Will Macnair
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willmacnair.bsky.social
Will Macnair
@willmacnair.bsky.social
1.2K followers 340 following 240 posts
Amateur neuroscientist, quite a bit of experience in single cell analysis, working on #neurodegeneration in Basel. Formerly postdoc with @markrobinsonca.bsky.social at UZH.
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willmacnair.bsky.social
Will Macnair @willmacnair.bsky.social · Nov 14
I made a bot that posts pre-prints of single cell papers:
@prepub-singlecell.bsky.social

(I posted about it a little while ago when no one was here, so posting again now :D)

It's pretty dumb so very open to suggestions for improvements!
Reposted by Will Macnair
prepub-neurodegen.bsky.social
Oligodendroglia as functional effectors of Multiple Sclerosis risk variants #NeuroDegeneration 🧪🧠
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.11.11.687640v1
November 13, 2025 at 8:01 AM
Reposted by Will Macnair
aosasmita.bsky.social
Astrocytes distress triggers brain pathology through induction of δ secretase in a murine model of Alzheimer’s disease

www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Astrocytes distress triggers brain pathology through induction of δ secretase in a murine model of Alzheimer’s disease - Nature Communications
The role of astrocytes in Alzheimer’s disease pathology remains insufficiently characterized. Here, the authors show that aggravated astrocyte response to Aβ causes brain inflammation, and amyloid and...
www.nature.com
November 5, 2025 at 12:42 PM
Reposted by Will Macnair
drannecarpenter.bsky.social
Required reading for cell biologists to get a sense of basic statistical principles!

www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Ten essential tips for robust statistics in cell biology - Nature Cell Biology
Statistical thinking is a core part of solid, trustworthy biology. However, many studies still include insufficient sample sizes, have poor experimental design or select an incorrect statistical metho...
www.nature.com
November 4, 2025 at 7:23 PM
Reposted by Will Macnair
castillohair.bsky.social
🚀Excited to share our new preprint: “Programming human cell type-specific gene expression via an atlas of AI-designed enhancers”

We built the largest repository of AI-designed enhancers, validated across 10 human cell lines + mouse retina.

👉 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

#AI #Genomics #SynBio
Programming human cell type-specific gene expression via an atlas of AI-designed enhancers
Differentially active enhancers are key drivers of cell type specific gene expression. Active enhancers are found in open chromatin, which can be mapped at genome scale across tissue and cell types. T...
www.biorxiv.org
October 6, 2025 at 4:57 PM
Reposted by Will Macnair
avehtari.bsky.social
Now I'm also looking for a research software engineer to implement a pile of research results to R packages loo, posterior, bayesplot, projpred, priorsense, brms or/and Python packages ArviZ, Bambi and Kulprit. Apply by email with no specific deadline (see contact info at users.aalto.fi/~ave/)
avehtari.bsky.social Aki Vehtari @avehtari.bsky.social · 16d
I'm now also looking for a postdoc with strong Bayesian background and interest in developing Bayesian cross-validation theory, methods and software. Apply by email with no specific deadline (see contact information at users.aalto.fi/~ave/).

Others, please share
avehtari.bsky.social Aki Vehtari @avehtari.bsky.social · Oct 6
I'm looking for a doctoral student with Bayesian background to work on Bayesian workflow and cross-validation (see my publication list users.aalto.fi/~ave/publica... for my recent work) at Aalto University.

Apply through the ELLIS PhD program (dl October 31) ellis.eu/news/ellis-p...
November 3, 2025 at 11:13 AM
Reposted by Will Macnair
kampmann.bsky.social
Thank you Alzforum for featuring our new preprint identifying regulators of disease states of #microglia.

Project led by Amanda McQuade, computation by Reet Mishra, collaboration with the Nunez and De Jager labs.

Alzforum
www.alzforum.org/news/researc...

Preprint
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
October 22, 2025 at 6:28 PM
Reposted by Will Macnair
nottalexi.bsky.social
Happy to share our latest work led by @kevincziegler.bsky.social and Aydan Askarova, examining cell type contributions of vascular cell types to dementia risk. Many thanks to the donors, and for support from @ukdri.ac.uk and @alzassociation.bsky.social.
www.cell.com/neuron/fullt...
Figure 1 showing the strategy to isolate nuclei from the brain including blood vessels and the epigenetic profiles of 6 major brain cell types.
October 31, 2025 at 10:10 AM
Reposted by Will Macnair
berniejmulvey.bsky.social
Got with the times + made a BSky to share our new, large-scale spatial RNAseq study of adult human #locuscoeruleus! Co-1st auth and cryostat wizard @heenadivecha.bsky.social squeezed 85 tissue sections into 43 Visium arrays. (1/8)

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Impact of Alzheimer's disease risk factors and local neuromelanin content on the transcriptomic landscape of the human locus coeruleus
The locus coeruleus (LC) is a small noradrenergic nucleus in the dorsal pons that sends projections across the brain regulating sleep, arousal, attention, stress responses, and some forms of cognition...
www.biorxiv.org
October 31, 2025 at 3:42 PM
Reposted by Will Macnair
oliviadavis.bsky.social
Thrilled to share our latest preprint using single nuq sequencing and Xenium to define neuron organisation and sex differences in glia within human spinal cord. Truly a collaborative effort, with a big shoutout to Katherin Gabriel and @tedpricethepainguy.bsky.social

