John Lees
@bacpop.org
Pathogen informatics and modelling http://bacpop.org
(Research group leader at EMBL-EBI - http://ebi.ac.uk/research/lees/)
(Research group leader at EMBL-EBI - http://ebi.ac.uk/research/lees/)
Pinned
John Lees
@bacpop.org
· Sep 17
EMBL International PhD Programme – Unique in the world and waiting for you!
www.embl.org
The EMBL PhD programme is open until 13th October (entry ~Sep 2026):
www.embl.org/about/info/e...
We have three positions in microbial genomics at EMBL-EBI, including one in my group. Please do apply, or if you know anyone that would be interested pass on to them
www.embl.org/about/info/e...
We have three positions in microbial genomics at EMBL-EBI, including one in my group. Please do apply, or if you know anyone that would be interested pass on to them
Congratulations to Zam!
Honoured and quite blown-over to receive this award. I have been, and continue to be, very lucky - first with great mentors, and then really prodigious students, postdocs and collaborators. Working with them has been a joy.
Congratulations to @zaminiqbal.bsky.social from @milnerevolution.bsky.social on being awarded the 2026 Mary Lyon Medal!
November 14, 2025 at 2:26 PM
Congratulations to Zam!
Reposted by John Lees
Just a quick plug: I've made a few updates to ExpEvoAnalyzer (variant functional annotation in experimental evolution studies) to use bwa as well as ska2, and to use existing or de novo annotations. It just might help streamline your pesky bioinformatics analysis! github.com/samhorsfield...
GitHub - samhorsfield96/ExpEvoAnalyzer: A workflow to analyse experimental evolution data.
A workflow to analyse experimental evolution data. - samhorsfield96/ExpEvoAnalyzer
github.com
November 7, 2025 at 3:07 PM
Just a quick plug: I've made a few updates to ExpEvoAnalyzer (variant functional annotation in experimental evolution studies) to use bwa as well as ska2, and to use existing or de novo annotations. It just might help streamline your pesky bioinformatics analysis! github.com/samhorsfield...
Reposted by John Lees
How do GWAS and rare variant burden tests rank gene signals?
In new work @nature.com with @hakha.bsky.social, @jkpritch.bsky.social, and our wonderful coauthors we find that the key factors are what we call Specificity, Length, and Luck!
🧬🧪🧵
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
In new work @nature.com with @hakha.bsky.social, @jkpritch.bsky.social, and our wonderful coauthors we find that the key factors are what we call Specificity, Length, and Luck!
🧬🧪🧵
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Specificity, length and luck drive gene rankings in association studies - Nature
Genetic association tests prioritize candidate genes based on different criteria.
www.nature.com
November 7, 2025 at 12:05 AM
How do GWAS and rare variant burden tests rank gene signals?
In new work @nature.com with @hakha.bsky.social, @jkpritch.bsky.social, and our wonderful coauthors we find that the key factors are what we call Specificity, Length, and Luck!
🧬🧪🧵
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
In new work @nature.com with @hakha.bsky.social, @jkpritch.bsky.social, and our wonderful coauthors we find that the key factors are what we call Specificity, Length, and Luck!
🧬🧪🧵
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Reposted by John Lees
Going through @samuelhorsfield.bsky.social presentation on pangenome graphs in comparative genomics, courtesy of @training.ebi.embl.org.
Fascinating tidbit on history of alignment based sequence graph - it goes all the way back to 1989 (Hein), era of Apple IIs and IBM PS/2s. Great talk!
💻🧬🦠🧫
Fascinating tidbit on history of alignment based sequence graph - it goes all the way back to 1989 (Hein), era of Apple IIs and IBM PS/2s. Great talk!
💻🧬🦠🧫
November 5, 2025 at 3:19 PM
Going through @samuelhorsfield.bsky.social presentation on pangenome graphs in comparative genomics, courtesy of @training.ebi.embl.org.
Fascinating tidbit on history of alignment based sequence graph - it goes all the way back to 1989 (Hein), era of Apple IIs and IBM PS/2s. Great talk!
💻🧬🦠🧫
Fascinating tidbit on history of alignment based sequence graph - it goes all the way back to 1989 (Hein), era of Apple IIs and IBM PS/2s. Great talk!
