Research scientist in genomics at the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research. My interests are in genomics, bioinformatics and data analysis. Obsessed with guitars and vintage fuzz pedals. Opinions my own.
Amazing new work from the Hurd lab:Sperm keep their mitochondria but lose their mitochondrial genomes. This new preprint identifies the nuclease responsible — and shows it reads DNA structure, not sequence. tinyurl.com/3npwwk37
Should be an interesting paper (or preprint) once its out.
For non-scientists:
- mtDNA = mitochondrial DNA. Mitochondria are energy processors in cells, and have their own set of genes that are not passed down the paternal, Dad to kids, line.
- GFP = green fluorescent protein, (cont’d)
Thomas Hurd (Univ Toronto) @tomhurd on how paternal mtDNA gets “cut out of inheritance”; 100s of mtDNA in oocyte but <1 per sperm; this elimination takes place within spermatogenesis from immature to mature sperm; mtDNA eliminated but not mitochondria themselves (sperm need energy to swim) #Dros26
University administration:
"We need you to complete 26 hours of lab safety training 🧪 each year so that everyone is safe and responsible."
Also university administration:
I love how mainstream media reports stuff like, “young people are poor bc of avocado toast,” and not “a tiny network of the super rich have conspired for decades to buy off world governments and set up offshore tax havens to evade taxes, meanwhile wages have stagnated since 1970”
This is DJT’s tariff calculation. Most grade schoolers have a higher level of sophistication than this. The S&P 500 is down 700 points from recent highs. He’ll eventually reverse these and markets will bounce. It is market manipulation on a scale never before seen but he’s also dismantling the SEC 🤦♂️
Hey Ontario, let’s flick the lights on-and-off a few times in New York, Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin. It works for my son’s grade 2 classroom so it might also work for Trump.
This is a metric called 'Vote Efficiency'. Basically, the number of votes each party has to get in order to win a seat. I'm comparing the Netherlands (they use Open Party List PR) with yesterdays Ontario election result. Red line is optimal votes/seat. The difference is staggering. #onpoli#ontario
Don't let Doug Ford tell you he won a 'strong mandate'. He won a majority government with 43% of the popular vote through a form of voter suppression. This country needs electoral reform badly.
#onPoli#election2025#ontario
The Loosemore-Hanby index measures proportionality of elections. The last Ontario election was the least proportional in recent history. The Conservative government of Ontario was able to secure a majority government with only 18% of the eligible vote. We need electoral reform NOW.
#ONpoli
Dear America. You can’t go decades insisting the world signs nonproliferation agreements, then insist the world use USD as its reserve curency so you can go trillions into debt building your military, then pull the rug on peace keeping. It’s a d1ck move. Supporting Ukraine IS your responsibility.
RFK Jr. thinks that a clinical trial should be done for the entire childhood vaccine schedule. Here’s why that will never happen.
1. You can’t do a randomized trial of something that we already know is safe and effective. There would have to be a placebo group that didn’t get vaxxed. Unethical.
When I heard Musk say this on Tuesday, my assumption was that it was a programming issue. Because I can code and have written to databases and because I am familiar with other examples of default values being misinterpreted.
Yet somehow Musk isn't.
Suddenly, out of nowhere, a declassified World War II-era CIA guide to sabotaging fascism in the workplace has become one of the most popular free ebooks on the internet:
www.404media.co/declassified...
New York City congestion toll sees 43K fewer cars per day in Manhattan. Would a similar charge help Toronto traffic?
One week into implementation, total traffic in the tolling zone dropped by 7.5 per cent compared to the equivalent period last year.
Too often we use landmark or game changer to mean “quite good”. This paper? Yeah, it’s a real landmark paper - stunning data, superb analysis, science that would have been unthinkable 10 years ago. Congrats to @benlehner.bsky.social and team - phenomenal.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Sometimes I think, "Compared to geological time, living things exist for only little blinks," but other times I think, "actually, life is one continuous chemical chain that first formed billions of years ago and every mountain range that existed back then has long since crumbled away to dust."
This is an interesting article that has benchmarked the use of @nanoporetech.com for clinical diagnostics in New Zealand. Lots of people (including us) are looking to do the same so a timely publication.
Also, great to see my old colleague @polona.bsky.social on the author list 🙌
rdcu.be/d2UoA
I wish Trudeau had followed through on his promise of electoral reform back when he won his first majority. First-past-the-post doesn’t serve Canadians very well. Without #electoralReform, we’ll continue getting screwed with Con majorities despite having a left leaning electorate.
#cdnpoli#onpoli
We are proud to announce a collaboration with UK Biobank to create the world’s first large-scale #epigenetic dataset of 50k participants. The dataset will unlock crucial insights into how #epigenetics drives disease & the breakthroughs to treat them.
Read more: nanoporetech.com/news/oxford-...
A vertical takeoff of life science with #AI LLLMs.
Publication of 10 new foundation models of Proteins, DNA, RNA, methylation, cells, and interactions, evolution, and design in the past couple of weeks!
Unprecedented progress, reviewed in the new Ground Truths
erictopol.substack.com/p/learning-t...
Ultra-high-throughput screening of antimicrobial combination therapies using a two-stage transparent machine learning model https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.11.25.625231v1