Robin Hofmeister

Excited to share my first preprint on federated conditional analysis of rare single variant and aggregate association tests across six genetically-inferred ancestry groups in All of Us and UK Biobank doi.org/10.64898/202...

Hi network 👋

⏰ Don’t miss it! #EMGM2026 in Davos (Switzerland) 🏔️
📅 14–15 April 2026
📝 Abstract deadline: 1 February 2026
✈️ Travel grants available
🎤 Amazing lineup of invited speakers
🔗 Details: emgm2026.sciencesconf.org

Hi #ASHG2025, the Lausanne team made it to Boston ! Excited to present our latest discoveries — come say hi and learn more about our research! @samuelmoix.bsky.social @rjhfmstr.bsky.social

I'm excited to share our pre-print about a new variant benchmarking tool we've been working on for the past few months!

Aardvark: Sifting through differences in a mound of variants
GitHub: github.com/PacificBiosc...

Some highlights in this thread:
1/N

Curious about the technical details of the parental haplotype reconstruction that powers this assortative mating study? 🧬
Check out our recent @nature.com
paper: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Big thanks to the amazing team behind this work and funders 🙏
This project was collaborative across Switzerland 🇨🇭, Estonia 🇪🇪, Italy 🇮🇹, and supervised by @zkutalik.bsky.social !
@snsf.ch @unil.bsky.social @fbm-unil.bsky.social

The big picture: assortative mating has intensified in recent generations.
Especially for height and education.
This means biases in GWAS & downstream analyses are likely stronger in younger cohorts.

Most approaches need genotyped couples (rare in biobanks) or rely on long-term signals.
Our haplotype-based method uses our recent inter-chromosomal phasing method to separate maternal & paternal haplotypes, then correlates partial parental polygenic scores to measure assortment.

🚨 New preprint out!
We reconstructed parental haplotypes in >440k individuals (UK & Estonian biobanks) to estimate assortative mating directly in the parental generation.
This reveals intensified assortment in recent generations.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

The impact of genetic variants can depend on the parent they come from Traits such as height, metabolism, and disease risk can be affected differently – and even in opposite directions – depending on whether the genetic variant responsible is inherited from the mothe...

Traits like disease risk can be affected differently, and in opposite ways, depending on which parent the genetic variant responsible comes from. Work led by SIB scientists @zkutalik.bsky.social & Robin Hofmeister at @unil.bsky.social/UniSanté & published in Nature👇

www.sib.swiss/news/the-imp...

Parent-of-origin effects on complex traits in up to 236,781 individuals - Nature A novel multistep strategy reveals how parent-of-origin effects shape complex traits in large-scale biobanks.

Congratulations to Zoltan @zkutalik.bsky.social , Robin @rjhfmstr.bsky.social and the whole team for this fantastic work out today in ‪@nature.com 👍 ‬ www.nature.com/articles/s41... Your parents' genome matters more than you think 😉https://www.unil.ch/dbc/en/home.html @fbm-unil.bsky.social

Study of 230,000 people finds many examples where the effect of a genetic variant differs depending on the parent of origin, especially for growth and metabolism - fascinating!

Amazing study, congrats @rjhfmstr.bsky.social, @zkutalik.bsky.social and team 👏

Extremely cool paper from @rjhfmstr.bsky.social @zkutalik.bsky.social and team. I still need to get my head around how the same genetic variant has opposite effects depending if it’s maternally or paternally inherited and why.

@snsf.ch @estresearchcouncil.bsky.social @fannydhelia.bsky.social @jaanikakronberg.bsky.social @mvaudel.bsky.social @srubinacci.bsky.social @lilimilani.bsky.social @natureportfolio.nature.com

Parent-of-origin effects on complex traits in up to 236,781 individuals - Nature A novel multistep strategy reveals how parent-of-origin effects shape complex traits in large-scale biobanks.

