Ewan Birney
@ewanbirney.bsky.social
Executive Director EMBL. I have an insatiable love of biology. Consultant to ONT and Cantata (Dovetail)
Reposted by Ewan Birney
Two new chapters from my free online book in human genetics out this weekend!
These complete Part 3 of the book, on human population structure and history:
3.3: Human prehistory [separate thread]
3.4: Ancient DNA: a genetic time capsule [this thread]
web.stanford.edu/group/pritch...
These complete Part 3 of the book, on human population structure and history:
3.3: Human prehistory [separate thread]
3.4: Ancient DNA: a genetic time capsule [this thread]
web.stanford.edu/group/pritch...
September 23, 2024 at 9:48 PM
Two new chapters from my free online book in human genetics out this weekend!
These complete Part 3 of the book, on human population structure and history:
3.3: Human prehistory [separate thread]
3.4: Ancient DNA: a genetic time capsule [this thread]
web.stanford.edu/group/pritch...
These complete Part 3 of the book, on human population structure and history:
3.3: Human prehistory [separate thread]
3.4: Ancient DNA: a genetic time capsule [this thread]
web.stanford.edu/group/pritch...
Reposted by Ewan Birney
This went under the radar but answers a fundamental question in Epigenetics...
From many hundreds of olfactory receptor genes, each neuron selects expression of only single one (near-randomly). How?
Outstanding work from Mathieu Boulard and colleagues
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
From many hundreds of olfactory receptor genes, each neuron selects expression of only single one (near-randomly). How?
Outstanding work from Mathieu Boulard and colleagues
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
The transcription of a single olfactory receptor per neuron is enforced by epigenetic silencing of their enhancers
The ability to discriminate thousands of odors in our environment requires each olfactory neuron to express a single olfactory receptor from hundreds of available genes. The biochemical mechanism enfo...
www.biorxiv.org
January 5, 2026 at 12:51 PM
This went under the radar but answers a fundamental question in Epigenetics...
From many hundreds of olfactory receptor genes, each neuron selects expression of only single one (near-randomly). How?
Outstanding work from Mathieu Boulard and colleagues
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
From many hundreds of olfactory receptor genes, each neuron selects expression of only single one (near-randomly). How?
Outstanding work from Mathieu Boulard and colleagues
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
Reposted by Ewan Birney
There are many concepts which are useful and important in helping us make sense of biology, but which do not correspond to something real at a fundamental level. Species exist in our books and papers, but biology doesn't know about them.
January 5, 2026 at 10:32 PM
There are many concepts which are useful and important in helping us make sense of biology, but which do not correspond to something real at a fundamental level. Species exist in our books and papers, but biology doesn't know about them.
Reposted by Ewan Birney
Great science thrives on sharing knowledge across borders, and the EMBL Sabbatical Fellowship Programme helps make that possible.
We're excited to host Natalie Twine from CSIRO. Learn about her time at EMBL-EBI and the Sabbatical Fellowship Programme👇
We're excited to host Natalie Twine from CSIRO. Learn about her time at EMBL-EBI and the Sabbatical Fellowship Programme👇
EMBL’s Sabbatical Fellowship Programme is slowly growing, attracting participants from around the world with its collaborative insights and access to world-class technologies.
www.embl.org/news/connect...
www.embl.org/news/connect...
A lab away from home | EMBL
The EMBL Sabbatical Fellowship Programme keeps growing, offering participants collaborative insights and access to world-class technology.
www.embl.org
January 5, 2026 at 3:00 PM
Great science thrives on sharing knowledge across borders, and the EMBL Sabbatical Fellowship Programme helps make that possible.
We're excited to host Natalie Twine from CSIRO. Learn about her time at EMBL-EBI and the Sabbatical Fellowship Programme👇
We're excited to host Natalie Twine from CSIRO. Learn about her time at EMBL-EBI and the Sabbatical Fellowship Programme👇
Reposted by Ewan Birney
The final Calvin and Hobbes, which appeared in papers 30 years ago today.
December 31, 2025 at 5:00 PM
The final Calvin and Hobbes, which appeared in papers 30 years ago today.
Chemists out there - learning about point group symmetries from my son - what is the point of pint group symmetries? Given the computational modelling now available for Raman etc … is this needed. It is … cute
December 30, 2025 at 9:14 PM
Chemists out there - learning about point group symmetries from my son - what is the point of pint group symmetries? Given the computational modelling now available for Raman etc … is this needed. It is … cute
Reposted by Ewan Birney
On the first day of Christmas (in about 2014), @duckswabber.bsky.social gave to me - a partridge in a pear tree.
Happy Christmas everyone!
Happy Christmas everyone!
