OK, here it is. Come work with me at the University of Liverpool making ALL THE AI models from ALL THE prokaryote pangenome data. Heck, we will make models from ALL the pangenomes, even eukaryotes!!! (link below👇) 1/4

After another announcement of Elsevier's embrace of AI (e.g. sciencebusiness.net/network-upda...), I remember that time when someone from Elsevier wanted me to work for them. For free. Scanning an open literature database. The hackathon organisers put them in charge. mstdn.science/@leomrtns/11...

Autism is a natural divergence from neurotypicality. It's normal & not the tragedy these clowns are making it out to be. Transness is a natural divergence from cisnormativity. It's normal & not the tragedy these clowns are making it out to be. Just deal with people being different than you.

When we build the greatest stereotype engine the world has ever seen we should not be surprised when it reproduces bias

Honoured + super grateful to give an oral talk on efforts by #PulseNETAfrica to enhance capacity of public health labs across Africa for cholera mgt + a poster describing investigation of a neonatal kleb pneumoniae ST39 outbreak in a rural hospital in the Gambia at #IMMEM XIV in beautiful Porto 🇵🇹

Come be our head of bioinformatics at @mrc-lms.bsky.social ! Our bioinformatics team are closely involved with lots of interesting science and we love working with them. Topics inc. development, cancer, metabolism, aging, TEs (my favourite of course 😜) #TEsky lms.mrc.ac.uk/work/vacanci...

"We’re Walling Off The Open Internet To Stop AI—And It May End Up Breaking Everything Else" This is a very interesting analysis from @mmasnick.bsky.social. www.techdirt.com/2025/09/08/w...

1/❓ Are you passionate about tackling some of the world’s most pressing #PublicHealth challenges? 🚨 Funded DPhil opportunity at University of Oxford & @hpruezi.bsky.social #PhD #AcademicJobs [Funding conditions note: Only applications from individuals eligible for home (UK) fees can be considered]

Terrific new feature presented by @theo.io on @pathoplexus.org called SeqSets for generating DOIs for sequence subsets used in publications, that can then be tracked for impact via CrossRef that will allow data generators to track impact! #IMMEMXiV

⚖️ Bolsonaro’s conviction marks a historic moment in Brazil’s political history Read more in @liverpooluni.bsky.social's Dr @mariekeriethof.bsky.social's latest article written for @theconversation.com ↙️ news.liverpool.ac.uk/2025/09/19/b...

Fun article about “outsider” scientists and their breakthroughs. “Academia filters most funding, publishing, and hiring decisions through senior insiders, which favors ideas within existing paradigms.” worksinprogress.co/issue/why-sc...

Hankyoreh now has an official English translation of this editorial: english.hani.co.kr/arti/english...

Our paper on the pangenome of the Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex is now out in its final form (version of record) in eLife! elifesciences.org/articles/97870

I am so glad to see our paper on two nationwide healthcare-associated outbreaks of Burkholderia cepacia complex linked to product contamination in the UK and Ireland, 2010–2023, is finally published. The UKHSA team has exhibited great resilience in the delivery of this work. doi.org/10.1017/ice....

We have expanded our ICTV Virus Taxonomy profiles and chapters to include higher ranks, which have been recently introduced and may not be familiar to all virologists. You can find our 2-page Profiles (citable record) in JGV @microbiologysociety.org www.microbiologyresearch.org/content/ictv...

Yesterday the president demanded that evidence about Covid vaccines be shown to the public. Today @apoorvanyt.bsky.social & I run through some of the studies made public over the past 4+ years that show that the vaccines work. Gift link: nyti.ms/46k17Tq

Study (N=1,400) finds female sponsors balance their own career interests w/ their protégés' interests. Men tend to focus more on how providing sponsorship benefits their own careers. This was especially true of men more senior in their role. today.ucsd.edu/story/are-me...

Along with this: it's tempting to collect technical skills like pokemon, and there certainly is focus on work with breadth that rewards this. But don't forget about the value of depth. Hard to do good science without deep understanding of what you're doing. That only comes from years of immersion.

Wordstar feelings. Party like it's 1985! mastodon.social/@terminaltro...

After 22 years, Typepad is shutting down with one month's notice. Go back up your old blogs, old-school blogger friends. everything.typepad.com/blog/2025/08...

#startrek #ai

"Sir, phrenology was dismissed as quackery 160 years ago." "Of course you'd say that, you have the brainpan of a stagecoach tilter."

NEW Yes, an incoming illiberal and radical UK government would have absolute constitutional power By me Substack: emptycity.substack.com/p/yes-an-inc... Personal blog: davidallengreen.com/2025/08/yes-...

