A few months ago, @elena-romero.bsky.social published a paper showing that HIV escape from broadly neutralizing antibody 10-1074 is driven by very recurrent mutation. In her latest, she asks - just how soft are the signatures of these sweeps? www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
Профиль
William DeWitt
Профиль VivelyAssistant Professor, University of Washington, Genome Sciences. Previous: JSMF Fellow, Berkeley EECS ♡: Computational biology, evolutionary dynamics, quantitative immunology https://dewitt-lab.github.io/ [disclaimer: opinions mine] 🇺🇸🚫👑
Applications are open for SFI's 2027 Complexity Postdoctoral Fellowships. SFI is looking for recent Ph.D. graduates with strong quantitative and computational skills who want to pursue independent, transdisciplinary research. Deadline: September 30, 2026 Apply: santafe.edu/sfifellowship
Dear microbiome enthusiasts: I'm excited to be moving my lab to New York University this fall (& the NYU Institute for Engineering Health); with joint-appointment @isbscience.org I'm hiring a postdoc @ NYU to look at diet-driven evolution in the gut: apply.interfolio.com/189980 Please share! 🦠🤓
Apply - Interfolio {{$ctrl.$state.data.pageTitle}} - Apply - Interfolio apply.interfolio.comIn new study led by @bdadonaite.bsky.social, we show many influenza HAs (H5, H7, H9, H1, H2, H3) can use avian or human MHC-II to enter cells. We then use novel combo of deep mutational scanning & cryoEM to define how H5 HA binds to avian MHC-II. Preprint: doi.org/10.64898/202...
Michaud, @andrewgoryachev.bsky.social, von Dassow, @xenresearchcenter.bsky.social et al. identify a versatile cortical pattern-forming circuit based on #Rho, F-#actin, Ect2, & RGA-3/4 rupress.org/jcb/article/... 📕 In "Collective Behaviors and Self-Organization in Cells" rupress.org/jcb/collecti...
Fitness Race: Modelling antibody evolution by replaying a monoclonal germinal centre reaction over a 100 times 📷 William DeWitt, Ashni Vora, Tatsuya Araki et al @victora.bsky.social @rockefeller.edu @matsen.bsky.social in @cp-cell.bsky.social ➡️ bpod.org.uk/archive/2026... + John Ankers
Tomorrow is your last chance to comment on the Office of Management and Budget's proposed rule affecting the future of science. These APS leaders are just some of the 2,400+ people who have used our letter-writing portal to share what they think. Submit your comment: https://go.aps.org/4vUO0ST
Fitness flux in SARS-CoV-2 and influenza H3N2 https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.07.05.736619v1
I am thrilled to share that UC Berkeley and UCSF have launched a joint initiative in Computational Biomedicine! cdss.berkeley.edu/news/uc-berk... We will soon be recruiting new faculty and postdoctoral fellows. Please repost to help spread the word.
My department, Neurobiology and Biophysics at the University of Washington (nbio.uw.edu), is hiring a new tenure-track Assistant Professor, application deadline 09/30/26. It's a broad search — molecular to organismal, all of neuroscience/physiology/biophysics welcome. apply.interfolio.com/187735
Scientists, especially younger ones, are going to have to come to terms with the idea that “doing science” is no longer enough. We all have to fight for science: what it means, what are its values, and why it matters.
Bethany BrookshireScientific research in the United States might not collapse with a bang, or with a whimper, but with a rule change. And it's not just Science. This rule change hits DOE, DOT, VA, HUD. ALL federal grants are at risk. www.theverge.com/science/9576...
What if an embryo made immune cells before it finished building the tissue they usually come from? In our new preprint, we show that annual killifish embryos specify neutrophils before germ layers are fully resolved. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... Huge thanks to my PI, @ohnolog.bsky.social ! 🧵
Excited to see @jonj-udd.bsky.social's fantastic work out @genetics-gsa.bsky.social. Selection in _heterozygotes_ is the primary force shaping allele frequencies of loss-of-function mutations in humans, even in genes only associated with purely recessive diseases. 🧪🧬 doi.org/10.1093/gene...
The human genome is no blueprint or algorithm — it’s something else entirely, something living with promiscuous logic. Can new genomic AI models, such as Evo 2 and AlphaGenome, untangle these tricky knots or will the genome confound them, too? www.quantamagazine.org/why-the-huma...
Aggregating many experiments into one zero-shot protein language model score obscures that current models cannot meaningfully rank a set of fit mutations or prioritize new-to-nature functions @clauswilke.com www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
Antibody LMs learn what looks antibody-like, but not how selection turns naive germline antibodies into strong binders. @aakarshv1.bsky.social and I are excited to share CoSiNE, a model that learns this germline-to-mature process for variant effect prediction and antibody design. (1/8)
We urge GSA members and the genetics community to submit a public comment on the recently proposed OMB regulations—which pose drastic challenges to the scientific enterprise—by July 13, 2026! Submit your comments here: www.regulations.gov/document/OMB...
Coalition for Life SciencesThis was one of the most complex projects I have ever been involved in. Took us the better part of a decade, but I thoroughly enjoyed every minute of it. Especially the intensive and extensive interactions with @wsdewitt.github.io, @matsen.bsky.social, and @tylernstarr.bsky.social
William DeWittThis started in 2019 as daydreamy PhD student musings with Tatsuya Araki. We're as excited as ever about germinal centers as a platform for experimental evolution. Many thanks to PIs @victora.bsky.social @matsen.bsky.social, co-1st authors Ashni Vora and Tatsuya, and many other key collaborators!
Out now in Science! Our study challenges long-standing assumptions about transcription factor specificity in eukaryotes. Novel single-molecule measurements of TF behavior in living cells reveal an independence of locus-specific binding from DNA sequence recognition.🧵 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...