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Adam M Novak

@adamnovak.graphs.vg
466 followers 347 following 229 posts

Bioinformatics Programmer at @ucscgenomics.bsky.social working on #pangenomics. orcid.org/0000-0001-5828-047X

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Adam M Novak @adamnovak.graphs.vg · 20h
In human genomics we see Epstein-Barr Virus all the time. It's used to immortalize cell lines. It even gets a fake chromosome in the human reference to suck up DNA reads from the virus. I don't understand why we put up with this virus infecting everybody? We should stop it from doing that.
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Adam M Novak @adamnovak.graphs.vg · 25/09/2026
How are you finding it does at preserving the intelligibility of the code or the leverage available from its abstractions? Is it generally optimizing things or is it e.g. replacing a bunch of classes with some kind of unholy columnar sacrifice to the cache gods?
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Human Pangenome Reference Consortium @humanpangenome.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Shredtools is making it easier to explore regions across a pangenome by quickly finding matching genomic regions across hundreds of genomes. The tool can identify a gene region across 476 human genomes in approximately half a second.  Read more: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
biorxiv.org
Navigating the pangenome coordinate system with Shredtools
Existing notions of pangenome coordinates rely on hard-to-compute multiple sequence alignments. On the other hand, pangenome-wide exact unique matches (multi-MUMs) can be computed efficiently, and rep...
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Julia Evans @b0rk.jvns.ca · 22/09/2026
periodic reminder that Wizard Zines has an educational use policy if you want to use them in your university courses! wizardzines.com/education/
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Adam M Novak @adamnovak.graphs.vg · 17/09/2026
Always exciting to see software you work on mentioned in a sentence like "We were unable to identify the cause of these discrepancies". Congratulations and apologies to all the #vg users out there; we're so glad you manage exciting research like this because of/despite it.
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Matt Holt @holtjma.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
Our article introducing Aardvark for variant benchmarking is now published in Genome Biology! “Aardvark: sifting through differences in a mound of variants” DOI: doi.org/10.1186/s130... GitHub: github.com/PacificBiosc... Follow along for some highlights… 1/N
doi.org
Client Challenge
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Human Pangenome Reference Consortium @humanpangenome.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
Pangenome coordinates can be complex... Shredtools offers a new approach using exact matches to query pangenome data efficiently. Its tools can extract syntenic regions across hundreds of genomes, making pangenome-scale exploration more accessible. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/42465356/
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
Navigating the pangenome coordinate system with Shredtools - PubMed
Existing notions of pangenome coordinates rely on hard-to-compute multiple sequence alignments. On the other hand, pangenome-wide exact unique matches (multi-MUMs) can be computed efficiently, and represent conserved stretches of columns in the underlying MSA. We introduce Shredtools, which uses mul …
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Simon Fisher @profsimonfisher.bsky.social · 21/08/2026
Hello, human geneticist here. There is no scientific basis for attempts to define people in terms of “good” or “bad” genes - these are discredited views in service of racist ideologies. For consensus & concerns of experts in our field, see e.g. this 2020 statement from @geneticssociety.bsky.social:
Statement from the American Society of Human Genetics in 2020, countering the myth of "good genes". It reads as follows:
"Genetics demonstrates that humans cannot be divided into biologically distinct subcategories or races, and any efforts to claim the superiority of humans based on any genetic ancestry have no scientific evidence. Moreover, it is inaccurate to claim genetics as the determinative factor in human strengths or outcomes when education, environment, wealth, and health care access are often more potent factors. There is no factual basis for attempts to define communities or regions of people with "good" or "bad" genes and a century of science has debunked such claims, which can feed discredited views and racist ideologies. Unchecked, unethical application of false genetic "theories" have resulted in past atrocities from forced sterilizations to the Holocaust and can still fuel unethical social policies worldwide today. Over the decades, our field also has reflected on its own role in such now-condemned ideas, and we speak out vocally as a community and as individuals to combat their resurgence.
We must protect and advance the ethical use of genetics and genomics knowledge for the profound good it can realize, including better, more precise healthcare that leverages what we are discovering about human genetic commonality and diversity. The human genetics community dedicates itself to this goal each day, and today we are improving and saving hundreds of thousands of lives. As the ASHG community focuses on realizing the benefits of human genetics and genomics research for people everywhere, we also urge societal attention to address profound educational, economic and health inequalities that fuel differences in human experience and well-being. By pursuing all of these activities, humans can celebrate our common heritage as one people, embrace and fully tap our valued diversity, and help achieve optimal life outcomes for all."
