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Tim Downing

@downingtim.bsky.social
114 followers 133 following 47 posts

@downingtim@genomic.social - also downingtim.bsky.social - Head of #Genomics at The #PirbrightInstitute (UK). He/him. All posts (etc) are in a personal capacity. I log in regularly, nearly every month. #Andacyclist #genomics #virus #pathogen #evolution

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Tim Downing @downingtim.bsky.social · 8h
New paper from my lab: Insights into goatpox virus and sheeppox virus genomes from pangenome graps Now out in Archives of Virololgy Including a new part on potential convergent evolution between sheep pox and goatpox doi.org/10.1007/s007...
doi.org
Insights into goatpox virus and sheeppox virus genomes from pangenome graphs - Archives of Virology
The capripoxviruses comprise three species: goatpox virus (GTPV), sheeppox virus (SPPV) and lumpy skin disease virus (LSDV). They are large double-stranded DNA viruses with highly conserved core genom...
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Kai Kupferschmidt @kakape.bsky.social · 15/10/2026
This summer, the @ecdc.europa.eu has so far counted 1715 locally acquired cases of West Nile virus infection, "the highest number of WNV infections in humans ever reported" in Europe. The disease also spread over a larger are than ever before. 🧪 wnv-monthly.ecdc.europa.eu #IDsky
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Gabriel Flynn @gabrielflynn.bsky.social · 14/10/2026
AI researchers warn technology 'months away' from being able to connect to wifi using eduroam
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Tim Downing @downingtim.bsky.social · 15/10/2026
Our new paper "A high-quality telomere-to-telomere lumpy skin disease virus genome assembly" Out now in the journal of general virology doi.org/10.1099/jgv....
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Emily M. Bender @emilymbender.bsky.social · 09/10/2026
2. But Anthropic researchers say they see patterns that suggest that Claude can. The employees at Anthropic are telling themselves stories based on the words they input into the software and the words that come back out. >>
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Kai Kupferschmidt @kakape.bsky.social · 10/10/2026
„Liability is a powerful incentive to behave responsibly. It speaks to corporations in a language they understand: Money. Artificial intelligence is an industry in need of incentives to behave responsibly, to judge by the litany of transgressions […] in recent months.“ #giftlink
nytimes.com
Opinion | Hold A.I. Companies Liable (Gift Article)
A.I. companies must operate under our laws.
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Carl Zimmer @carlzimmer.com · 05/10/2026
I'm delighted to kick off a new project from the @nytimes.com science desk called Unknowns. My contribution is an essay on the consciousness of babies. Gift link: nyti.ms/4jDfXLU
nyti.ms
Are Babies Conscious? (Gift Article)
By pinpointing when it begins in young humans, scientists hope to better understand what consciousness is, and how it arises, in all of us.
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Craig MacLean @craigmaclean.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Postdoc position available in my group to work on ERC funded project on evolutionary biology of antibiotic resistance. Looking for someone with expertise in bacterial genetics, AMR, and evolutionary biology. www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DSZ416/p...
jobs.ac.uk
Postdoctoral Research Associate at University of Oxford
Explore an exciting academic career as a Postdoctoral Research Associate. Don't miss out on other academic jobs. Click to apply and explore more opportunities.
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Nick Loman @pathogenomenick.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
This is spectacular: kudos to whoever did it meridian-ai.info
meridian-ai.info
Meridian — Pathogen surveillance, reasoned by AI, pandemic ready.
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Richard McElreath 🐈‍⬛ @rmcelreath.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Thoughts and prayers for research data managers everywhere. You are not alone. We will get through this together techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/excelbl...
techcommunity.microsoft.com
Excel now supports multiple values in a single cell | Microsoft Community Hub
Lists, arrays in cells, and nested arrays introduce new ways to store and organize related information, helping you keep data together without sacrificing...
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Dr Abeba Birhane @abeba.blacksky.app · 21/09/2026
"In a leaked document, the Irish Presidency proposes to EU Member States that the interest of OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Meta and SpaceX to make profits should take precedence over the fundamental right to data protection" noyb.eu/en/ai-eu-mem...
noyb.eu
AI: EU Member States plan “digital expropriation” of Europeans in the interest of AI companies
In a leaked document, the Irish Presidency proposes to EU Member States that the interest of AI companies to make profits should take precedence over the fundamental rights of Europeans.
