Rebee

New preprint out! Fun collaboration with the Herod Lab 🦠🧬

Excited to share that our norovirus NS3 study is now online in Nature Communications! 🎉 These enzymes, found across an entire order of RNA viruses, have long been molecular motors in search of a function. We think we’ve uncovered their role. (🧵) www.nature.com/articles/s41... #virology #cryoEM

While Ed can’t make #Nido2026, the lab is well-represented by Max Erdmann, and @rebee.bsky.social ! They will be sharing some of the labs findings on coronavirus replication! Catch Max’s talk tomorrow (Wed) at 3:25, and Rebee’s poster C-0036

Sign it here petition.parliament.uk/petitions/76...

We're hiring! The British Science Association is looking for a Grants and Learning Manager (fixed term until Dec 2027) to join our Grants Team in delivering The Ideas Fund. Applications close at midnight on Sunday 5th July 2026. All the details: www.britishscienceassociation.org/grants-and-l...

New preprint out today lead by collaborators at Zürich!

Learn more about the latest long read cDNA sequencing upgrade by ONT and bambu-pipe for analysing single cell and spatial long read RNA-Seq data, presentation by @suiyue-0823.bsky.social @goekelab.bsky.social #RNA26 github.com/GoekeLab/bam...

How every day should start 😻🌞🌳☕️

Reminded of someone trying to "train" LLMs to do "sorting", to prove LLMs can "solve problems". Not only a) are LLMs not reliable, but also b) sorting is a computationally easy to solve task, c) we have many efficient algorithms for it, and d) LLMs unnecessarily bloat the resource consumption.

Forgotten my joy for tissue culture and audio books! Good job I just did three time courses back to back to remind myself 🤣🦠

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what will it take for our universities to start abandoning genAI

🚨 New paper from the lab! 🚀 We explore “The dynamics and strategy of RNA replication in astroviruses”, now out in NAR Molecular Medicine. Many thanks to all co-authors and congratulations to David Noyvert on his first first-author paper🎉 doi.org/10.1093/narm...

Rapid release of multiplex PCR amplicon scheme for Andes hantavirus whole genome sequencing validated on control material: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... @scalene.bsky.social @stevepullan.bsky.social @ukhsa.bsky.social output from HPRU in Public Health Genomics

folx, I’ve been working on AI "ethics" for almost a decade now & hate to tell you there’s no such thing as "ethical AI" the only "ethical principle" that works is regulating the shit out of the industry & to take back control of our autonomy, fundamental rights, freedoms & right to exist w/out AI

Happy to share new preprint is now on bioRxiv: "Ultraviolet exposure conditions skin to enhance arbovirus infection and mosquito probing" Led by our then PhD student now Dr. @ailishmccafferty.bsky.social this work asks how UV-exposed skin shapes mosquito-borne virus infection. (1/4)

Baric, who is among the most-cited coronavirus researchers in the world, says his lab’s work played pivotal roles in helping companies bring COVID drugs and vaccines to market, saving millions of lives. “My payment for this is to be debarred?” he asks. “I’m being strung out for being a scientist.“ 🧪

New preprint! Current T7-based MNV reverse genetics can be performed by co-transfecting plasmids encoding T7 RNA polymerase and vaccinia capping enzymes. We see a further 100-1000-fold boost in titres by incorporating CD300lf-expressing BSR-T7 cells into this system. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Chatbots offer a magnificent bribe - a fast, frictionless route to information that bypasses the discomfort of learning. In this op-ed, we describe this as a Faustian bargain, in which we trade away what it means to be human & universities trade away their value www.irishexaminer.com/opinion/comm...

Congrats to Dr @stephenholmes.bsky.social on passing his PhD viva today! Thanks to examiners Al Darby and @mtrost.bsky.social!

