Zhiru Liu
@zzzhiru.bsky.social
240 followers 80 following 17 posts
PhD Student with @benjaminhgood.bsky.social @ Stanford Applied Physics -- evolution, pop gen theory, microbes
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Reposted by Zhiru Liu
peterhotezmdphd.bsky.social
My latest in @plosbiology.org Look I get it, it seems really dark, but there are opportunities. My paper explores some ideas and tries to guide ways of thinking through the anticipated challenges. An emphasis on America’s “biohubs” and entrepreneurship

journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...
Reposted by Zhiru Liu
nejm.org
NEJM.org @nejm.org · Apr 2
A recent study of an mRNA vaccine in a mouse model of 𝘊𝘭𝘰𝘴𝘵𝘳𝘪𝘥𝘪𝘰𝘪𝘥𝘦𝘴 𝘥𝘪𝘧𝘧𝘪𝘤𝘪𝘭𝘦 infection provided proof of concept of a protective effect. Learn more: nej.md/4kS8x5X

@umich.edu #MedSky #IDSky
An illustration of the candidate vaccine against Clostridioides difficile infection.
Reposted by Zhiru Liu
wcratcliff.bsky.social
Here's my interview with @stevenstrogatz.com on @quantamagazine.bsky.social's Joy of Why podcast.

This was *so much fun*. I was nervous going into it (I really look up to Steve!), but I had a blast and I think this is the best interview I have ever done.

Thanks for having me on, folks!
Reposted by Zhiru Liu
goldmandoran.bsky.social
I’m thrilled to share my first ever publication, now published in PNAS! www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

With mentorship from the amazing @ksxue.bsky.social, I looked at how the outcomes of species introductions to microbial communities are influenced by the number of introduced microbes.
PNAS
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), a peer reviewed journal of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) - an authoritative source of high-impact, original research that broadly spans...
www.pnas.org
Reposted by Zhiru Liu
jamie-blundell.bsky.social
Delighted to share a major update on our work investigating age-related deceleration in clonal haematopoiesis.

Takehome: Widespread and substantial deceleration in fitness with age!

Amazing effort by PhD student Hamish MacGregor 💪

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Reposted by Zhiru Liu
alyulina.github.io
I am glad to see this work in print & on the cover! Read more at academic.oup.com/genetics/article/228/3/iyae145/7747749
Artist's depiction of mutant lineages rising and falling in frequency, influenced by selection, recombination, and genetic drift. In this issue, Lyulina et al. develop a mathematical framework for quantifying the statistical associations between these variants. Image courtesy of Anastasia Lyulina.
zzzhiru.bsky.social
Fascinating work showing genome-wide DNA packaging into phage capsids in "normie" gut bacteria!
colinhillucc.bsky.social
First post on a lovely story from the lab that shows that Faecalibacterium prausnitzii can package its own genome in bite-size segments in phage-like capsids
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
www.biorxiv.org
zzzhiru.bsky.social
Really cool and clever study! We saw extensive core genome recombination in gut bacteria in recent work, and I’ve always wondered about the underlying mechanism -- phage-like elements seem like the best candidate. Your examples of LT and GTA are particularly striking.
Reposted by Zhiru Liu
joaoascensao.bsky.social
We usually think of genetic drift as the predominant stochastic force in evolving populations. But working with some model microbial populations, we found a distinct source of demographic stochasticity that scales (and behaves) differently than drift

Learn more in our new paper 👉 rdcu.be/d07Np
Asynchronous abundance fluctuations can drive giant genotype frequency fluctuations
Nature Ecology & Evolution - Based on a combination of experiments and modelling, this study shows large stochastic fluctuations in genotype frequencies caused by intrinsic and extrinsic...
rdcu.be
Reposted by Zhiru Liu
ksxue.bsky.social
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
Reposted by Zhiru Liu
gcbias.bsky.social
Just posting this to #popgen
Here's a link to my notes on population & quantitative genetics:
github.com/cooplab/popg...
Hoping to extend it more after the winter holidays, as I'm just finishing up teaching the undergrad version of class.
Releases · cooplab/popgen-notes
Population genetics notes. Contribute to cooplab/popgen-notes development by creating an account on GitHub.
github.com
Reposted by Zhiru Liu
imartincorena.bsky.social
Resharing here a recent X post. In this preprint, we introduce an improved version of NanoSeq, a duplex sequencing protocol with <5 errors per billion bp in single DNA molecules, and use it to study the somatic mutation landscape of oral epithelium in >1000 people. 1/ www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...
Somatic mutation and selection at epidemiological scale
As we age, many tissues become colonised by microscopic clones carrying somatic driver mutations ([1][1]–[10][2]. Some of these clones represent a first step towards cancer whereas others may contribu...
www.medrxiv.org
zzzhiru.bsky.social
My first theory project! I've really enjoyed how we could decompose complex dynamics into those of individual lineages.

This approach is quite flexible, and we're hoping to extend it to more complex scenarios, including N(t) and certain forms of positive selection!
zzzhiru.bsky.social
Thanks for the kind words☺️
zzzhiru.bsky.social
PS: after a long revision process, this paper has gotten much better but admittedly a bit long (with 41 SI figures 🙂). So don't hesitate to reach out if you have any questions!

See also Ben's thread on twitter when we first posted on biorxiv
x.com/benjaminhgoo...

(n/n)
x.com
zzzhiru.bsky.social
and 2) global spread of particular sequences. (btw @rwolff.bsky.social and @nanditagarud.bsky.social recently found more evidence of global selective sweeps in these gut bacteria. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...)
zzzhiru.bsky.social
We also found some evidence that many recombined segments are strongly selected, leading to 1) within-host sweeps
zzzhiru.bsky.social
What might cause all these fine-scale variations? Many factors are commonly thought to impact realized recombination rate. Here we were able to rule out the effect of sequence divergence, which plays very little role in almost all gut species (Fig 4 & W in SI are probably my favorite figures)
Fig W buried in SI, showing limited role of sequence divergence in these gut species
zzzhiru.bsky.social
We found extensive heterogeneity in the rates and lengths of recombination, both between species and within species.
zzzhiru.bsky.social
However, that was only a coarse summary of recombination at the species level. Using closely related strains found in the dataset, we were able to directly identify individual recombination events.
zzzhiru.bsky.social
Here are some highlights of what we found. First and foremost, gut bacterial species recombine quite a lot -- certainly closer to H pylori than to M tuberculosis, the two extremes in the microbial world when it comes to recombination
fig 1F
zzzhiru.bsky.social
For example, do gut bacteria recombine on human-relevant timescales?
Do recombination events even matter for evolution (i.e. get selected), since it's only mixing existing genes?
What are the mechanisms responsible for this recombination?
zzzhiru.bsky.social
So, there is a ton of work about HGT between species and how mobile elements hop around in this ecosystem. But genetic exchange also mixes up the core genome within a species, enabling bacteria to *recombine* like sexual organisms. Much less is known about recombination in gut bacteria:
Ecology drives a global network of gene exchange connecting the human microbiome - Nature
Horizontal gene transfer — the exchange of genetic material between different species or lineages — is an important factor in bacterial evolution. A study of human microbiome data comprising more than...
www.nature.com