A UC San Diego team published PanMAN (Pangenome Mutation‑Annotated Network), a new data structure and compression method that achieves up to ~1,391× file‑size reduction versus existing variation‑preserving formats, enabling analyses across millions of genomes. PanMAN encodes phylogenies, mutations and whole‑genome alignments in mutation‑annotated trees (PanMATs) connected as a network, allowing computations on compressed data without inflating storage demands. The method, described in Nature Genetics, addresses a central informatics bottleneck for population and pathogen genomics by making large‑scale pangenomic queries and phylogenetic analyses tractable. For sequencing centers, public‑health labs and genomics platforms, PanMAN implies lower storage costs and faster cross‑sample analyses at pandemic‑scale and in population studies.