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Matt Bashton

@mattbashton.bsky.social

Associate Prof in Computational Biology at Northumbria University, Newcastle, UK. Structural and High Throughout Sequencing Bioinformatics, Protein Domains, Pandemic Preparedness.

513 Followers  |  1,662 Following  |  27 Posts  |  Joined: 20.10.2024  |  1.9837

Latest posts by mattbashton.bsky.social on Bluesky

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NuPhyยฎStudio|Mechanical Keyboard & Gaming Keyboard & Computer Keyboard Nuphy sells various styles of mechanical keyboards that are popular among gamers and programmers. Users can choose from a variety of switches that differ in resistance, tactile feedback, and noise lev...

NuPhy also has some more tame keyboards, which are generally well received too. nuphy.com

26.01.2026 18:53 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 1    ๐Ÿ” 0    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 1    ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

Lol just say throcky gasket in the M and S food advert voice ๐Ÿคฃ, seriously the world of keyboards has gone crazy with levels of refinement and customisation..

26.01.2026 18:48 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 1    ๐Ÿ” 0    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0    ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

OMFG! THIS, this stupid pop-up is the bane of my existence, every bloody time I log-in, it never goes away, and the countless time's it's asked me negates any saving, I'd really like to know who is responsible for this dialogue and where I file a ticket to remove it from the universe!

26.01.2026 18:41 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 1    ๐Ÿ” 0    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0    ๐Ÿ“Œ 0
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Epomaker Keyboard | Customizability, creativity and high standards Discover premium mechanical keyboards, accessories, and typing upgrades in our online store. Elevate your experience with hot-swappable switches, RGB lighting & customizable designs.

Epomaker also has some fancy stuff epomaker.com

26.01.2026 18:36 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 0    ๐Ÿ” 0    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 2    ๐Ÿ“Œ 0
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Akko | Designer for Mechanical Keyboards Akko designs professional-level gaming mechanical keyboards and is dedicated to embodying interests, attitudes and cultural elements into computer peripherals.

I'd have a look at both Akko en.akkogear.com and Varmilo varmilo.com things tend to be released in limited runs, with a choice of switch.

26.01.2026 18:31 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 1    ๐Ÿ” 0    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 2    ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

Depends on what you want, I love my mechanical keyboards, but not everyone wants to go down that route, however the world of mechanical keyboards has vastly expanded beyond what type of cherry switch do you want.. There is now a proliferation of switches and fancy keycaps too

26.01.2026 18:31 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 1    ๐Ÿ” 0    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 1    ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

This project is joint with fab computational biologist @mattbashton.bsky.social - great opportunity to learn computational and molecular biology skills

24.01.2026 15:09 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 4    ๐Ÿ” 6    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0    ๐Ÿ“Œ 0
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Unicore identifies single-copy protein structures across genomes using Foldseek, bypassing slow structure predictions by utilizing 3Di predictions from ProstT5, enabling rapid phylogenetic inference at the tree-of-life scale. 1/n
๐Ÿ“„ www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
๐Ÿ’พ github.com/steineggerla...

23.12.2024 16:39 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 121    ๐Ÿ” 57    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 2    ๐Ÿ“Œ 3
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Chromothripsis-associated chromosome 21 amplification orchestrates transformation to blast-phase MPN through targetable overexpression of DYRK1A - Nature Genetics Multiomic analysis of blast-phase myeloproliferative neoplasms identifies a chromosome 21 amplicon harboring DYRK1A as a clonal and therapeutically targetable event in around a quarter of cases.

This research with Oxford started during the pandemic when I spotted a familiar iAMP21 like copy number profile on chromosome 21 here termed chr. 21amp. It's lovely to see all the different omics techniques come together from all the collaborators! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

09.06.2025 18:54 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 0    ๐Ÿ” 0    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0    ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

The age old "similar to putative function" annotation disease - only with AI, reinforcing suspect homology based matches in training data.

31.03.2025 12:05 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 0    ๐Ÿ” 0    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0    ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

Congratulations, I guess you will be spending more time in Heidelberg!

