I'm an undergrad research ~intern for one of the professors on this paper! :)
Edit: I've been corresponding with Professor Fehren-Schmitz of the Human Paleogenomics lab at UCSC for the past few months and will likely be focusing on improving computational workflows at the lab in the next few months. One recurring theme I've noticed in paleogenomics research is that the people who do the actual paleogenomics aren't always the same people who develop the computational genomics/bioinformatics tools [1], meaning there might be a bit of a disconnect between those two fields. My understanding of computational paleogenomics is still pretty rough, but it seems to me like a lot of the tools still have a ton of room for improvement.
[1] Patterson et al., 2012 (Ancient Admixture in Human History)
I appreciate this effort, and in a way paints a picture of why it has taken this long to come up with this type of data points: Consolidation of knowledge and technologies.
[1] That paper brings back memories! Back in 2011, I was chatting with Nick about admixture and graph theory when it dawned on me that he was effectively trying to solve the Steiner tree problem. Knowing that his formulation of the problem was intractable provided a little nudge in the right direction.
It's also worth mentioning that (long) before joining David Reich's lab, Nick Patterson worked at GCHQ where he was famously mentor to Clifford Cocks. The story goes that Nick threw an unsolved asymmetric cryptography problem at Cocks and he came back in the morning having invented RSA.
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[ 4.4 ms ] story [ 26.4 ms ] threadEdit: I've been corresponding with Professor Fehren-Schmitz of the Human Paleogenomics lab at UCSC for the past few months and will likely be focusing on improving computational workflows at the lab in the next few months. One recurring theme I've noticed in paleogenomics research is that the people who do the actual paleogenomics aren't always the same people who develop the computational genomics/bioinformatics tools [1], meaning there might be a bit of a disconnect between those two fields. My understanding of computational paleogenomics is still pretty rough, but it seems to me like a lot of the tools still have a ton of room for improvement.
[1] Patterson et al., 2012 (Ancient Admixture in Human History)
Unless I'm reading it wrong.
It's also worth mentioning that (long) before joining David Reich's lab, Nick Patterson worked at GCHQ where he was famously mentor to Clifford Cocks. The story goes that Nick threw an unsolved asymmetric cryptography problem at Cocks and he came back in the morning having invented RSA.