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

6,339 Followers  |  5,321 Following  |  1,338 Posts  |  Joined: 22.08.2023
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Posts by Zamin Iqbal (@zaminiqbal.bsky.social)

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Do they think people have literally no memory of past events at all?

07.03.2026 21:59 β€” πŸ‘ 1405    πŸ” 375    πŸ’¬ 63    πŸ“Œ 40
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‘ 6344    πŸ” 2403    πŸ’¬ 124    πŸ“Œ 196

"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‘ 13    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‘ 171    πŸ” 80    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‘ 251    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‘ 201    πŸ” 104    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‘ 17133    πŸ” 5975    πŸ’¬ 514    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‘ 8    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‘ 8332    πŸ” 2879    πŸ’¬ 201    πŸ“Œ 452

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‘ 76    πŸ” 23    πŸ’¬ 6    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

Nobody here needs to be told that Reform's claims of cheating are utterly absurd but it's worth noting that the anti-Reform vote was so large that even if the Greens and Labour had split it 50/50 Reform would still have lost β€” in fact they would have come third. They only value democracy if they win

27.02.2026 10:54 β€” πŸ‘ 426    πŸ” 98    πŸ’¬ 10    πŸ“Œ 2

There are millions of people who have that stomach. We just need to get them into public office.

27.02.2026 13:48 β€” πŸ‘ 772    πŸ” 109    πŸ’¬ 14    πŸ“Œ 3
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Article - Nuffield Politics Research Centre

@martamiori.bsky.social and I have been writing, since 2024, about why Labour's 'Reform' challenge and emphasis was based on a misunderstanding of Labour's vote. Here for anyone interested: politicscentre.nuffield.ox.ac.uk/news-and-eve...

27.02.2026 08:02 β€” πŸ‘ 129    πŸ” 70    πŸ’¬ 3    πŸ“Œ 18
Unrooted phylogeny indicating the major clades of Mycobacterium bovis found in Ireland.

Unrooted phylogeny indicating the major clades of Mycobacterium bovis found in Ireland.

The genomic diversity and spatial patterns of Mycobacterium bovis in Ireland revealed by whole genome sequencing rdcu.be/e50zT

27.02.2026 10:42 β€” πŸ‘ 8    πŸ” 3    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

This could be true, I don't know how we'd know really. What do you mean by load/requirements for ENA - they are under load, and submission has tricky requirements?

27.02.2026 09:16 β€” πŸ‘ 0    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0
⚑️πŸ’ͺEnergym⚑️πŸ’ͺ
YouTube video by Comptoir IA ⚑️πŸ’ͺEnergym⚑️πŸ’ͺ

This spoof is fantastic, not least for the aging choices they’ve made for the tech broligarchs. youtu.be/zdkBUuWCZg4?...

27.02.2026 08:26 β€” πŸ‘ 30    πŸ” 11    πŸ’¬ 3    πŸ“Œ 0

One interesting thing we did is look at rate of submission bacterial sequence data to INSDC. Logistic fit is surprisingly good - inflexion during the pandemic. So, the data no longer looks like exponential growth. Projected to 2035 just for the hell of it, let's see.

27.02.2026 09:02 β€” πŸ‘ 16    πŸ” 1    πŸ’¬ 2    πŸ“Œ 0

Cheers Ewan! Was very glad to see our protein structure predictions get into EBI AFDB! Open databases FTW!

26.02.2026 16:18 β€” πŸ‘ 1    πŸ” 1    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0