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Reposted by Nandita Garud

Zamin Iqbal @zaminiqbal.bsky.social · 14d

Delighted to see our paper studying the evolution of plasmids over the last 100 years, now out! Years of work by Adrian Cazares, also Nick Thomson @sangerinstitute.bsky.social - this version much improved over the preprint. Final version should be open access, apols.
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Ben Good @benjaminhgood.bsky.social · Aug 16

Excited to share a new preprint w/ the Sonnenberg lab, led by Matt Carter, @zzzhiru.bsky.social & @mattolm.bsky.social. We analyzed the microbiomes of two non-industrialized populations from opposite sides of the globe to try to reconstruct the recent evolutionary history of our gut microbiota.

Prehistoric Global Migration of Vanishing Gut Microbes With Humans

The gut microbiome is crucial for health and greatly affected by lifestyle. Many microbes common in non-industrialized populations are disappearing or extinct in industrialized populations. Understand...

www.biorxiv.org

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Nandita Garud @nanditagarud.bsky.social · Jul 22

I am seeking a postdoc for my group at UCLA. We work at the intersection of population genetics x microbiome (garud.eeb.ucla.edu). If interested, please message me!

Garud Lab

garud.eeb.ucla.edu

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Katherine Xue @ksxue.bsky.social · Jul 17

The Xue lab at UC Irvine is looking for a staff scientist to support our work investigating how microbes interact and evolve in the gut microbiome! Open to a wide range of previous experience levels, see ad for more.
recruit.ap.uci.edu/JPF09601

Junior, Assistant, or Associate Specialist – Xue Lab

University of California, Irvine is hiring. Apply now!

recruit.ap.uci.edu

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Nandita Garud @nanditagarud.bsky.social · Jun 19

So excited to see @alisonfeder.bsky.social among the winners of the freeman hrabowski award!! www.hhmi.org/programs/fre...

The 2025 Freeman Hrabowski Scholars | HHMI

Freeman Hrabowski Scholars are outstanding early career faculty who have the potential to become leaders in their research fields.

www.hhmi.org

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Reposted by Nandita Garud

Xinjun Zhang @zhanglabpopgen.bsky.social · May 8

Super excited to share my latest preprint with @klohmueller.bsky.social! Here we leverage the unique signature that recessive deleterious variants can lead to an increase in archaic ancestry to tackle a classic question - the dominance distribution on the human genome www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Neanderthal introgressed ancestry reveals human genomic regions enriched with recessive deleterious mutations

Negative natural selection on deleterious mutations plays a key role in shaping human genetic variation. Understanding the dominance of deleterious mutations is critical as it can fundamentally impact...

www.biorxiv.org

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Nandita Garud @nanditagarud.bsky.social · Jan 24

This work provides an unprecedented inference of the demographic histories and DFEs of ~25 common gut commensals. Inferring so many models was not an easy task, but was gamely taken on by the talented @jonmah.bsky.social. Many thanks also to @klohmueller.bsky.social for such a fun collaboration!

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Nandita Garud @nanditagarud.bsky.social · Jan 24

We are thrilled to share that our paper entitled "Inference of the demographic histories and selective effects of human gut commensal microbiota over the course of human history" is officially out in MBE! academic.oup.com/mbe/advance-...

Inference of the demographic histories and selective effects of human gut commensal microbiota over the course of human history

Abstract. Despite the importance of gut commensal microbiota to human health, there is little knowledge about their evolutionary histories, including their

academic.oup.com

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Reposted by Nandita Garud

Chuliang Song @clsong.com · Jan 14

Thrilled to share my Perspective piece "Assembly Graph as the Rosetta Stone of Ecological Assembly" in Environmental Microbiology! Huge thanks to @asanchezlab.bsky.social for the invite & reviewers for insightful feedback.

Assembly Graph as the Rosetta Stone of Ecological Assembly

This paper introduces the assembly graph as an integrative lens to unify ecological assembly theories across dynamical, informational, and probabilistic approaches. In addition to theory, it also pre...

enviromicro-journals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com

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Nandita Garud @nanditagarud.bsky.social · Jan 6

UCLA QCBIO is looking for its next director! Please consider applying! recruit.apo.ucla.edu/JPF10007

Director, Institute for Quantitative and Computational Biosciences

University of California, Los Angeles is hiring. Apply now!

recruit.apo.ucla.edu

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Reposted by Nandita Garud

Karina Gutiérrez García @karinagtz.bsky.social · Dec 23

Finally, our paper, "A Conserved Bacterial Genetic Basis for Commensal-Host Specificity," has been officially published in Science.

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

A conserved bacterial genetic basis for commensal-host specificity

Animals selectively acquire specific symbiotic gut bacteria from their environments that aid host fitness. To colonize, a symbiont must locate its niche and sustain growth within the gut. Adhesins are...

www.science.org

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Nandita Garud @nanditagarud.bsky.social · Nov 20

Apply to work with Katherine! A fantastic opportunity!

