Mike White
@genologos.bsky.social
Associate Professor of Genetics at Washington University in St. Louis. I write about genomics at https://www.thisgenomiclife.org
Drosophila biologists still going strong with the best gene names in the business:
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40215271/
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40215271/
April 15, 2025 at 4:41 PM
Drosophila biologists still going strong with the best gene names in the business:
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40215271/
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40215271/
Here's an interesting thought-instead of speculating about super-intelligent AGI, let's think about the implications of artificial intelligence as *normal* tech.
New essay from the authors of AI Snake Oil:
knightcolumbia.org/content/ai-a...
New essay from the authors of AI Snake Oil:
knightcolumbia.org/content/ai-a...
April 15, 2025 at 4:41 PM
Here's an interesting thought-instead of speculating about super-intelligent AGI, let's think about the implications of artificial intelligence as *normal* tech.
New essay from the authors of AI Snake Oil:
knightcolumbia.org/content/ai-a...
New essay from the authors of AI Snake Oil:
knightcolumbia.org/content/ai-a...
Imagine being this family 100 years ago–4 of 8 siblings died of spinal muscular atrophy as babies. Within the past decade, we learned how to cure this disease. One of the treatments, ASOs, is being brought to bear on cancer.
April 11, 2025 at 11:23 PM
Imagine being this family 100 years ago–4 of 8 siblings died of spinal muscular atrophy as babies. Within the past decade, we learned how to cure this disease. One of the treatments, ASOs, is being brought to bear on cancer.
Yes, more books like this:
April 10, 2025 at 10:20 PM
Yes, more books like this:
April 9, 2025 at 11:58 PM
Times seem rough but I'm glad we live in an era when we develop drugs by *designing* them rather hoping we'll get lucky and find a natural compound to cure a fatal disease. The era of drug design is still young & antisense oligos are an exciting part of it.
www.thisgenomiclife.org/p/treating-d...
www.thisgenomiclife.org/p/treating-d...
April 8, 2025 at 6:21 PM
Times seem rough but I'm glad we live in an era when we develop drugs by *designing* them rather hoping we'll get lucky and find a natural compound to cure a fatal disease. The era of drug design is still young & antisense oligos are an exciting part of it.
www.thisgenomiclife.org/p/treating-d...
www.thisgenomiclife.org/p/treating-d...
Best popular science book I have read in a long, long time. Right up there with Gleick’s Chaos and Judson’s 8th Day of Creation.
I find a lot of pop science boring because it reads like a Wikipedia article dressed up with a bunch of anecdotes. Not this.
I find a lot of pop science boring because it reads like a Wikipedia article dressed up with a bunch of anecdotes. Not this.
April 4, 2025 at 1:02 AM
Best popular science book I have read in a long, long time. Right up there with Gleick’s Chaos and Judson’s 8th Day of Creation.
I find a lot of pop science boring because it reads like a Wikipedia article dressed up with a bunch of anecdotes. Not this.
I find a lot of pop science boring because it reads like a Wikipedia article dressed up with a bunch of anecdotes. Not this.
Great review of state-of-the-art gene therapies that target the nervous system. There has been a tremendous amount of progress over the last decade.
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
April 3, 2025 at 10:05 PM
Great review of state-of-the-art gene therapies that target the nervous system. There has been a tremendous amount of progress over the last decade.
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
One of the developers of support vector machines (after her PhD) on an experience familiar to everyone who went to grad school. Committee asks why she didn’t do X, she said it’s not important, but the real reason is she just wanted to graduate:
April 3, 2025 at 12:49 AM
One of the developers of support vector machines (after her PhD) on an experience familiar to everyone who went to grad school. Committee asks why she didn’t do X, she said it’s not important, but the real reason is she just wanted to graduate:
April 1, 2025 at 5:09 PM
April 1, 2025 at 5:09 PM
Genomics people, does anyone know what paper this image comes from? I took a screenshot years ago and haven't been able to find the original reference again, even with image searching.
April 1, 2025 at 2:56 PM
Genomics people, does anyone know what paper this image comes from? I took a screenshot years ago and haven't been able to find the original reference again, even with image searching.
