Jamie Heather
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jamieheather.bsky.social
Jamie Heather
@jamieheather.bsky.social
🇬🇧 immunulogist in 🇺🇸 | instructor @ MGH/HMS | TCRs and pMHC
Technically a James | ʤeɪmi hɛðə˞ | he/him
@jamimmunology in the old place
papers, tools, & 3d printed labware here: https://jamieheather.github.io/
Pinned
I've got a PSA to the T cell receptor researchers of #immunosky to let you know about a new paper we've just got out: doi.org/10.1016/j.im...

This covers how our field is handling the sets of germline #TCR genes used in our research. Maybe not the most glamorous topic, but it’s kind of a big deal…
Reposted by Jamie Heather
As mentioned in another thread, four UKRI leaders spoke to journalists this morning about changes to research council funding

They addressed stories broken by RPN that STFC has to find £162m of costs savings by 2029-30, and that major physics infrastructure projects have been shelved

...
February 5, 2026 at 5:06 PM
Reposted by Jamie Heather
Update from MRC re funding
They've separately said:
Our transition to new ways of working also means we unfortunately expect to make a reduced number of awards to applications currently being assessed by our four research boards and developmental pathway funding scheme.
www.ukri.org/blog/mrc-fun...
MRC funding update
An update on MRC funding during UKRI’s transition, what’s changing, and the next steps for paused opportunities and reopening timelines.
www.ukri.org
February 5, 2026 at 4:58 PM
Reposted by Jamie Heather
Unleashing live-cell imaging for the masses!
Adapting the OpenFlexure Microscope for Affordable Live-Cell Imaging www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
Fits into existing incubators for time-lapse experiments & feeds into existing bioimaging analysis pipelines.
Thanks @wellcometrust.bsky.social funding
February 3, 2026 at 2:49 PM
Reposted by Jamie Heather
This is finally out.

Very short take home. All the variation in spike that produced the immune escape characteristics of Omicron can occur in one single persistently infected individual over the period of a year.

This is why persistent infections matter

www.cell.com/cell-reports...
Antibody escape drives emergence of diverse spike haplotypes resembling variants of concern in persistent SARS-CoV-2 infections
Snell et al. develop sequencing methodology to identify full-length spike haplotypes and show that persistent SARS-CoV-2 infections drive divergent haplotype emergence, accelerating viral evolution an...
www.cell.com
February 2, 2026 at 4:09 PM
Reposted by Jamie Heather
I have a 3-year postdoc position available at University of Manchester for a mass spec expert in proteomics. The person will be involved in exciting projects in single cell proteomics, drug discovery and innate immunity - on timsTOF Ultra AIP & HF & Astral Zoom.

www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DQJ093/r...
Home - Trost Lab
www.trostlab.org
February 2, 2026 at 7:53 PM
Reposted by Jamie Heather
There is a cost to science denial.
January 27, 2026 at 9:29 PM
This should be a source of great national shame, and a spur to action.

I sadly suspect it will be neither.
BREAKING NEWS: UK loses its #measles elimination status

@benk-d.bsky.social highlights failure to reach 95% measles #vaccine coverage target in UK

+ need for secure funding for vaccine outreach efforts & joined-up #PublicHealth response

Read more: www.lshtm.ac.uk/newsevents/n...
January 26, 2026 at 6:19 PM
Reposted by Jamie Heather
Delighted that our latest paper is out at @mucosalimmunol.bsky.social. Here, using bronchoscopies and scRNA- and TCR-seq, we found that T cells isolated from bronchoalveolar lavage versus the airway mucosal are surprisingly distinct. Summary of the original preprint below. #Immunology #PCCM
January 9, 2026 at 2:14 PM
Me before: "this is fun but silly"

Me after: "I think there's something to this you know"
January 2, 2026 at 4:53 AM
Reposted by Jamie Heather
🚨 EXCLUSIVE: English hospitals that cut registered nurses saw more deaths while those hiring nurses saw more patients survive. Even when hospitals tried to fill gaps with non-nurses, deaths still went up. Major new study exposes dangerous NHS variation:
www.thetimes.com/article/7eed...
Death rates rise when NHS cuts back on nursing
Using lower-paid workers to plug the gaps left by a failure to hire registered nurses damages safety, new research has shown
www.thetimes.com
December 21, 2025 at 8:41 AM
A copilot button has appeared in all of my work Office programs, without need, want, or license, and without any way to get of it. Not only does IT not have a clue why it's there, no Microsoft resource can explain how to remove it.

