The Somatic Mutation Journal Club meets on the second Thursday of each month from 1–2 PM ET during the academic year. Sessions are held in person at the Broad Institute and on Zoom, with lunch provided—thanks to generous support from the Broad's Office of Academic Affairs.
Most sessions feature presentations by the lead author(s) of recent high-impact somatic mutation papers or preprints. We also showcase work-in-progress talks by trainees, creating a supportive space for feedback, discussion, and community building.
In addition to regular journal clubs, we kick off the fall and spring semesters with social happy hours and lead breakout sessions at the annual Broad Retreat.
See below for the upcoming and past events!
Recordings of past meetings and presentation slides are only available to members of the journal club. To join, contact us.
1/29/2026 1-2 PM ET
Speaker: Dave Cheek, PhD
Paper: Cheek et al. "Age distinguishes selection from causation in cancer genomes", bioRxiv (Oct 2025).
11/13/2025 1-2 PM ET
Speakers: Vladimir Seplyarskiy, PhD & Mikhail Moldovan, PhD
Paper: Seplyarskiy, V., Moldovan, M.A., Koch, E. et al. "Hotspots of human mutation point to clonal expansions in spermatogonia." Nature (2025)
10/9/25 4-6 PM ET
9/11/25 1-2 PM ET
Speaker: David Tang
Paper: Tang et al. "Patterns and drivers of 43,617 mosaic chromosomal alterations in blood." medRxiv (2025)
6/12/25 1-2 PM ET
Speaker: Guanlan (Lan) Dong, PhD
Paper: Dong, Ma et al. “Diverse somatic genomic alterations in single neurons in chronic traumatic encephalopathy.” bioRxiv (2025)
5/22/25 1-2 PM ET
Speakers: Zinan Zhou, PhD & Joe Luquette, PhD
Paper: Zhou, Luquette, Dong et al. “Recurrent patterns of widespread neuronal genomic damage shared by major neurodegenerative disorders.” bioRxiv (2025)
4/10/25 1-2 PM ET
Speaker: Tim Coorens, PhD
Paper: Coorens et al. "The Somatic mutation landscape of normal gastric epithelium." Nature (2025)
3/13/25 1-2 PM ET
Speaker: Jie Liu, PhD
Paper: Liu et al. "Impact of Germline Genetic Variation on Clonal Hematopoiesis Landscape and Progression to Hematologic Malignancy." In press (2025)
2/13/25 1-2 PM ET
Speakers: Riaz Gillani, MD & Ryan Collins, PhD
Paper: Gillani, Collins, et al. "Rare germline structural variants increase risk for pediatric solid tumors.” Science (2025)
1/21/25 4-6 PM ET
Section coming soon!
Section coming soon!