Maria Akopyan and Matthew Genchev Published a Study

Former QCB postdoc Maria Akopyan (top left) and QBIO undergraduate student Matthew Genchev (top right), both from Dr. Jazlyn Mooney's (bottom) lab, published a study titled “Reference genome choice compromises population genetic analyses” in Cell. The authors quantify how using a reference genome from a different species affects commonly used statistics for conservation and inferences in population genetics. They found that using a different species as the reference will produce biased results that could lead to population mismanagement, which is very important in species of conservation concern. You can read the paper here, and Dornsife news article on it here.