When I thought I was done with the GWAS stories of 2023 and I should wrap up, stephen o'rahilly (its pronounced O-RA-hill-EEE) dropped yet another great paper from his team. How can I resist? It's storytelling time. In this hot-off-the-press Nature paper, Marlena Fejzo et al. uncover an absolutely fascinating

Just wanted to check - is everyone still managing to somehow muddle through?

Tricia Day I, too, am determined to do the very least I can....

We are proud to announce that our facilities are fully open to provide genomics sequencing services with no profit motive in Africa! Our objective is to help to advance scientific research, biotech, vaccine, therapy and diagnostics development - A short 🧵 ceri.org.za/news/?token=725

Couldn't agree more! Nothing wrong with PCA.

Iain Mathieson Weird outcome where the only ancestry visualizations of AoU (as far as I'm aware) are the above UMAP or the below PCA plot where hard genetic clusters are, for some reason, labeled as ethnicities

UMAP aside, I think there is tremendous ambiguity in the use and definition of race, ancestry, and ethnicity throughout the AllOfUs paper (not to mention conflation of genetic ancestry and genetic similarity)

"how geneticists construe human genetic populations... [is] also sociopolitical. Genetic distinctions between human populations are not natural; they are the consequences of categorizations developed by geneticists" 🔥

There’s a book to be written on how Sunak got to a place where his Rwanda policy with its unworkable, cruel, expensive, law breaking nationally embarrassing contradictions- Rwanda is safe but it’s a deterrent etc, etc- became his make or break policy in a country where public

This week marks 30 years since South Africa held it's first democratic elections in 1994. This is a good week to read Mandela's famous opening statement at the Rivonia trial delivered this week 60 years ago. One of the greatest speeches in history. 1/ law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projec…

Where did i just land?

Femi Kuti live at the new Afrika Shrine, Lagos. That’s a big one off the bucket list

It’s apricot harvest time in Menlo Park. And this year i beat the squirrels!!

In 2023 I led negotiations involving 9 corporations & 24 African institutions that trained 408 African scientists in genomics & bioinformatics. That effort, with >100 African authors, is now published in Nature Genetics. Thanks to all contributors:  nature.com/articles/s4158…

You’re on, Polly Toynbee ! Here’s hoping. It’s a very good sign that a dedicated Child Poverty Unit has been set up in Downing St. However, the first thing any of the child poverty campaigning bodies invited to the unit will recommend is the lifting of the two-child benefit cap.

This is a huge loss to absolutely nothing and no one, anywhere.

Want to help refugees, but not sure how? I found a surprisingly simple answer theguardian.com/commentisfree/…

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Super happy to see @Derekgripper tonight. Long a fan of his extraordinary reimagining of W African kora, & of J.S. Bach, the musical distance bw them far shorter than y might imagine. 2024 gigs: Oumou, Fatou, Tinariwen, Femi Kuti (in Lagos!), Derek, been a good year