Here's something a bit different that we've been noodling around with! Nearly 10y ago we established a panel of cell lines from Papuan donors, which let us check predictions from AlphaGenome against experimental data. If you've followed the field you'll know that expression prediction is very tough

bioRxiv Genomics@biorxiv-genomic.bsky.social · 3d ago

Using sequence-to-function models to interpret archaic hominin introgression https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.08.31.748430v1

Nueva Iniciativa! 🎓 Preview Doctorado 🎓 Estas pensando en una tesis doctoral de biología en EEUU/USA pero tienes dudas de cómo afrontar la solicitud? Te gustaría conocer a profesores y doctorandos de UC Berkeley? Lee más información sobre nuestro programa de mentoría! tinyurl.com/previewdocto...

I am delighted to announce that The Department of Human Genetics at the University of Utah is continuing a multi-year recruiting initiative for multiple tenure-track faculty positions at the rank of Assistant Professor. Please share and consider applying! utah.peopleadmin.com/postings/208...

PhD opening to study the Genomics of Adaptation in globally invasive ragweed. It will be a cross-continent venture, co-supervised between @johnstinchcombe.bsky.social at Toronto and us at Melbourne. Please circulate! findanexpert.unimelb.edu.au/opportunity/...

Genomic evolution of adaptive traits in the globally invasive weed Ambrosia artemisiifolia : Find an Expert : The University of Melbourne

<p> Ragweed is native to North America and is now a globally invasive weed whose pollen is extremely allergenic. Australian ragweed populations are restricted to parts of Queensland and New South Wales, potentially limited by the extent of genetic variation available for local adaptation that could facilitate its spread. Our modelling suggests that the supply of genetic variation from North America could dramatically help colonise Australia further. </p> <p> However, we have no empirical understanding of how functional variation is acquired by Australian ragweed and whether North American source populations might supply such variation in an ecological context. </p> <p> This project will connect field experiments in Toronto and genomically-informed niche modelling in Melbourne to assess the risk of ragweed becoming a superweed, able to combine multiple sources of genetic variation to expand its range. Ragweed plants from multiple origins, including Australia, planted at the University of Toronto’s field station will be characterised phenotypically and genomically to measure functional differentiation between ranges. </p> <p> Genetic mapping will identify adaptive loci, or regions of the genome involved in adaptive traits. A newly drafted pan-genome will be used to assess if these adaptive loci are found in genomic regions with high levels of structural variation, such as copy number variants or inversion, likely to reduce the effectiveness of gene flow between populations and ranges. </p> <p> This analysis will shed light on the process of adaptation to novel environments using a weed as model of accelerated evolution, and inform biosecurity models in the context of globalisation and enhanced invasion risk. </p>

findanexpert.unimelb.edu.au

En 2023 el NYTimes le hizo este reportaje. Nos enseñó qué es la magia, el chan-tatachán, el mejor del mundo con las cartas. www.nytimes.com/2023/01/02/m...

The Man Who Made Spain the Magic Capital of the World (Published 2023)

Inside the mind of Juan Tamariz, the godfather of close-up card magic.

nytimes.com

maybe this is my new lab photo?

In my non-academic, leftists circles the attitude is very similar to that against GMOs - unquestioning and uncompromisingly negative. Zero nuance, to the detriment of everyone, and a metonymic conflation of OpenAI et al for the technology as a whole.

Don't let the title mislead you - we parsed through 700,000 SRA record so you don't have to! We looked at who's doing research, where, who they're including, and how they're describing them. In brief: knowledge generation is concentrated in HICs, and heavily features people who live in said HICs.

Irene Gallego Romero@ee-reh-neh.bsky.social · 3w ago

Old lady in first author paper shocker! 🧪🧬🖥️ (ok but seriously I worked very hard on this and I am proud of it. Taught myself some neat new tricks while doing it, too!) www.cell.com/cell-genomic...

