While Ed can’t make #Nido2026, the lab is well-represented by Max Erdmann, and @rebee.bsky.social ! They will be sharing some of the labs findings on coronavirus replication! Catch Max’s talk tomorrow (Wed) at 3:25, and Rebee’s poster C-0036
Rebee
@rebee.bsky.social
Virologist, bioinformatician, NGS, photographer. RNA is my special interest 🧬 Proteomics is growing on me 😬 🇳🇿🇬🇧British Kiwi based in Liverpool 📍 Post doc in the Emmott Lab👩🏻🔬👩🏻💻 🏳️🌈 She/They. 🧠 Neurodivergent ✨ rebee.co.uk
Sign it here petition.parliament.uk/petitions/76...
Petition: Launch a public inquiry into the impact of Section 28 on LGBTQ people
We call on the Government to launch a public inquiry into the impact of Section 28 of the Local Government Act (1988) which specified that Local Authorities could not intentionally promote, through ma...
petition.parliament.uk
We're hiring! The British Science Association is looking for a Grants and Learning Manager (fixed term until Dec 2027) to join our Grants Team in delivering The Ideas Fund. Applications close at midnight on Sunday 5th July 2026. All the details: www.britishscienceassociation.org/grants-and-l...
Grants and Learning Manager
The British Science Association is seeking to appoint someone on a fixed term contract to the end of December 2027, to join our Grants Team in delivering The Ideas Fund, an exciting programme which lo...
britishscienceassociation.org
"AI is operating at a PhD level" oh, so it's replying 'sorry for the late response' to every email and complaining about its labor conditions?
New preprint out today lead by collaborators at Zürich!
bioRxivpreprint@biorxivpreprint.bsky.social · 2mo agoThe biodistribution and effect of post-exposure neutralising monoclonal antibody treatment in a mouse model of SARS-CoV-2 infection with viral spread to the brain https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.05.27.728081v1
Learn more about the latest long read cDNA sequencing upgrade by ONT and bambu-pipe for analysing single cell and spatial long read RNA-Seq data, presentation by @suiyue-0823.bsky.social @goekelab.bsky.social #RNA26 github.com/GoekeLab/bam...
GitHub - GoekeLab/bambu-pipe: Transcript discovery and quantification for long read single cell and spatial transcriptomics data using Bambu
Transcript discovery and quantification for long read single cell and spatial transcriptomics data using Bambu - GoekeLab/bambu-pipe
github.com
RNA Society@rnasociety.bsky.social · 3mo agoHey RNA Researchers! Are you arriving in Montreal for #RNA26 a bit early and looking for something to fill the time? Come learn about @nanoporetech.com Long Read RNA sequencing capabilities at a pre-conference workshop from 1:30-4:30pm!
Reminded of someone trying to "train" LLMs to do "sorting", to prove LLMs can "solve problems". Not only a) are LLMs not reliable, but also b) sorting is a computationally easy to solve task, c) we have many efficient algorithms for it, and d) LLMs unnecessarily bloat the resource consumption.
Forgotten my joy for tissue culture and audio books! Good job I just did three time courses back to back to remind myself 🤣🦠
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Melanie Mitchell@melaniemitchell.bsky.social · 3mo ago"Science is not simply a sequence of tasks that can be optimized....The scientific system thrives on inefficiency: redundant efforts, failed attempts, and divergent paths. These are not costs to be eliminated but sources of discovery." Excellent essay! ⬇️ www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
what will it take for our universities to start abandoning genAI
Alex Hanna@alexhanna.bsky.social · 3mo agoSir, another graduation ceremony in which the students booed AI has dropped. "College graduates were pissed after their school used AI to announce graduates’ names and missed hundreds of names" (via @/FearedBuck on Twitter)
🚨 New paper from the lab! 🚀 We explore “The dynamics and strategy of RNA replication in astroviruses”, now out in NAR Molecular Medicine. Many thanks to all co-authors and congratulations to David Noyvert on his first first-author paper🎉 doi.org/10.1093/narm...
The dynamics and strategy of RNA replication in astroviruses
Abstract. Astroviruses are positive-sense single-stranded RNA viruses that cause significant disease across avian and mammalian hosts, yet their replicatio
doi.org
Rapid release of multiplex PCR amplicon scheme for Andes hantavirus whole genome sequencing validated on control material: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... @scalene.bsky.social @stevepullan.bsky.social @ukhsa.bsky.social output from HPRU in Public Health Genomics
biorxiv.org
folx, I’ve been working on AI "ethics" for almost a decade now & hate to tell you there’s no such thing as "ethical AI" the only "ethical principle" that works is regulating the shit out of the industry & to take back control of our autonomy, fundamental rights, freedoms & right to exist w/out AI
Happy to share new preprint is now on bioRxiv: "Ultraviolet exposure conditions skin to enhance arbovirus infection and mosquito probing" Led by our then PhD student now Dr. @ailishmccafferty.bsky.social this work asks how UV-exposed skin shapes mosquito-borne virus infection. (1/4)
Even before completing its PhD, now it is eligible for postdoc positions 😂 www.nature.com/articles/d41...
