Zamin Iqbal's Avatar

Zamin Iqbal

@zaminiqbal.bsky.social

Professor of Algorithmic and Microbial Genomics at the University of Bath (UK). Pangenomes, drug resistance (esp TB), data structures for DNA search, plasmid evolution, global microbial surveillance. Open Data, reproducibility

6,342 Followers  |  5,321 Following  |  1,344 Posts  |  Joined: 22.08.2023
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Posts by Zamin Iqbal (@zaminiqbal.bsky.social)

thanks!

09.03.2026 10:04 β€” πŸ‘ 0    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0
Reddit screenshot from Glasgow thread. Bright flames rising out the side of a Victorian building.

Reddit screenshot from Glasgow thread. Bright flames rising out the side of a Victorian building.

Video screenshot from Reddit. Building is now a shell with flames visible in every window.

Video screenshot from Reddit. Building is now a shell with flames visible in every window.

The roof has collapsed embers rise into the night sky.

The roof has collapsed embers rise into the night sky.

The fire at Glasgow central station is utterly devastating. Shops, homes and our transport link to England are being wiped out.
I am amazed by the limited news coverage.

08.03.2026 21:11 β€” πŸ‘ 1742    πŸ” 787    πŸ’¬ 81    πŸ“Œ 106

yes, but I maybe would have expected to see many different trends in different fields, adding up to some kind of star of ladders. I don't know really.

08.03.2026 21:25 β€” πŸ‘ 1    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

Yes I have no idea what I'd expect and it'll depend on what data they analysed

08.03.2026 15:04 β€” πŸ‘ 0    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0

I'd better check what they constructed this from

08.03.2026 14:32 β€” πŸ‘ 0    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0
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Did not expect this:

"To illustrate this evolution, a phylogenetic tree constructed from the similarity of word content of abstracts shows a remarkably regular β€˜ladder-like’ topology, with each successive year being most similar to its preceding year"
from journals.biologists.com/bio/article/...

08.03.2026 14:31 β€” πŸ‘ 11    πŸ” 1    πŸ’¬ 2    πŸ“Œ 0

Anyone aware of data on how the number of scientists publishing papers has changed over the last 100 years? (also the number of papers)

08.03.2026 14:20 β€” πŸ‘ 4    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 1

Just fascinating to see Blair, a man whose reputation was ruined by the Iraq war, advocate joining a war that is exponentially stupider and more chaotic. How is it possible to learn nothing from the worst mistake of your life?

08.03.2026 11:56 β€” πŸ‘ 4199    πŸ” 776    πŸ’¬ 288    πŸ“Œ 79
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Do they think people have literally no memory of past events at all?

07.03.2026 21:59 β€” πŸ‘ 1762    πŸ” 475    πŸ’¬ 73    πŸ“Œ 47
Caitlin KALINOWSKI over X

I resigned from OpenAl. I care deeply about the Robotics team and the work we built together.
This wasn't an easy call. Al has an important role in national security. But surveillance of Americans without judicial oversight and lethal autonomy without human authorization are lines that deserved more deliberation than they got. This was about principle, not people. I have deep respect for Sam and the team, and I'm proud of what we built together.

Caitlin KALINOWSKI over X I resigned from OpenAl. I care deeply about the Robotics team and the work we built together. This wasn't an easy call. Al has an important role in national security. But surveillance of Americans without judicial oversight and lethal autonomy without human authorization are lines that deserved more deliberation than they got. This was about principle, not people. I have deep respect for Sam and the team, and I'm proud of what we built together.

OpenAI head of robotics just resigned over company deal with the Pentagon saying…

β€œSurveillance of Americans without judicial oversight and lethal autonomy without human authorization are lines that deserved more deliberation than they got”

07.03.2026 19:05 β€” πŸ‘ 7118    πŸ” 2659    πŸ’¬ 141    πŸ“Œ 211

"novel transformer-based model, Popformer, for learning encodings of general patterns of genetic variation...includes site-wise and haplotype-wise attention.... The model is pre-trained with an analog of the masked language modeling objective across a range of real human genomic data"

07.03.2026 07:47 β€” πŸ‘ 15    πŸ” 3    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0
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Excited to share this preprint that describes my latest work on using GPUs to accelerate processing of RNA-seq data.

The title says it all: "RNA-seq analysis in seconds using GPUs" now on biorxiv www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... and github github.com/pachterlab/k...

Figure 1 shows they key result

06.03.2026 19:32 β€” πŸ‘ 179    πŸ” 85    πŸ’¬ 6    πŸ“Œ 8

The good kind of infighting. Creasy explaining very clearly why the policy sucks. More power to the backbenchers

05.03.2026 22:53 β€” πŸ‘ 250    πŸ” 35    πŸ’¬ 9    πŸ“Œ 3
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Sovereignty for sale Tech monopolies and the future of the nation state

New post just out:

"Sovereignty for sale"

The UK is uniquely exposed to the power of US tech monopolies - from Palantir to AI and cloud services.