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Aparna Nair @disabilitystor1.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
if you are reviewing an unpublished manuscript and you have the sheer unmitigated audacity, cheek, gall and laziness to upload it into an LLM to generate a review, let me tell you, you should be shunned and tarred and feathered
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Pat Schloss @patschloss.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
Let me get this straight. There's a title. There's a commentary article. There's an abstract. There's a set of bullet point highlights. There's a graphical abstract. AND YOU STILL THINK I NEED YOUR AI AGENT TO SUMMARIZE THE ARTICLE FOR ME?
AI BS from Cell
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Linda Koch @linkonrg.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
💡 Out now in Nature Reviews Genetics! Genomic insights into natural selection in recent human history go.nature.com/3T3JKT5 #Review by @pontus-skoglund.bsky.social & @iainmathieson.bsky.social Free to read here: rdcu.be/MgjB7Jgsy2Fa
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Prof Sarah-Jayne Blakemore @sjblakemore.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
www.the-scientist.com/wellcome-s-5...
the-scientist.com
Wellcome’s $50M Microbiome-Autism Project Gets a Serious Gut Check | The Scientist
A massive research program investigating causal links between the gut microbiome and autism sparked fierce pushback from scientific critics and advocacy groups.
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Julian Parkhill @julianparkhill.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
This will be an amazing opportunity for the right person. The Department of Veterinary Medicine in Cambridge is recruiting for an established chair who will also be our Head of Department. Your research can be in any area of veterinary science. Please circulate. www.cam.ac.uk/jobs/profess...
cam.ac.uk
Professorship of Veterinary Science
The Board of Electors to the Professorship of Veterinary Science invite applications for this Professorship from persons whose work is connected with veterinary science (ideally in research aligned wi...
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Mark Histed @markhisted.org · 16/09/2026
Scientist here: It is widely known inside science that this—top-down imposition of a research agenda—leads to mostly rote, boring, non-innovative work. Building an institute to do discovery science is hard: you hire young people, put them together, hope synergies arise and ideas fall out.
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MRC-UofG Centre for Virus Research @cvrinfo.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
Interested in using genomics, big data and AI to tackle future pandemic threats? The @cvrinfo.bsky.social is recruiting two PhD students through the DETECTIVE Doctoral Network 🦠🕵️‍♂️ shorturl.at/iLrfP
The hexagonal logo of the DETECTIVE project next to a researcher working in a lab
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Nature @nature.com · 13/09/2026
An abandoned quarry in southwestern China has given scientists an unprecedented glimpse into the lives and abilities of the mysterious ancient humans called Denisovans go.nature.com/4duLDza
go.nature.com
Who were the Denisovans? Rich trove of fossils and tools paints new picture
Nature - Objects found in a cave in southwestern China suggest that these enigmatic ancient humans were accomplished hunters.
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Ryan Hisner @ryanhisner.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
Question for virologists: Does anyone sample bat respiratory tracts for viruses? Seemingly all the coronavirus samples from bats are intestinal/fecal/abdominal cavity, etc. Genbank search for BetaCoV bat samples > 2000 nt show only 1 respiratory sample. All others unlabeled or else feces/GI tract.
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Nick Stroustrup @nstroustrup.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
Did you know that the cells of old animals contain much less mRNA than the cells of young ones? Let me share with you some results from an ongoing project in the lab, where we are finding that a progressive depletion of total mRNA abundance is a crucial part of aging 1/22
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Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 05/09/2026
The current NIH director is a grievance-driven weasel, a sycophant so desperately out of his league that he lacks even the most basic of bureaucratic reflex arcs: the impulse to protect if not expand his own domain.
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Max Kozlov @maxkozlov.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
🚨 The NIH is moving to transfer hundreds of millions of dollars in infectious-disease research projects to the DOD under a secret 10-year pact. Here’s what’s happening inside “Operation Prevailing Edge” 🧵👇 www.nature.com/articles/d41...
nature.com
Revealed: inside the US military's plan to tap huge sums from the NIH
An agreement paves the way for hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of projects to be transferred from the NIH’s institute for infectious diseases to the Department of Defense.
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Tim Downing @downingtim.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
eupha.org/articles/in-... Such an admiral individual. Time and wisdom for everyone. I was fortunate to have worked with him briefly. RIP.
eupha.org
EUPHA - In Memoriam: Prof. Anthony Staines, a public health leader for the people we serve
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Claus Wilke @clauswilke.com · 30/08/2026
I'm really frustrated by the constant fear-mongering about AI-designed superviruses. Can we focus on the things that should actually worry us, such as measles? blog.genesmindsmachines.com/p/im-sorry-y...
blog.genesmindsmachines.com
I'm sorry, you're not going to die from an AI-engineered supervirus
God save us from economists who think they can competently talk about biology
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Aylwyn Scally @aylwyn-scally.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
I see this as essentially accepting the ethical logic of hereditarianism, and a variant of Hume's 'is-ought' problem. As it happens, most hereditarian claims about biology fall into the category of 'not even wrong', being founded on misconceptions about genetics that date back many decades.
