Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Adam MacLean

@adamlmaclean.bsky.social

2.7K followers 460 following 170 posts

Assistant professor @USC. Modeling cell fate with dynamical systems & statistical inference. What makes a stem cell? macleanlab.usc.edu he/him

Posts Media Videos Starter Packs

Pinned

Adam MacLean @adamlmaclean.bsky.social · Nov 11

Hello! Re-introduction due to 🚀 of late

My lab studies cell fate. I 💙 haematopoietic stem cells, dynamical systems, Bayesian stats, single-cell genomics & ⚔️ metastatic cancer

I’m here for bsky as a place for kind discussion: deep dumb weird fun et al.

Also occasional kid content +/- science songs

1 3 28

Reposted by Adam MacLean

Paul Macklin @mathcancer.bsky.social · 7d

Really enjoyed talking about mathematical biology (and a little about being an associate dean) in @parmvir.com's Biology in Numbers podcast on the 2025 @smbmathbiology.bsky.social annual meeting!

Bolero superfans, don't @ me! 🧪

(I'm at 33:43)

podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/b...

S3 Ep1: SMB 2025

Podcast Episode · Biology in Numbers · 09/29/2025 · 53m

podcasts.apple.com

1 6 15

Reposted by Adam MacLean

Rita Strack @ritastrack.bsky.social · 8d

Please start following @natbiomedeng.nature.com! It's an alive account now and we will start posting good content!

1 10 38

Adam MacLean @adamlmaclean.bsky.social · 7d

Who knows if the cows were more or less interested in my poster than the poster session attendees would have been.

Also good idea @mathcancer.bsky.social to flip the script, it was great to hear from our host Parmvir too!

Adam MacLean @adamlmaclean.bsky.social · 8d

This was fun and great to learn about the research (and trivia) of colleagues from #SMB2025 this summer in Edmonton. Thanks to @parmvir.com for hosting a great podcast 🙌 🧬 🔢

podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/s...

1 2 5

Reposted by Adam MacLean

Parmvir K Bahia @parmvir.com · 8d

Also starring:
@adamlmaclean.bsky.social
@gosiaweh.bsky.social
@mathcancer.bsky.social
@thomasewoolley.bsky.social
Luis Sordo Vieira
Mobolaji Williams
Kira Pugh
and Francisca Olajide

@smbmathbiology.bsky.social #scicomm #BiologyInNumbers

Parmvir K Bahia @parmvir.com · 8d

This year's @smbmathbiology.bsky.social meeting provided us with another delightful mashup of math biologists (and me) talking about science, and in Amy's case, ultra-running and conference coffee ☕
Thanks to all the excellent attendees who agreed to speak with me for Biology in Numbers.

#scicomm

Amy Hurford @amyhurford.bsky.social · 8d

I do regret not asking @parmvir.com about her ultra-running in the podcast: open.spotify.com/episode/7rpv... but even better, she's interviewed here too!

2 4

Reposted by Adam MacLean

Javier del Campo @fonamental.bsky.social · 16d

Phylogenetic tree inference from single-cell RNA sequencing data www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... #singlecell

3 7

Reposted by Adam MacLean

Jazlyn Mooney @jazlynmooney.bsky.social · 16d

Super excited to see our reference bias work out in Cell! Reviewers gave us some excellent ideas, and Maria added on some new analyses that broke down how SNPs from heterospecific references mapped or did not map in a conspecific reference.

Maria Akopyan, PhD @akopyan.bsky.social · 16d

Now published in Cell! We found that ~15% of SNPs from divergent refs did not liftover as SNPs in the gray fox ref—half mapped to monomorphic sites, half failed to map. Co-authored with Matthew Genchev, @elliecat.bsky.social, and @jazlynmooney.bsky.social

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

1 4 13

Adam MacLean @adamlmaclean.bsky.social · Sep 4

😂 perfect

Adam MacLean @adamlmaclean.bsky.social · Sep 3

Sometimes I get the feeling I'm working in the wrong subfield of biology

www.cell.com/current-biol...

