethically done?

aeon.co
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People still think "Gattaca" is just a fairy tale, because a eugenic dystopia must be something imposed on us rather than something we all voluntarily choose.
Crémieux
@cremieuxrecueil30 Jul 2025
The latest embryo selection company is live, and guess what: They're publicly letting people select for IQ! If you want to see what they can do for your family for a variety of traits, go check out their website where they've got a calculator app available.
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I'm thrilled that my lab at NYU is now supported by an NIH MIRA grant! I'm looking to hire 1-2 senior lab members (outstanding postdoc candidates or experienced staff scientists) with expertise in computational and statistical methods in human genetics or genomics. Please share!
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Doc Edge retweeted
Na Cai@caina8924 Jul 2025
Very happy to share our new paper now on @medrxivpreprint: “Genetic risk effects act in sets”, a great effort led my PhD student @JolienRietkerk, and performed together with collaborators @andywdahl, @AndrewSchork, @jonathan_flint1 etc. Thread 1/n
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New preprint with Guy Sella on the question: what is polygenicity? biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/…

Principled measures and estimates of trait polygenicity

The ‘polygenicity’ of traits is often invoked and sometimes quantified in quantitative, statistical, and human genetics. What do we mean by the polygenicity of a trait? We propose a principled...

biorxiv.org
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One of my favorite categories of thing is "guy decides to spend decades on an insane, idiosyncratic, solo art project of staggering scope". Other entries include the Watts Towers, Coral Castle, Forestiere Underground Gardens, Le Palais Ideal
“paula”
@paularambles15 Jul 2025
this guy spent 21 years building a miniature version of nyc consisting of almost a million buildings, the full model is 50 feet long and 30 feet wide, and he first announced it on tiktok like this:
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latest paper from the lab led by PhD student Gilia Patterson. Gilia has developed a spatially explicit deep learning method for close kin mark recapture that we think will be extremely useful for conservation biology biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/…

Simulation-based spatially explicit close-kin mark-recapture

Estimating the size of wild populations is a critical priority for ecologists and conservation biologists, but tools to do so are often labor intensive and expensive. A promising set of newer...

biorxiv.org
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Mutation-selection-drift balance models of complex diseases biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/… #biorxiv_genetic

Mutation-selection-drift balance models of complex diseases

Genetic variation that influences complex disease susceptibility is introduced into the population by mutation and removed by natural selection and genetic drift. This mutation-selection-drift-bala...

biorxiv.org
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When should adaptation arise from a polygenic response versus few large effect changes? biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/… #biorxiv_evobio

When should adaptation arise from a polygenic response versus few large effect changes?

The question of when adaptation involves genetic changes of large effect versus a polygenic response traces back to early debates around Darwin’s “Origin of Species” and remains unanswered today....

biorxiv.org
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Doc Edge retweeted
Michael Baym@baym17 May 2025
I went on WBUR today to talk about the grant terminations and the importance of basic medical research wbur.org/news/2025/05/16/har…

Antibiotic research at Harvard lab threatened by federal funding cuts

Microbiologist Michael Baym studies antibiotic resistance at Harvard Medical School. He lost millions in federal funding this week.

wbur.org
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Doc Edge retweeted
Michael Baym@baym15 May 2025
In the right conditions, antibiotic resistance can happen extremely fast. Here is an example from my own work of bacteria overcoming an antibiotic in just eleven days in a giant petri dish: 1/
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Doc Edge retweeted
Michael Baym@baym15 May 2025
This entire line of research, after being repeatedly selected in rigorous open national competitions for funding, was cut this week as collective political retribution xitter.cf/baym/status/1922435976…
Michael Baym@baym13 May 2025
Yesterday, the NIH R35 “Outstanding Investigator” grant to fund scientists in my lab studying antibiotic resistance was terminated for reasons not related to the content of the science, or any actions taken by me or members of my lab
A screenshot showing "Outstanding Investigator Grants"

ALT A screenshot showing "Outstanding Investigator Grants"

A screenshot of the termination notice with "This award is terminated effective the date of this award, due to unsafe antisemitic actions that suggest the institution lacks concern for the safety and wellbeing of Jewish students." highlighted

ALT A screenshot of the termination notice with "This award is terminated effective the date of this award, due to unsafe antisemitic actions that suggest the institution lacks concern for the safety and wellbeing of Jewish students." highlighted

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Hanania advocated passionately against "race mixing" for years, so he knows what he's talking about here. But it's worth adding that race-IQ obsessives also tend to make very poor predictions about the future. Let's review ...
Richard Hanania
@RichardHanania9 May 2025
I explain the intoxicating effect on some people of thinking about race differences in IQ and how it leads people to go crazy. Stay off drugs.
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