Fellowship application unsuccessful! First of many I am sure. Might be worth looking to leave Liverpool - if anyone in my network is looking for lecturers/junior group leaders. Hit me up. Virology, informatics, sequencing, RNA mods etc. 🦠🧬🧑‍💻

We have landed at Festival of Genomics! 🧬 First stop at Alida Bio! One of the companies to keep an eye out for if you’re interested in RNA mods… and if you’re not. Why?! Also big thanks to Jerome for giving me the special alida tube stand 🤩 favourite colour and everything! #FoG26 #RNAmods

The future is RNome 🧬 New publication out today summarising the ECR experience of the Human RNome consortium meeting in Frankfurt last August! Thanks to coauthors @bennetthenzeler.bsky.social @ramibechara.bsky.social et al for getting this across the line!! www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Machine learning enables scalable and systematic hierarchical virus taxonomy - @sullivan-lab.bsky.social go.nature.com/4qoPli9

It’s happening again…. Used to be straight on this kind of message during the pandemic. Going back there is kind of difficult… how would you handle this… basically. Help. 🦠

In this Perspective, Ryan Langlois hypothesizes that antiviral genes are evolutionarily selected for their function at fever temperatures yet are commonly studied at basal temperatures, a potential blind spot in our understanding of antiviral gene mechanisms. rupress.org/jem/article/... #Virology

The scikit-bio paper in online in Nature Methods! Many thanks to our collaborators, community contributors and reviewers! We couldn’t have done it without you. www.nature.com/articles/s41... #Bioinformatics #OpenSource

Congratulations again to the excellent @idb-virology.bsky.social for this amazing science communication piece. Please go and watch the videos and keep the vision alive! Yes it is the viral lifecycle being explained by roller skaters…

New preprint: Viral protease-mediated polyprotein processing in human astroviruses Great collaboration with Lulla lab. And the first of @leandroxneves.bsky.social proteolysis stories. More coming soon! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

New preprint from the lab, and joint first authors @biomarkella.bsky.social and @stephenholmes.bsky.social! Single-cell phenotypic analysis and multiplet detection through incorporation of microscopy data into cellenONE-based single-cell proteomic data analysis www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

big moves! so that's Parse -> Qiagen Scale -> 10X Genomics Fluent -> Illumina next-gen single-cell cell omics, capable of processing 10^6 to 10^8 cells i wonder if what the near term looks like - will commercial kits stagnate while the buyers rebrand?

Te Tiriti obligations don't disappear just because the government claims they're not necessary. He Whakaputanga and Te Tiriti o Waitangi are the foundation on which Aotearoa stands, and continue to have legal authority. Without them, there is no kāwanatanga. www.archives.govt.nz/discover-our...

Identification of Capture Phases in Nanopore Protein Sequencing... arxiv.org/abs/2511.0... --- #proteomics #prot-preprint

RNA Virus Journal Club – Upcoming Talk - this thursday (Nov 6th !) With @rdrpsummit.bsky.social - excited to announce talk and discussion with Dr Sanguu Kim about HF nanopore sequencing strategy for virology :) calendar.app.google/oyRVP6v5Tvjg... CET: 14:00–15:00, Format: 30 min + 30 min

www.cidrap.umn.edu/covid-19/onl...

🦇🩸⚰️ Happy Halloween! 🧛🩸🦇 Same-sex sexual behaviours in bats were first documented in 1895! Here's a more recent study: www.italian-journal-of-mammalogy.it/Same-sex-sex... #Halloween #HappyHalloween #histsci #histbio #STS #GLAM #queer #lgbtq #queernature #PrideInSTEM 🌈🗃️

First evidence in the UK of breeding aegypti mosquito – the main spreader of dengue, chikungunya and Zika. Dr Marcus Blagrove writes for The Conversation highlighting the need for enhanced mosquito surveillance and proactive strategies to mitigate future risks. bit.ly/3KKlGQP #TeamLivUni

Something not so sciencey… off to Barcelona next week to screen a documentary my partner has produced and I’m excited! Any Nick Garrie fans? 🎸🎥

Viral AlphaFold Database (VAD) is live in Science Advances ~27,000 predicted viral protein monomers & homodimers Conserved folds across bacteria, archaea & eukaryotic viruses New toxin–antitoxin system KreTA uncovered Vast “functional darkness” remains uncharted www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Following recent decisions by pharmaceutical companies to scale back investment, the UK Parliament’s Science, Innovation and Technology Committee is seeking written evidence on the competitiveness of the UK’s life sciences sector.

Full thread will come later, but @annacusco.bsky.social's preprint on the dog pet gut microbiome is out! Using ONT+Illumina, we get better MAGs than to corresponding species representative in public databases doi.org/10.1101/2025...

Our year-long project on Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (#EDI) strategies in the UK’s science and tech sectors has drawn to a close with a new report exploring data collection, analysis and insight. Read our findings and recommendations >> www.britishscienceassociation.org/News/report-...