At least Clippy had the decency to get lost when you told him to.
December 19, 2025 at 2:45 PM
The annual realisation that no, it's not that all of the appliances' wiring has gone faulty at once, but that your winter thermals have turned you into a walking Van de Graaff generator
December 10, 2025 at 8:31 PM
Reposted by Jamie Heather
If you ever need to fuzzy search some DNA, sassy is your tool.

Please spread the word; I think many people just outside my own circle could benefit from this :)

cc @rickbitloo.bsky.social

github.com/RagnarGrootK...
December 10, 2025 at 3:50 PM
Reposted by Jamie Heather
a life changing opportunity made possible by the Nobel Prize funds awarded to John Sulston -- the @sangerinstitute.bsky.social runs the Sanger Prize scheme, open to an undergrad from any LMIC to spend 3 months here learning all about genomics. more details here www.sanger.ac.uk/about/study/...
November 20, 2025 at 5:39 PM
This isn't *why* we should encourage scientists to have interests outside of the lab (they are their own reward), but it's an excellent demonstration of the inspiration that can happen when you do
Great culture can save lives. Literally.

Amazing letter in today’s @thetimes.com about Tom Stoppard
December 2, 2025 at 5:29 PM
Reposted by Jamie Heather
Great culture can save lives. Literally.

Amazing letter in today’s @thetimes.com about Tom Stoppard
December 2, 2025 at 8:48 AM
Just realised I haven't shared some of my favourite recent functional 3d printed labware designs on here. While the PCR tube/strip rack one is undoubtedly the one I use most, I still love the agar plate divider best.

All available @ www.thingiverse.com/jamimmunolog...

#labrats #science #3dprinting
December 1, 2025 at 8:13 PM
Reposted by Jamie Heather
We are #absolutely #thrilled to #present @cp-immunity.bsky.social - Deep profiling of human T cells defines compartmentalized clones and phenotypic trajectories across blood and tonsils: Immunity www.cell.com/immunity/ful...
Deep profiling of human T cells defines compartmentalized clones and phenotypic trajectories across blood and tonsils
Human T cell responses are often studied using blood, yet most T cells reside in tissues. By comparing T cell receptor repertoires from millions of T cells from autologous tonsils and blood, Sureshcha...
www.cell.com
November 26, 2025 at 3:47 PM
Reposted by Jamie Heather
Computational X-scan didn't work super well for improving the specificity of the design process. There's potential for deorphanization but the design problem is actually simpler than deorphanization since you're free to sample a huge space.
November 24, 2025 at 10:03 PM
Reposted by Jamie Heather
As the saying goes, one man’s trash is another man’s treasure: the flow-cytometry doublets that are routinely excluded from analysis are in fact a rich source of tumor-reactive T cells.

#immunology
#science
#tumor
#immunotherapy

buff.ly/pETJPEH
Tumour-reactive heterotypic CD8 T cell clusters from clinical samples
Tumour-reactive CD8+ T cells are enriched in functional clusters with tumour cells and/or antigen-presenting cells and can be isolated and expanded from clinical samples.
www.nature.com
November 19, 2025 at 7:32 PM
Whoever said we're living in the time of decision-based evidence making was absolutely right
This is a very sad day for public health and evidence-based science in general.
November 20, 2025 at 3:25 PM
What fresh captcha hell is this
November 19, 2025 at 1:27 AM
Reposted by Jamie Heather
Happy Friday! We're so thrilled to share our review on #trainedimmunity out in @elife.bsky.social today. We had a great time writing this. Honored to be included in the special issue of trained immunity. Always an absolute treat to write with @khannakm.bsky.social
elifesciences.org/articles/108...
November 14, 2025 at 6:08 PM