Colin Semple

MRC four-year International PhD programme: Human Genetics, Genomics and Disease | IGC Graduate Research & Training | Institute of Genetics and Cancer Applications now open.

Come to Edinburgh to study genomics and human disease!
We are recruiting to our 4 year PhD programme - closing date 11th January 2026
institute-genetics-cancer.ed.ac.uk/igc-graduate...

New preprint from the lab!
Profiling triple negative breast cancer samples over time, we looked at tumour genome responses to treatment. We reveal major roles for whole genome duplication (WGD) as these tumours evolve; with WGD seen in many pre-treatment samples, but also re-emerging at recurrence.

Looking for a new opportunity in computational genomics? Join our group @uoe-igc.bsky.social @edinburgh-uni.bsky.social

Deadline September 1!

elxw.fa.em3.oraclecloud.com/hcmUI/Candid...

Divergent trajectories to structural diversity impact patient survival in high grade serous ovarian cancer - Nature Communications Tumour evolution and heterogeneity in high grade serous ovarian cancer (HGSOC) remains poorly characterised. Here, the authors investigate the genomic landscape of HGSOC and reveal two distinct evolut...

New publication from the lab!
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Restoring Gold Standard Science By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, including section 7301 of title 5, United

tl;dr — this EO co-opts the language of open science to implement a system of political control wherein presidential appointees are given broad latitude to designate any number of reasonable scientific activities and inferences as scientific misconduct, and to penalize those involved accordingly.

Come and join us! We’re hiring a new Group Leader in Generative Biology at the @sangerinstitute.bsky.social

Building AI models or the data to train them?

Core funding of >$130M a year for a faculty of ~30.

www.nature.com/naturecareer...

acrobat.adobe.com/id/urn:aaid:...

pls RT!

CTCF-anchored chromatin loop dynamics during human meiosis - BMC Biology Background During meiosis, the mammalian genome is organised within chromatin loops, which facilitate synapsis, crossing over and chromosome segregation, setting the stage for recombination events and...

New publication from the lab! We used a machine learning approach to predict chromatin loop dynamics during human spermatogenesis - and find these structures do not direct gene expression but may drive the positioning of recombination events
bmcbiol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10....

Similar ideological currents are swirling on the other side of the pond. What happens if strains of anti-science politics gain influence in one or more places simultaneously? What exactly is our insurance against - say - the plug being pulled on databases at EBI/NCBI/DDBJ?

Watching the US take a wrecking ball to science 💔 🤯

Reminder of the importance of doing science in the open. Put data, software, resources in public domain, where no single govt can erase them. This is our collective knowledge. Distributed data systems are essential.

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Welcome to the Bluesky account for Stand Up for Science 2025!

Keep an eye on this space for updates, event information, and ways to get involved. We can't wait to see everyone #standupforscience2025 on March 7th, both in DC and locations nationwide!

#scienceforall #sciencenotsilence

#postdoctoral traineeships in the Hide Lab in Alzheimer's disease omics and in cancer immunoediting. #Spatial #snSeq? Integration?#compBiol We grow people and celebrate diversity @harvardmed.bsky.social @bidmcreseach.bsky.social @bidmc-cancercenter.bsky.social
learn more: shorturl.at/97TpL

Delighted to see this work emerge - exploiting a large in vivo mouse mutagenesis experiment to study evolutionary interactions between the nuclear and mitochondrial genomes during early tumourigenesis:
bsky.app/profile/bior...

Germline and somatic variation influence nuclear-mitochondrial crosstalk in tumourigenesis https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.02.11.637769v1

Opinion | American Science is Under Attack (Gift Article) The Trump administration hobbles research and endangers the public health.

American science is under attack

Opinion piece by Dr Harold Varmus, Nobel Prize winner, former director of the #NIH and the #NCI 🧪

“Perhaps what’s most disheartening is what feels like the absence of widespread opposition to this unraveling”

www.nytimes.com/2025/02/14/o...

Methods like this will be important to bridge the gap between large scale genomic datasets and much needed clinical trials of new drugs for cancers of unmet need.

We show that a novel computational method can exploit the large volumes of CRISPR screening data out there, to discover novel drug targets relevant to subsets of Glioblastoma tumours carrying particular biomarkers.

Systematic identification of context-dependent gene-essentiality in Glioblastoma: The GBM-CoDE platform Glioblastoma (GBM) is a heterogeneous and aggressive brain tumour that is invariably fatal despite maximal treatment. Genetic or transcriptomic ‘biomarkers’ could be used to stratify patients for trea...

A new preprint from the lab!

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

Prolonged persistence of mutagenic DNA lesions in somatic cells - Nature Persistent DNA lesions can occur throughout the human lifespan and can remain in the genome of affected cells for several years and generate a substantial proportion of the mutational burden.

Building on our discovery of #LesionSegregation, @mikespencerchapman.bsky.social and colleagues from @sangerinstitute.bsky.social find that some DNA lesions can persist in humans for months or years!

"Prolonged persistence of mutagenic DNA lesions in somatic cells"
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Manuscript logo, phylogenetic tree of mouse strains with different but highly reproducible patterns of cancer evolution. Demonstrated by rerunning cancer evolution in a controlled system.

To what extent is cancer development deterministic and predictable..?

Does the germline genome affect that predictability...?

Preprint: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Genetic background sets the trajectory of cancer evolution Human cancers are heterogeneous. Their genomes evolve from genetically diverse germlines in complex and dynamic environments, including exposure to potential carcinogens. This heterogeneity of humans,...

🌟NEW PREPRINT ALERT!🌟

We are very pleased to introduce #StrainDifferences: “Genetic background sets the trajectory of cancer evolution”

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

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We are hiring a new postdoctoral bioinformatician!
Come and work with us on multidisciplinary cancer genomics projects at the Institute of Genetics and Cancer in Edinburgh:
elxw.fa.em3.oraclecloud.com/hcmUI/Candid...

institute-genetics-cancer.ed.ac.uk
semplelab.com

Edinburgh skyline showing castle and Arthur's seat with blue sky

The SIDB PhD programme with projects on neurodevelopmental disorders (including one from our lab) is now open for applications. Good stipend, excellent environment and a beautiful city sidb.org.uk/phds/

Mutational scanning reveals oncogenic CTNNB1 mutations have diverse effects on signalling and clinical traits https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.11.09.566307v1 Abstract CTNNB1, the gene encoding beta-catenin, is a frequent target for oncogenic mutations activa

Mutational scanning reveals oncogenic CTNNB1 mutations have diverse effects on signalling and clinical traits https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.11.09.566307v1

Divergent trajectories to structural diversity impact patient survival in high grade serous ovarian cancer https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.01.12.575376v1 Deciphering the structural variation across tumour genomes is crucial to determine the events drivin

Divergent trajectories to structural diversity impact patient survival in high grade serous ovarian cancer https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.01.12.575376v1

Protein structural context of cancer mutations reveals molecular mechanisms and identifies novel candidate driver genes https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.03.21.586131v1 Advances in structure determination and computational modelling are enabling us to study the protein

Protein structural context of cancer mutations reveals molecular mechanisms and identifies novel candidate driver genes https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.03.21.586131v1

YouTube video by Led By Donkeys TESLA = TRUMP

How Musk broke Twitter and helped elect Trump
(Location: Tesla European HQ, Amsterdam)

www.youtube.com/watch?v=iX3v...

We are happy to announce the release of a new #nf-core workflow -- #oncoanalyser performs an exhaustive analysis of single-patient cancer sequencing data using methods developed by the Hartwig Medical Foundation Australia. (1/5)