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NY Times Pitchbot @nytpitchbot.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
Doctors say that measles can kill young children. A guy who snorts cocaine off toilet seats and drives around with dead bear cubs in his car says they'll be fine as long as they eat enough beef tallow. For busy parents, it can be hard to know who to trust.
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Reese Richardson @reeserichardson.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
A massive update: At least ~15 companies~ are selling scientists antibodies using faked validation data. We've documented 18,000+ manipulated images on 17,000+ products sold by leading laboratory suppliers including Thermo Fisher, Abcam, Santa Cruz Biotechnology, Millipore Sigma and Bio-Techne. 1/🧵
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Casey Dunn @caseywdunn.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
My new book, Phylogenetic Biology, is now published. Available online for free at dunnlab.org/phylogenetic... . Physical copies can be purchased at shop.lightningsource.com/b/085?params... or your favorite bookstore.
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Adam Rutherford @adamrutherford.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
4) It's cowardly virtue signalling (I phrase I loathe): so few are willing to address the inherent bastardisiation of scholarly principles that allows cosplayers like Cofnas as scholars in the first place. 5) Cofnas' work is crap, and should never have been granted scholarly credibility.
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Adam Rutherford @adamrutherford.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
Things that are simultaneously true: 1) Academic freedom is sacrosanct 2) The reasons given for Cofnas' suspensions are spurious 3) Academics love signing petitions 1/n
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MU-Peter Shimon 🀄 @mu-peter.bsky.social · 21/08/2026
Denisovan leg bones from Taiwan reveal large body size🏺🧪 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... Shows Denisovan population at northern circle had larger body size than earlier H. erectus and Late Pleistocene H. sapiens in east Asia Study also suggests large Denisovan brain resulted partly from body size
Penghu 2 and Penghu 3 hominin leg bones.

Anterior (a), medial (b), and distal (c) views of the Penghu 2 right femoral shaft. Anterior (d), lateral (e) and distal (f) views of the Penghu 3 right tibia. Symbols: m=medial, p=posterior. Scale bar=10cm.
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Benjamin Riley @benjaminjriley.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
Both the Economist and others suggest this study demonstrates that AI can help students. So I contacted the lead researcher to figure out how many. Answer: Out of ~26,000 kids, a total of 20. And five months after starting to use AI, only four continued to spend 65 minutes on homework. Four.
Graph of student exam scores correlated to homework completion time for to groups, students using AI and those that did not. There is a slight spike for studens using AI who also maintained extensive homework completion time. As described in post, the number of students falling into this bucket was 20 out of 26,000.
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Dan Silverman @dmsilverman.bsky.social · 18/08/2026
I‘m far from an AI doomer, but it is amazing how many serious voices — on LinkedIn, no less! — are sharing stories about how AI slop is quickly becoming one of the top problems they see in academic writing and research “AI will 10x our research!” doesn’t seem to be surviving encounters with reality
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Steve Peers @stevepeers.bsky.social · 15/08/2026
Ok, some thoughts, as an olde tyme academic, on the Arday tragedy. First, allegations about causes. We don't know what was in his mind, but many people are keen to blame him, or woke lefties/academia, or the media. Some people are absolutely certain that the media are faultless. 1/
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Crow @abbyjane.cloverdalelane.com · 14/08/2026
I think about this a lot.
Tim Henke
@TimHenke9
eat shit, René Magritte
Translate Tweet
Mauv @ThatsMauvelous • 1d the machine refused to recognize my humanity until i professed to believe that a sign painted to look like a traffic light is indeed a traffic light.
Show this thread
Select all squares with traffic lights
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c0nc0rdance @c0nc0rdance.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
I want to talk about Ötzi the Iceman, a natural mummy found in the Alps in 1991 that was dated to 5300 years ago, the Copper Age. But in this thread, I want to talk only about why he carried with him two types of polypore ("shelf") mushrooms. One was for fire-starting, the other for medicine.
nationalgeographic.com
Scientists reconstruct Ötzi the Iceman’s frantic final climb
The famed mummy died from an arrow to the back on a high Alpine mountain pass 5,300 years ago. Now researchers are tracing his unusual movements right before his murder.