13.03.2025 19:57 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 1    ๐Ÿ” 0    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0    ๐Ÿ“Œ 0
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This week at @northumbriauni.bsky.social we launched our new #HPC cluster Higgs, having been involved in shaping this project from the outset it's nice to see it finally come to fruition with our partners #Logicalis and #Lenovo. l'm looking forward to all the research our new cluster will enable.

06.03.2025 20:43 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 1    ๐Ÿ” 0    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0    ๐Ÿ“Œ 0
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The pigeon as a machine: Complex category structures can be acquired by a simple associative model Cognitive neuroscience; Machine learning

Can't afford an NVIDIA H100 just get a pigeon, readily available in all Northern towns too. cell.com/iscience/ful... #AI #Pigeon

05.03.2025 20:49 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 1    ๐Ÿ” 0    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0    ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

I'm not sure why everyone is surprised by DeepSeek if you deny people access to the latest hardware then they will naturally develop more efficient algorithms. In this sense US "export" policy on AI hardware has been a massive own goal.

29.01.2025 08:54 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 6    ๐Ÿ” 1    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 1    ๐Ÿ“Œ 0
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Extent of microfibre pollution from textiles to be explored at new research hub A newly established research hub in North East England will explore the extent and environmental impact of microfibre loss from textiles.

Designers and environmental scientists from Northumbria have teamed up with The Microfibre Consortium to establish the Fibre-fragmentation and Environment Research Hub (FibER Hub) to explore the extent and environmental impact of microfibre loss from textiles
www.northumbria.ac.uk/about-us/new...

22.01.2025 10:28 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 12    ๐Ÿ” 2    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0    ๐Ÿ“Œ 0
Star Trek The Next Generation scene. Early series Picard is shown up close with a determined look of contentment. He's locked into eye contact with someone just off screen, and smouldering. Closed caption reads: (champagne fizzing)

Star Trek The Next Generation scene. Early series Picard is shown up close with a determined look of contentment. He's locked into eye contact with someone just off screen, and smouldering. Closed caption reads: (champagne fizzing)

01.01.2025 04:59 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 1295    ๐Ÿ” 270    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 8    ๐Ÿ“Œ 7
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Northern lights in Northumberland- beautiful and so counter intuitive that the camera is a far more faithful representation of the colours than your eyes (itโ€™s a grey pink sky to the naked eye!)

01.01.2025 18:24 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 55    ๐Ÿ” 7    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 2    ๐Ÿ“Œ 0
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Comprehensive Analysis of SARS-CoV-2 Spike Evolution: Epitope Classification and Immune Escape Prediction The evolution of SARS-CoV-2, the virus responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic, has produced unprecedented numbers of structures of the Spike protein. This study presents a comprehensive analysis of 1,560 published Spike protein structures, capturing most variants that emerged throughout the pandemic and covering diverse heteromerization and interacting complexes. We employ an interaction-energy informed geometric clustering to identify 14 epitopes characterized by their conformational specificity, shared interface with ACE2 binding, and glycosylation patterns. Our per-residue interaction evaluations accurately predict each residue's role in antibody recognition and as well as experimental measurements of immune escape, showing strong correlations with DMS data, thus making it possible to predict the behaviour of future variants. We integrate the structural analysis with a longitudinal analysis of nearly 3 million viral sequences. This broad-ranging structural and longitudinal analysis provides insight into the effect of specific mutations on the energetics of interactions and dynamics of the SARS-CoV-2 Spike protein during the course of the pandemic. Specifically, with the emergence of widespread immunity, we observe an enthalpic trade-off in which mutations in the receptor binding motif (RBM) that promote immune escape also weaken the interaction with ACE2. Additionally, we also observe a second mechanism, that we call entropic trade-off, in which mutations outside of the RBM contribute to decrease the occupancy of the open state of SARS-CoV-2 Spike, thus also contributing to immune escape at the expense of ACE2 binding but without changes on the ACE2 binding interface. This work not only highlights the role of mutations across SARS-CoV-2 Spike variants but also reveals the complex interplay of evolutionary forces shaping the evolution of the SARS-CoV-2 Spike protein over the course of the pandemic. ### Competing Interest Statement The authors have declared no competing interest.

and also our latest work, Natรกlias latest preprint, a collaboration with the groups of
@mattbashton.bsky.social and Ricardo Rajsbaum is out in BioRxiv. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

10.12.2024 12:02 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 7    ๐Ÿ” 2    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 1    ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

I didn't have time to stop to play it, but it looks authentic, around the time it was current there were a lot of clone JAMA boards from Taiwan which had all sorts of unique enhancements like changing fighter mid match! Only they had 3x the PCB board count as reverse engineered all custom chips.

