From listmaster animalgenome.org Wed Jun 17 04:29:49 2026
From: "Jose Espinosa-Carrasco" <joseantonio.espinosacrg.eu>
To: Members of AnGenMap <angenmapanimalgenome.org>
Subject: Kind reminder tomorrow Miguel Perez-Enciso - Meeting of the
animalgenomics nf-core special interest group 17 June, 4pm
CEST / 10am EST
Date: Wed, 17 Jun 2026 04:29:49 -0500
Dear all,
See the info on my previous announcement below and don't miss it
We are pleased to announce that Miguel Prez-Enciso Centre for Research
in Agricultural Genomics CRAG, UAB campus, 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 Prez-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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