Wound-dependent leg amputations to combat infections in an ant society

Frank et al. provide the first example of the use of amputations to treat infected leg wounds in a non-human animal. The findings demonstrate that ants can adapt their treatment modality depending on ...

www.cell.com

1 7

Adam MacLean @adamlmaclean.bsky.social · Aug 12

Online now! Tumor dynamics & spatial proteomics-informed personalized predictions of growth & response

Beyond RECIST: mathematical modeling and Bayesian inference reveal the importance of immune parameters in metastatic breast cancer

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

5 12

Adam MacLean @adamlmaclean.bsky.social · Jul 28

"When they see us coming
The birdies all try an' hide
But they still go for peanuts
When coated with cyanide."

Reposted by Adam MacLean

MathOnco @mathonco.bsky.social · Jul 25

In this week's post Jesse Kreger (@adamlmaclean.bsky.social‬) discusses his latest work in #cancer #systems #immunology together with Edgar Gonzalez to study the mechanisms of response of breast cancer to #checkPointInhibitors

Discovering mechanisms of response via CSI (Cancer Systems Immunology)

mathematical-oncology.org

2 1

Adam MacLean @adamlmaclean.bsky.social · Jul 19

Thanks for the great science and great company. Next year will be time to swap the poutine for pilsner and I'll hope to see you in Graz! #SMB2025

1 2

Adam MacLean @adamlmaclean.bsky.social · Jul 19

For the most part everything ran on time! Also crucial to success of course, as well as being just good manners. I wholeheartedly endorse the session chair energy of Kelsey Gasior:

"If you run over time, I will body slam you off stage."

1 1

Adam MacLean @adamlmaclean.bsky.social · Jul 19

I was overall really impressed with the organization, bravo to the team. The venue worked well; this is IMO crucial to a great conference experience in that it permits ease of hopping between parallel sessions (bar a few squeaky doors) to cram in as many minisymposia talks as is humanly possible.

Adam MacLean @adamlmaclean.bsky.social · Jul 19

In terms of themes, I feel like more than even I saw an emphasis on rigorous inference of one's models to data, not just in methods talks but in applications; big fan of that! I also appreciated great talks that dug deep into complex tumor microenvironments and cell state transitions within them.

Adam MacLean @adamlmaclean.bsky.social · Jul 19

Couldn't leave Canada without breakfast poutine. Some scattered thoughts and Takeaways from #SMB2025...

I had a super fun week, so many conversations, short and long, with science friends old and new.

1 1 7

Adam MacLean @adamlmaclean.bsky.social · Jul 18

Yep. There are a lot that don't say a lot.

Adam MacLean @adamlmaclean.bsky.social · Jul 18

This is such a cool paper and dataset from lab of @arjunraj.bsky.social. There are [ahem] a lot of spatial transcriptomics papers out there. Here's a [rare?] example of one from which we can truly learn some interesting things...

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

Single-cell spatial mapping reveals reproducible cell type organization and spatially-dependent gene expression in gastruloids

Gastruloids are three-dimensional stem-cell-based models that recapitulate key aspects of mammalian gastrulation, including formation of an anterior-posterior (AP) axis. However, we do not have detail...

www.biorxiv.org

2 5 31

Adam MacLean @adamlmaclean.bsky.social · Jul 18

Mohit Jolly kicking off the last day of #SMB2025 presenting a compelling case for understanding EMT via gene exp "teams"

Ending with a heartfelt shoutout to the 'SMB team'

Q: Which is more important: the journey or the destination?
A: the company.

1 4

Adam MacLean @adamlmaclean.bsky.social · Jul 16

Fantastic plenary this morning from @yosoykit.bsky.social highlighting the power of stochastic processes to inform clinical decision-making in gastrointestinal cancers. #SMB2025

1 1 9

Adam MacLean @adamlmaclean.bsky.social · Jul 15

Followed by a compelling description of the genome as a bureaucracy... even if we argue over the relative utility of the information processing capabilities of the cell, it's redundancies (compared to human-made systems) are impressively expansive. #SMB2025

1 2

Adam MacLean @adamlmaclean.bsky.social · Jul 15

Kicking off day 2 is plenary from Fred Adler with some lovely badly-drawn diagrams, always great to see alternatives to the hegemony of the diagrammatically bland biorender et al.

#SMB2025

2 2 8

Reposted by Adam MacLean

Jason Moore @moorejh.bsky.social · Jul 14

#medicaid HT The New Yorker

1 1 14

Adam MacLean @adamlmaclean.bsky.social · Jul 14

"Patients should be their own control"

- great & pithy takeaway from @sandyanderson.bsky.social in his talk on the adoption of adaptive therapies in the clinic #SMB2025 #MathOnco

6 15