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
A molecular map of the human spinal dorsal and ventral horn defines arrangement of neuronal types and glial sex differences
The spinal cord is the gateway for sensory information from the body as it ascends to the brain, as well as a major motor output center of the nervous system. It is also a key location for sensory-mot...
www.biorxiv.org
November 1, 2025 at 10:46 AM
Reposted by Will Macnair
martinowk.bsky.social
Excited to share our newest project using spatial transcriptomics with novel image analysis approaches to investigate the impact of biological risk factors for Alzheimer's disease (AD) - APOE haplotype, sex, and genomic ancestry - on molecular states in the locus coeruleus (LC 🔵) of the human 🧠.
October 31, 2025 at 5:24 PM
Reposted by Will Macnair
prepub-neurodegen.bsky.social
Consensus meta-analysis of genome-wide association studies for Alzheimer's disease and related dementia #NeuroDegeneration 🧪🧠
http://medrxiv.org/cgi/content/short/2025.10.20.25338060v1
October 24, 2025 at 7:02 AM
Reposted by Will Macnair
prepub-neurodegen.bsky.social
APOE3 astrocytes can rescue lipid abnormalities and dystrophic neurites of APOE4 human neurons #NeuroDegeneration 🧪🧠
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.10.24.684364v1
October 25, 2025 at 4:02 PM
Reposted by Will Macnair
ewanbirney.bsky.social
Furthermore I am more convinced that the real AI breakthrough is the attention concept (attention being all you need from the famous paper) - the ability to do data-driven model discovery. LLMs are just one place where this attention scheme is powerful. There are many more.
October 26, 2025 at 7:48 AM
Reposted by Will Macnair
prepub-singlecell.bsky.social
Deep Learning-Based Genetic Perturbation Models Do Outperform Uninformative Baselines on Well-Calibrated Metrics #SingleCell 🧪🧬🖥️
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.10.20.683304v1
October 21, 2025 at 4:00 PM
Reposted by Will Macnair
kjhealy.co
Always take sentences using “the Cloud” or “the Internet” and try replacing those phrases with “A shed in Virginia” to see how they hold up. “Our service is fully based in a shed in Virginia”; “All my files are in a shed in Virginia”; “A shed in Virginia was designed to survive a nuclear war”, etc.
October 20, 2025 at 5:39 PM
Reposted by Will Macnair
erictopol.bsky.social
Several years before onset of symptoms of multiple sclerosis, there is evidence of central nervous system myelin injury
nature.com/articles/s41...
Myelin injury precedes axonal injury and symptomatic onset in multiple sclerosis - Nature Medicine
Myelin damage in multiple sclerosis can be detected up to 7 years before symptoms, with early immune pathway activation and a 21-protein panel showing promise for presymptomatic diagnosis.
nature.com
October 20, 2025 at 4:24 PM
Reposted by Will Macnair
posit.co
Announcing Plotnine 0.15.0: The Python package for Grammar of Graphics gets a massive upgrade!

A new feature is Native Plot Composition: combine multiple independent plots into one figure, no more layout managers for multi-panel #Python graphs!

Read the post: posit.co/blog/plotnin...
Four-panel chart grid: a) scatter plot of mpg vs. wt; b) box plot of mpg vs. cyl; c) line plot of mpg vs. disp; and d) bar chart of carb count.
October 20, 2025 at 3:10 PM
Reposted by Will Macnair
clauswilke.com
Super useful new feature! I've started to recommend plotnine to everybody who does data analysis in python and needs a plotting solution, so this is very welcome.
posit.co Posit @posit.co · 25d
Announcing Plotnine 0.15.0: The Python package for Grammar of Graphics gets a massive upgrade!

A new feature is Native Plot Composition: combine multiple independent plots into one figure, no more layout managers for multi-panel #Python graphs!

Read the post: posit.co/blog/plotnin...
Four-panel chart grid: a) scatter plot of mpg vs. wt; b) box plot of mpg vs. cyl; c) line plot of mpg vs. disp; and d) bar chart of carb count.
October 20, 2025 at 4:37 PM
Reposted by Will Macnair
markhisted.org
For Twitter refugees:
A science and an #NIH starter pack.

First, my neuro starter pack. 1/
October 16, 2025 at 4:38 AM
Reposted by Will Macnair
odedrechavi.bsky.social
BIG ANNOUNCEMENT📣: I haven’t been this excited to be part of something new in 15 years… Thrilled to reveal the passion project I’ve been working on for the past year and a half!🙀🥳 (thread 👇)
October 15, 2025 at 12:22 PM
Reposted by Will Macnair
prepub-singlecell.bsky.social
A single-cell genetic colocalization test improves power and resolves disease-mediating cell types #SingleCell 🧪🧬🖥️
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.10.10.681685v1
October 14, 2025 at 7:01 AM
Reposted by Will Macnair
prepub-neurodegen.bsky.social
Multi-scale integration of human brain vasculature and CSF proteomes reveals biomarkers of cerebral amyloid angiopathy linked to Alzheimer's disease risk #NeuroDegeneration 🧪🧠
http://medrxiv.org/cgi/content/short/2025.10.08.25337413v1
October 14, 2025 at 7:02 AM
Reposted by Will Macnair
prepub-neurodegen.bsky.social
Long-read genome sequencing and multi-omics in aging and neurodegeneration #NeuroDegeneration 🧪🧠
http://medrxiv.org/cgi/content/short/2025.10.10.25337775v1
October 14, 2025 at 7:02 AM
Reposted by Will Macnair
prepub-neurodegen.bsky.social
Distinct Filament Conformation for Receptor-Bound Amyloid-β from Alzheimers Disease Brain #NeuroDegeneration 🧪🧠
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.10.10.681740v1
October 14, 2025 at 7:02 AM
Reposted by Will Macnair
prepub-neurodegen.bsky.social
Brain wide engraftment of human monocytes induces neurodegeneration and cognitive dysfunction #NeuroDegeneration 🧪🧠
https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-7762816/latest
October 10, 2025 at 4:02 PM