December 25, 2025 at 8:03 AM
On the first day of Christmas (in about 2014), @duckswabber.bsky.social gave to me - a partridge in a pear tree.
Happy Christmas everyone!
Happy Christmas everyone!
Reposted by Ewan Birney
New result: you can build a universal computer using a single billiard ball on a carefully crafted table!
More precisely: you can create a computer that can run any program, using just a single point moving frictionlessly in a region of the plane and bouncing off the walls elastically.
(1/n)
More precisely: you can create a computer that can run any program, using just a single point moving frictionlessly in a region of the plane and bouncing off the walls elastically.
(1/n)
December 23, 2025 at 10:21 AM
New result: you can build a universal computer using a single billiard ball on a carefully crafted table!
More precisely: you can create a computer that can run any program, using just a single point moving frictionlessly in a region of the plane and bouncing off the walls elastically.
(1/n)
More precisely: you can create a computer that can run any program, using just a single point moving frictionlessly in a region of the plane and bouncing off the walls elastically.
(1/n)
Reposted by Ewan Birney
On a Wensleydale pilgrimage - geographically and back in time - to where and when epidemiology was about fieldwork (or practice) amongst real people in actual populations, and involved literally crossing fields … check out his beautifully written papers as a seasonal treat to yourself …
December 21, 2025 at 4:54 PM
On a Wensleydale pilgrimage - geographically and back in time - to where and when epidemiology was about fieldwork (or practice) amongst real people in actual populations, and involved literally crossing fields … check out his beautifully written papers as a seasonal treat to yourself …
Reposted by Ewan Birney
Reposted by Ewan Birney
This headline is wrong and misleading, and the brief text below it is not much better. Whatever might constitute a full explanation of the differences between sapiens and other hominins, we remain confident that 'genes' will be central to it.
www.nature.com/articles/d41...
www.nature.com/articles/d41...
Genes don’t explain what made humans different
Tiny genetic variations between humans, Neanderthals and Denisovans might not be all they were cracked up to be.
www.nature.com
December 19, 2025 at 11:55 AM
This headline is wrong and misleading, and the brief text below it is not much better. Whatever might constitute a full explanation of the differences between sapiens and other hominins, we remain confident that 'genes' will be central to it.
www.nature.com/articles/d41...
www.nature.com/articles/d41...
Happy holidays to all!
December 19, 2025 at 6:58 PM
Happy holidays to all!
Reposted by Ewan Birney
We’re excited to announce the "Toward Trustworthy AI Modeling for Computational Healthcare" @elsa-ai.eu workshop, a one-day in-person event focused on building private, fair, robust, reliable, and accountable AI systems for healthcare. Register now.
📅 March 9, 2026
📍 EMBL, Heidelberg, Germany
📅 March 9, 2026
📍 EMBL, Heidelberg, Germany
Registrations just opened for the workshop “TrustworthyAI4Health: Toward #TrustworthyAI Modeling for Computational #Healthcare”!🔥
Join us on March 9, 2026, to advance private, fair, robust, reliable, and accountable AI models for healthcare applications.
elsa-ai.eu/elsa-worksho...
Join us on March 9, 2026, to advance private, fair, robust, reliable, and accountable AI models for healthcare applications.
elsa-ai.eu/elsa-worksho...
December 19, 2025 at 1:42 PM
We’re excited to announce the "Toward Trustworthy AI Modeling for Computational Healthcare" @elsa-ai.eu workshop, a one-day in-person event focused on building private, fair, robust, reliable, and accountable AI systems for healthcare. Register now.
📅 March 9, 2026
📍 EMBL, Heidelberg, Germany
📅 March 9, 2026
📍 EMBL, Heidelberg, Germany
Reposted by Ewan Birney
The EMDB wishes you a very Merry Christmas, a Happy New Year and we are delighted to share our jointly designed EMDB/PDBe Christmas card with you. It has been a busy year, we look forward to seeing you in the New Year here! Card: A mixture of #cryoEM and X-ray diffraction structures.
December 18, 2025 at 2:01 PM
The EMDB wishes you a very Merry Christmas, a Happy New Year and we are delighted to share our jointly designed EMDB/PDBe Christmas card with you. It has been a busy year, we look forward to seeing you in the New Year here! Card: A mixture of #cryoEM and X-ray diffraction structures.
Dear UK Energy transition experts on bluesky - I read that by the end of this year there should be enough synchronous condensers for the last piece of grid services to allow fossil free operation - does anyone know if this is true? In the inevitable christmas demand dip is this likely? Or foolish?
