Boris Lenhard
borislenhard.bsky.social
Boris Lenhard
@borislenhard.bsky.social
Professor of Computational Biology, Imperial College London
MRC Investigator, Computational Regulatory Genomics, MRC Laboratory of Medical Sciences

Interested in eukaryotic promoters, enhancers and long-range developmental regulation
Reposted by Boris Lenhard
@andreaserio.bsky.social and I are recruiting a postdoc to lead an exciting MNDA-funded project using multi-omics to study long axons in motor neurons and how they shape susceptibility to #ALS.

Get in touch for any questions and apply by 2 December:
my.corehr.com/pls/kclrecru...
November 4, 2025 at 5:33 PM
Reposted by Boris Lenhard
Why far from being a disadvantage, hostility to people from different races and cultures has now become an active requirement for career advancement on the right of British politics

www.adambienkov.co.uk/p/the-racism...
The Racism Premium
Far from being a disadvantage, hostility to people from different races and cultures has now become an active requirement for career advancement on the right of British politics
www.adambienkov.co.uk
November 1, 2025 at 12:18 PM
This is the state in which waste collectors have left the bins at 14-19 Lichfield Gardens this morning. It has been like that for the past several weeks, after years of (mostly) no issues.

This is not haste. This is passive aggression.

@richmondcouncil.bsky.social Please report to Serco.
October 21, 2025 at 11:05 AM
It turns out that "Idiocracy" was way too optimistic.
Trump posts AI video showing him literally dumping shit on America
October 19, 2025 at 1:12 PM
Reposted by Boris Lenhard
new lab preprint 👇
Ever wondered how sperm are formed? Spermatogenesis is a microscopic marathon that starts in the testes and ends with fully functional sperm! Our new preprint bitly.cx/jC4Qg takes a deep dive into zebrafish spermatogenesis, mapping out every fascinating step. 🧵👇 1/7
A single-cell multiomics roadmap of zebrafish spermatogenesis reveals regulatory principles of male germline formation
Spermatogenesis is the biological process by which male sperm cells (spermatozoa) are produced in the testes. Beyond facilitating the transmission of genetic information, spermatogenesis also provides...
bitly.cx
March 13, 2025 at 12:47 PM
Reposted by Boris Lenhard
First work on kinases from my lab! Working on this project, I often remembered the late Cyrus Chothia who said that if the data doesn’t fit a beautiful model, maybe it’s not the model, maybe you just need more data. :)
Mechanism of MEK1 phosphorylation by the N-terminal acidic motif mediated asymmetric BRAF dimer https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.09.26.678760v1
September 28, 2025 at 10:33 AM
Reposted by Boris Lenhard
“Let’s call it for what it is: bullshit. The truth is, politicians have talked about little else but immigration for decades and in the most dehumanising ways.

Polanski added: “Stop the boats’ is all we hear. Well, today I'm saying ‘stop the bullshit’.”

www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home...
UK faces ‘battle for the soul’ of the country, says Starmer amid Reform threat
In a rallying cry to progressives around the world, the Prime Minister said allies must stop the ‘politics of predatory grievance’.
www.independent.co.uk
September 26, 2025 at 1:34 PM
Reposted by Boris Lenhard
Vichy Labour. Deliberately and repeatedly affirming and amplifying the inflammatory far right *lie* of "uncontrolled migration".
“The belief that uncontrolled legal migration was nothing but good news for an economy should never have been accepted on the Left,” writes Starmer “fighting” populism. What does even mean “uncontrolled” in the case of legal migration? www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/f9444c6...
The Left ignored immigration fears for too long. It’s time to give communities back control
Only a plan for patriotic national renewal led by Labour will counter the rise of the populist Right
www.telegraph.co.uk
September 26, 2025 at 6:56 AM
Reposted by Boris Lenhard
Useful reminder from Peter Kellner on the problems we refuse to acknowledge are getting better, and the politics of hopelessness that this breeds

open.substack.com/pub/kellnerp...
September 23, 2025 at 6:29 AM
Reposted by Boris Lenhard
Retrospectively removing indefinite leave to remain would be immoral and economically damaging. It would tear families apart.
Attacking it as ‘potentially illegal’ is completely beside the point.
Argue with the (awful) idea. Don’t try ’well, actually you can’t do that’.
September 22, 2025 at 7:10 AM
Reposted by Boris Lenhard
mRNA vaccines are one of if not the most studied human inventions in history at this point. It's madness to say that they are somehow not well-understood!
September 2, 2025 at 11:03 PM
Reposted by Boris Lenhard
Interested in a sabbatical in Lyon? The Collegium de Lyon provides accommodation and attractive interdisciplinary environment for 1 or 2 semesters. Open to all disciplines. You can be affiliated with any local department/lab. Apply now for 2026-27. collegium.universite-lyon.fr/2026-2027-un...
September 2, 2025 at 8:45 AM
Reposted by Boris Lenhard
And now government doctors got my entire channel removed.