💻🧬🦠🧫
Reposted by John Lees
Bonjour! Masters students in France 🇫🇷, we’ve got an internship for you, in collaboration with the French Embassy in London.
Aimed at students of computer science, statistics or bioinformatics.
Deadline: 7 December 2025
Find out more and apply:
www.ebi.ac.uk/about/jobs/i...
Aimed at students of computer science, statistics or bioinformatics.
Deadline: 7 December 2025
Find out more and apply:
www.ebi.ac.uk/about/jobs/i...
November 3, 2025 at 11:00 AM
Bonjour! Masters students in France 🇫🇷, we’ve got an internship for you, in collaboration with the French Embassy in London.
Aimed at students of computer science, statistics or bioinformatics.
Deadline: 7 December 2025
Find out more and apply:
www.ebi.ac.uk/about/jobs/i...
Aimed at students of computer science, statistics or bioinformatics.
Deadline: 7 December 2025
Find out more and apply:
www.ebi.ac.uk/about/jobs/i...
Reposted by John Lees
🧬Join us for the next TARGetAMR webinar!
💊Dangerous Miracle: A Brief History of Antibiotics
🗓️Wednesday 19 November🕐 1–2pm 💻 Online
🎙️With Liam Shaw, Computational Biologist at University of Bristol
🔗Register now! www.targetamr.org.uk/hdrevents/ta...
💊Dangerous Miracle: A Brief History of Antibiotics
🗓️Wednesday 19 November🕐 1–2pm 💻 Online
🎙️With Liam Shaw, Computational Biologist at University of Bristol
🔗Register now! www.targetamr.org.uk/hdrevents/ta...
November 3, 2025 at 11:04 AM
🧬Join us for the next TARGetAMR webinar!
💊Dangerous Miracle: A Brief History of Antibiotics
🗓️Wednesday 19 November🕐 1–2pm 💻 Online
🎙️With Liam Shaw, Computational Biologist at University of Bristol
🔗Register now! www.targetamr.org.uk/hdrevents/ta...
💊Dangerous Miracle: A Brief History of Antibiotics
🗓️Wednesday 19 November🕐 1–2pm 💻 Online
🎙️With Liam Shaw, Computational Biologist at University of Bristol
🔗Register now! www.targetamr.org.uk/hdrevents/ta...
Reposted by John Lees
Very happy about this work on phylogenetic neural inference, led by @lblassel.bsky.social :)
We’re very excited to finally share our latest work:
Phyloformer 2, a deep end-to-end phylogenetic reconstruction method: arxiv.org/abs/2510.12976
Using neural posterior estimation, it outperforms Phyloformer 1 and maximum-likelihood methods under simple and complex evolutionary models.
🧵1/17
Phyloformer 2, a deep end-to-end phylogenetic reconstruction method: arxiv.org/abs/2510.12976
Using neural posterior estimation, it outperforms Phyloformer 1 and maximum-likelihood methods under simple and complex evolutionary models.
🧵1/17
October 17, 2025 at 5:27 AM
Very happy about this work on phylogenetic neural inference, led by @lblassel.bsky.social :)
We are running a hackathon at EBI in Feb: biomics.bacpop.org
If you are at EMBL, ETH Zurich, GRC or GIMM working on a biological problem in data science or programming, consider putting a project forwards!
If you are at EMBL, ETH Zurich, GRC or GIMM working on a biological problem in data science or programming, consider putting a project forwards!
BIOMICS hackathon at EMBL-EBI
Hackathon held in Hinxton 2026
biomics.bacpop.org
October 15, 2025 at 4:29 PM
We are running a hackathon at EBI in Feb: biomics.bacpop.org
If you are at EMBL, ETH Zurich, GRC or GIMM working on a biological problem in data science or programming, consider putting a project forwards!
If you are at EMBL, ETH Zurich, GRC or GIMM working on a biological problem in data science or programming, consider putting a project forwards!
Reposted by John Lees
Proud to see my lab's work on M. tuberculosis and P. aeruginosa highlighted in this blog post
October 1, 2025 at 11:29 AM
Proud to see my lab's work on M. tuberculosis and P. aeruginosa highlighted in this blog post
Now published, our tool to run (almost) all biological models interactively in your web browser
Paper: academic.oup.com/bioinformati...
