DNA Sequencing Reveals Hitler Was Type Of Fern

Whoah EBV not only causes multiple sclerosis, it also might be the root of SLE www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... An EBV vaccine to rid ourselves of these horrible autoimmune conditions (and many cancers)? #lupus #medsky #RheumSky @christosargyrop.bsky.social

The outbreak in Ethiopia is #Marburg virus, the first such outbreak for this country. 9 cases so far, including some health workers. x.com/drtedros/sta...

“Bin Chicken” is now published in Nature Methods! It substantially improves genome recovery through rational coassembly 🧬🖥️. Applied to public 🌍 metagenomes, we recovered 24,000 novel species 🦠, including 6 new phyla. doi.org/10.1038/s415... @benjwoodcroft.bsky.social @rhysnewell.bsky.social 🧵1/6

New paper with @statsepi.bsky.social and @deevybee.bsky.social in which we show there's really no evidence for a link between the gut microbiome and autism www.cell.com/neuron/fullt...

My review of #Crick by @matthewcobb.bsky.social has been published online by @science.org. The book is lucid, beautifully crafted, and compelling. It will instantly become the definitive guide to this extraordinary individual’s life and work.

New primer alert! Fantastic insight into how to apply machine learning and AI in microbiology. A must read. @microbiologysociety.org @delafuentelab.bsky.social www.microbiologyresearch.org/content/jour...

We don't want people to think you can see evil in the genome, but we'll call our Channel 4 documentary "Hitler's DNA: Blueprint of a dictator".

We wrote the Strain on scientific publishing to highlight the problems of time & trust. With a fantastic group of co-authors, we present The Drain of Scientific Publishing: a 🧵 1/n Drain: arxiv.org/abs/2511.04820 Strain: direct.mit.edu/qss/article/... Oligopoly: direct.mit.edu/qss/article/...

“Heat pumps are superior in efficiency to condensing boilers, even if the heat pumps are powered by electricity from a power station burning natural gas.” Not me saying that but the late Prof Sir David MacKay. More in my @carbonbrief.org article 👇 interactive.carbonbrief.org/factcheck/he...

Bluesky feels like it’s had a bit of a bump recently

"i asked grok" "i asked chatgpt" yeah well i asked carl sagan and he said the greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance but the illusion of knowledge 🧪

If you believe either that Franklin discovered the double helix, and / or Watson and Crick stole her data, ask yourself how you know this. Then take a read of this article.

HAPPY FOUR SEASONS TOTAL LANDSCAPING DAY TO ALL WHO CELEBRATE

Nextstrain's daily-updated tree of SARS-CoV-2 genomes was my gateway into the world of viral phylogenetics in early 2020, and Nextstrain's beautiful interactive tree display is crucial to making usher.bio results usable. GISAID cutting off data harms global surveillance efforts. 🧵👇

One analytical model shows that, as of November 5th, the dismantling of U.S.A.I.D. has already caused the deaths of 600,000 people, two-thirds of them children. https://newyorkermag.visitlink.me/jUzNSc

😂😂 need a PR for gyat()

On Oct 1, 2025, GISAID informed us that they had ended updates to the flat file of SARS-CoV-2 genomic sequences and associated metadata that we had used to update Nextstrain analyses since Feb 2020. GISAID's stated rationale was that their "resources are limited". 1/5

🧬 Thrilled to share our latest paper in @natmicrobiol.nature.com 📄 A collaboration to give the Flaviviridae (home to Zika, Dengue & HCV) a much-needed taxonomic re-think. Our at-scale AI structure prediction gave a complementary perspective on viral evolution. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Shout out to University of Birmingham folk: A science-themed play that I co-wrote is coming to you at the Midlands Art Centre on the 17th. A lab-night out? See you there! 🤞 linktr.ee/panaceaplay @wvschaik.bsky.social @alanmcn1.bsky.social @drjorhodes.com @jkreft.bsky.social

We’re gonna see plenty of this I predict

I was one of the Editorial Board Members at @gigascience.bsky.social who resigned from the Editorial Board. 🧪 🔓 ⬇️ retractionwatch.com/2025/11/03/d...

Our new preprint is out 🥳🥳🥳 Henipaviruses, like Nipah and Hendra, package their genomes inside helical shells built by thousands of nucleoproteins. These nucleocapsids are essential to protect the viral RNA, but how do they ever let the polymerase in to read the sequence? 👇

Nature suggests you use their "Manuscript Adviser" bot to get advice before submitting I uploaded the classic Watson & Crick paper about DNA structure, and the Adviser had this to say about one of the greatest paper endings of the century:

PathogenSurveillance: an automated pipeline for population genomic analyses and pathogen identification www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... Code: github.com/nf-core/path... Nextflow nf-core pipeline: nf-co.re/pathogensurv...

