Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Reposted by Conor (Conchúr) Meehan

Terry McGlynn @hormiga.bsky.social · 1d

Y'all. I just got ChatGPT to do everything in R for this manuscript. I mean EVERYTHING. And it's all legit and reproducible. I'm shook.

How are we mentoring our trainees in statistics now? Who needs to learn coding in R line by line, and who doesn't?

scienceforeveryone.science/statistics-i...

Statistics in the era of AI

How do we mentor, teach, and do stats when AI can do so much of the work?

scienceforeveryone.science

25 19 77

Reposted by Conor (Conchúr) Meehan

Ewan Birney @ewanbirney.bsky.social · 22h

A reminder that the PhD program for EMBL is open for winter recruitment round. If you want to understand life at a molecular level and have a quantitative science (you don't have to have done biology - we love our mathematicians/physcists/chemists!) apply www.embl.org/about/info/e...

Application – EMBL International PhD Programme

www.embl.org

1 43 32

Conor (Conchúr) Meehan @conmeehan.bsky.social · 2d

The deadline for abstracts for the BSAC Antibiotic Resistance and Mechanisms workshop in November is closing October 10th. Come join us for a packed 2-day programme in Birmingham!
bsac.org.uk/antibiotic-r...

Antibiotic Resistance and Mechanisms (ARM) Workshop for Researchers 2025 - The British Society for Antimicrobial Chemotherapy

bsac.org.uk

1

Conor (Conchúr) Meehan @conmeehan.bsky.social · 8d

BBSRC Fellowships 2025 Triage Outcome Decisions were today. 277 applications, 42 put through to peer review and interview. A fellow I was supporting didn't get selected and BBSRC now offer *no feedback*.
Months of work and not a single iota of feedback for the applicant. Honestly, disgraceful.

1 2 1

Conor (Conchúr) Meehan @conmeehan.bsky.social · 10d

Noooooo don't send me away!

1

Conor (Conchúr) Meehan @conmeehan.bsky.social · 10d

For those interested in taxonomy/nomenclature, a nice paper on the use of sub-genus rank to 'resolve' taxonomy/naming disputes (like we saw in Mycobacterium recently)
www.microbiologyresearch.org/content/jour...

Leveraging the subgenus category to address monophyletic genus over-splitting: illustration with recently proposed Mycobacteriales genera

www.microbiologyresearch.org

1 3

Conor (Conchúr) Meehan @conmeehan.bsky.social · 13d

Equitable data sharing is paramount, and this article outlines a framework for fairly attributing datasets to authors. Would be great to see this widely implicated!
It was great being part of the consortium led by @lhug.bsky.social @alexjprobst.bsky.social and others.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

1 6

Reposted by Conor (Conchúr) Meehan

Zamin Iqbal @zaminiqbal.bsky.social · 14d

Delighted to see our paper studying the evolution of plasmids over the last 100 years, now out! Years of work by Adrian Cazares, also Nick Thomson @sangerinstitute.bsky.social - this version much improved over the preprint. Final version should be open access, apols.
Thread 1/n

14 150 300

Conor (Conchúr) Meehan @conmeehan.bsky.social · Sep 5

Our paper on the pangenome of the Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex is now out in its final form (version of record) in eLife! elifesciences.org/articles/97870

The Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex pangenome is small and shaped by sub-lineage-specific regions of difference

The accessory genome of Mycobacterium tuberculosis is small, but differences in gene content are found both between and within lineages.

elifesciences.org

6 14

Reposted by Conor (Conchúr) Meehan

franz @franzanth.bsky.social · Sep 4

I reread this over and over again and this absolutely breaks my brain

Craig Kaplan @triggerloop.bsky.social · Sep 3

Look at this crazy thing!
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

One mother for two species via obligate cross-species cloning in ants - Nature

In a case of obligate cross-species cloning, female ants of Messor ibericus need to clone males of Messor structor to obtain sperm for producing the worker caste, resulting in males from the same moth...

www.nature.com

8 39 150

Reposted by Conor (Conchúr) Meehan

Microbiology Society @microbiologysociety.org · Sep 3

That's correct! Read the full details about #Microbio26 attendance rates here - microb.io/425T0Yc

We will also be offering grants for the event. Applications for the Society Events Grant will open on 12 December 2025 and close on 2 January 2026 at 23:59 GMT.

2 4

Conor (Conchúr) Meehan @conmeehan.bsky.social · Sep 3

The @microbiologysociety.org conference next year will have a 2 day attendance rate again! So happy with this, especially as this year I can only make 2-3 days.

