Nick Loman

RFK Jr: “We're developing a universal vaccine at NIH which is a vaccine that addresses the entire phylum of viruses.” “It's a vaccine that mimics natural immunity and it is effective against any kind of mutation.” “We believe it's gonna be effective against not only coronaviruses but also flu.” “And it's gonna be a much safer and a much more effective vaccine.”

RFK has announced that he is developing a vaccine against all viruses. Yes, every single one. The whole, uh, "phylum"

Just announced - @smhopkins.bsky.social will be the new chief executive of the UK Health Security Agency @ukhsa.bsky.social. Starting in September.

Are we placing bets yet on which fairly-reputable journal will be first to announce that they are incorporating AI into reviewing to modernize & keep up with increasing paper volumes (*cough*) - but *don't worry* they have a *specially designed system* and it will be *fine*?

Lab Leak Fever The COVID-19 Origin Theory that Sabotaged Science and Society

Happy August.

Here is a little surprise for everybody: The english version of my book is finally available. You can get it on Amazon. You can also read and listen to it on my blog, where I will release the book as freely accessible serialized novel.

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www.protagonist-science.com/p/lab-leak-f...

After a four-year investigation, a breakthrough study reveals the cause of sea star wasting disease (SSWD). A strain of the bacterium Vibrio pectenicida is the culprit behind the marine epidemic that has killed billions of sea stars since 2013. Read the study: 🔗https://tinyurl.com/4rcb3xpf

‘Self-termination is most likely’: the history and future of societal collapse An epic analysis of 5,000 years of civilisation argues that a global collapse is coming unless inequality is vanquished

“Today, people find it easier to imagine that we can build intelligence on silicon than we can do democracy at scale, or that we can escape arms races. It’s complete bullshit.”
I am so here for this book. www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Technical blogging for growth and learning Writing a technical blog improves your writing, forces you to learn new things, helps others and yourself, and helps your career. This post: why blog, what to blog about, how to start, and using AI.

Writing a technical blog improves your writing, forces you to learn new things, helps others and yourself, and helps your career. In this essay: (1) why blog, (2) what to blog about, (3) how to get started, and (4) using AI. https://doi.org/10.59350/bqnfd-7p249 🧪

How to be a man The right story narrative about male attractiveness is grounded in Social Darwinism and free market economics. Can progressives tell a better story?

OK so feeling slightly apprehensive about this, which I suppose is kind of the point. This is an attempt at a progressive view on masculinity and on men getting laid. God help me. iandunt.substack.com/p/how-to-be-...

Every Scientific Empire Comes to an End America’s run as the premiere techno-superpower may be over.

This is as essential read, however, I wish it included references to contemporary history, e.g., Hungary, Brazil, Poland, Argentina, etc.

There are many recent examples in which science was under assault and destroyed - exactly what we're now seeing in the US.

www.theatlantic.com/science/arch...

It was great fun writing this review with @gemccallum.bsky.social , even if our conclusions are rather scary. Lots of important pathogen evolution must be occurring outside of the infection context...

Empowering bioinformatics communities with Nextflow and nf-core genomebiology.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.... 🧬🖥️🧪

nf-core is the standard by which "community" should be measured, and the countless hours by contributors has truly transformed the practice of bioinformatics over the past few years

Metagenomic estimation of absolute bacterial biomass in the mammalian gut through host-derived read normalization | mSystems In this study, we asked whether normalization by host reads alone was sufficient to estimate absolute bacterial biomass directly from stool metagenomic data, without the need for synthetic spike-ins, ...

You can get an accurate estimate of total bacterial biomass from stool metagenomes by simply normalizing by host read count, without needing any additional measurements.

Excellent work by UW Master's student Gechlang Tang in @asm.org #mSystems Journal.

journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/...
🧵

Reddit post on r/technology about young people and AI: "I recently heard about a teacher who instead of trying to circumvent students using AI, which is impossible, she made assignments by going "ask ChatGPT to write a report on this subject, and then research how and why it's wrong". Not only did the students discover that ChatGPT is extremely wrong a lot of the time, it also lead them to realise that they should not use it as a primary source".

This is one of the best ideas I've heard in ages.

Pleased to say that our preprint benchmarking Nanopore data for MLST, cgMLST, cgSNP & AMR typing from bacterial isolates is out! TL;DR you can get almost perfect results from 50x depth using live SUP basecalling with a GPU in under 20 hours #microsky#IDsky 🦠🧬🖥️ /1
www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...

Where did the "everything is everywhere" hypothesis of microbial ecology emerge?

When I heard the concept, I was confused that anyone suggested that hypothesis instead of "it is easy to contaminate samples."

How conspiracy theories about COVID’s origins are hampering our ability to prevent the next pandemic The COVID pandemic likely began when the virus jumped from animals to humans, and didn’t start in a lab. But false narratives continue to circulate.

