Advances for health, biodiversity & trustworthy AI; new connections; a unique artistic performance; Geneva-wide celebrations – and cross-societal recognition of the value of life-science data. See highlights from the record 2026 ECCB @eccb-europe.bsky.social

Academic, government and industry leaders stress strategic value of data

Over 1,500 experts from 63 countries advanced health, environmental protection and trustworthy AI in Geneva at the 25th European Conference on Computational Biology (ECCB), from 31 August to 4 Septemb...

sib.swiss

The PhD and Postdoc application links are now live! Come join me at UNIL to work on deep learning for protein structure, interactions & design. pickybinders.org#open-positions

Janani Durairaj (Jay)@ninjani.bsky.social · 3w ago

Some exciting news: I'm joining the University of Lausanne @unil.bsky.social @dbc-unil.bsky.social as an Assistant Professor next month 🎉 My group will work on context-aware deep learning for protein structure, interaction & design. Postdoc and PhD openings coming soon - keep an eye out!

From tracing human migrations with ancient DNA to uncovering how one genome gives rise to many cell types: the insights & networking continued on ECCB day 2. Keynotes: Anna-Sapfo Malaspinas, University of Lausanne; Stephen Quake, Stanford University eccb2026.org/schedule/int... #ECCB2026

SIB Biodata Resources were on show at ECCB @eccb-europe.bsky.social, through posters and info sessions by experts across our network. The programme also featured SIB scientists presenting on pathogen surveillance, new AI tools and more: eccb2026.org/schedule/int... #ECCB2026

ECCB’s record 980 scientific talks and posters ended yesterday with a keynote on large-scale immune data from Aleksandra Walczak, @cnrs.fr See the full scientific programme: eccb2026.org/schedule/int... #ECCB2026

In Geneva for #ECCB2026 ! Been a long time since I was last at this meeting. Talking tomorrow in morning session about bioinformatics for pathogen surveillance with legends of the field: @angieshinrichs.bsky.social @firefoxx66.bsky.social and @theo.io ! eccb2026.org/schedule/par...

Remember this? bsky.app/profile/did:... Rigorous visualization of the structure in your high-dimensional data. Fantastic work by @dhdegroot.bsky.social With help of the reviewers of Nat Biotech it is now updated, extended an officially published here: www.nature.com/articles/s41... 1/n

Bonsai reconstructs tree representations for distortion-free visualization and exploration of high-dimensional data - Nature Biotechnology

High-dimensional data are visualized through representation on tree structures.

nature.com

Erik van Nimwegen@erikvannimwegen.bsky.social · last yr.

Here it is! Bonsai. Now there is really no more excuse for using t-SNE/UMAP. Bonsai not only makes cool pictures of your data. It actually rigorously preserves its structure. No tunable parameters. Incredible work by @dhdegroot.bsky.social. I'm so excited about this! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Biological Databases are critical infrastructure - not projects. As so much effort is put into harnessing AI to solve all our problems, we are allowing the foundational data resources crumble. Treat biological databases as infrastructure, not projects www.nature.com/articles/d41...

🌿 Just published in Bioinformatics Advances: "AmpliPhy improves gene trees by adding homologous sequences without affecting alignments"  Find it here: https://doi.org/10.1093/bioadv/vbag222 Authors include: @dongwookkim.bsky.social, @dessimoz.bsky.social

AI-driven protein structure prediction lets us revisit the question once impossible to tackle at scale: What can we learn from the evolution of protein structures? Our new preprint reviews how to properly assess the quality of structure-based alignments and trees. 🧵1/5 📄 doi.org/10.32942/X2T10D

AmpliPhy is now reviewed and published in @bioinfoadv.bsky.social! AmpliPhy improves your gene trees by adding homologs with a single command, based on the observations from a quantitative benchmark design. More details in quoted 🧵 📄 doi.org/10.1093/bioadv/vbag222 💾 github.com/DessimozLab/ampliphy

AmpliPhy improves gene trees by adding homologous sequences without affecting alignments

AbstractMotivation. In phylogenomics, gene tree reconstruction depends on multiple sequence alignment and tree inference, and ongoing work continues to imp

doi.org

Dongwook Kim@dongwookkim.bsky.social · 8mo ago

Can ever-increasing sequence databases improve phylogenetic reconstruction of a gene family? Our new preprint introduces AmpliPhy, a pipeline that automates homolog enrichment to improve gene tree inference, built on a robust phylogenomic benchmark scheme. 🧵1/n 📃 doi.org/10.64898/2026.01.26.701724

This will be an amazing tutorial on Comparative Genomics, covering the foundations, key challenges, and practical tips from the Orthology Clinic! It’s part of ECCB, but you can also join the tutorial only on September 3rd! #GenevaLovesData

Travis Wheeler@wheelerlab.org · last mo.

Orthology is central to comparative genomics. Join us at the tail end of eccb2026.org in Geneva (3 Sep) for a full day of orthology: bit.ly/ECCB_ortho Intro to major tools, hands-on tutorials, and an "orthology clinic" for your own data. Extend your ECCB trip, or come just for the tutorial.