December 17, 2025 at 4:44 PM
Dear UK Energy transition experts on bluesky - I read that by the end of this year there should be enough synchronous condensers for the last piece of grid services to allow fossil free operation - does anyone know if this is true? In the inevitable christmas demand dip is this likely? Or foolish?
Reposted by Ewan Birney
It’s out! Using cryo-ET in Dicty cells, we take a fresh in situ look at vaults. Surprisingly, we uncover vaults associated with ER and NE membranes, and find that many vaults enclose ribosomes in defined orientations, opening new avenues to their cellular function! www.biorxiv.org/lookup/conte...
December 16, 2025 at 8:17 AM
It’s out! Using cryo-ET in Dicty cells, we take a fresh in situ look at vaults. Surprisingly, we uncover vaults associated with ER and NE membranes, and find that many vaults enclose ribosomes in defined orientations, opening new avenues to their cellular function! www.biorxiv.org/lookup/conte...
Reposted by Ewan Birney
Vaults. They are cell biology's greatest puzzle! This preprint from Martin Beck's lab shows them docked on ER membranes with a ribosome inside. What on earth is going on there??
#CellBiology #WTFology
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
#CellBiology #WTFology
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
The vault associates with membranes in situ
The eukaryotic vault particle is a giant ribonucleoprotein complex that assembles into an iconic barrel-like cage. Its cellular function has remained elusive despite extensive characterization. Using ...
www.biorxiv.org
December 16, 2025 at 6:35 AM
Vaults. They are cell biology's greatest puzzle! This preprint from Martin Beck's lab shows them docked on ER membranes with a ribosome inside. What on earth is going on there??
#CellBiology #WTFology
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
#CellBiology #WTFology
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
It burns. It burns. My eyes.
December 15, 2025 at 8:28 PM
It burns. It burns. My eyes.
I missed this the first time and lovely to see it published from Rob Finn's group and Toby Spribrille's group on the complicated (so complicated!) world of Lichens. They are complex communities which... are sort of a bit like species. (but not)
Microbial occurrence and symbiont detection in a global sample of lichen metagenomes
#microbiology #metagenomics #lichen #MicroSky
@plosbiology.org
journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...
#microbiology #metagenomics #lichen #MicroSky
@plosbiology.org
journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...
December 15, 2025 at 10:04 AM
I missed this the first time and lovely to see it published from Rob Finn's group and Toby Spribrille's group on the complicated (so complicated!) world of Lichens. They are complex communities which... are sort of a bit like species. (but not)
I wrote about ethnicity, genetics and football here: www.linkedin.com/posts/ewan-b...
Ethnicity, Genetics and Football | Ewan Birney
Musing on Ethnicity, Genetics and Football.
www.linkedin.com
December 14, 2025 at 10:29 PM
I wrote about ethnicity, genetics and football here: www.linkedin.com/posts/ewan-b...
Earliest sunset of the year today in London - for now on the evenings get longer (but the mornings getting shorter - and a bit more - until 21st)
December 12, 2025 at 8:44 PM
Earliest sunset of the year today in London - for now on the evenings get longer (but the mornings getting shorter - and a bit more - until 21st)
Schwineshaxe 2025! Achievement unlocked! Plus - no need to eat for 48 hours
December 11, 2025 at 9:25 PM
Schwineshaxe 2025! Achievement unlocked! Plus - no need to eat for 48 hours
I was interviewed by Chirag Patel from Harvard Medical school and the Nexus exposomics project on large scale cohorts, multi-modal data, exposomics and AI.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=uARz...
www.youtube.com/watch?v=uARz...
NEXUS Podcast: A Conversation with Dr. Ewan Birney
YouTube video by NEXUS: Network for Exposomics in the U.S
www.youtube.com
December 9, 2025 at 5:38 PM
I was interviewed by Chirag Patel from Harvard Medical school and the Nexus exposomics project on large scale cohorts, multi-modal data, exposomics and AI.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=uARz...
www.youtube.com/watch?v=uARz...
The Australians are fundamentally better at Cricket than the Brits (at least at the moment). Ashes away is harder for the visitors but there is too big a gap. Sigh. Lots of talk for next test for avoiding the whitewash
December 7, 2025 at 11:14 AM
The Australians are fundamentally better at Cricket than the Brits (at least at the moment). Ashes away is harder for the visitors but there is too big a gap. Sigh. Lots of talk for next test for avoiding the whitewash
Just a reminder that Large Language Models is just one type of AI. It is not synonymous with AI and indeed the key aspects which make LLMs work - big attention networks, very large embedding spaces - have many applications.
December 5, 2025 at 9:15 AM
Just a reminder that Large Language Models is just one type of AI. It is not synonymous with AI and indeed the key aspects which make LLMs work - big attention networks, very large embedding spaces - have many applications.