If, like me, you're not a physicist but fascinated by the deep relationship between thermodynamics, computation, and information, this new book is worth checking out. I've been looking for something like this for years.
press.princeton.edu/books/hardco...
press.princeton.edu/books/hardco...
March 29, 2025 at 11:29 PM
If, like me, you're not a physicist but fascinated by the deep relationship between thermodynamics, computation, and information, this new book is worth checking out. I've been looking for something like this for years.
press.princeton.edu/books/hardco...
press.princeton.edu/books/hardco...
Our latest preprint is up, describing how a ribosomal protein regulates the expression of its own gene by counteracting an intronic splicing enhancer.
The result of some very insightful analysis by @gdstormo.bsky.social
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
The result of some very insightful analysis by @gdstormo.bsky.social
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
March 19, 2025 at 11:17 PM
Our latest preprint is up, describing how a ribosomal protein regulates the expression of its own gene by counteracting an intronic splicing enhancer.
The result of some very insightful analysis by @gdstormo.bsky.social
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
The result of some very insightful analysis by @gdstormo.bsky.social
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
March 7, 2025 at 5:31 PM
My youngest daughter was born in 2009. Routine childhood vaccinations given to her birth cohort are expected to prevent 42,000 early deaths and 20 million cases of disease. Add that up for each annual cohort and you get a much healthier country:
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24590750/
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24590750/
March 6, 2025 at 10:26 PM
My youngest daughter was born in 2009. Routine childhood vaccinations given to her birth cohort are expected to prevent 42,000 early deaths and 20 million cases of disease. Add that up for each annual cohort and you get a much healthier country:
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24590750/
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24590750/
Lots of hype last week about writing genomes on demand but I'm not sure we're that close yet for even the small mitochondrial genomes.
I could be wrong - would love to see what happens when you put this zoo of a mitochondrial genome into cells.
I could be wrong - would love to see what happens when you put this zoo of a mitochondrial genome into cells.
February 28, 2025 at 11:39 PM
Lots of hype last week about writing genomes on demand but I'm not sure we're that close yet for even the small mitochondrial genomes.
I could be wrong - would love to see what happens when you put this zoo of a mitochondrial genome into cells.
I could be wrong - would love to see what happens when you put this zoo of a mitochondrial genome into cells.
When generative models trained on multiple species write genomes, does the gene content become a zoo?
Evo 2 generated a mitochondrial genome in which each gene aligned best to a different species ranging from fish to bats to sheep:
arcinstitute.org/manuscripts/...
Evo 2 generated a mitochondrial genome in which each gene aligned best to a different species ranging from fish to bats to sheep:
arcinstitute.org/manuscripts/...
February 28, 2025 at 11:39 PM
When generative models trained on multiple species write genomes, does the gene content become a zoo?
Evo 2 generated a mitochondrial genome in which each gene aligned best to a different species ranging from fish to bats to sheep:
arcinstitute.org/manuscripts/...
Evo 2 generated a mitochondrial genome in which each gene aligned best to a different species ranging from fish to bats to sheep:
arcinstitute.org/manuscripts/...
Cool preprint from Genentech: Designing therapeutic antibodies with generative models and active learning.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
February 27, 2025 at 5:29 PM
Cool preprint from Genentech: Designing therapeutic antibodies with generative models and active learning.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
My next read: The Music of the Spheres. Blurbed by Christopher Hogwood and John Gribbin. A thoughtful gift from @rfriedman22.bsky.social who knows my enthusiasm for science, music, and used book stores!
February 15, 2025 at 11:07 PM
My next read: The Music of the Spheres. Blurbed by Christopher Hogwood and John Gribbin. A thoughtful gift from @rfriedman22.bsky.social who knows my enthusiasm for science, music, and used book stores!
Last week in Nature on the left. RFK jr (via Paul Offit) on the right.