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UC Santa Cruz Genomics Institute @ucscgenomics.bsky.social · 06/08/2026
We’ve sequenced a marmoset! Grad student @prajnahebbar.bsky.social & @benedictpaten.bsky.social led the effort, and expect it to enable scientists to learn more about genes that contribute to memory loss and Alzheimer's. 🔗https://news.ucsc.edu/2026/08/first-complete-marmoset-genome/
A quote from Prajna Hebbar, graduate student at UC Santa Cruz and lead author on the T2T marmoset paper, reads "Routine T2T genomics is making findings easier... It's great to be in an era where we're not stuck with the technical problems- we can go into the biology and make discoveries relevant to human health." A small monkey is pictured on the side.
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bioRxiv Genomics @biorxiv-genomic.bsky.social · 22/07/2026
HPRC2: A human pangenome reference with near-complete coverage of common genetic variation www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/20…
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Adam M Novak @adamnovak.graphs.vg · 11/07/2026
Did you remember your red pen and clipboard? You always need those when you print a PDF.
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Adam M Novak @adamnovak.graphs.vg · 11/07/2026
Since I only get a couple weeks to peer-review papers, what's happening to *my* papers for the several months they're in review at the journal?
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Shuangjia Lu @lushjia.bsky.social · 07/07/2026
🔥 Does switching to a pangenome reference actually improve your association study? We tested it, and the answer is yes, measurably. Our preprint is online now: "Pangenome-based human genome analysis improves trait association and genomic prediction": doi.org/10.64898/202...
doi.org
Pangenome-based human genome analysis improves trait association and genomic prediction
The Human Pangenome Reference Consortium has generated 462 open-access reference genomes and a variation graph that represents differences among them, providing a substrate for pangenome-based analysi...
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Genetics Society UK @gensocuk.bsky.social · 26/06/2026
Congratulations to Prof Richard Durbin, winner of the 2026 Genetics Society Medal! His pioneering work in computational genomics has transformed how we analyse and understand genome sequences.
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UC Santa Cruz Genomics Institute @ucscgenomics.bsky.social · 26/06/2026
Growing neurons from stem cells—in high school! 🧠 A Genomics Institute platform uses cloud-connected microscopes so students design real stem cell experiments remotely. New study shows it measurably boosts STEM identity, especially for Hispanic & first-gen students. news.ucsc.edu/2026/0...
About two dozen people gather under a sign that promotes innovation at UC Santa Cruz
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Adam M Novak @adamnovak.graphs.vg · 26/06/2026
I want people to make me write good text! If the text does not have to be good, why are we bothering to write it? We should just send the software or whatever to the reviewers!
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Adam M Novak @adamnovak.graphs.vg · 26/06/2026
Honestly I think we should start judging them by how easy they are to read and how well you understand them afterwards. Regardless of the science, I've been on papers that, after being squashed down to fit in the journal and having all the good stuff moved to the supplement, were terrible.
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Adam M Novak @adamnovak.graphs.vg · 26/06/2026
I went to check on this in LibreOffice and I'm very upset that "2007-365" is a well-formed Microsoft Office version range.
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Zamin Iqbal @zaminiqbal.bsky.social · 25/05/2026
This is awful to hear, describing how Sean Eddy (HMMER, infernal, pfam, rfam) has been defunded. The letter said his work "had been determined to be of absolutely no value to the US taxpayer, and therefore it was being specifically terminated," www.npr.org/2026/05/21/n...
npr.org
Researchers say the Trump administration is finding new ways to punish science
Even with federal grants largely restored, scientists say the Trump administration is still preventing those funds from reaching them. The consequences, they say, are already becoming clear.
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Adam M Novak @adamnovak.graphs.vg · 22/05/2026
I was going to complain that we spend a lot of time and effort *removing* suspicious anchors.
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AAUP @aaup.org · 12/05/2026
“The message, very clearly, they’re sending is, do not speak out on behalf of Chinese postdocs. If you do, you’re going to pay a penalty...It seems pretty obvious that this is an attempt by the current administration to silence people that question their activities." — Roger Innes, IU AAUP member
chronicle.com
A Professor Defended a Postdoc Who Was Deported. Now His Lab Has Been Suddenly Locked Down.
