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psathyrella.bsky.social

@psathyrella.bsky.social
32 followers 56 following 14 posts
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Reposted by @psathyrella.bsky.social
Yun S. Song @yun-s-song.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
We are excited to announce a new faculty position in AI for Biology at UC Berkeley. Please repost & share this opportunity with outstanding early-career researchers in your networks. Apply by Nov 9, 2026: aprecruit.berkeley.edu/JPF05560
aprecruit.berkeley.edu
Assistant Professor - AI for Biology - Electrical Engineering & Computer Sciences and Center for Computational Biology
University of California, Berkeley is hiring. Apply now!
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Bloom lab @jbloomlab.bsky.social · 23/07/2026
In new study led by @bdadonaite.bsky.social, we show many influenza HAs (H5, H7, H9, H1, H2, H3) can use avian or human MHC-II to enter cells. We then use novel combo of deep mutational scanning & cryoEM to define how H5 HA binds to avian MHC-II. Preprint: doi.org/10.64898/202...
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Frederick "Erick" Matsen @matsen.bsky.social · 24/06/2026
Coding tools are great at producing code. But they don't fit how I do science, where the manuscript is the central artifact. So I built bipartite: manuscript-driven development with a team of agents, directed the way a PI directs a group. matsen.fredhutch.org/general/202...
matsen.fredhutch.org
Bipartite: manuscript-driven development with a team of agents
Bipartite is an agent orchestration system built around a simple idea: the manuscript is the source of truth, so understanding a project should mean reading its paper.
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Stephen Lu @matrixmaster.me · 08/06/2026
Antibody LMs learn what looks antibody-like, but not how selection turns naive germline antibodies into strong binders. @aakarshv1.bsky.social and I are excited to share CoSiNE, a model that learns this germline-to-mature process for variant effect prediction and antibody design. (1/8)
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William DeWitt @wsdewitt.github.io · 05/06/2026
This started in 2019 as daydreamy PhD student musings with Tatsuya Araki. We're as excited as ever about germinal centers as a platform for experimental evolution. Many thanks to PIs @victora.bsky.social @matsen.bsky.social, co-1st authors Ashni Vora and Tatsuya, and many other key collaborators!
cell.com
Replaying germinal center evolution on a quantified affinity landscape
Antibody affinity maturation results from a somatic evolutionary process that takes place in the germinal center. A “parallel replay” experiment on germinal center B cells reveals the evolutionary for...
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David Simons @davidsimons.bsky.social · 04/06/2026
1/7 New #ecology preprint out. We’ve spent half a century searching for Arenavirus and Hantavirus reservoirs, but it turns out global surveillance is essentially just us looking under the nearest streetlight. It is decoupled from actual host biodiversity.🧵 doi.org/10.64898/202...
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Dan Schrider @samurscicop.bsky.social · 31/05/2026
Andy Kern, who doesn't (really) have an account here, would like to share his group's new tool for speeding up pop gen summary stat calculations using GPUs. Check it out here: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... And see his thread over at the other place: x.com/pastramimach...
biorxiv.org
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William DeWitt @wsdewitt.github.io · 31/05/2026
Marc Feldman and Jessica Riskin with another withering critique of a "sociogenomics" popularization: "...you can’t add or subtract factors that interact, such as genetic and environmental influences. How much of a rainbow’s formation is due to moisture in the air and how much to sunlight?"
nybooks.com
Not in Your Genome | M.W. Feldman, Jessica Riskin
Generations of “sociobiologists” have tried and failed to argue that genetic analysis offers the key to understanding social inequality. A new book fares no better.
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Gabriel Victora @victora.bsky.social · 29/05/2026
Happy to share our latest preprint on the clonal dynamics of GC “refueling.” We asked what happens at the clonal level after the simple (and ubiquitous) step of delivering a second vaccine dose during an ongoing GC response. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
biorxiv.org
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William DeWitt @wsdewitt.github.io · 29/04/2026
Arc Institute’s “MULTI-evolve” learns a classical additive model, not epistasis. Preprint (w/ Gian Marco Visani and Aayush Verma): www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... Blog: dewitt-lab.github.io/posts/2026-0...
dewitt-lab.github.io
Additivity is all you need?
Arc Institute’s “MULTI-evolve” learns a classical additive model, not epistasis.
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Gytis Dudas @evogytis.bsky.social · 22/04/2026
Please share! My lab has an open fully-funded PhD position at Vilnius University's Life Sciences Center in Lithuania. The PhD project will involve identifying missing orthomyxovirus segments from public sequence data. Applicants must hold an MSc by June & have bioinformatics experience. 1/2
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Inigo Martincorena @imartincorena.bsky.social · 15/04/2026
Excited to share our latest work in Nature. Applying single-molecule and single-cell DNA sequencing methods, we uncover an extraordinary landscape of somatic mutations in immune checkpoint genes in autoimmune B cells, suggesting that somatic mutations may be key to autoimmunity [1/n] rdcu.be/fdqbr
rdcu.be
Polyclonal selection of immune checkpoint mutations in thyroid autoimmunity
Nature - Polyclonal selection of immune checkpoint mutations in thyroid autoimmunity
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William DeWitt @wsdewitt.github.io · 07/04/2026
Results from an @sfiscience.bsky.social postdoc "research jam" now published at @prxlife.bsky.social
journals.aps.org
Ignition Criteria for Trigger Waves in Cell Signaling
Employing a minimal but biochemically relevant model of trigger waves, this study obtained an analytic expression for wave ignition thresholds in cell signaling in 1D and numerical solutions in 2D and...