Let me suggest that publishing unscientific mysticism about alternate realities in Nature does not help scientists combat the unscientific mysticism about alternate realities peddled by RFK jr.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Let me suggest that publishing unscientific mysticism about alternate realities in Nature does not help scientists combat the unscientific mysticism about alternate realities peddled by RFK jr.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
February 12, 2025 at 10:40 PM
Last week in Nature on the left. RFK jr (via Paul Offit) on the right.
Let me suggest that publishing unscientific mysticism about alternate realities in Nature does not help scientists combat the unscientific mysticism about alternate realities peddled by RFK jr.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Let me suggest that publishing unscientific mysticism about alternate realities in Nature does not help scientists combat the unscientific mysticism about alternate realities peddled by RFK jr.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
What you get when the government is run by morons:
Grind federally-funded cancer, diabetes, heart disease, dementia, autism research to a halt, stop disbursing disaster aid, etc. while a bunch of D-list fools go hunting for “woke gender ideology”.
www.nytimes.com/2025/01/27/u...
Grind federally-funded cancer, diabetes, heart disease, dementia, autism research to a halt, stop disbursing disaster aid, etc. while a bunch of D-list fools go hunting for “woke gender ideology”.
www.nytimes.com/2025/01/27/u...
January 28, 2025 at 1:23 PM
What you get when the government is run by morons:
Grind federally-funded cancer, diabetes, heart disease, dementia, autism research to a halt, stop disbursing disaster aid, etc. while a bunch of D-list fools go hunting for “woke gender ideology”.
www.nytimes.com/2025/01/27/u...
Grind federally-funded cancer, diabetes, heart disease, dementia, autism research to a halt, stop disbursing disaster aid, etc. while a bunch of D-list fools go hunting for “woke gender ideology”.
www.nytimes.com/2025/01/27/u...
Back in 1943 Schrödinger argued that "present-day physics and chemistry could not possibly account for what happens in space and time within a living organism." I wrote up why he said that and how thermodynamics + new single-fiber sequencing tech answer him.
open.substack.com/pub/thisgeno...
open.substack.com/pub/thisgeno...
January 7, 2025 at 8:18 PM
Back in 1943 Schrödinger argued that "present-day physics and chemistry could not possibly account for what happens in space and time within a living organism." I wrote up why he said that and how thermodynamics + new single-fiber sequencing tech answer him.
open.substack.com/pub/thisgeno...
open.substack.com/pub/thisgeno...
Deep learning with data beyond the genome: Our paper on active machine learning to model regulatory DNA is out today in Cell Systems.
With functional assays and DNA synthesis you can generate any training examples, not just genomic sequences. 🧵
kwnsfk27.r.eu-west-1.awstrack.me/L0/https:%2F...
With functional assays and DNA synthesis you can generate any training examples, not just genomic sequences. 🧵
kwnsfk27.r.eu-west-1.awstrack.me/L0/https:%2F...
January 7, 2025 at 5:42 PM
Deep learning with data beyond the genome: Our paper on active machine learning to model regulatory DNA is out today in Cell Systems.
With functional assays and DNA synthesis you can generate any training examples, not just genomic sequences. 🧵
kwnsfk27.r.eu-west-1.awstrack.me/L0/https:%2F...
With functional assays and DNA synthesis you can generate any training examples, not just genomic sequences. 🧵
kwnsfk27.r.eu-west-1.awstrack.me/L0/https:%2F...
How do you get from manually reading bands off a sequencing gel to sequencing a > 3 billion bp genome?
Check out this fascinating oral history/talk by my former dept. chair who describes some of the key technologies needed to make genome sequencing possible:
open.substack.com/pub/thisgeno...
Check out this fascinating oral history/talk by my former dept. chair who describes some of the key technologies needed to make genome sequencing possible:
open.substack.com/pub/thisgeno...
December 31, 2024 at 12:49 AM
How do you get from manually reading bands off a sequencing gel to sequencing a > 3 billion bp genome?
Check out this fascinating oral history/talk by my former dept. chair who describes some of the key technologies needed to make genome sequencing possible:
open.substack.com/pub/thisgeno...
Check out this fascinating oral history/talk by my former dept. chair who describes some of the key technologies needed to make genome sequencing possible:
open.substack.com/pub/thisgeno...