Website: biomodels.bacpop.org
Code: github.com/bacpop/SBMLt...
Paper: academic.oup.com/bioinformati...
Website: biomodels.bacpop.org
Code: github.com/bacpop/SBMLt...
September 29, 2025 at 9:49 AM
Now published, our tool to run (almost) all biological models interactively in your web browser
Paper: academic.oup.com/bioinformati...
Website: biomodels.bacpop.org
Code: github.com/bacpop/SBMLt...
Paper: academic.oup.com/bioinformati...
Website: biomodels.bacpop.org
Code: github.com/bacpop/SBMLt...
Reposted by John Lees
A new ggCaller version is out! v1.4 includes tweaks to improve efficiency, outputs Panaroo-friendly GFFs, and enables iterative gene calling; if you have already called a gene set, you can now add more genomes either one by one or in batches github.com/bacpop/ggCal...
GitHub - bacpop/ggCaller: Bifrost graph gene caller.
Bifrost graph gene caller. Contribute to bacpop/ggCaller development by creating an account on GitHub.
github.com
September 24, 2025 at 1:27 PM
A new ggCaller version is out! v1.4 includes tweaks to improve efficiency, outputs Panaroo-friendly GFFs, and enables iterative gene calling; if you have already called a gene set, you can now add more genomes either one by one or in batches github.com/bacpop/ggCal...
Reposted by John Lees
The EMBL PhD programme is open until 13th October (entry ~Sep 2026):
www.embl.org/about/info/e...
We have three positions in microbial genomics at EMBL-EBI, including one in my group. Please do apply, or if you know anyone that would be interested pass on to them
www.embl.org/about/info/e...
We have three positions in microbial genomics at EMBL-EBI, including one in my group. Please do apply, or if you know anyone that would be interested pass on to them
EMBL International PhD Programme – Unique in the world and waiting for you!
www.embl.org
September 17, 2025 at 3:49 PM
The EMBL PhD programme is open until 13th October (entry ~Sep 2026):
www.embl.org/about/info/e...
We have three positions in microbial genomics at EMBL-EBI, including one in my group. Please do apply, or if you know anyone that would be interested pass on to them
www.embl.org/about/info/e...
We have three positions in microbial genomics at EMBL-EBI, including one in my group. Please do apply, or if you know anyone that would be interested pass on to them
Thanks for all the trainers and attendees on this course, which was a lot of fun to run, and hopefully filled a gap in genomics/modelling training
And especially co-organisers @leonielorenz.bsky.social @sonjalehtinen.bsky.social Joel Hellewell
And especially co-organisers @leonielorenz.bsky.social @sonjalehtinen.bsky.social Joel Hellewell
Thank you to everyone who joined us this week for the @embo.org Practical Course 'Methods for infectious disease modelling using genomics'.
Join us for 2026's EMBO Practical Course. Sign up for 'Causality in biomedicine' alerts and hear as this new course develops: www.ebi.ac.uk/training/eve...
🧬🧫
Join us for 2026's EMBO Practical Course. Sign up for 'Causality in biomedicine' alerts and hear as this new course develops: www.ebi.ac.uk/training/eve...
🧬🧫
September 22, 2025 at 9:43 AM
Thanks for all the trainers and attendees on this course, which was a lot of fun to run, and hopefully filled a gap in genomics/modelling training
And especially co-organisers @leonielorenz.bsky.social @sonjalehtinen.bsky.social Joel Hellewell
And especially co-organisers @leonielorenz.bsky.social @sonjalehtinen.bsky.social Joel Hellewell
Reposted by John Lees
Thank you to everyone who joined us this week for the @embo.org Practical Course 'Methods for infectious disease modelling using genomics'.
Join us for 2026's EMBO Practical Course. Sign up for 'Causality in biomedicine' alerts and hear as this new course develops: www.ebi.ac.uk/training/eve...
🧬🧫
Join us for 2026's EMBO Practical Course. Sign up for 'Causality in biomedicine' alerts and hear as this new course develops: www.ebi.ac.uk/training/eve...
🧬🧫
September 19, 2025 at 8:33 AM
Thank you to everyone who joined us this week for the @embo.org Practical Course 'Methods for infectious disease modelling using genomics'.