Work at an Indiana University biology lab was halted amid federal scrutiny, affecting dozens of researchers. “The damage is significant and mounting,” the department chair told The Chronicle.
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Adam M Novak @adamnovak.graphs.vg · 12/05/2026
We also have a v1.74.1 patch release out!
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Jason Moore @moorejh.bsky.social · 03/05/2026
#dna #captcha
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Adam M Novak @adamnovak.graphs.vg · 04/05/2026
We got "Help me write" in our #UCSC Google Docs and I really can't deal with its little text prompt flashing in and out at the cursor position whenever I stop typing in order to think. I told to our IT that it meaningfully interferes with my ability to write in Google Docs and they can't fix it.
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Quinn Slobodian @quinnslobodian.com · 30/04/2026
earthrise in santa cruz
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Adam M Novak @adamnovak.graphs.vg · 17/04/2026
I feel like this all the time when trying to generate code with Claude Code. I end up spending lots of time reviewing what are supposedly *my own* pull requests for terrible ideas. I want to be reading code written by people *better at it than I am*, and I'm definitely not.
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Adam M Novak @adamnovak.graphs.vg · 09/04/2026
No word yet on how to best apply this to my backyard Sorghum patch
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Adam M Novak @adamnovak.graphs.vg · 09/04/2026
Very happy to see both vg and Sequence Tube Map being used for Sorghum pangenomics! www.nature.com/articles/s41...
A Tube Map style plot of part of the Sorghum pangenome. Transparent grey nodes, representing pieces of DNA, are visited by colored "tubes", representing individual samples, which travel left to right. They are organized vertically in bands that visit similar sets of nodes.
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Adam M Novak @adamnovak.graphs.vg · 03/04/2026
Does Rust not have the thing GCC has where you can tell it to build function versions for multiple architectures into the same binary and pick the right one at runtime? Or does that add too many runtime checks? stackoverflow.com/a/63270856
stackoverflow.com
specify simd level of a function that compiler can use
I wrote some code and compiled it using gcc with the native architecture option. Typically I can take this code and run it on an older computer that doesn't have AVX2 (only AVX), and it works fine...
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Adam M Novak @adamnovak.graphs.vg · 01/04/2026
I think only a little of the cost of an enzyme is to pay to make the enzyme, and most of it is paying for the enzyme to be: - Actually there - By itself - In the right concentration - Not secretly a very pure and properly concentrated supply of some other enzyme on accident - etc.
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PinkNews @pinknews.bsky.social · 31/03/2026
Today, March 31st, is International Trans Day of Visibility. In an era of immense difficulty for the community, it can be hard to remember that Trans Day of Visibility is as much about positivity as it is about awareness and resistance.
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Fulcrum Genomics @fulcrumgenomics.com · 24/03/2026
Ever receive a BAM aligned to “GRCh38” and realize that could mean several different references? We just released ref-solver, a tool that identifies the reference genome behind BAM/CRAM/FASTA files by comparing sequence dictionaries to known builds. 🔗 whatsmygenome.fulcrumgenomics.com Read more 👇
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Adam M Novak @adamnovak.graphs.vg · 16/03/2026
But how are we going to know what features to speculatively pre-compute in case they turn out to be useful for building an ML model later? Don't the features for something like a DeepVariant need to be deeply co-engineered with the model to be most useful?
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Adam M Novak @adamnovak.graphs.vg · 23/02/2026
No, but it sure can train students to see unprompted Duo push notifications asking if they are logging in right now and hit "Yes" regardless.
