🚨 New preprint! How does noncoding variation drive complex traits? We built a massive atlas of cattle regulatory variants (>150k emVars!) and directly tested them in both bovine AND human cells. 🐄🧬🚶‍♂️ Read it here: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Nextstrain #ANDV trees updated with a few improvements: - 2 outbreaks marked - host scientific/common name added - province now visible on map - date colouring added Here's a quick tour of how to change colours, geography & names! Links to trees here (scroll down): nextstrain.org/groups/hodcr...

For me this is the most common oversight in grant applications which is simple to fix - explain why *you* *the investigator* believe that the study you are proposing is going to work. If someone has done it before at this scale but different samples/disease/context - brilliant! tell me!

First genome sequence from Andes hantavirus strain from ongoing ship outbreak posted on Virological: virological.org/t/complete-s... courtesy Swiss National Reference Centre for Emerging Viral Infections, Geneva University Hospitals, University of Zurich

UCL really does boast some of the best science communicators on the planet.

In collaboration with the TransCODE consortium, EMBL-EBI scientists have found over 1,700 new proteins in the ‘dark proteome,’ a region of the human genome once thought to be noncoding. These new proteins could have implications for human diseases, including cancer. tinyurl.com/yc4t6s3s

Minflux is one of the technologies pushing the boundaries of what we can see in living cells - tracking single molecules at nanometer resolution in living cells. Sounds like science fiction - is actually doable @embl - come and learn more!

(1/15) Thrilled to share new Evo-Devo work where we address the molecular, cellular & morphometric basis of an extreme axis segmentation program in the Japanese eel — an animal that forms 120 vertebrae.

5 mins for Arsenal’s season … made on Merseyside….

Suddenly a toffee fan. Amazing game.

UK Biobank has my data, but I’m not worried. I know the benefits are too great to consider pulling out www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

The hill has Paleolithic rock shelters occupied by Neanderthals approximately 50 thousand years ago, long before the Iron Age hillfort was built. One of the last known Neanderthal sites in Britain

If you're interested in the history and philosophy of randomization in all its forms I'm co-organising a *FREE* conference in glorious Bristol 2-3rd July wth the legendary Samir Okasha, registration is here www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/randomizat... If you think it looks interesting please advertise

Bluesky uk energy transition hive mind - could today be the first 0 fossil free 30mins?

Grant writing tips from a grumpy reviewer ploughing through grants. 1. Often your reviewers are going to come from a broad range disciplines adjacent but *not actually in* in your field. Help us get orientated in the summary with an analogy/sketch and go back to analogy / sketch throughout.

I wrote a friendly rant about the use of causal language in AI. www.linkedin.com/posts/ewan-b...

First Spargel of 2026 - with hefeweizen of course in beautiful Heidelberg with @oliverstegle.bsky.social - love the German spring - with extra AI love!

Are you ready to play our special version of pinball? 🕹️ This cover of @natrevgenet.nature.com was inspired by our review on the interpretation, extrapolation and perturbation of single cells. The artwork takes the form of a pinball machine, as a deliberate reimagination of Waddington's metaphor.

British grid get pretty darn close to fossil fuel free today - negative prices (sunny, reasonably windy, warm, Europe also excess power) and presumably the two gas stations are on only to provide other services. (graphic from grid.iamkate.com)

EA3 is one of three offshore wind farms where turbines are being erected, totalling 4 GW of sovereign power generation. We're building the wind power equivalent of a Hinkley Point C or Sizewell C nuclear power station under every two years. Hinkley Point C is expected to take 14 years to build.

Not sure my nerves can take another 45 minutes of this. Arsenal - can you play in their half only next half …

Oh Bluesky hive mind - I’m looking for recommendations for heat pump/battery/solar consulting for my London Victorian era home - I’d like to swap out gas boiler for heat pump, ideally have a battery and either have solar or definitely be able to go there in the future

A HUGE, narrative-breaking moment for the UK car market New EVs are now cheaper than petrol cars on average, says Autotrader Last yr CCC said price parity was due by 2028 – and it's already here And EVs are already MUCH cheaper to run than petrol

Yet another spurious non-linear Mendelian randomization paper has been retracted by a journal academic.oup.com/jpubhealth/a... Kudos to the editors of the Journal of Public Health for following through and retracting spurious publications. What is shocking is that many other journals /cont

The UK rejoining Erasmus is the best science news for a while! #AcademicSky www.gov.uk/government/n...

Congratulations to Vikas Trivedi & collaborators for being awarded the HFSP grant! An international team coordinated by EMBL Barcelona researchers has been awarded $1.5M to study how developing organisms stay on track despite climate-driven temperature instability. www.embl.org/news/awards-...