AI bills can be as big as a postdoc salary. Is the cost worth it?
Recent price hikes, usage limitations and unreliable outputs are causing some scientific researchers to think twice about using artificial intelligence.
nature.com
Baric, who is among the most-cited coronavirus researchers in the world, says his lab’s work played pivotal roles in helping companies bring COVID drugs and vaccines to market, saving millions of lives. “My payment for this is to be debarred?” he asks. “I’m being strung out for being a scientist.“ 🧪
Virologist accused of starting COVID-19 will fight U.S. ban on funding
HHS memo says Ralph Baric had a “pattern of deception” in describing virus studies long before pandemic
science.org
AI is coming up a lot in current day to day conversations atm. Naturally. Has anyone come across balanced publications/research about the impact of AI as a research tool? Researcher perspective? Changes in learning and education?
New preprint! Current T7-based MNV reverse genetics can be performed by co-transfecting plasmids encoding T7 RNA polymerase and vaccinia capping enzymes. We see a further 100-1000-fold boost in titres by incorporating CD300lf-expressing BSR-T7 cells into this system. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
biorxiv.org
Chatbots offer a magnificent bribe - a fast, frictionless route to information that bypasses the discomfort of learning. In this op-ed, we describe this as a Faustian bargain, in which we trade away what it means to be human & universities trade away their value www.irishexaminer.com/opinion/comm...
Learning is complex, messy, emotional: AI can’t replicate that
ChatGPT and other AI tools may seem irresistible. But educators should beware, as they could end up trading away the thing that gives them value — the rich experience of slow learning
irishexaminer.com
Congrats to Dr @stephenholmes.bsky.social on passing his PhD viva today! Thanks to examiners Al Darby and @mtrost.bsky.social!
Fellowship application unsuccessful! First of many I am sure. Might be worth looking to leave Liverpool - if anyone in my network is looking for lecturers/junior group leaders. Hit me up. Virology, informatics, sequencing, RNA mods etc. 🦠🧬🧑💻
As much as my heart’s truest answer to the rhetorical question kicking off this thread was, “nope!” it’s an important read for those of us in the broader emerging virus research space.
Colin Carlson@colincarlson.bsky.social · 6mo agoThis is Nathan Wolfe. Nathan is a virus hunter. Nathan has a bit of a reputation. Through the years, I've told multiple journalists stories I've heard, like "Nathan thanks Jeffrey Epstein in his book." Somehow no one ever wrote anything up. Want to see what Nathan was up to in today's Epstein files?
This might be the thread that gets me to quit all together because what the actual fuck.
The future is RNome 🧬 New publication out today summarising the ECR experience of the Human RNome consortium meeting in Frankfurt last August! Thanks to coauthors @bennetthenzeler.bsky.social @ramibechara.bsky.social et al for getting this across the line!! www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
Conversations at the crossroads of the Human RNome project: a collaborative reflection by the RNome early career Researcher (ECR)
Published in RNA Biology (Just accepted, 2026)
tandfonline.com
Machine learning enables scalable and systematic hierarchical virus taxonomy - @sullivan-lab.bsky.social go.nature.com/4qoPli9
Machine learning enables scalable and systematic hierarchical virus taxonomy - Nature Biotechnology
vConTACT3 enables multirank, large-scale classification of eukaryotic and prokaryotic viruses.
go.nature.com
It’s happening again…. Used to be straight on this kind of message during the pandemic. Going back there is kind of difficult… how would you handle this… basically. Help. 🦠
The absolute highlight of my 2025 is now available on YouTube! Check out the "making of" mini-documentary and full performance of Antiviral Roller Skating at the @britsciassoc.bsky.social Festival earlier this year. My New Years resolution will be to do it all again in a different city! 👀
Antiviral Roller Skating@antiviral-rskating.bsky.social · 8mo ago🚨 Big news! We’re thrilled to announce the release of both the Behind-the-Scenes Mini-Doc and the Full Recording of Antiviral Roller Skating! 🛼✨ Now you can watch the mini-doc to see how it all came together behind the scenes: youtu.be/0nevSD1wrdg And the full performance: youtu.be/mp995EBB3Bo
In this Perspective, Ryan Langlois hypothesizes that antiviral genes are evolutionarily selected for their function at fever temperatures yet are commonly studied at basal temperatures, a potential blind spot in our understanding of antiviral gene mechanisms. rupress.org/jem/article/... #Virology