Don’t worry.

I won’t base my entire identity around this or claim it is worse than covid. 😂
August 29, 2025 at 9:49 PM
If anybody needs advice on good fountain pens, I’d be happy to help.
August 26, 2025 at 9:07 PM
The guest is David Collum, a rabid conspiracy theorist who is still a professor of chemistry and chemical biology at Cornell.

Tenure should probably not be able to protect academics against the consequences of lunacy such as this.
Tucker Carlson agrees with a guest on his show who says, “It turns out I think the story we got about World War II is all wrong… one can make the argument that we should have sided with Hitler.”

Not even trying to hide it.
August 22, 2025 at 12:24 PM
Reposted by Boris Lenhard
Archaea are often surrounded by bacteria. But is there ever active conflict between the two? Can archaea kill bacteria? If so, how do they do it?

Work by @romainstrock.bsky.social shows that some archaea can kill bacteria by secreting peptidoglycan hydrolases. journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...
Archaea produce peptidoglycan hydrolases that kill bacteria
Archaea regularly interact with bacteria but reports of archaea killing bacteria are very rare. This study shows that many archaea encode peptidoglycan hydrolases, which specifically target bacterial ...
journals.plos.org
August 14, 2025 at 6:50 PM
Reposted by Boris Lenhard
After nearly twenty years in the making, our attempt at understanding what makes the chaetognath phylum so unique has finally been published! www.nature.com/articles/s41...
with #LauraPiovani @dariagavr.bsky.social @alexdemendoza.bsky.social @chemamd.bsky.social and others /1
The genomic origin of the unique chaetognath body plan - Nature
Genomic, single-cell transcriptomic and epigenetic analyses show that chaetognaths, following extensive gene loss in the gnathiferan lineage, relied on newly evolved genes and lineage-specific tandem ...
www.nature.com
August 13, 2025 at 4:38 PM
Reposted by Boris Lenhard
Wrote a big review with my friend and colleague @varshneylab.social on the state-of-the-art in CRISPR used experimentally in vivo. We wanted to focus on their use in experimental vertebrate animals (apparently passé now but we persist).
CRISPR-based functional genomics tools in vertebrate models - Experimental & Molecular Medicine
Recent advances in DNA sequencing have allowed scientists to gather vast amounts of genetic data, but understanding what those sequences actually do requires additional tools that allow scientists to ...
www.nature.com
July 31, 2025 at 4:08 PM
Reposted by Boris Lenhard
Of all the bullshit positions, the one I loathe most is "yOu LiBz mAdE tEh fAsCiSmZ hAppEn" as if fascism is not a cyclical political phenomenon that always has behind it the same violent insecure inadequate men who yearn to dominate and those that support it have no agency or moral responsibility.
July 31, 2025 at 9:07 PM
Reposted by Boris Lenhard
There is a growing violent movement which senior politicians and media organisations are now not only seeking to justify, but actively encouraging.

Why it's time for politicians to instead start standing up to the wholly illegitimate concerns of the far right
www.adambienkov.co.uk/p/illegitima...
Illegitimate Concerns
There is a growing violent far-right movement in the UK which senior politicians and media organisations are now not only seeking to justify, but are actively encouraging
www.adambienkov.co.uk
July 26, 2025 at 11:33 AM
Reposted by Boris Lenhard
I am glad to announce that the #DANIO-CODE Data Coordination Center is back online at a new home:
danio-code-dcc.genereg.net
Thank you all for your patience and sorry for any inconvenience!
July 13, 2025 at 12:40 PM
Reposted by Boris Lenhard
#IZFC2025 #zebrafish #DANIO-CODE data coordination centre is back online. Note changed address: danio-code-dcc.genereg.net
DANIO-CODE DCC
This Data Coordination Center allows DANIO-CODE consortium members to submit and view their data sets annotated with standard metadata nomenclatures.
danio-code-dcc.genereg.net
July 13, 2025 at 12:23 PM
Reposted by Boris Lenhard
Weight loss improves health but What happens to cells in the fat during weight loss? Intriguingly, immune cell numbers decrease but their activated states persist w chronic inflammatory potential. Beautiful work from neighbors @mrc-lms.bsky.social Will Scott et al www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Selective remodelling of the adipose niche in obesity and weight loss - Nature
An atlas study of adipose tissue in people with obesity undergoing weight loss and their lean counterparts reveals that weight loss reduces cell senescence but cannot reverse all the metabolic problem...
www.nature.com
July 11, 2025 at 10:06 AM