Good morning damp Northumberland- very different from bustling Barcelona

A pleasure hanging out yesterday with @jamesasharpe.bsky.social head of @embl.org Barcelona - talking science of development as we walked along the beach - with EMBL Barcelona in the PRBB building in the background

I posted on LinkedIn about my reflections on the genome, 25 years on. www.linkedin.com/posts/ewan-b...

Great piece of work and great to see a Drug X Genotype (a type of GxE!) being shown so cleanly. Hats off to @adamauton.bsky.social and team

Good morning Barcelona

⏳¡Quedan 24 horas para la charla de @ewanbirney.bsky.social! 🧬Celebra con CNAG e @easigen-eu.bsky.social los 25 Años del Genoma Humano y descubre el hito que transformó la biomedicina moderna, desde la secuenciación de los 90 hasta los retos de la IA 📌CosmoCaixa, 19h 👉 www.cnag.eu/events/confe...

Dear Bluesky hive mind - what are "good" examples of cancer genomic biomarkers -> specific therapy/therapy changes -> better outcomes to patients. Ideally a large number of patients. There's the BRAF story; glioblastomas; cancers of unknown origin; BRAC1/2 (though I'd prefer a somatic example)

Few people are aware of how much progress has been made against cancers. Leukemia is probably the most striking example. Before the 1970s, most children affected by leukemia would soon die from it. Now, most children in rich countries survive. ourworldindata.org/childhood-le...

Welcome, Tony Hyman! EMBL welcomes its new Director General, Tony Hyman, as he takes up the mandate of leading EMBL's six sites. www.embl.org/news/embl-an...

Paper accepted in my inbox. WooHoo! It never, ever, gets old. Another brick in our edifice of knowledge of life and the universe, and I helped craft this brick.

We have two paid internships available in our group starting this summer, suitable for master's / pre-PhD students: - Protein structure search - Promoter variation For full details and how to apply see: www.bacpop.org/jobs/

🧬 ¡Seguimos celebrando los 25 años del Proyecto Genoma Humano! 🗣️ Descubre cómo fue la creación del primer libro de la vida, de la mano de uno de sus creadores: el Dr. @ewanbirney.bsky.social 🗓️ 08 de abril, 19h 📍 @cosmocaixa 📝 Inscripciones: cosmocaixa.org/es/p/ewan-bi... @easigen-eu.bsky.social

ChromSMF preprint is out!🚀 tinyurl.com/ChromSMF We often piece together chromatin regulation layer by layer from separate assays. But this can be limiting! In @arnaudkr.bsky.social's lab, we developed a method to directly study multiple layers on the same DNA molecule! 🧬 What does this unlock? ⬇️

The issue will be the ease of producing plausibly looking wrong or fabricated research and how to deal with it in science. Open Source software development and conference prepreints are already facing issues with poor quality submissions. But I don't think this means we should not use these models.

There is no turning back even if the models don't get any better. If you listen to interviews of top programmers, those that learned assembly back in the day, they are coding by AI. AI in science will grow, first with verifiable tasks as in Maths and assisted coding with a veriable oucomes.

Hearing about discarding data (both sequencing and imaging) "because one can re-do the experiment". This echos conversations we had over 10 years ago when NGS first arrived (europepmc.org/article/MED/...) - two thoughts as valid today as a decade ago

Arsenal. Disappointing. Well at least we know who should be our starting keeper.

We are thrilled to announce our second keynote speaker for #BOSC2026: Eric Green, the Chief Medical Officer at Illumina. Dr. Green was a key architect of the Human Genome Project and led the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) for 15 years. More info: www.open-bio.org/events/bosc-...

🧵 What does single-cell transcriptomics reveal about individual patients with acute (AKI) and chronic (CKD) kidney 🫘 disease? Can we use it to find new biomarkers? In our new preprint 👇, we asked this using biopsies from 150+ participants from the Kidney Precision Medicine Project.

Today. Come, it’s free!

🧬Continuem celebrant els 25 Anys del Projecte Genoma Humà! 🗣️Descobreix com va ser la creació del primer llibre de la vida, de la mà d'un dels seus creadors: el Dr. @ewanbirney.bsky.social 🗓️08 d'abril, 19h. CosmoCaixa 📝Inscripcions: cosmocaixa.org/es/p/ewan-bi... @easigen-eu.bsky.social #ICTSNews

The complete set of nucleobases found in terrestrial DNA and RNA — adenine, guanine, cytosine, thymine and uracil — have been detected in samples returned from the asteroid Ryugu, according to research in Nature Astronomy. go.nature.com/3P9A9YN 🔭 🧪

This is a step forwards into the world of accurate complex models by AI m, at scale, openly distributed. Excellent work by the consortium here !

Oh hive mind! Can someone give an overview of the French municipal elections for English speaking outsiders? It looks … complicated