You’ve been badly misled over COVID origins theconversation.com/how-conspira...

Large-scale processing of within-bone nutrients by Neanderthals, 125,000 years ago Neanderthals intensively processed a minimum of 172 large mammals for grease and marrow fat, 125,000 years ago.

So they found a 125,000 yr old Neanderthal fat rendering plant & I have thoughts.

Knowing that they loved saturated fat SO MUCH that they industrialized to get as much of it as humanly possible?

Makes me feel seen, heard, supported, etc www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

A twitter post explaining how you can “save PNGs to birds” by converting a drawing of a bird into a spectrogram then playing it to a starling who sung it back, reproducing the PNG.

Can’t wait to introduce bird-based storage into my backup system

Coordinated Aerial Logistics for Emergency Response and National Resilience at University of Birmingham on FindAPhD.com PhD Project - Coordinated Aerial Logistics for Emergency Response and National Resilience at University of Birmingham, listed on FindAPhD.com

The Health Protection Research Units have been hiring a lot recently for roles across public health, but this one is a little different:

Drones for public health emergency logistics!

Part of the @ukhsa.bsky.social and Uni Birmingham joint HPRU

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

The Last of Us: Developing a Genomic Epidemiology Toolkit for Fungal Outbreaks at University of Birmingham on FindAPhD.com PhD Project - The Last of Us: Developing a Genomic Epidemiology Toolkit for Fungal Outbreaks at University of Birmingham, listed on FindAPhD.com

Last week to apply for TWO PhDs with me and amazing supervisors at University of Birmingham

The Last Of Us - www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

Understanding pathogen diversity in maternal and neonatal populations - www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

I’m on holiday so can’t answer queries though

An image showing the ARTIC and Pathoplexus logos connected by blue lines, with the text "Hiring: post-doc/software engineer" and "Global open-source pathogen tools" and "Join Swiss TPH, Work on ARTIC2 and Pathoplexus, Basel, Switzerland"

📢New job posting!📢
Are you excited by the idea of building global infrastructure to make pathogen sequencing more accessible, interpretable, and equitable? 🧑🏻‍💻🧬

My group at @swisstph.ch has an opening working with ARTIC2, @pathoplexus.org, & Loculus - read on!

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PhD Microbial Genomics for Health Protection, Biosciences - University of Birmingham PhD in Microbial Genomics, exciting new Doctoral Training Programme in Microbial Genomics for Health Protection in collaboration with the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) launches

Just a few days left to apply for PhD positions in the Health Protection Research Unit - Public Health Genomics @imibirmingham.bsky.social.

preview-uob.cloud.contensis.com/research/cen...

I am offering two projects (on Clostridioides difficile & metagenomics of wastewater and freshwater).

Genome-resolved long-read sequencing expands known microbial diversity across terrestrial habitats - Nature Microbiology Nanopore sequencing of Danish soils and sediments yields genomes from over 15,000 microbial species, expanding the phylogenetic diversity of prokaryotes by 8%.

Genome-resolved long-read sequencing expands known microbial diversity across terrestrial habitats www.nature.com/articles/s41... #jcampubs

Fifteen years later, Science retracts ‘arsenic life’ paper despite study authors’ protests Belated decision on widely disputed 2010 study pleases some critics but puzzles and dismays others

Science finally retracts the Arsenic life paper www.science.org/content/arti...

World is in a mess but at least no one spaffs on about NFTs anymore.

🦠🧍‍♀️From bacterial to human immunity.

We report in @science.org the discovery of a human homolog of SIR2 antiphage proteins that participates in the TLR pathway of animal innate immunity.
Co-led wt @enzopoirier.bsky.social by D. Bonhomme and @hugovaysset.bsky.social

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

New sylph pre-built databases + taxonomy available for:

- GTDB-R226 (143k prok. species)
- GlobDB-R226 (>300k prok. species, thanks @daanspeth.bsky.social )
- UHGV (Unified Human Gut Virome Catalog, thanks @apcamargo.bsky.social )

Must update sylph-tax; see docs (sylph-docs.github.io/sylph-tax/)

Professor Robin May to join UKHSA as Chief Scientific Officer UKHSA has appointed Professor Robin May as Interim Chief Scientific Officer.

Huge congratulations to IMI's Prof Robin May @robinmay9.bsky.social who has been appointed as UKHSA's @ukhsa.bsky.social Interim Chief Scientific Officer - excellent choice! 🎉
www.gov.uk/government/n...

Early notice of NEW Wellcome Conference -
AIR 2026: Genomic and Systems Approaches to Respiratory Infection, Microbiomes and Immunity 11th-13th February, sign up below for notifications

coursesandconferences.wellcomeconnectingscience.org/our-events/c...

It's immunulogy AND it's microbiology 🫁

Officially reaching that near-recess point of delirium where I think things like this are a good idea

So go on, hit me