Join us for 2026's EMBO Practical Course. Sign up for 'Causality in biomedicine' alerts and hear as this new course develops: www.ebi.ac.uk/training/eve...
🧬🧫
Join us for 2026's EMBO Practical Course. Sign up for 'Causality in biomedicine' alerts and hear as this new course develops: www.ebi.ac.uk/training/eve...
🧬🧫
Reposted by John Lees
Just launched an interactive Bayesian epidemic modelling platform that runs entirely in your browser!
No downloads, no installations, no expensive software licenses. Just open the link and start modelling disease dynamics with real-time parameter estimation.
>> widget-bayesian-sir.davidhodgson.me
No downloads, no installations, no expensive software licenses. Just open the link and start modelling disease dynamics with real-time parameter estimation.
>> widget-bayesian-sir.davidhodgson.me
Interactive Bayesian Epidemic Modelling
widget-bayesian-sir.davidhodgson.me
September 19, 2025 at 4:53 PM
Just launched an interactive Bayesian epidemic modelling platform that runs entirely in your browser!
No downloads, no installations, no expensive software licenses. Just open the link and start modelling disease dynamics with real-time parameter estimation.
>> widget-bayesian-sir.davidhodgson.me
No downloads, no installations, no expensive software licenses. Just open the link and start modelling disease dynamics with real-time parameter estimation.
>> widget-bayesian-sir.davidhodgson.me
The EMBL PhD programme is open until 13th October (entry ~Sep 2026):
www.embl.org/about/info/e...
We have three positions in microbial genomics at EMBL-EBI, including one in my group. Please do apply, or if you know anyone that would be interested pass on to them
www.embl.org/about/info/e...
We have three positions in microbial genomics at EMBL-EBI, including one in my group. Please do apply, or if you know anyone that would be interested pass on to them
EMBL International PhD Programme – Unique in the world and waiting for you!
www.embl.org
September 17, 2025 at 3:49 PM
The EMBL PhD programme is open until 13th October (entry ~Sep 2026):
www.embl.org/about/info/e...
We have three positions in microbial genomics at EMBL-EBI, including one in my group. Please do apply, or if you know anyone that would be interested pass on to them
www.embl.org/about/info/e...
We have three positions in microbial genomics at EMBL-EBI, including one in my group. Please do apply, or if you know anyone that would be interested pass on to them
Reposted by John Lees
Sometimes you meet absolutely incredible bioinfo-magicians.
It was a huge privilege when @shenwei356.bsky.social
joined our group for a year on an @embl.org sabbatical.
While here, he developed a new way of aligning to
millions of bacteria, called LexicMap 1/n
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
It was a huge privilege when @shenwei356.bsky.social
joined our group for a year on an @embl.org sabbatical.
While here, he developed a new way of aligning to
millions of bacteria, called LexicMap 1/n
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Efficient sequence alignment against millions of prokaryotic genomes with LexicMap - Nature Biotechnology
LexicMap uses a fixed set of probes to efficiently query gene sequences for fast and low-memory alignment.
www.nature.com
September 10, 2025 at 9:12 AM
Sometimes you meet absolutely incredible bioinfo-magicians.
It was a huge privilege when @shenwei356.bsky.social
joined our group for a year on an @embl.org sabbatical.
While here, he developed a new way of aligning to
millions of bacteria, called LexicMap 1/n
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
It was a huge privilege when @shenwei356.bsky.social
joined our group for a year on an @embl.org sabbatical.
While here, he developed a new way of aligning to
millions of bacteria, called LexicMap 1/n
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Reposted by John Lees
Mathematical models in biology are powerful, but often hard to run, visualise, or reuse without specialist skills.
Menelmacar is a new platform that makes biological models interactive and easy to explore directly in the browser: biomodels.bacpop.org
🧬💻
Menelmacar is a new platform that makes biological models interactive and easy to explore directly in the browser: biomodels.bacpop.org
🧬💻
September 8, 2025 at 10:25 AM
Mathematical models in biology are powerful, but often hard to run, visualise, or reuse without specialist skills.
