From listmaster animalgenome.org Sat Jun 13 17:43:02 2026
From: "Jose Espinosa-Carrasco" <joseantonio.espinosacrg.eu>
To: Members of AnGenMap <angenmapanimalgenome.org>
Subject: Miguel Pérez-Enciso - Next meeting of the animalgenomics
nf-core special interest group 17 June, 4pm CEST / 10am EST
Date: Sat, 13 Jun 2026 17:43:03 -0500
Dear all,
We are pleased to announce that Miguel Perez-Enciso Centre for Research in
Agricultural Genomics CRAG, Spain will be the speaker for the upcoming talk of the
animal-genomics Special Interest Group, taking place on Wednesday, June 17th, at
1600 CEST/1000 EST.
Miguel Perez-Enciso is a Biologist who obtained his PhD in 1990 in Genetics
Universidad Complutense, Madrid. After his PhD he moved to the USA and France for
three years of postdoctoral studies, specialising in Bayesian Statistics applied
to Animal Breeding and Quantitative Genetics. He worked at the Institut de Recerca
i Tecnologia Agroalimentaria IRTA from 1993 to 1999 and at INRA Toulouse, France
from 1999 to 2003, when he became an ICREA Research Professor. He is currently
based at the Centre for Research in Agricultural Genomics CRAG on the UAB campus.
From 2022 to 2024 he was on leave working as a Quantitative Geneticist for Corteva
Agriscience, one of the largest plant breeding companies. Find below the title
and abstract of his talk Reflections on AI for breeding and beyond.
In this talk, I will review some of the impacts that, in my opinion, AI is having
on the breeding industry and academy. Given that AI has been around for decades,
the first issue is Why all the fuss now? I argue that a main reason is that, while
we can accept that AI generates images, numbers, even music, the fact that modern
large language models (LLM) seem to understand and produce text of such realism, a
so far distinctly human feature, is disturbing. As a consolation, we should be
aware that these models have a huge number of parameters, e.g., about 1M
parameters per Wikipedia article. Focusing on breeding, genomic prediction is one
of the early topics where AI has been applied. However, despite numerous efforts,
its advantage over linear models has not been convincingly proved. Another area
where AI is currently undergoing rapid development is generative AI. The purpose
of generative AI is to produce samples of any arbitrary complexity by mimicking
training data. There are similarities but also important conceptual differences
with standard simulation used in breeding. Generative AI can have important
advantages relative to standard simulation, e.g., it is not limited by following a
defined statistical distribution. AI can then be used to generate, e.g., shapes,
plant architecture or animal conformation. Finally, given the speed of AI
developments, we can speculate whether AI will supersede standard quantitative
genetic principles or even Statistics. To conclude, AI offers endless
opportunities for breeding companies to optimise their schemes and offers numerous
opportunities for academia to understand AI results. There are important risks,
though. In my opinion, a main one is reproducibility. A second one is learning
itself and the advancement of science will AI compromise our interest in learning
and criticism? Will AI make it more difficult to go beyond established boundaries
of knowledge?
More information on https://nf-co.re/events/2026/sig_animalgenomics_jun
Join Zoom Meeting https://rediris.zoom.us/j/94803529514
Looking forward to seeing you,
Jose Espinosa- Carrasco
The nf-core animal- genomics group is an open group for anyone interested in
using/developing nf- core tools tailored for animal genomics. It provides a
collaborative space to share expertise, troubleshoot, and stay updated with the
latest developments. For more information about it please watch this nf-core
bytesize talk introducing the group https://youtu.be/2vqHkveWAws or visit our site
https://nf-co.re/...oups/animal-genomics Our primary
communication platform is Slack.
We warmly invite you to become part of the conversation and its vibrant community
by joining the nf-core Slack https://nf-co.re/join/slack and the animal-genomics
channel.
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