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Matt Keeter @mattkeeter.com · 20/02/2026
it has been [0] days since I've tried to emulate 64-bit atomic operations using 32-bit atomic ops in a system with relaxed memory ordering
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Alan McNally @alanmcn1.bsky.social · 17/02/2026
Bit different from our usual work A PhD applying metagenomics to identify microbial plastic degradation and metabolism, fully funded studentship (UK students only). www.findaphd.com/phds/project...
findaphd.com
A metagenomics approach to discover novel plastic degrading microbial pathways at University of Birmingham on FindAPhD.com
PhD Project - A metagenomics approach to discover novel plastic degrading microbial pathways at University of Birmingham, listed on FindAPhD.com
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Jouni Sirén @jltsiren.bsky.social · 10/02/2026
Our latest vg release introduces GBZ v2 with better compression for sequences. I originally assumed that the total sequence length in a pangenome graph would be similar to the size of the genome. This does not hold in the full HPRC graphs due to unaligned centromeres.
github.com
Release vg 1.72.0 - Littlefoot · vgteam/vg
Don't forget to mark the static binary executable: chmod +x vg Docker Image: quay.io/vgteam/vg:v1.72.0 Buildable Source Tarball: vg-v1.72.0.tar.gz Includes source for vg and all submodules. Use th...
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Andrea Guarracino @andreaguarracino.bsky.social · 06/02/2026
Looking for a postdoc to build my new lab at TGen (Phoenix, AZ) focused on pangenome methods for cancer and complex disease. Full stack — from pangenome assembly and compression to association studies and somatic variant discovery. Reach out if interested! guarracinolab.github.io#join
guarracinolab.github.io
Guarracino Lab | Pangenome Research
We develop methods to build and analyze pangenomes, with applications in cancer and complex disease. Translational Genomics Research Institute, Phoenix, AZ.
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NativeBio Data Consortium @nativebio.bsky.social · 05/02/2026
Native Bio has made the @nytimes.com for the second time. The #IDsov movement is a tidal wave....and a solution for these difficult times. “We are at a fork in the road. Do not choose hate & do not choose unsustainability.” ~ 21st Century Maxim, Author Unknown www.nytimes.com/2026/02/05/s...
nytimes.com
He Built a Server to Protect Indigenous Health Data
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Adam M Novak @adamnovak.graphs.vg · 05/02/2026
This sounds implausible. And it would result in the file existing but having no or the wrong content, right? I would not believe this robot.
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Prajna Hebbar @prajnahebbar.bsky.social · 03/02/2026
This was such a fun project. Adam's thread on it is a great summary!
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Adam M Novak @adamnovak.graphs.vg · 02/02/2026
Maybe I need to get Kimi k2.5 set up somehow so I can run it for a full day at reasonable cost, in a contained environment that can be allowed to turn evil and so doesn't constantly need me to approve things.
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Adam M Novak @adamnovak.graphs.vg · 02/02/2026
My Claude Code distracted me constantly when I tried to let it work while I was in a meeting, has me now more confused about the nature of the problem I was trying to get it to solve than when I started, and then went on strike for increased subscription fees after 2 hours. Am I holding it wrong?
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Adam M Novak @adamnovak.graphs.vg · 27/01/2026
This is a chat box where you can try to yell at your paper until it is written.
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Adam M Novak @adamnovak.graphs.vg · 27/01/2026
Something that makes my LaTeX code snap together out of lose curly braces, or that hands me BibTeX keys based on which paper in my .bib smells most like the sentence I just wrote, might be useful. This does not appear to be that thing.
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Steve Joffe @stevejoffe.bsky.social · 26/01/2026
Excellent piece about why race is not a biological category and how medical education needs to respond. www.bmj.com/content/392/...
bmj.com
Race is not a biological category: challenging this misconception will help tackle racism in healthcare
Healthcare professionals must reject flawed racial generalisations, writes Jasmeen Kanwal Institutional racism in healthcare has received increased coverage in recent years, including in The BMJ ’s ...
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Adam M Novak @adamnovak.graphs.vg · 20/01/2026
In vg we are vendoring in htslib partly so we can make sure we use an htslib built with libdeflate support. For blocked-gzip at least you can stream the overall file just fine.
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Adam M Novak @adamnovak.graphs.vg · 20/01/2026
We've all heard of ramdisk, but have you met cachedisk?
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Adam M Novak @adamnovak.graphs.vg · 14/01/2026
Apply ASAP to be a "Genomics Senior Systems Architect" AKA Linux Herder at @ucscgenomics.bsky.social ! The first test is convincing www.ucsc.edu/careers/ to show you #job number 82880.
ucsc.edu
Careers – UC Santa Cruz
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Adam M Novak @adamnovak.graphs.vg · 12/01/2026
Are #redhat #quay.io Docker container builds down for anyone else? Mine are failing with no logs, and then my trigger gets "automatically disabled due to successive internal errors".
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