4

Reposted by Conor (Conchúr) Meehan

Colin Carlson @colincarlson.bsky.social · Aug 30

I went to work on my lecture over some ramen and the server asked if I worked in healthcare, because she’s a cancer bioinformatician who can’t find a job and is in now in tenuous visa territory. I’m so sad and angry about this country, and it keeps hitting me at the moments I don’t expect it

8 110 760

Reposted by Conor (Conchúr) Meehan

Tulio de Oliveira @tuliodna.bsky.social · Aug 10

Dr. Emilyn Costa Conceição, a remarkable Brazilian-African scientist, is making waves in the field of genomics with a purpose-driven approach. From the Amazon to Africa, she advocates for the importance of diverse voices in science. Read more about ceri.org.za/news/?token=...

2 6

Reposted by Conor (Conchúr) Meehan

John Innes Centre @johninnescentre.bsky.social · Aug 9

VACANCY - We’re recruiting for a visionary group leader to lead fundamental research on Discovery Plant Science as part of our vibrant research community

Successful candidate will be offered a six-year tenure-track position with the opportunity to apply for tenure:

www.jic.ac.uk/vacancies/gr...

42 31

Conor (Conchúr) Meehan @conmeehan.bsky.social · Jul 30

The most important prize of all!

Reposted by Conor (Conchúr) Meehan

Susie Grigson @susiegriggo.bsky.social · Jul 30

🚨 New preprint 🚨

My phage annotation tool, Phynteny, finally has a preprint and a brand new version powered by a cool AI transformer architecture and protein language models! #phagesky

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Synteny-aware functional annotation of bacteriophage genomes with Phynteny

Accurate genome annotation is fundamental to decoding viral diversity and understanding bacteriophage biology; yet, the majority of bacteriophage genes remain functionally uncharacterised. Bacteriopha...

www.biorxiv.org

4 42 83

Conor (Conchúr) Meehan @conmeehan.bsky.social · Jul 30

Submitted a Welcome Trust Discovery grant yesterday. Probably biggest application I've ever done with a great team of collaborators. Proud of this at least, no matter what happens next.
Is anyone needs me I'll be joining my cat Nebula in this pose.

4 28

Conor (Conchúr) Meehan @conmeehan.bsky.social · Jul 1

Some guidance and overview of current data on Doxy-PEP for STI control
journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Sage Journals: Discover world-class research

Subscription and open access journals from Sage, the world's leading independent academic publisher.

journals.sagepub.com

Conor (Conchúr) Meehan @conmeehan.bsky.social · Jun 23

Great presentation from Xenia at #esm2025 supported by @micronorman.bsky.social and @tlillebaek.bsky.social and others on decades of NTM isolates from patients and how it changes over those years.

3 8

Reposted by Conor (Conchúr) Meehan

European Society of Mycobacteriology @esmyco.bsky.social · Jun 22

A huge congratulations to
@jodyphelan.bsky.social from @lshtm.bsky.social l for receiving the Gertrud Meissner Award at #ESM2025! 🏆 His work on bioinformatic pipelines to predict drug resistance is truly impactful. Well deserved! 🎉 #Tuberculosis #Awards #Science

2 5

Reposted by Conor (Conchúr) Meehan

aurelianachilengue.bsky.social @aurelianachilengue.bsky.social · Jun 11

I am Honoured to have received the 2nd Prize at NTU's ⭐️ STAR (Science & Tech Annual Research) Conference!
Special thanks to my supervisors @conmeehan.bsky.social @blackpassiflora.bsky.social and collaborators @danwhiley.bsky.social @Kate Cox for the incredible support.
@arom-ntu.bsky.social

4 7

Reposted by Conor (Conchúr) Meehan

Maria Lopopolo @marialopopolo.bsky.social · May 29

Did leprosy exist in the Americas before European invasion? Our lab #aDNA study at @institutpasteur.bsky.social supervised by @nrascovan.bsky.social in collab with @avanzich.bsky.social (CSU) finds M.lepromatosis in pre-colonial Ancestors from North and South America www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Pre-European contact leprosy in the Americas and its current persistence

Leprosy, primarily caused by Mycobacterium leprae, is considered a disease introduced into the Americas during European colonization. However, the recent discovery of a second pathogen causing leprosy...

www.science.org

4 21 51

Conor (Conchúr) Meehan @conmeehan.bsky.social · May 29

Very excited for the @esmyco.bsky.social 2025 conference programme!
Come see me speak about M leprae SNP calling pipeline validationand @orentzfadia.bsky.social speak on some cool machine learning on the genus to find markers of pathogencitiy.

www.esmycobacteriology.eu/event-progra...

Programme | ESM

www.esmycobacteriology.eu

1 4

Reposted by Conor (Conchúr) Meehan

Kristian G. Andersen @kgandersen.bsky.social · May 28

You might be wondering why we haven't updated outbreak.info for months.

Well, the reason is that GISAID cut our access in January - as they did others. Without telling us.

After a ♾️ back and forth, that is now permanent.

More on that soon - and why GISAID should not be trusted with critical data.

3 120 240