Alison Feder

@alisonfeder.bsky.social

2263 Followers 782 Following

Rapid evolutionary dynamics in viruses, cancer and bacteria. Assistant professor at UW Genome Sciences and Freeman Hrabowski Scholar at HHMI. federlab.github.io

Two rows of figures. Top: change in diversity as a function of genomic position, faceted by 1, 2, 10, 20, 50 or 100 origins. 1, 2 and to some extent 10 origins show a decrease in diversity, while 20 or more origins show no change in diversity in the surrounding region, and an increase at the escape locus itself. Bottom: standardized iHH as a function of genomic position for 1, 2, 10, 20, 50 or 100 origins. iHH increases after the sweep when there are 20 or fewer origins, but for 50 or 100 origins, it does not.
X axis: genomic position, y axis: standardized iHH (integrated haplotype homozygosity). Faceted grid showing the genomic data from 10 participants, where in 8/10 participants, the iHH for day 0, week 4 and week 8 largely overlap each other and 0. In two participants, there is some elevation of iHH at week 4 or 8.
Faceted graphs showing the change in diversity (pi) following a selective sweep. Genomic position is on the x axis and a red vertical mark highlights the site of an adaptive locus. Each plot shows inconsistent diversity changes, except for an increase in diversity at the adaptive locus itself.
Poster reads: G.S. happy hour sponsored by the queitsch/cuperus right after research reports. picture of corn on juliet-style balcony
Top: Label: High density. Image: multiple sensitive and resistant genomes coinfect cells and produce hybrid capsids with resistant and sensitive subunits which mostly fail to pass through a selective screen. Bottom: Label: Low density. Image: single sensitive and resistant genomes in cells and produce fully resistant or sensitive capsids. Fully resistant genomes pass successfully through a selective screen.
Text: Could mucosal gene therapy prevent cancer in people with Fanconi anemia? Animation: a needle delivers a green substance into a field of grey, which begins to spread. As it spreads, it competes with newly emerging maroon patches.
Text: How do you detect selection cancer lineage tracing data? Animation: A cell division process in which each carries a short DNA barcode. The division process is then overlaid by a corresponding tree, which shrinks in certain places to form polytomies where multiple cells carry identical barcodes.
Text: How can you tell if mutational processes differ between groups without relying on signature decomposition? Animation: 6 different bar plots (colored like 6-mer mutational spectra) are sorted into two groups labeled with gold and navy. Below them, gold and navy 6-mer spectra bar plots grow and are compared to each other with the label Delta. Then, the group labels shuffle and the animation repeats.
Text: Can intracellular interference among polioviruses prevent drug resistance evolution? Animation: Three viruses (two blue, one red) enter a cell, produce red and blue viral proteins, which form into red/blue chimeric viruses and exit the cell where they are bound by yellow triangles (drug).
Text: How parallel and predictable are HIV's evolutionary responses to two broadly neutralizing antibodies? Animation: antibodies chasing viruses across the gif in a loop - black viruses are replaced by many colorful ones
Yellow, red and blue lab logo spinning
Two scientists standing in front of a SMBE 2024 Puerto Vallarta sign
Four scientists wearing conference badges standing in front of a big tree at a conference venue.
a picture of white felted slippers
Google query: "highest ever dn/ds" AI overview response: "The highest dN/dS ratio ever observed is in the NS2A gene of DENV, which has a dN/dS value of 0.080."
Crocheted green creature with three eyestalks sitting in a tea tin
Google street view image of a building with an architectural motif resembling a coalescent process
Map showing Mexico and Guatemala, annotated with symbols representing structural variation types. The legend reads "Figure I. - The distribution of the structural types of the third chromosome in Mexico and Guatemala."
Plot showing mutational frequencies by position across 15 brain specimens. Mutations marked in blue are at the same frequency in each region, and mutations marked in red are at the same frequency (and complementary to blue)
image of brain showing the percentage of reads in each region that map to MeV. Percentages become as high as 20.1% in some regions but are as low as 0.5% in others.
Paper figure showing (top) a phylogenetic tree displaying the relationships among several measles viral clones and (bottom) the spatial distribution of those clones superimposed on a cartoon of the brain.
Image showing building on the Fred Hutch campus, and text reading "Mahan Postdoctoral Fellowship. Deadline for Applications: Friday, December 1"
Visual notes from Nandita Garud seminar
Google scholar follow recommendations whose suggestions are non-diverse on the basis of inferred gender and race (1/2)
Very sad succulents
Template switching allows HIV to RECOMBINE. But first, multiple viruses must coinfect the same cell. So, might high viral loads lead to more recombination in HIV?