New preprint out! The Punan of Borneo offer rare windows into what happens molecularly when a hunter-gatherers transitions to a settled lifestyle, and the answer is: a lot and fast. Deep gratitude to the communities for their trust & participation. Feedback welcome 🙏 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Rapid convergence toward an agriculturalist regulatory landscape following lifestyle transition in Bornean hunter-gatherers

The transition from hunter-gatherer to agricultural lifestyles is one of the landmarks in the history of human societies, but its phenotypic and immediate molecular consequences remain poorly understo...

biorxiv.org

Old lady in first author paper shocker! 🧪🧬🖥️ (ok but seriously I worked very hard on this and I am proud of it. Taught myself some neat new tricks while doing it, too!) www.cell.com/cell-genomic...

Reporting and representation of population descriptors in public RNA-seq databases

By combining repository metadata, genotype-inferred ancestry, and manual curation of publications, Gallego Romero et al. demonstrate that public RNA-seq datasets are dominated by samples from high-inc...

cell.com

Rapid convergence toward an agriculturalist regulatory landscape following lifestyle transition in Bornean hunter-gatherers https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.08.09.743820v1

Oh god is the pink panther a hairless cat???

My god this ARC webinar I am losing it.

There was just an unbalanced centrifuge in this movie and I literally winced.

Just dreamt that a journalist broke into my place, took a photo of *an unfinished git commit message,* used that to make me look like I was trying to sabotage one of my dragon boat friends and sic an internet mob on me, and now that I'm awake I can really appreciate just how bizarre that was.

LinkedIn is having blazing rows about the 7 lessons that thought leaders can take from Odysseus's logistical decisions.

Every time Claude does a stupid thing and I want to start using all caps I am reminded of a friend's father, who was working on the development of voice systems for cars, and apparently found that calm, soothing and unflappable voices just provoked people into ever worse roadrage.

I just want it on the record that my new way to troll @davisjmcc.bsky.social is to ask every LLM to choose between Limma and DESeq and send him the answer.

But will they address the variable number of external assessors issue? It's a lot harder to climb out of a hole when 1/3 reviewers hate you than when 1/5 do. Really skews averages! I got 2 external reviewers for my DP this year, so 1 not-quite-enthusiastic-one will sink me.

ARC Tracker@arc-tracker.bsky.social · last mo.

The ARC has released their new set of grant schemes ▶️ www.arc.gov.au/news-and-pub... Before implementing them, they’re now going to “consult with the sector”. Hopefully genuinely, not just with a few disengaged DVCRs. In the meantime, there’ll be another round of Discovery Projects (DP28).

Come and join our dream team! We’re recruiting a PhD candidate with a strong background in statistics, machine learning and (human) genetics to work at the interface of biological sequence foundational models and scores polygenic score methods.

my student won't mind if I go into her code and change the colour scheme in all her figures to red/yellow, will she?

Whew, but also, the music from SBS was, of all things, Hoy no me puedo levantar, which is a DEEP cut!

Best “remove glasses to look at something unbelievable” in cinema history.

Jurassic Park: Dr. Grant's Surprise

Alt: Jurassic Park: Dr. Grant's Surprise

static.klipy.com

I am thrilled to share that UC Berkeley and UCSF have launched a joint initiative in Computational Biomedicine! cdss.berkeley.edu/news/uc-berk... We will soon be recruiting new faculty and postdoctoral fellows. Please repost to help spread the word.

UC Berkeley and UCSF Launch Computational Biomedicine Initiative

UC Berkeley and UCSF have launched a joint program called the Bakar Computational Biomedicine Initiative to develop the frontier of AI and biomedicine, tremendously accelerating advances in clinical c...

cdss.berkeley.edu

Aaaah... yet another paper with a lot of new data from country X without any authors from X...

omggggggggg

and I have only deadends left :(

I didn't get a chance to post about this properly, what with prepping for ESHG, but all of you over at #SMBE2026 might get a kick out of Lift&Add

Navya Shukla@navya-shukla.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Lift&Add is live 🙂 suprised that trying to the answer the simple problem - how do I get more marsupials in my alignments? - has let to a method paper, but happy nonetheless. academic.oup.com/bioinformati...

Is there really eduroam at Arlanda Airport or is someone spoofing things?

NTU's School of Biological Sciences is hiring faculty, Assistant Professor to Full Professor. The environment is collaborative and the start-up funding is genuinely generous. Four research areas. Campus visits 28 Sep to 2 Oct 2026. Apply here www.ntu.edu.sg/sbs/about-us...