Reminder: deadline to apply for the Stem Cell Summer School is 30th May. And it's May already! So you have to apply this month!

A limited number of bursaries are available.

p.s. this year, the summer school coincides with the Spetses Armata Festival, so there will be a big party on the island 🙂

Congratulations Matt!

Fully-funded PhD opportunity in mathematical biology and applied mathematics with Pascal Buenzli and me at Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, Australia. Details at smb.org/Member-Forum... @smbmathbiology.bsky.social

Our framework enables more accurate prediction of CH's clinical impact, moving us closer to personalized risk assessment and potential intervention strategies.

MACS120 outperformed traditional measurements (like variant allele frequency) in predicting mortality risk and showed increased correlations with the speed of change in blood markers like lymphocyte and albumin levels.

Considering these factors, we developed MACS120 - a novel metric that combines mutation fitness and acquisition timing to predict maximum clone size a mutation will reach over a lifetime.

Third, we discovered a strong correlation between mutation timing, or age at time of mutation acquisition (ATMA), and fitness. Higher fitness mutations tend to appear later in life - possibly due to declining quality control mechanisms with age.

Similarly, mutations can have different fitness effects depending on what other mutations are present in the same clone. For example, ASXL1 mutations have higher fitness when co-occurring with SRSF2 than with TET2.

Second, we found that clonal coexistence matters! Mutations don't grow in isolation - when multiple clones are present in the same person, they alter each other's overall contribution to the production of blood cells.

First, we confirmed gene-specific fitness differences: RNA splicing mutations (like U2AF1, U2AF2) show higher fitness than epigenetic regulator mutations (like DNMT3A, TET2).

Our key insight: Three factors, mutation fitness (growth advantage), mutation timing, and clonal structure (which mutations occur together) are needed to understand the progression and clinical impact of CH.

We integrated data from 713 individuals across 3 longitudinal aging cohorts (2,341 observations total) and developed models to understand the dynamics of CH mutations over time. #CancerResearch #ClonalHematopoiesis

Clonal hematopoiesis (CH) is common in aging populations and associated with increased risk of blood cancers and other diseases. But what determines which CH mutations will progress to disease?

It's great to see the follow-up to our 2022 study on mutations in ageing blood out on bioRxiv, lead by the talented @elatorre.bsky.social – it was a pleasure to work with you again.

Investigating a polarity switch in bird wing feather development at University of Sheffield on FindAPhD.com PhD Project - Investigating a polarity switch in bird wing feather development at University of Sheffield, listed on FindAPhD.com

Matt Towers & Alex Fletcher are advertising a fully funded PhD project to investigate feather development in @drn-sheffield.bsky.social at @sheffielduni.bsky.social 🐥🦈🔬

Come join us - it'll be a super cool project!

Send me a message if you have any questions 🧪

www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

SIAM Activity Group on Life Sciences Early Career Prize | SIAM Established in 2016, the prize is awarded to an individual in their early career for research contributions in the field of mathematics applied to the life sciences.

Nominations sought for the 2026 SIAM Activity Group on Life Sciences Early Career Prize!

Deadline May 1, 2025.

Eligibility criteria and more information: www.siam.org/programs-ini...

The 2025 Stem Cell Summer School! We get outstanding feedback each year & should probably update our testimonials page 🙃
www.stemcellsummerschool.org/testimonials
This is an advanced course for experienced PhD students (2nd yr & up), postdocs & Junior PIs

It will be great.
Please spread the word

7 days left to apply for @ai4bicdt.bsky.social PhD project with me, Guillaume Blin @edinuni-irr.bsky.social and Peter Humphreys
Join us to advance scientific machine learning methods for biomedical discovery science

www.ai4biomed.io/research/pro...

Only 3 days left to apply for these PhD projects in Edinburgh

Neural crest migration is driven by a few trailblazer cells with a unique molecular signature narrowly confined to the invasive front Summary: Single cell mRNA profiling defines a group of leading cells in migratory neural crest. Key factors expressed in these cells regulate the behaviour of the migrating neural crest population.

Reminds me of my PhD work modelling neural crest migration (+ earlier work by Louise Dyson). Great to see your thorough exploration of this in other biological systems as well
journals.biologists.com/dev/article/...
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

How does regulation of stem cell proliferation interplay with multistate dynamics?

I'm chuffed to have my first PhD student Rodrigo García-Tejera's second article (with me) published in @dev-journal.bsky.social, great collaboration with @amoyellab.bsky.social and Ramon Grima.

Applications open for a new cohort of @dev-journal.bsky.social *Pathway to Independence* fellows

Know a #devbio post-doc about to enter the academic job market?

Would they benefit from a little support & mentoring?

Spread the word

Deadline 31 Jan 2025

journals.biologists.com/dev/pages/pi...

I must admit that this annotated Nature abstract remains a useful recipe for constructing a summary paragraph. I show it to my students every time we get started.

You should chat to incoming Collaboratorium fellow Eric Latorre-Crespo about clonal haematopoeisis and ageing.

Mathematical modeling of pancreatic islet behaviour for the improvement of islet transplants in Type 1 Diabetes Precision Medicine Project - Mathematical modeling of pancreatic islet behaviour for the improvement of islet transplants in Type 1 Diabetes

Interested in using your quantitative, computational, and theoretical skills to research better ways to treat human diseases?

Apply for a Precision Medicine PhD in Edinburgh!

There are 3 projects with me:
usher.ed.ac.uk/precision-me...
usher.ed.ac.uk/precision-me...
usher.ed.ac.uk/precision-me...