My article in tomorrow's @theobserveruk.bsky.social now online. But go and buy a copy!

We have progressed from data collection to data analysis.

@andersonfbrito.bsky.social and I are seeking input from the community on hosting/sharing arbovirus sequencing data (DENV, CHIKV, OROV, ZIKV, & YFV) on @pathoplexus.org. Please consider filling out this VERY SHORT survey about your interest and/or concerns. docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

I've been asked about this paper (www.nature.com/articles/s41...) enough times that I finally had to read it. The basic claim is that mRNA vaccines had huge synergistic benefit with checkpoint blockade against lung cancer melanoma. tl;dr it's glam-slop & everyone involved should be embarrassed

October 2025 batch of Kraken 2 indexes, including core_nt and many others, available: benlangmead.github.io/aws-indexes/k2 Coming soon to K2: a feature for querying many K2 indexes as though they're a single index. Highly useful if the index you want to query is too big to build and/or fit in RAM.

Genuinely delighted to download a PhD thesis from a university repository where the author has neglected to remove the words "BITCH THIS IS YOUR THESIS" from the filename.

We’ve identified a highly divergent betacoronavirus from South American bat that encodes a functional furin cleavage site. Another fascinating reminder of how diverse coronavirus evolution is in wildlife reservoirs. #Virology #VirusEvolution #Bats #Coronavirus www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Nobody makes enemies by finishing their talk early…

Musk calling for civil war in Britain again. Man’s clearly never met a Brit. You can’t get them out when it’s drizzling, never mind manning the barricades.

Look what the dog fetched up! @matthewcobb.bsky.social’s new biography of Francis Crick. Folks, it’s like no other Crick biog. Full of new research, fresh insights, juicy stories, & it’s a romp. Having watched this develop from the larval stage, it’s a thrill to hear it thunk! on my table

When people learn with ChatGPT instead of following their own searches, they end up knowing less, caring less, and producing worse advice, even when the facts are the same. Friction is an essential ingredient for learning! Convenience makes us shallow. academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/ar...

complete batshit insanity

Musk: X will delete all heuristics from its recommendation system within six weeks. ...the familiar logic of likes, replies, and reposts that shaped Twitter for years is about to disappear. In its place, Grok, the platform's in-house Al model, will read and watch more than one hundred million posts.

This is the nub... the commercial and political pressure around LLMs is judgement is a huge problem in evaluation and expanding on them

Around 10% of your Nanopore reads (SQK-RBK114) are incorrectly trimmed. Here is why, and how our new tool Barbell solves it: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... Want to get started? github.com/rickbeeloo/b...

This remains the funniest way to hear about an internet outage, though.

The countdown to the end of DRC's most recent #Ebola outbreak has begun with the release from hospital of the last known patient. Of 64 cases (53 confirmed, 11 probables), there have been 45 deaths & 19 survivors. +35,000 people were vaccinated in this response. www.afro.who.int/news/last-eb...

Another round of terminations, combined with previous layoffs and departures, has reduced the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention workforce by about 3,000 people since January.

Our infographic shows the number of hospitalisations and positive tests compared to last week for each virus. If you want even more detail, read the full report below. 🔎 🔗 www.gov.uk/government/s...

🟣 COVID-19 shows a slight decrease but continues to circulate at medium levels. 🔵 RSV has increased but remains at baseline levels.

🆕 #UKHSAVirusWatch: The latest flu, COVID-19 and RSV data from our weekly winter surveillance report. 🟢 Flu has increased, particularly in children, but remains at baseline levels.

In response, I'm seeing complaints about solar on farmland from the likes of @cprecountryside.bsky.social Butt 2% of UK farmland is used to grow biofuels, which is wildly inefficient and way more damaging than solar If you're not campaigning against biofuels, do shut up about solar on farmland

"...one year on and it feels like much of the political momentum around tackling AMR has already vanished." www.theguardian.com/global-devel...

Grid scale batteries are changing our electricity system. Excellent new visual story on batteries in FT today shows just how far this technology has evolved. Fasten your seatbelts, this is just the beginning. ig.ft.com/mega-batteri...

“ResearchFish isn’t a fish”