Katy Brown
@thekatybrown.bsky.social
Postdoc in computational genomics studying RNA viruses at Cambridge. She/Her https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8400-6922
My first time presenting in a theatre! About the upstream ORF in Enterovirus species. I liked it - maybe I should go on tour 🤔😀 #ViBioM2026
Excited for #Microbio26! Really enjoying the education session so far. I'm speaking in the Genetics and Genomics forum, Hall 2B, at 16:45 tomorrow, about tandem repeats of an endogenous viral element in butterflies and moths 🦋🦋
I cherish this mug so much that I don't even use it for liquids.. And it's from the 1993 my beloved paper by Dolja and Koonin. I will forever be grateful for @thekatybrown.bsky.social for such a thoughtful gift! :) Their work was also what got me into virology without any hesitation:)
🧬 Data scientists and enablers with experience in UK biomedical research: Your experience matters! MRC-funded research to tackle isolation & career barriers in biomedical data science roles. app.onlinesurveys.jisc.ac.uk/s/oxford/bio... 📅 Closes: 6/3/26 £50 Prize draw Contact: integrate@imm.ox.ac.uk
I have a new preprint! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... I found this endogenous retrovirus as a PhD student with @rtarlinton.bsky.social back in 2012 - a mere 14 years later we've written it up! This ERV is expressed in guinea pig lymphomas and might explain their high rate of lymphoma/leukemia. 💻🧪
Expression of Retroviruses in Guinea Pig Lymphomas
Retroviruses commonly cause neoplasia in many species but have not been described in guinea pigs. While historical evidence exists for the presence of an active retrovirus in domestic guinea pigs ( Cavia porcella), there has been no description of the sequence of these viruses or their role in disease in guinea pigs. This paper uses genome mining of the published domestic and wild ( Cavia aperea) guinea pig genomes for retroviral sequences to identify the gamma and beta-retroviral complement of the Cavia genome, describing eight groups of viruses with evidence of recombination between virus groups. The most intact group, gamma-like retroviruses related to HERV-T (integration estimates of 855,000 to 3.8 million years ago), has five near full length loci that are likely capable of active infection. RNA-Scope In-situ Hybridisation of archived formalin-fixed, paraffin embedded (FFPE) guinea pig lymphoma sections with a probe for one of these loci demonstrated viral RNA expression in lymphoma tissue, strengthening the case for a role of these viruses in the high incidence of leukaemia and lymphoma in this species. ### Competing Interest Statement The authors have declared no competing interest. University of Nottingham, https://ror.org/01ee9ar58
biorxiv.org
also the post at the ToL slack was captioned barger badger badger badger virus virus AAAAAAAHHH sponge sponge it's a sponge
really nice talk by @thekatybrown.bsky.social on fishing for viruses in our Darwin Tree of Life @sangerinstitute.bsky.social datasets 🎣🦠 #SciArt #sketchnote
Proud to have been a part of this! www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...
Ancient RNA expression profiles from the extinct woolly mammoth
Ancient RNA profiles from Late Pleistocene woolly mammoths were sequenced from permafrost-preserved mummified tissues, revealing tissue-specific transcriptional functions and gene expression regulator...
cell.com
Emilio Mármol Sánchez@marmole6.bsky.social · 9mo ago🦣🧬🦣🤯💥We are pleased to share our new paper about ancient RNA expression profiles from the Woolly Mammoth, now published in Cell @cellpress.bsky.social www.cell.com/cell/fulltex... If you want to know more, read the 🧵 below:
My paper is out! Uncovering hundreds of exogenous and endogenous RNA viral RdRp sequences amongst uncharacterised sequences in public protein databases. doi.org/10.1093/ve/v... 💻🧬 1/5 🧵
I translated "Jeff Jet: Abenteuer InfoHighway" as "Jeff Jet: Adventure on the InfoHighway" archive.org/details/jeff... - a German promotional adventure game for Hewlett Packard from 1995.