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William DeWitt @wsdewitt.github.io · 11/03/2026
NEE Focus issue on "Evolution in medicine", including a comment article from @alisonfeder.bsky.social and me.
nature.com
Context dependency is essential for predicting intrahost evolution - Nature Ecology & Evolution
The ability to predict rapid evolutionary processes within our bodies would advance both medical science and evolutionary biology. We discuss technologies that move us towards intrahost evolutionary p...
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Gabriel Victora @victora.bsky.social · 24/02/2026
One more trick pulled off by antibody-mediated feedback www.cell.com/immunity/ful...
cell.com
Antibody-mediated feedback modulates interclonal competition in the germinal center
Antibodies generated by prior immune responses regulate B cell responses upon recall immunization. Barbulescu et al. examine whether antibodies produced by an ongoing immune response influence the out...
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Yun S. Song @yun-s-song.bsky.social · 21/02/2026
Can we simulate realistic evolutionary trajectories and “replay the tape of life”? In this work, we propose a flexible, generalizable deep learning framework for modeling how the entire protein sequence evolves over time while capturing complex interactions across sites. 1/n doi.org/10.64898/202...
doi.org
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William DeWitt @wsdewitt.github.io · 22/12/2025
How much better is an ancestral recombination graph (ARG) than a site frequency spectrum (SFS)? For recovering mutation rate history, we can answer fairly precisely because both ARG and SFS are linear transforms of mutation rate history. This blog post uses spectral analysis to clarify the picture.
dewitt-lab.github.io
Observability of mutation rate histories from ancestral recombination graphs
This post explores mathematical aspects of recovering mutation rate histories from an ancestral recombination graph (ARG) Vs a sample frequency spectrum (SFS), expanding on a recent collaborative pape...
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Gytis Dudas @evogytis.bsky.social · 18/12/2025
This isn't in international media yet but Lithuania is in crisis. The ruling coalition is trying to seize control of our public broadcaster LRT using expedited parliamentary procedures. European & Venice Commissions are aware & we've been protesting for the last two weeks. Things are looking grim.
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Frederick "Erick" Matsen @matsen.bsky.social · 11/12/2025
Over the past 5+ years I've had the honor of working with @wsdewitt.github.io @victora.bsky.social and many others on a project to "replay" affinity maturation evolution from a fixed starting point. matsen.group/general/2025...
matsen.group
Replaying evolution to learn about the fitness landscape of affinity maturation
A five year collaboration with the Victora lab is bearing fruit for evolutionary biology.
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Frederick "Erick" Matsen @matsen.bsky.social · 13/11/2025
The last five months with Claude Code have completely changed how we work. matsen.group/agentic.html details: • How agents work (& why it matters) • Git Flow with agents • Using agents for science • The human-agent interface Questions? What has your experience been?
matsen.group
Agentic Coding For Scientists
A four-part series on using coding agents like Claude Code for scientific programming, covering fundamentals, workflows, best practices, and the human side of AI-assisted development.
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Gabriel Victora @victora.bsky.social · 08/11/2025
Check out our latest preprint on the effects of antibody-mediated feedback on ongoing germinal center reactions, led by Alex Barbulescu and @janabilanovic.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
biorxiv.org
Antibody-mediated feedback modulates interclonal competition in the germinal center
Serum antibodies from prior immune responses regulate B cell activation and germinal center (GC) access upon recall immunization. However, how antibodies produced by an ongoing immune response influen...
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Armita Nourmohammad @thearmita.bsky.social · 16/10/2025
excited that this paper is finally out in @pnas.org : www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... Led by Gian Marco Visani (effort initiated by Michael Pun), fantastic collaboration with @pgtimmune.bsky.social @asya-minervina.bsky.social and Phil Bradley.
pnas.org
T cell receptor specificity landscape revealed through de novo peptide design | PNAS
T cells play a key role in adaptive immunity by mounting specific responses against diverse pathogens. Effective bindings between T cell receptors ...
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Volodymyr Minin 🇺🇦🇺🇸 @vmminin.bsky.social · 05/10/2025
In another display of incredible resilience, Ukrainian mathematicians in 2022(❗) opened a new International Centre for Mathematics in Ukraine (ICMU): icmu.ua/en It was pleasure to give an online mini-course on Bayesian Statistics to Ukrainian students and scientists: icmu.ua/en/events/in...
icmu.ua
International Centre for Mathematics in Ukraine - ICMU
ICMU supports top-level research in mathematics, with special emphasis on training younger generations of scientists and the development of mathematics in Ukraine.