Katherine Xue @ksxue.bsky.social · Nov 19

Hi friends new and old! I study how microbes interact and evolve in complex communities like the human gut microbiome.🦠🧬💩 I'm thrilled to share that I'm starting a lab at UC Irvine in April 2025 and am recruiting at all levels - please spread the word! kxuelab.com More about my work below...🧵1/n

Xue lab at UC Irvine

Ecology and evolution in the human gut microbiome

kxuelab.com

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Reposted by Nandita Garud

Katherine Xue @ksxue.bsky.social · Nov 19

Hi friends new and old! I study how microbes interact and evolve in complex communities like the human gut microbiome.🦠🧬💩 I'm thrilled to share that I'm starting a lab at UC Irvine in April 2025 and am recruiting at all levels - please spread the word! kxuelab.com More about my work below...🧵1/n

Xue lab at UC Irvine

Ecology and evolution in the human gut microbiome

kxuelab.com

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Nandita Garud @nanditagarud.bsky.social · Nov 13

Delighted to share that our paper on discovering selective sweeps with haplotype statistics in aDNA is now out in Nat. Comm! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Wonderful collaboration with Vagheesh Narasimhan, Devansh Pandey, and @mharris.bsky.social

Leveraging ancient DNA to uncover signals of natural selection in Europe lost due to admixture or drift - Nature Communications

Large-scale ancient DNA (aDNA) studies offer the chance to examine genomic changes over time, providing direct insights into human evolution. Here the authors use aDNA from 708 European samples to ide...

www.nature.com

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Kirk Lohmueller @klohmueller.bsky.social · Nov 12

Hi all! I'm excited to announce a tenure track faculty position in conservation genomics in EEB at UCLA! We're looking for candidates who use genomic tools to study evolutionary processes related to conservation. Note, the actual application deadline is Nov 29. recruit.apo.ucla.edu/JPF09875

Conservation Genomics Faculty Position

University of California, Los Angeles is hiring. Apply now!

recruit.apo.ucla.edu

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Nandita Garud @nanditagarud.bsky.social · Oct 23

Job alert! We are searching for a faculty member to join us @UCLAEEB in the area of Conservation Genomics. I have had very positive experiences here at UCLA and would be happy to chat with you if you are interested! Please apply and be my colleague! recruit.apo.ucla.edu/JPF09875

Conservation Genomics Faculty Position

University of California, Los Angeles is hiring. Apply now!

recruit.apo.ucla.edu

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Nandita Garud @nanditagarud.bsky.social · Apr 16

The UCLA Goodman-Luskin Endowed Postdoctoral Fellowship in Microbiome Research ($100K in salary + supplies) deadline is June 1. Get in touch if you would like to write a proposal together!

And, get in touch even if your timeline is different - I am looking for a postdoc!

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Nandita Garud @nanditagarud.bsky.social · Feb 15

Congrats Zhiru and Ben!

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Reposted by Nandita Garud

Zhiru Liu @zzzhiru.bsky.social · Feb 14

Excited (and relieved!) to share that my 1st paper in grad school finally came out in PLOS Biology! We were motivated by a very basic question: how fast, really, do bacteria exchange DNA in the human gut? (1/n)

Dynamics of bacterial recombination in the human gut microbiome

Recombination is a ubiquitous force in bacterial evolution, but its dynamics are poorly characterized in many natural populations. This study presents a metagenomic approach for quantifying the landsc...

t.co

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Nandita Garud @nanditagarud.bsky.social · Jan 10

Really proud of this work with Richard Wolff on detecting selective sweeps that have spread across host microbiomes. I leave for you an animation we made featuring the highlights of our paper. Ricky has done a great job sharing some highlights of the paper below. garud.eeb.ucla.edu/pervasive-se...

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Nandita Garud @nanditagarud.bsky.social · Nov 14

This was an extremely fun collaboration with first author @jonmah.bsky.social and co-senior author @klohmueller.bsky.social. It has been a dream of mine to learn from Kirk’s deep wisdom on demographic and DFE inference, and I am grateful that the three of us could make paper happen.

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Nandita Garud @nanditagarud.bsky.social · Nov 14

We are delighted to share our work on “Inference of the demographic histories and selective effects of human gut commensal microbiota over the course of human history”! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... Please check out the full tweet thread and GIF here: twitter.com/nanditagarud...

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Nandita Garud @nanditagarud.bsky.social · Oct 19

I am looking for a graduate student and a postdoc to join my group! We are a computational group working on understanding evolution in natural populations with a large emphasis on the microbiome. Please get in touch by dm or email! garud.eeb.ucla.edu

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Nandita Garud @nanditagarud.bsky.social · Sep 17

Very cool work Paul Torrillo and @contaminatedsci.bsky.social!! We saw some empirical evidence of reversions at 1D sites in infant microbiome evolution: genome.cshlp.org/content/32/6...

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