Dirigée par @zkutalik.bsky.social et @rjhfmstr.bsky.social à la @fbm-unil.bsky.social, au @sib.swiss et à #unisanté, une nouvelle étude publiée dans @nature.com présente une méthode computationnelle innovante pour étudier ces effets liés à l’origine parentale.
🔗 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Thrilled to see this project come to life — a huge team effort with collaborators in 🇨🇭 🇪🇪 🇳🇴! Huge thanks to all co-authors and funders!
@zkutalik.bsky.social @lilimilani.bsky.social @srubinacci.bsky.social @adriaan-vd-graaf.bsky.social @unil.bsky.social @estbiobank.bsky.social and many more !

The paper comes with:
A Nature Research Briefing 🔗 www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Press releases from our local press:
🔗 www.unil.ch/news/fr/1754...
🔗 www.sib.swiss/fr/news/limp...

Open data & tools for the community :
🔗 rjhfmstr.github.io/THORIN/

All bi-polar effects involve growth & metabolism, giving one of the strongest evidence yet for the genetic conflict hypothesis ⚔️

This evolutionary “tug-of-war”:

Dad’s genes → push growth
Mom’s genes → limit growth to save resources

By separating maternal and paternal genomes, we discovered >30 parent-of-origin effects, including bi-polar effects:
➡️ Allele from one parent ↑ trait
➡️ Allele from the other parent ↓ trait
These findings expose a hiding pattern of genetic effect in biobank data.

🚨 Our parent-of-origin study is out in Nature! 🧬
Maternal and paternal alleles can have distinct — even opposite — effects on human traits, revealing a hidden layer of genetic architecture that standard GWAS miss.
🔗 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Highlights below!

Thrilled to receive the Early Career Award for my presentation at #ESHG2025! 🧬
Big thanks to all the amazing collaborators on this project — couldn't have done it without you.
Grateful to the organizers and inspired by the science shared this week!

Particularly interesting talk from @rjhfmstr.bsky.social @ #ESHG25. Impressive work coming out of @unil.bsky.social 🧬🚀

🎉 Hi #ESHG2025, the Statistical Genetics Group and alumni (@zkutalik.bsky.social) is coming in force!

Check out our latest work on human genetics!

📍Come see our talks & posters, or reach out to meet us!

Very excited to give a virtual talk as part of the
@eshg.bsky.social
webinar series tomorrow at 4pm (CEST). If you want to listen in, register here: wma.eventsair.com/eshg-webinar... I will talk about all the exciting things we can learn from GWAS summary statistics...

Association between plausible genetic factors and weight loss from GLP1-RA and bariatric surgery - Nature Medicine The authors found, after analyzing 10,960 individuals from 9 multiancestry biobanks across 6 countries, that genetic factors previously associated with BMI have limited impact on GLP-1 receptor agonis...

🚨 New paper 🚨

Do known genetic factors for obesity and type 2 diabetes affect weight loss from GLP1-RA (Ozempic) or bariatric surgery?

🔍 10,960 people, 9 biobanks, 6 countries
🧬 Minimal genetic impact on GLP1-RA response
📉 Modest effect after surgery

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

After 6 (healthy) months of hiatus from social media, first post with a brand new conference announcement!! 🔥COMPUTATIONAL BIOLOGY IS EVERYWHERE! Join us in Lausanne for the first international Computational Biology Symposium! 18-19 September 2025 Registrations are OPEN! cbiosymposium.unil.ch

Only two weeks left to apply to the Leena Peltonen School of Human Genomics.

Stellar faculty, free accommodation and no registration fee.

Unique format: 20 students:20 tutors, presenting their science and learning together.

lpshg.com

Here are some cool animations I made a couple years ago for teaching DAG-based causal inference

Confounding!

EMGM2025 abstract deadline extended – 09/02 (final). Conference 8-9 April, Brest, France. Everything statistical and population genetics, genetic epidemiology, bioinformatics… Invited speakers: Céline Bon, Beatriz Cuyabano, Garrett Hellenthal. emgm2025.sciencesconf.org

Just 10 days to go until the EMGM2025 abstract submission deadline!
emgm2025.sciencesconf.org?lang=en
Registration is also now up and running.
Hope to see you all in Brest