Why is it so dangerous? What are other countries doing? And what should we do?

(Β£/free trial)

open.substack.com/pub/samf/p/s...

05.03.2026 09:03 β€” πŸ‘ 213    πŸ” 106    πŸ’¬ 14    πŸ“Œ 13
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FT comments section this morning - saying what everyone else is thinking, right?

05.03.2026 07:15 β€” πŸ‘ 17162    πŸ” 5982    πŸ’¬ 513    πŸ“Œ 493
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New AI in genomics fellowship with the sanger institute and Google DeepMind A new research fellowship will explore the application of AI in genomics, funded by Google DeepMind.

Postdoc on AI/biology funded by asanger and DeepMind!

www.sanger.ac.uk/news_item/ne...

04.03.2026 22:43 β€” πŸ‘ 10    πŸ” 5    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0
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Spanish PM SΓ‘nchez responds to Trump:

"Spain is against this disaster... Govts are here to improve people's lives... It is absolutely unacceptable that those leaders who are unable to fulfill that mission use the smoke of war to hide their failure, and in the process, fill the pockets of a few."

04.03.2026 11:24 β€” πŸ‘ 8345    πŸ” 2882    πŸ’¬ 201    πŸ“Œ 451

right, deleted, sorry both!

04.03.2026 14:20 β€” πŸ‘ 0    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0

er...yes, sorry :-(
i'm not really adding to the discourse am I, maybe i should delete

04.03.2026 12:58 β€” πŸ‘ 0    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0
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Bhattacharya urges measles vaccination as US activity increases

"According to the New York Times, the United States asked PAHO for the deadline to be pushed back, with some experts again noting the administration does not want to lose elimination status before the midterm elections."

www.cidrap.umn.edu/measles/bhat...

04.03.2026 11:38 β€” πŸ‘ 2    πŸ” 1    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0

"..used the tech to identify peptide inhibitors of transcription factor CREB1, which is overactive in a broad range of cancers ..
They have shown these peptides can enter human cancer cells grown in the lab, shut down CREB1-controlled pathways, and selectively kill cancer cells."

04.03.2026 10:59 β€” πŸ‘ 3    πŸ” 1    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0
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New paper showing that bacteria with more genes for cooperation can live in a broader range of habitats and that genes for cooperation are more more likely to be in the accessory genome www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... @lauriebelch.bsky.social

04.03.2026 10:23 β€” πŸ‘ 55    πŸ” 24    πŸ’¬ 2    πŸ“Œ 0
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I felt the need to write to my MP yet again

03.03.2026 11:01 β€” πŸ‘ 80    πŸ” 23    πŸ’¬ 7    πŸ“Œ 2
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First mRNA COVID-flu combo vaccine set for European approval Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use (CHMP) backs Moderna’s mCombriax vaccine for adults aged 50 and over.

Coming to Europe...

#Medsky #IDsky #influenza #COVID #vaccines #Moderna #MRNA

02.03.2026 18:44 β€” πŸ‘ 26    πŸ” 14    πŸ’¬ 5    πŸ“Œ 3

Starmer's ability to find the exact sweetspot which pisses off everyone is extraordinary. He's a savant.

01.03.2026 21:25 β€” πŸ‘ 2878    πŸ” 534    πŸ’¬ 84    πŸ“Œ 24

Help me out #MicroSky - what are your favourite microbial/viral genetics practical classes for undergraduates that can be run across just two sessions?

23.02.2026 12:43 β€” πŸ‘ 2    πŸ” 3    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

If Reform had won Starmer would be on his knees to those voters begging for forgiveness. Greens win and it's like "Fuck off cranks"

28.02.2026 11:04 β€” πŸ‘ 422    πŸ” 63    πŸ’¬ 13    πŸ“Œ 3

Not even hiding the belief that there are Real Voters (white, male, perhaps working class when politically convenient) and Fake Voters (graduates, Muslims, people in cities, anyone on the left regardless of class or ethnicity). A belief shared by many on the Labour right

28.02.2026 11:20 β€” πŸ‘ 128    πŸ” 27    πŸ’¬ 12    πŸ“Œ 3

This is terrible from Starmer. Just absolute trash. And any normal voter looking at the new MP and then reading this description will think him mad.

27.02.2026 21:15 β€” πŸ‘ 1507    πŸ” 274    πŸ’¬ 122    πŸ“Œ 14

The man who brought you β€œIsland of Strangers” has views on divisive politics

27.02.2026 14:13 β€” πŸ‘ 113    πŸ” 28    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0