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Ed Hollox

@edhollox.bsky.social
646 followers 834 following 1.1K posts

Professor of Genetics at U of Leicester. Genome structural variation. "Anyone with gumption and a sharp mind will take the measure of two things: what's said and what's done." Views my own.

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Reposted by Ed Hollox
RTarlinton.bsky.social @rtarlinton.bsky.social · 5h
Ah well you’ve given me permission now… first up the “ orange/not orange” gene is in the X chromosome and cats like many other mammals display a fairly random x inactivation so if you are female and have one orange and one not orange gene you end up with patches of both ( tortoiseshell )
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Ed Hollox @edhollox.bsky.social · 4h
Makes absolute sense
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Ed Hollox @edhollox.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
As well as recycling old tropes, stating the vaguely obvious as profound ("use smarter tools, universities!), this article seems to be in cloud cuckoo land about what universities can realistically afford.
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Ed Hollox @edhollox.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
The full report is here. martingale.foundation/about-us/rep... chutzpah in the quote from Wellcome, the same Wellcome that cut all geographically-spread Doctoral Training Programmes a couple of years ago.
martingale.foundation
The Path to PhD - Martingale Foundation
report Socioeconomic Background and Barriers to STEM Postgraduate Study October 2026 SUPPORTED BY About the Report Martingale and partners have carried out the largest piece of research ever into the ...
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Kirsty Grainger @kirstygrainger.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
This was entirely predictable yet swept under the carpet seven months ago bsky.app/profile/kirs...
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Athena Kugblenu @athenakugblenu.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
HOLY SHIT I am watching Channel 5 again at my mums house and I just learned that Salvador Dali designed the Chupa Chups logo. Did you know this??
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Michael Hiller @hillermich.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
Happy to share results of the @bat1kgenomes.bsky.social phase 1, providing reference genomes covering 21 bat families. New insights into bat phylogeny, ancestral genome reconstruction, European origin & ancestral echolocation. Great work by a team of 100+ colleagues www.nature.com/articles/s41...
nature.com
Reference genomes and fossils revise bat family phylogeny and biogeography - Nature
An updated phylogeny of bats is presented, based on new genome assemblies and many ancient fossils and including all known bat families.
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Christophe 🔬 Leterrier @christlet.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
As they are not active here, I left a comment on the LinkedIn post from Nikon Small World about the concerns I think I share with many (first screenshot is their post, second screenshot is my comment) lnkd.in/p/ecdT6saZ
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Sam Freedman @samfr.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
The difference between the performance of immigrants in England and Western Europe is staggering. (20 pts equals a year of learning.) I looked at this in detail in the post - it can't be explained away by language or relative advantage of different immigrant communities. There is a policy factor.
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Ed Hollox @edhollox.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
Joy unconfined! @originstorypodcast.bsky.social - two blokes talking about John Rawls for an hour! Brilliant.
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Charlotte Lydia Riley @lottelydia.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
literally thousands of jobs in higher education were cut *last year alone* and there's been almost no media coverage and no government action
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Ed Hollox @edhollox.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
"The sort of chap who was always doing someone else's crossword." 🤣🤣💀
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Willem van Schaik @wvschaik.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
I missed this last month The University of Southampton 'will no longer use ubiquitous anti-cheating tools provided by Turnitin because of concerns that the company might use students’ work to train artificial intelligence.' www.timeshighereducation.com/news/southam...
timeshighereducation.com
Southampton dumps Turnitin over use of students’ work to train AI
Academic integrity giant denies accusations as university declines to renew contract in favour of ‘other options’
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Ed Hollox @edhollox.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
Sad news. Still going strong is Richard Wilson who was only 54 when he started playing legendary old grump Victor Meldrew (who in character was only 60 at the start...)
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Mark O’Neill 🐻 @radiobeartime.com · 18/09/2026
Lads I think we've peaked
Jane Austen's 8-bit Adventure

Classic literature meets classic gaming in Jane Austen's 8-bit Adventure! This 2D platformer stars Jane Austen herself, the beloved English novelist, who finds herself transported into an 8-bit video game.

Explore 8-bit England, battle characters ripped straight from Austen's novels, and defeat enemies the only way a proper author knows how — with a quill. Collect the scattered pages and restore Miss Austen's books to the 8-bit library before it's too late!