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Mahul Chakraborty @mahulchak.bsky.social · 07/08/2026
More broadly, the study illustrates how long-read sequencing and pangenome approaches can reveal functionally important variants that are missed by traditional reference-based analyses. The paper is now out in @genomeresearch.bsky.social genome.cshlp.org/content/36/7...
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Nature @nature.com · 10/08/2026
Without strong standards and smart oversight, artificial intelligence risks eroding the foundations of higher education, says Roberto Serrano go.nature.com/4hpPLn0
go.nature.com
I caught my students using AI to cheat in an exam — here’s what universities must do to stamp this out
Without strong standards and smart oversight, artificial intelligence risks eroding the foundations of higher education.
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SPAAM @spaam-community.bsky.social · 10/08/2026
The first #ancient #smallpox genomes from the Americas! 🦠🧬#Genomes from two #Inca-Colonial individuals in Chile reveal an extinct #Variola lineage, providing direct evidence of smallpox during the early colonial period. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... #MetagenomicsMonday #SPAAM #AncientDNA #aDNA
science.org
The genomic identity of early smallpox in South America
Smallpox was a major driver of population collapse in the Americas after European contact, yet the genetic identity of the causal strains remains unknown. Here, we report the first ancient smallpox…
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Bioinformatics Advances @bioinfoadv.bsky.social · 10/08/2026
🗺️ New in Bioinformatics Advances: "jsPCA: Fast, scalable, and interpretable identification of spatial domains and variable genes across multi-slice and multi-sample spatial transcriptomics data"  See it here: doi.org/10.1093/bioadv/vbag206 Authors include: @paulvilloutreix.bsky.social
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Glen O'Hara @gsoh31.bsky.social · 09/08/2026
When you don't listen for *years* to what loads of us who actually understand universities say, when you listen to a load of know-nothing frauds from think tanks and consultants and media loudmouths instead, this is the university disaster you make. Govts could have listened. They didn't.
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Razzball @razzball.bsky.social · 07/08/2026
gets incredible air here
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c0nc0rdance @c0nc0rdance.bsky.social · 07/08/2026
Dive photographer Alex Dawson captured this eerie tour of an underwater forest at Geiseltalsee, the largest artificial lake in Germany. Formerly an open-cast lignite coal mine, it was flooded 2003-2011 to create the lake. Let's talk about the geological history of this valley & why it was flooded.
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Bioinformatics Advances @bioinfoadv.bsky.social · 07/08/2026
📊 New study in Bioinformatics Advances: "scGraphVerse: A modular workflow for single-cell gene network inference"  Explore the paper: doi.org/10.1093/bioadv/vbag208
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Nature @nature.com · 07/08/2026
An AI model has revealed that some trusted numbers in one reference database have been wrong all along go.nature.com/4whJiOB
go.nature.com
AI agents are checking the scientific literature — and spotting decades-old errors
The technology is proving adept at finding faults in decades-old papers and reference databases.
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Sangyu Xu @xusangyu.com · 01/08/2026
DABEST2.0 paper is live! #statistics #reproduciblescience #estimation www.nature.com/articles/s41...
nature.com
Getting over ANOVA: estimation graphics for multi-group comparisons - Nature Methods
Nature Methods - Getting over ANOVA: estimation graphics for multi-group comparisons
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Darren Dahly @statsepi.bsky.social · 04/08/2026
Stop trying to explain what a p-value is in a single sentence (ICYMI) statsepi.substack.com/p/no-you-can...
statsepi.substack.com
No, you can't explain what a p-value is with one sentence (Parts I, II)
But I'm going to try and do it in as few as possible. #fml
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Kai Kupferschmidt @kakape.bsky.social · 01/08/2026
It's been two and a half months since the Ebola outbreak in the DRC was declared and it is now the biggest the country has ever experienced and the second largest the world has ever seen. Dozens of cases continue to be reported each day across three separate provinces. 🧪 insp.cd/sitrep-n077-...
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c0nc0rdance @c0nc0rdance.bsky.social · 31/07/2026
I love this image of the Great Buddha statue in Nara, with the tiny monks capturing the grand size of the statue (15 m/50 ft). It was built as part of the original temple complex by edict of Emperor Shōmu in 743 AD. Let's talk about how SMALLPOX spread Buddhism in Japan. (📷: Yomiuri Shimbun)
Monks remove dust from the Great Buddha statue at Todaiji temple in Nara.
CREDIT: The Yomiuri Shimbun
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