Hello! For a mere 50k per student I will also provide you a school with no teachers.

i'm the guy who invented the spike traps that pop out of temple walls. i hate my job. every day my boss says "why haven't we killed any archeologists" and i say "they haven't invented that yet." they pay me in tomb juice. i hate tomb juice. honestly i might just start working on my big boulder idea

Deat @bsky.app is that you? In the UK you don't seem so worried about the privacy implications or the scope breadth

"Despite the increasing recognition of Long COVID as a condition, many patients still face dismissal by medical professionals, misattribution of their symptoms to psychological causes, or simply being left to fend for themselves." Source: www.surrey.ac.uk/news/patient...

very nice, it's a natural spike-in! I wonder what are the GDPR implications, though, of sharing human reads. I guess participants now will be asked to consent to their genomic data being shared.

I'm super bummed to be missing #ESEB2025 @eseb2025.bsky.social due to a cancelled flight! Here's a quick overview of my talk "Gene- and genome-focused perspectives on microbial pangenomes" slated to be part of The Evolution of Microbial Pangenomes -- which I recommend you attend tomorrow (Fri) ! 1/n

This is a new collection, there are so many #genomes "in progress" on posters or in talks at #eseb2025 do come chat about how to add yours to the collection... why? 🟣 minimise unnecessary double efforts 🔵 see what species in your taxa of interest have genomes in progress 🟢 open new opportunities

Ji, Kapli, Flouri & @zihengyang.bsky.social assess the impact of genotyping errors in phylogenomic data on Bayesian inference of species trees, suggesting that it is better to sequence a few samples at high depths over many samples at low depths. 🔗 doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msaf184 #evobio #molbio

Really pleased to see this study led by @raymondkiu.bsky.social now published in @natcomms.nature.com! We show that probiotics help modulate the preterm infant 👶#microbiome - to reduce ARGs, lower MDR bacteria 🦠 & increase beneficial Bifido ✨ Huge team effort! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

I see the pressure to emphasise the relevance of what we do, but calling it "superhuman" is less than useful. "to do something that a doctor cannot do" describes basically any device or algorithm. We should fight comms trying to inflate the novelty, and we obvs should not engage in such inflation.

URM faculty received 7% more negative votes & were 44% less likely to receive unanimous votes from P&T committees -evidence that P&T decision-making processes contribute to the sustained underrepresentation of URM faculty in tenured faculty positions www.nature.com/articles/s41...

art thread

Annoyance against the machine

This oped from the Head of the NIH, Jay Bhattacharya, is downright embarrassing: in a rather short piece he brings up Biden 5 times. I convinced dozens of people to be RNA vaxxed, and I'll tell you why their sceptical and how they were convinced. 1/n www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/202...

I wondered if the more than £500 mi spent/allocated by UKRI would not have a higher societal/health impact by sequencing patients' microbiomes. Of course, then you would have to actually do something for the patient, instead of just collecting a database with future, diffuse promises.

To everybody criticising the visa denials to bat researchers in Australia, thank you. I am always reminded of this previous humiliation, where hundreds of AIDS researchers were denied entry into Canada healthpolicy-watch.news/aids-confere...

Dismay as north of England universities miss out on share of £54m talent fund www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...

Today my organic, time-consuming, 100% AI-free review was completely overridden by the Editor. So, at the minute, I can't say that the AI alternative sounds that bad, given how much my time is valued.

Skilled immigrants who have worked for TFL for years will be forced to leave the UK because many incomes don't meet the new thresholds and in some cases, their jobs have been removed from the shortage list (presumably because they filled the shortage?)

Honoured to be part of a video series by @todospelasaude.bsky.social ‪‪about Bioinformatics! It's been wonderful to see more & more women come into Bioinf, as such an important & wide-ranging field - full of awesome & impactful projects! #womeninstem www.linkedin.com/posts/instit...

For the math folks on here: NSF has suspended Terry Tao's grant. www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/...

OSA is gonna make us lose access to fucking wikipedia write to your MPs.

We’re pleased to announce two new vacancies for senior roles at our institute: Group Leader in Discovery Plant Sciences: www.jic.ac.uk/vacancies/gr... 🗓️ Closes 25 August Independent Fellowship in Plant-Associated Microbial Interactions: www.jic.ac.uk/vacancies/in... 🗓️ Closes 5 September

People in India/Brazil/Mexico: assuming equiv of USD 10 is too high, what is a reasonable price for the EPUB version of PLAI (plai.org) in INR/BRL/MXN? Making available via Kindle store. [NB: Free EPUB will always be available at book site, no worries!]

440,000 non-British nationals left in 2024. The rise in immigration to record levels 2022-23 has led to a rise in emigration in 2024-25. 43% of emigration was non-EU foreign nationals and 42% was EU nationals. Shriver has zero interest at all in facts, of course, just perceptions from online right