- Battle characters from Jane Austen's novels

- Explore 8-bit England

- Defeat enemies with a quill

- Restore Miss Austen's books to the 8-bit library
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Ko-Fan Chen 陳克帆 @kofanchen.biologists.social.ap.brid.gy · 18/09/2026
Interested in understanding how environmental light control #sleep in #Drosophila and other #Diptera species? Two potential #PhD opportunities to work in my lab from 2027 September, please see details in www.kofanchenlab.net/come-join-us and spread the words
kofanchenlab.net
Come Join US
Potential PhD project A
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Ed Hollox @edhollox.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
Oh the irony. I have consistently argued that although Willetts intended different universities to specialise in different things, the actual result is that they chase the same students by offering only popular subjects. The market doesn't care about UK linguistic capacity and intelligence.
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Kevin Mitchell @wiringthebrain.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
Excellent article by RJ Mackenzie @rjmsci.bsky.social on the highly dubious claims of autism-microbiome links and the sociology of the science around them 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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Ed Hollox @edhollox.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
Telegraph is so out of touch with modern school meals/catering that it thinks the housemaster's wife should be cooking the boys a eggs benedict every suppertime.
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Philip Ball @philipcball.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
In thisa piece for @thenewworldmag.bsky.social I express the wish for a better level of public discourse around AI that doesn't leave us hanging on every word of the alleged tech gurus. www.thenewworld.co.uk/philip-ball-...
thenewworld.co.uk
Apocalyptic AI fantasies are a stupid, annoying distraction from its real problems
The people who work in AI are not gurus and most of their predictions have been wrong. Working in the industry makes them less reliable commentators, not more
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Ed Hollox @edhollox.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
He hasn't been in post long, but McDonald is shaping up to be a catastrophic appointment.
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Ed Hollox @edhollox.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
"A credible warrant of quality over a credence good" is the most accurate strapline that we will never see in university promotional material!
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Ed Hollox @edhollox.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
Fascinating essay here on Kammerer.
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Kirsty Grainger @kirstygrainger.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
That anyone should be sacked via Teams in a UK University is utterly shocking. What is our sector if it is not the brilliant people that work in it. If you don't understand that, and don't treat people with a basic level of respect then you should not be in the sector.
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Sam Adams @samadams.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
I wrote about the four-hour documentary about the world’s most dangerous man. (Gift link) #TIFF26
slate.com
Some People Think Elon Musk Snapped. The Controversial Four-Hour Documentary About Him Suggests Something Else. (Gift Article)
Alex Gibney’s movie has an unfortunate twist.
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Philip Ball @philipcball.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
The "simple" argument is not that "if we create superintelligent AI, we face the problem of maintaining power, forever, over entities more powerful than ourselves." Stop this empty talk of "superintelligence" - the dangers are real, and are about human (and especially corporate) carelessness. /4
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Margot Finn @eicathomefinn.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
'In some respects, what we are seeing resembles a form of collective grief. Not only grief for colleagues who have left, but grief for ways of working, professional identities and communities that once gave meaning to academic life. This creates an important challenge for university leaders.'
wonkhe.com
The loss of staff belonging in higher education
Nick Hulbert-Williams argues that what looks like low morale and change fatigue in HE may really be a crisis of belonging
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Kirsty Grainger @kirstygrainger.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
New blog. Written before today's changes from UKRI. Full of lots of ideas (including an alternative to Distributed Peer Review). Publishing in a not quite finished form because I've sat on it too long - .I think it contains interesting thoughts anotherwayoflookingatit.substack.com/p/the-right-...
anotherwayoflookingatit.substack.com
The Right To Apply
Many thoughts on rising application numbers and peer review
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Graham Coop @gcbias.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
I’m looking to hire an NIH funded postdoc to join our lab here at Davis (please RT). Ongoing areas of interest include: 1) polygenic signals of selection from time series, ARGs, GWAS, etc 2) The interpretation of GWAS, polygenic scores, & sources of confounding
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Philip Ball @philipcball.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
I'm sympathetic to the argument in this piece that we should seek to find good uses for AI in education and child-raising, and not just recoil in horror. BUT... 🧵 www.theguardian.com/technology/2...
theguardian.com
I’m a father of three who studies the impact of artificial intelligence: this is what parents need to know about AI
A Dr Seuss-style story written in seconds alerted me to the power – and perils – of the technology. But how can children embrace it without forgetting core skills?
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Margot Finn @eicathomefinn.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
'Students are attending less, reading less, participating less, and often treating university as one commitment among many.'
wonkhe.com
Students are not disengaged, they are adapting to a thinner university
For Fredrick Agboma and Andrew Doyle, the question isn't whether students are less committed, but what culture they're asked to inhabit
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Sam Freedman @samfr.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
One reason England does so well is our second generation immigrants outperform their peers which is not true in most OECD countries. We are also very good at integration. And it's v sad that this is never acknowledge in debates on immigration.
