Yeah a missed reference. I do cite some papers benchmarking single cell models (which some are now calling ‘virtual cells’). They don’t do well at all! I heard lotsa scepticism over whether ssRNA-seq is going to get us even close to useful virtual cells.

With huge thanks to my sources for their generosity with their time: @jbloomlab.bsky.social @eddieholmes.bsky.social @systemsvirology.bsky.social @peacockflu.bsky.social @firefoxx66.bsky.social @angierasmussen.bsky.social l Alex Sigal and Ravi Gupta @ahri-news.bsky.social & Susan Weiss.

After 5 years, 150k papers and 17 million genomes, here's what we learned about SARS-CoV-2 and viruses in general.

It holds lessons for future pandemics - only if we listen. "We’re in a worse place in terms of pandemic prevention" @eddieholmes.bsky.social told me.

www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Anyone been to Park Street lately? Me neither.

I wrote about Colossal's new woolly mouse (left), engineered with a mix of mammoth-inspired edits and mouse phenotypes. My story: www.nature.com/articles/d41....

20+ years ago Jackson Lab bred a 'wooly' mouse (right) missing a gene called Fam83g. bmcresnotes.biomedcentral.com/articles/10....

This. Again, RFK Jr is lying and needs to be called out as a liar by the press. This is the first U.S. death *in 10 years*! So yeah, pretty damn unusual.

I feel so strongly about the need for evidence-based policy and a dogged defence of science

I said it in 2020, and will reiterate it til the end of time.

The world may change - our principles should not

This is indeed a great story from Ewen (Science magazine has reported on this too). Ewen makes it properly clear that there are many questions about the functionality (or not) of all these "mini-proteins". Many may turn out to be "junk peptides". BUT...

I wrote for @natureportfolio.bsky.social about 'dark proteins' encoded by our genomes. Once overlooked, they may be central to cancers, cellular biology and evolutionary innovation. As @sebastiaanvheesch.bsky.social told me: "There's new biology here."

www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Hi palaeopeople - this new Robyn Pickering account is a fake. The real Prof Pickering is @pickeringrobyn.bsky.social

This new account has an extra ‘bsky’ after the handle and started DM-ing me immediately after I followed it.

The 2024 Nobel prize in physiology or medicine has been awarded to Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun, who discovered microRNAs, a class of tiny RNA molecules that help to control how genes are expressed in multicellular organisms. Read the Nature article. 🧪

Thanks! (I meant lost in news coverage if AF gets a gong next week. It's tempting and easy to give AI magic all the credit.)

Is there a free-to-read version? I pre-wrote an AlphaFold Nobel story last year that I'll probably update this week. One point that I hope doesn't get lost is that AlphaFold's success was enabled by decades of experimental work and freely available structures and sequences.