Come to the BOKR session at 2:20 and see Charlotte Tumescheit @schnamo.bsky.social give a super interesting talk about improving prediction of molecular properties by incorporating ontologies. #ISMBECCB2025
Someone needs to implement an LLM to help select which talks to go to at #ISMBECCB2025
Come and see me in the ice rink if you want to plot phylogenies in matplotlib! Poster 206. GitHub.com/KatyBrown/plot_phylo #ISMBECCB2025
I reformatted the #ISMBECCB2025 schedule a bit - in case anyone else wants to use it this way - ordered by day and start time: csv: drive.google.com/file/d/1JyhT... xlsx: docs.google.com/spreadsheets...
ISMBECCB_2025_All_Detailed_Schedule.csv
drive.google.com
Excited for the ISMB/ECCB conference! I have two posters A520 today about an endogenous and exogenous virus I found in nematodes - and B206 tomorrow about my tool plot_phylo for drawing phylogenies in matplotlib. #ISMBECCB2025
Is it so much to ask for all my bullet points to be 1. the same size and 2. in a straight line?
I could do my job in half the time if we just picked a column delimiter and stuck with it and then no-one can use that symbol for anything else. Let's not use * to both delimit columns and represent a stop codon, or use a random number of spaces, or put "_" in our sequence IDs. 🖥️🧪
From student to researcher, a #career in #science can come with a high price tag. @drcraigmc.bsky.social explores how wealth shapes opportunity in #STEM and proposes structural changes to support #equity and inclusion. 🧪 plos.io/4edGlY4
Too poor to science: How wealth determines who succeeds in STEM
From student to researcher, a career in science can come with a high price tag. This Perspective explores how persistent financial barriers limit who can succeed in science, revealing how wealth shape...
plos.io
There should be a ban on broadcasters using footage of “anonymous” (heads cropped out) larger people - who could nevertheless recognise themselves based on knowing their own bodies and clothes - to illustrate stories about obesity, fat or weight loss
Are you interested in using AI to decode RNA? Have a look at this brilliant new review from my friend @schnamo.bsky.social and her colleagues.
Charlotte Tumescheit@schnamo.bsky.social · last yr.New Review Paper Alert! Are you interested in how to use AI to decode RNA? Check it out here www.nature.com/articles/s41... @jannahastings.bsky.social @vincentjung.bsky.social
Just a reminder to please fill out this form if you’d be interest in an EVE / ERV meeting 📋🥳
Katy Brown@thekatybrown.bsky.social · last yr.I'm thinking of organising a meeting on endogenous viral elements (RNA, DNA and retroviral) - if you'd potentially be interested, please fill out the form here - forms.gle/wrCiWMw4yXZe... - so I can gauge interest. Please RT or share with anyone maybe interested! 🧪🧬🖥️🦠 #virology #bioinformatics
NIH funding supporting the HMMER and Infernal software projects has been terminated. NIH states that our work, as well as all other federally funded research at Harvard, is of no benefit to the US.
@ariskatzourakis.bsky.social @robjgifford.bsky.social @lequimelab.eu @emma-harding.bsky.social
Katy Brown@thekatybrown.bsky.social · last yr.I'm thinking of organising a meeting on endogenous viral elements (RNA, DNA and retroviral) - if you'd potentially be interested, please fill out the form here - forms.gle/wrCiWMw4yXZe... - so I can gauge interest. Please RT or share with anyone maybe interested! 🧪🧬🖥️🦠 #virology #bioinformatics
I'm thinking of organising a meeting on endogenous viral elements (RNA, DNA and retroviral) - if you'd potentially be interested, please fill out the form here - forms.gle/wrCiWMw4yXZe... - so I can gauge interest. Please RT or share with anyone maybe interested! 🧪🧬🖥️🦠 #virology #bioinformatics
EVE Meeting Expression of Interest
forms.gle
"Action in Hollywood" is one of several promotional games released in the 1990s for Bi-Fi Rolls, a salami-based snack originating in Germany and sold across Europe.
I translated "Bi-Fi: Action in Hollywood" (1994) for MS-DOS, one of the more ambitious and fully-developed promotional games of the era. Huge thanks to @sonneveld.bsky.social for helping me with the technical aspects on this one. archive.org/details/bifi...
Excited for #RdRpSummit2025 and #ViBioM2025! Just starting off now in Lisbon.