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Wolfgang Huber @wkhuber.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
Been reading biomedical study proposals. It is remarkable how much old-fashioned concepts such as study design, sample size, biostats, "is there a plausible path from the data we'll obtain to the question we state?", have given way to "we'll collect multiomics and AI will figure something out"
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Kate Bevan @katebevan.com · 08/09/2026
Two things: one, no, it won't, because cancer isn't one disease with a single cure that's just waiting to be found, and two, why is the economics editor writing about tech, and indeed health research, when he clearly knows fuck all about either subject? www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
bbc.co.uk
AI will cure cancer in our lifetime, claims boss of UK chip giant
Arm Holding's chief executive Rene Haas says artificial intelligence will find a solution to the disease.
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Inigo Martincorena @imartincorena.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
Big paper alert! This project has been years in the making. A comprehensive description of somatic mutation rates and signatures across 53 tissues or cell types using NanoSeq. A large collective effort led by Mimy Pham, Mike Stratton and @r-rahbari.bsky.social. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
biorxiv.org
A comprehensive atlas of somatic mutation rates and mutational signatures in normal human cells
Over the course of a lifetime, somatic mutations accrue in normal human cells, causing variation in cell phenotype and engendering somatic evolution with outcomes ranging from the adaptive immune syst...
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Ed Hollox @edhollox.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
Excellent response to the bizarre article in The Economist on polygenic selection in embryos.
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Ed Hollox @edhollox.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
Just had a v rare visit to the other site. First post I see, some bloke complaining about a question about sexuality when submitting a paper to Science. Being wilfully enraged for clicks obvs, he doesn't have to answer it if he doesn't want to. Reminds me why I avoid x.
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Hetan Shah @hetanshah.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
Gosh when was the last time that a Prime Minister used the word ‘academia’? www.ft.com/content/2390...
He added: "We will back local industrial strategies, a policy of the Theresa May government I am happy to revive, by identifying priority sectors and developing the triple helix approach to economic development by entwining business, academia and government behind the plan.
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Ed Hollox @edhollox.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
As well as sophisticated, beautiful objects, direct proof that infants were fed milk from domesticated mammals in the Iron Age.
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Ed Hollox @edhollox.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
This has cheered me up. Good riddance.
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Cab Davidson @gnomeicide.bsky.social · 21/08/2026
Tuna used to be plentiful in the north sea. But no, you're not misremembering, there are no traditional recipes on the east coast. We didn't used to eat it. We just killed it. Sad thread on why. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
bbc.co.uk
First bluefin tuna caught and landed in Yorkshire since 1960s
A crew from Whitby lands two of the migratory species weighing over 300kg each in as many days.
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Ed Hollox @edhollox.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
Live and let DIY
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Ed Hollox @edhollox.bsky.social · 14/08/2026
A fantastic episode on a someone that I knew nothing about, and a nice change of time from @iandunt.bsky.social. Also, I too shared a moment reminiscing about Tricolore textbooks. Finalement, bring on @dorianlynskey.bsky.social 's idea about a special cut-price Lestah patreon subscription!
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Simon Pegg @simonpegg.bsky.social · 14/08/2026
We should get one of those National Alerts ahead of Whamageddon to be honest.
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21 Group @21group.bsky.social · 14/08/2026
After multiple sex harassment scandals at King's College Cambridge, Gillian Tett delivers masterclass in how to handle a crisis She acknowledges institutional weaknesses have allowed misconduct to happen And she appoints an external barrister to lead investigation www.varsity.co.uk/news/31922
varsity.co.uk
King’s announces externally led review following incidents of sexual misconduct
The review of the College’s institutional practices and wider culture is expected to conclude by March next year
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Mark A. Hanson @hansonmark.bsky.social · 14/08/2026
HIRING MICROBIOLOGIST: effective start asap! The PDRA/PDRF (per xp) will investigate the interactions of bumblebee antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) with the gut microbiota & more. Our work has shown AMPs have striking specificity for ecological microbes. careers.exeter.ac.uk/vacancies/13... 1/2
careers.exeter.ac.uk
Postdoctoral Researcher Associate or Fellow in Cornwall | University of Exeter
View details and apply for this Postdoctoral Researcher Associate or Fellow vacancy in Cornwall. Postdoctoral Research Associate / Fellow This job is part of an Advanced Research + Inventio...
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Mike Fainzilber @mfainzilber.bsky.social · 14/08/2026
🧪 "The aim of science is not to open the door to infinite wisdom, but to set some limit on infinite error". — Bertolt Brecht Via @economist.com quote of the day
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Ben Myring @benmyring.bsky.social · 14/08/2026
This is wonderful - if you need cheering up then this is a real tonic. ordinaryabundance.com
ordinaryabundance.com
Ordinary Abundance
A walk through a modern apartment, through the eyes of the people for whom everything in it was new.
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Ed Hollox @edhollox.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
I think it is a bit strange that fossil collections are somehow regarded as the property of a human construction - the nation state. It's good that it will be displayed in support of evolutionary understanding in the Middle East.
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oneoneoneone @oneoneoneone.bsky.social · 10/08/2026
Wild times on the UK MOTHS Facebook group.
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