21.11.2024 15:32 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 1    ๐Ÿ” 0    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 1    ๐Ÿ“Œ 0
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Been exploring some of the breathtaking John Portman architecture in Atlanta while at #SC24

20.11.2024 21:38 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 5    ๐Ÿ” 0    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 1    ๐Ÿ“Œ 0
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Nice to see this CPS-1, duel CPU 68000/Z80 set-up at #SC24, it's all about those custom chips too! #retrogaming

20.11.2024 21:32 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 29    ๐Ÿ” 2    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 1    ๐Ÿ“Œ 0
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Supercomputer investment will power world-leading research and innovation Northumbria University has announced a multi-million pound investment in its first university-wide high-performance computing facility which will give researchers access to state-of-the-art technology...

So #SC24 has been a lot of fun! We are also entering a new phase of HPC at @northumbriauni.bsky.social as we expand facilities for our researchers www.northumbria.ac.uk/about-us/new...

20.11.2024 20:38 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 3    ๐Ÿ” 0    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0    ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

who knew it would be easier to get everyone to switch social media platforms than getting them to use hg38

14.11.2024 18:45 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 254    ๐Ÿ” 62    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 15    ๐Ÿ“Œ 13
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Trashzymes: Mining Municipal solid waste and alkaliphilic species for brilliant cleaning at Procter & Gamble on FindAPhD.com PhD Project - Trashzymes: Mining Municipal solid waste and alkaliphilic species for brilliant cleaning at Procter & Gamble, listed on FindAPhD.com

If you find this work interesting I'm currently looking for a new PhD student, see the Add here www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

14.11.2024 19:56 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 1    ๐Ÿ” 2    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0    ๐Ÿ“Œ 0
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Interestingly if we look at promiscuous superfamilies' (those binding multiple ligands) we find they can fall into "generalised" - binding a wide range of chemically diverse ligands or "specialised" - binding some very chemically similar ligands, categories.

14.11.2024 19:56 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 2    ๐Ÿ” 1    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 1    ๐Ÿ“Œ 0
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This the work of my PhD student Matt Crown, one of the nice things he did was this t-SNE plot of cognate ligand space within the PDB, in which we see some nice clusters of related compounds.

14.11.2024 19:56 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 0    ๐Ÿ” 0    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 1    ๐Ÿ“Œ 0
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ProCogGraph: a graph-based mapping of cognate ligand domain interactions AbstractMotivation. Mappings of domain-cognate ligand interactions can enhance our understanding of the core concepts of evolution and be used to aid docki

Our latest work has been published in #Bioinformatics Advances ProCogGraph, the spiritual successor of PROCOGNATE. This graph database provides a linkage between proteins domains (SCOP/CATH/Pfam) and cognate ligands for #enzymes in the #PDB. academic.oup.com/bioinformati...

14.11.2024 19:56 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 4    ๐Ÿ” 2    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 1    ๐Ÿ“Œ 0
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New graph algorithms for analysis of the genomes and pangenomes of bacteria and their mobile elements. at University of Bath on FindAPhD.com PhD Project - New graph algorithms for analysis of the genomes and pangenomes of bacteria and their mobile elements. at University of Bath, listed on FindAPhD.com

I'm advertising a PhD studentship (open to international students) working on long read pangenome / assembly algorithms in bacteria. Would suit someone with maths/compsci/coding background. Aptitude + interest more important than experience.
Details here:
www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

11.11.2024 14:23 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 50    ๐Ÿ” 67    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0    ๐Ÿ“Œ 2
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After editing, this very short letter to New Scientist is even shorter now. But I think it gets the point across! @faecalmatters.bsky.social

11.11.2024 22:23 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 120    ๐Ÿ” 34    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 10    ๐Ÿ“Œ 4

@mattbashton is following 20 prominent accounts