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Yun S. Song @yun-s-song.bsky.social · 22/09/2025
We are excited to share GPN-Star, a cost-effective, biologically grounded genomic language modeling framework that achieves state-of-the-art performance across a wide range of variant effect prediction tasks relevant to human genetics. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... (1/n)
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Gytis Dudas @evogytis.bsky.social · 22/09/2025
My MSc student Indrė Blagnytė has a #preprint up on @biorxivpreprint.bsky.social on influenza D virus: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1.... Flu D was discovered back in 2011, mostly circulating in cattle. Despite lots of research, a comprehensive analysis of its phylogeography had been missing. 1/6
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William DeWitt @wsdewitt.github.io · 27/08/2025
A short blog post about a recent preprint (work hatched as a very fun all-postdoc collaboration at @sfiscience.bsky.social)
dewitt-lab.github.io
A dynamical perspective on triggering multiscale immune responses
Preprint: BH Schlomann, WS DeWitt, Y Zhang, K Shah. Ignition criteria for trigger waves in cell signaling. arXiv:2508.16810 [q-bio.CB]
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Frederick "Erick" Matsen @matsen.bsky.social · 19/08/2025
Why does selection feel so weak relative to mutation in affinity maturation? A new blog post giving three perspectives, including our new transformer-based model of natural selection on antibodies: matsen.group/general/202...
matsen.group
The term 'affinity maturation' understates the influence of somatic hypermutation
Three recent papers quantify how nucleotide-level mutation processes drive antibody evolution.
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psathyrella.bsky.social @psathyrella.bsky.social · 16/08/2025
In a new preprint we use deep learning on lineage trees to infer the functional form of the relationship between affinity and fitness that controls antibody evolution in germinal centers: arxiv.org/abs/2508.09871 🧵
arxiv.org
Inference of germinal center evolutionary dynamics via simulation-based deep learning
B cells and the antibodies they produce are vital to health and survival, motivating research on the details of the mutational and evolutionary processes in the germinal centers (GC) from which mature...
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Yun S. Song @yun-s-song.bsky.social · 15/08/2025
Antibodies are highly diverse, but most possible sequences are unstable or polyreactive. In this work, just published in Cell Syst., we propose a new source of data for modeling constraints from these properties. Our models show clear improvements in predicting Ab dysfunction. (1/n) t.co/qCZERPUMPF
t.co
https://authors.elsevier.com/a/1lbX08YyDfuZWX
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Jiansi Gao @jsigao.bsky.social · 17/06/2025
Excited to share my new preprint developed with @matsen.bsky.social, in collaboration with Marius Brusselmans, Luiz Carvalho, @msuchard.bsky.social, and @guybaele.bsky.social, on the biological causes and impacts of tree space ruggedness in phylodynamic inference. 1/ www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
biorxiv.org
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Gabriel Victora @victora.bsky.social · 05/06/2025
Wanted to highlight our latest preprint--a huge effort by multiple people and labs, but led primarily by @wsdewitt.github.io, Tatsuya Araki, and Ashni Vora, in a very close wet-dry collaboration with @matsen.bsky.social’s lab at the Hutch www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
biorxiv.org
Replaying germinal center evolution on a quantified affinity landscape
Darwinian evolution of immunoglobulin genes within germinal centers (GC) underlies the progressive increase in antibody affinity following antigen exposure. Whereas the mechanics of how competition be...
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Frederick "Erick" Matsen @matsen.bsky.social · 20/05/2025
New blog post: our recent work to understand the somatic hypermutation process that enables antibodies to incrementally improve. A story of running into the limitations of deep learning, but still gaining biological insight along the way. matsen.group/general/2025...
matsen.group
Two new approaches to learn about antibody somatic hypermutation
We try to learn about SHM mechanism and do so by directly using mechanistic models, and by exploring deep architectures.
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Frederick "Erick" Matsen @matsen.bsky.social · 18/05/2025
matsen.group/general/2025...
matsen.group
Let's blog!
My return to blogging, and why I hope to read your blog too.
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Kevin Zollman @kevinzollman.com · 19/02/2025
I have a new paper about these cute little guys (and some girls)! White-necked Jacobins are interesting because all males and some but not all (!) females are brightly colored. The scientific question is why some but not all females? (Img credit: Kate & Sam)
A picture of a white-necked Jacobin hummingbird with a blue head, long beak, blue-green shoulders, and a white belly. The hummingbird is sitting on a branch and staring into the camera.
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Michael Eisen @mbeisen.bsky.social · 19/12/2024
Kudos to NIH for getting rid of the odious 12 month delay in public access (a capitulation to the demands of scientific societies). But, as the new policy assumes grantees will continue to publish their work in traditional scientific journals, it remains unacceptable. grants.nih.gov/grants/guide...
grants.nih.gov
NOT-OD-25-047: 2024 NIH Public Access Policy
NIH Funding Opportunities and Notices in the NIH Guide for Grants and Contracts: 2024 NIH Public Access Policy NOT-OD-25-047. OD
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Sheryl Weikal says Prosecute ICE @leftistlawyer.com · 18/11/2024
Where do our rights come from? Believe it or not, the United States has been rolling back our rights for 40 years. The biggest expansion of the peoples' rights in American history actually occurred between 1953 and 1969, during the period of American history known as the "Warren Court." THREAD.
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