Menelmacar is a new platform that makes biological models interactive and easy to explore directly in the browser: biomodels.bacpop.org
🧬💻
Menelmacar is a new platform that makes biological models interactive and easy to explore directly in the browser: biomodels.bacpop.org
🧬💻
Reposted by John Lees
Wow, more than 2.4M of assembled bacteria in the new release of ABT! We plan to index these using our efficient colored De Bruijn graph index, Fulgor. We recently conducted experiments with nearly 1M genomes…getting there :)
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
AllTheBacteria - all bacterial genomes assembled, available and searchable
The bacterial sequence data publicly available via the global DNA archives is a vast potential source of information on the evolution of bacteria. However, most of this sequence data is unassembled, o...
www.biorxiv.org
August 28, 2025 at 12:16 PM
Wow, more than 2.4M of assembled bacteria in the new release of ABT! We plan to index these using our efficient colored De Bruijn graph index, Fulgor. We recently conducted experiments with nearly 1M genomes…getting there :)
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Reposted by John Lees
📢🚨📢🚨 Genome Informatics deadline extended to September 8! meetings.cshl.edu/meetings.asp....
Please spread the word. If you are like me and had at least one abstract that wasn't quite ready by last week's deadline, you get another swing. See you there!
Please spread the word. If you are like me and had at least one abstract that wasn't quite ready by last week's deadline, you get another swing. See you there!
Genome Informatics
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Meetings & Courses -- a private, non-profit institution with research programs in cancer, neuroscience, plant biology, genomics, bioinformatics.
meetings.cshl.edu
August 26, 2025 at 8:38 PM
📢🚨📢🚨 Genome Informatics deadline extended to September 8! meetings.cshl.edu/meetings.asp....
Please spread the word. If you are like me and had at least one abstract that wasn't quite ready by last week's deadline, you get another swing. See you there!
Please spread the word. If you are like me and had at least one abstract that wasn't quite ready by last week's deadline, you get another swing. See you there!
Reposted by John Lees
Closing soon. Great opportunity to do spatial transcriptomics on pre-antibiotic TB
⭐ Excellence fellowships accepting applications ⭐ for Black ECRs who have a degree from the UK. sanger.wd103.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/Wellco...
I have an amazing spatial transcriptomics project available on the world's most important pathogen, TB: www.sanger.ac.uk/wp-content/u...
Please reach out!
I have an amazing spatial transcriptomics project available on the world's most important pathogen, TB: www.sanger.ac.uk/wp-content/u...
Please reach out!
www.sanger.ac.uk
August 20, 2025 at 1:48 PM
Closing soon. Great opportunity to do spatial transcriptomics on pre-antibiotic TB
Reposted by John Lees
It's interesting to draw these parallels.
(We definitely need to move beyond purely technological solutions to how we deal with infections in a future where antimicrobials are more scarce.)
www.theguardian.com/books/2025/a...
(We definitely need to move beyond purely technological solutions to how we deal with infections in a future where antimicrobials are more scarce.)
www.theguardian.com/books/2025/a...
Why antibiotics are like fossil fuels
They helped create the modern world but are dangerously overused. How can we harness them sustainably?
www.theguardian.com
August 18, 2025 at 11:41 AM
It's interesting to draw these parallels.
(We definitely need to move beyond purely technological solutions to how we deal with infections in a future where antimicrobials are more scarce.)
www.theguardian.com/books/2025/a...
(We definitely need to move beyond purely technological solutions to how we deal with infections in a future where antimicrobials are more scarce.)
www.theguardian.com/books/2025/a...
Reposted by John Lees
Deacon 0.9.0 can filter FASTA at well over 2Gbp/s on an AMD CPU from 2021. Compression is very limiting, but I suspect ~1Gbp/s is possible for fastq.gz with a modern CPU. Thanks @curiouscoding.nl for a monumental perf PR!
Release 0.9.0
github.com/bede/deacon/...
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Release 0.9.0
github.com/bede/deacon/...
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
August 15, 2025 at 7:15 PM
Deacon 0.9.0 can filter FASTA at well over 2Gbp/s on an AMD CPU from 2021. Compression is very limiting, but I suspect ~1Gbp/s is possible for fastq.gz with a modern CPU. Thanks @curiouscoding.nl for a monumental perf PR!
Release 0.9.0
github.com/bede/deacon/...
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Release 0.9.0
github.com/bede/deacon/...
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...