I'm really excited about SeqSets reaching fruition. Sequencing pathogen genomes is impactful: this data enables us to design vaccines, to predict future evolution, and more. But at the moment, getting scientific credit mostly requires writing a paper, not just sequencing a genome. [1/n]

Pathoplexus@pathoplexus.org · 2mo ago

2/ 📄 SeqSets/DOIs now show citations! We've integrated with @crossref.bsky.social so you can see which scientific publications have used a SeqSet - on the SeqSet page *and* on individual sequence pages. Using seqs in a paper? Don't forget to cite the DOI! 👉 pathoplexus.org/about/citation

Switzerland and Geneva hold a trump card for shaping trustworthy AI, argues SIB Executive Director Christophe Dessimoz in an opinion published in Le Temps. Read in English: www.sib.swiss/news/switzer... French: www.letemps.ch/opinions/la-... @dessimoz.bsky.social @letemps.ch

Switzerland must become the world capital of trusted scientific data

AI is only as good as the quality of its data, and Switzerland has a trump card to play: the country’s scientific excellence, quality, reliability, and cooperation represent enormous competitive...

sib.swiss

📢 Genome Informatics 2026 (Hinxton UK + virtual, 2–4 Dec) is coming! Some confirmed speakers now listed: coursesandconferences.wellcomeconnectingscience.org/event/genome... Early-bird registration & bursary deadlines: 7 Sept. Abstract deadline: 5 Oct. Please submit your work & join us!

✨ ELIXIR will be at #ECCB2026, holding two workshops and an ELIXIR track programme showcasing highlights and impact of ELIXIR Community activities! More information 👉 https://loom.ly/emMscGg

@dessimoz.bsky.social at #JOBIM2026: “creating a database is like adopting a puppy, it’s fun in the beginning but it’s a long-term commitment!”

Spatial protein inference 🧬🧪 Predict protein landscapes from transcriptomics using spatial & single-cell omics data. Tutorial organized by: Hatice Ulku Osmanbeyoglu and Zeyuan Meng Register here: 👉 eccb2026.org/registration... #ECCB2026 #SpatialOmics #Multiomics #ComputationalBiology

The cradle of humankind. The origin of our species. Home to the deepest human genetic diversity on earth. And the most underrepresented continent in the global genomic databases driving scientific discovery. Closing that gap is the work of the African Bioinformatics Institute.

We’re looking for a Director 👇 ABI is seeking a senior scientific leader to help grow a continental hub for bioinformatics and computational biology. Applications close 30 June 2026. Apply: webapp.placementpartner.com/wi/vacancy/?... #AfricanScience #Bioinformatics

Looking to contribute to the future of #ScientificResearch 🧪 in 🇨🇭? The SNSF Research Council is recruiting 21 new members for its six committees. The mandates will start in April and October 2027. Interested? 🗓️ Apply by 14 June 2026. www.snf.ch/en/pk2qftWyV...

Call for new Research Council members

The SNSF is seeking 21 researchers to join its Research Council.

snf.ch

Happy to announce the release of TOGA2 data for 68 turtle genomes, generated with a cryptodiran and a pleurodiran turtle reference. The combined TOGA2 annotation consistently improves annotation completeness compared with RefSeq. All data at genome.senckenberg.de/download/TOGA2. Genome browsers ...

Just a shout-out to the folks over at @pathoplexus.org and, importantly, all the scientists sharing genomic data with such amazing speed. It's great to see the field having moved to a new platform, with non-transparent platforms being a thing of the past. Fantastic.

A great collaboration with @plazi-species.bsky.social and @idsianlp.bsky.social - thanks to the @snsf.ch for selecting our project for funding support!

SIB Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics@sib.swiss · 4mo ago

🦇 A SIB-led project aims to enable more tailored guidance for environmental protection and restoration – and to support biodiversity research – by mobilizing siloed species data into models used for biodiversity assessments. See more👇 @rmwaterhouse.bsky.social sky.social @plazi-species.bsky.social

With Eugene Koonin, we wrote a rather comprehensive review on the origin, evolution and organization of the #virosphere. We describe all 10 viral realms and the logic behind them, and so much more. Check it out! comptes-rendus.academie-sciences.fr/biologies/ar...

Incredibly proud of the @pathoplexus.org team for getting this up so quickly. In an outbreak like this, it's critical to share data quickly & openly - so scientists can do public health analyses (like the @nextstrain.org builds) - while still protecting the right to publish on generated sequences.

Pathoplexus@pathoplexus.org · 4mo ago

1/ 🚀 Pathoplexus now supports the Andes variant of Hantavirus (ANDV). ANDV is the variant identified in the recent MV Hondius cases, & the Hantavirus variant previously identified as having occasional human-to-human transmission. pathoplexus.org/andv #hantavirus #hondius

virological.org/t/complete-s...

Complete sequence of Orthohantavirus andesense virus: Swiss resident 2026

Posted on behalf of the Swiss National Reference Center for Emerging Viral Infections, Geneva University Hospitals and the Institute of Medical Virology, University of Zurich (Partner Laboratory Natio...

virological.org

OMA (part of SwissOrthology) mapped rice seed germination genes to their counterparts in barley, revealing when and where they're active — a step towards improving crop resilience. Another example of how SIB Resources tackle challenges from food security to human health. 👉 sib.swiss/services/ope...

Interested in predicting the dynamics of antibiotic resistance? Come work with us! We're looking for two postdocs to develop predictive models of resistance. We're interested in a range of approaches (mathematical & statistical modelling, causal inference, machine learning). tinyurl.com/6c4y3jke