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Ilia Minkin

@minkinpark

A bioinformatics postdoc at Victoria Popic's lab at Broad Institute.

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19.09.2023
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Latest posts by Ilia Minkin @minkinpark

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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 πŸ‘ 179 πŸ” 85 πŸ’¬ 6 πŸ“Œ 8
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Detecting foldback artifacts in long-reads - BMC Genomics Long-read sequencing data is useful for detecting large and complex structural variations; however, technical artifacts can lead to false structural variant calls. In our analyses, we became aware of ...

Our paper on foldback artifacts in long-read sequencing is now published in BMC Genomics!

We introduce Breakinator to flag foldback and chimeric artifacts across library types, sequencers, and chemistries.

Paper: link.springer.com/article/10.1...

With Matthew Meyerson and @lh3lh3.bsky.social

24.02.2026 16:02 πŸ‘ 17 πŸ” 6 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0
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Annotating genomes at increased scale and resolution Nature Reviews Genetics - In this Review, Ji et al. overview how rapidly advancing experimental and computational methods are enabling improved and automated annotation of gene structure and...

Our new review on genome annotation just appeared in @naturerevgenet.bsky.social, with a particular focus on the human genome, with Hayden Ji and Mihaela Pertea: rdcu.be/e4mI1

17.02.2026 12:46 πŸ‘ 24 πŸ” 12 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
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Time for a thread on our Christmas preprint β€œOrigin and evolution of acrocentric chromosomes in human and great apes”. I had so much fun with this project and paper. It will be hard to summarize in a thread, but I’ll try www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... [1/21]

02.02.2026 14:58 πŸ‘ 41 πŸ” 29 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 1

@nytpitchbot.bsky.social

22.01.2026 13:35 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
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Common variation in meiosis genes shapes human recombination and aneuploidy - Nature Analysis of data from pre-implantation genetic testing sheds light on the genetic basis of meiotic-origin aneuploidy, the leading cause of human pregnancy loss, identifying common genetic variants ass...

Pregnancy loss is common in humans, and chromosomal abnormalities are the leading cause. Using genetic data from ~140,000 IVF embryos, we show that maternal variation in meiosis genes influences recombination and aneuploidy risk.

First authors: @saracarioscia.bsky.social & @aabiddanda.github.io

21.01.2026 21:14 πŸ‘ 121 πŸ” 55 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 5
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Postdoctoral Researcher or Senior Scientist (AI Γ— Biology)

Boeva Lab is #hiring postdocs and senior scientists in AI/ML for Cancer Biology! Check the offer and apply at: jobs.ethz.ch/job/view/JOP...

20.01.2026 14:49 πŸ‘ 8 πŸ” 8 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
Redirecting

In 2012 the ENCODE project claimed that most of our genome 🧬 wasn't junk after all on the basis that most of it was active in some way πŸ§ͺ

In response, @cryptogenomicon.bsky.social proposed the random genome project - even random DNA would be mostly active, he suggested 1/2

doi.org/10.1016/j.cu...

31.12.2025 12:50 πŸ‘ 15 πŸ” 7 πŸ’¬ 2 πŸ“Œ 1

If you’ve heard me talk in the past ~5 years, you will know I have developed an obsession with acrocentric chromosomes. This is all of that, condensed into one paper. I will do a full thread in the new year, but for those that want something to read over the holidays, have at it. Such a cool story!

24.12.2025 03:59 πŸ‘ 77 πŸ” 21 πŸ’¬ 2 πŸ“Œ 0

I’m recruiting a postdoc to work on algorithms for cancer genome reconstruction. We have access to a rich set of tumour samples sequenced across multiple technologies. If interested, feel free to DM. Please share.

11.12.2025 03:04 πŸ‘ 13 πŸ” 12 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 1
DSB 2026 Venice - February 18-19 Workshop Data Structures in Bioinformatics

The 12th edition of the 2-days workshop β€œData Structures in Bioinformatics” (DSB) will take place in Venice (Italy) on February 18-19th, 2026: dsb-meeting.github.io/DSB2026/

10.12.2025 14:29 πŸ‘ 10 πŸ” 9 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 1
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The Penicillin Myth Competing theories seek to explain inconsistencies surrounding Alexander Fleming’s famed discovery.

Every biologist knows the story of Fleming's chance discovery of penicillin. But is it true?

Here, with @asimovpress.bsky.social, I write about inconsistencies in the canonical story, and explore a few alternative theories about what really happened in that St. Mary's lab in the summer of 1928.

24.11.2025 17:00 πŸ‘ 44 πŸ” 23 πŸ’¬ 2 πŸ“Œ 8

Half-Life Alyx

23.11.2025 16:00 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

@nytpitchbot.bsky.social

21.11.2025 22:28 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
Haapaniemi et al. (2018) provide one famous example how targeted gene edits can produce spurious results.
They detail how CRISPR editing can automatically activate p53, a tumor suppressor. Because many edited
cells die as a result, experimentalists can inadvertently select for cells with defective p53 responses, forming a
confounder for research on cancer genetics.

Haapaniemi et al. (2018) provide one famous example how targeted gene edits can produce spurious results. They detail how CRISPR editing can automatically activate p53, a tumor suppressor. Because many edited cells die as a result, experimentalists can inadvertently select for cells with defective p53 responses, forming a confounder for research on cancer genetics.

If you talk about philosophy of science in interpretability papers you get to learn some incredible facts about what can go wrong with simple causal ablation studies

18.11.2025 23:54 πŸ‘ 42 πŸ” 8 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 1

πŸš€ Looking for talented PhD students!
Join us in πŸ‡ΈπŸ‡¬ Singapore for 1-2 years to push the frontiers of AI for Genomics.
Work on:
🧬 Cancer genome reconstruction
🧫 Cancer genome & cell foundation models
πŸ’Š RNA drug & mRNA therapeutic design

#AI #Genomics #PhD
1/5

04.11.2025 07:32 πŸ‘ 10 πŸ” 8 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0

So sad to miss it this year, the program looks incredible!

03.11.2025 21:01 πŸ‘ 3 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
Assistant Professor, Associate Professor, Professor Job Description Summary Organization's Summary Statement: The Department of Computer Science is top-ranked for research and teaching, with its undergraduate computer science program ranked 9th among p...

Our department (Comp Sci) at UMD is hiring this cycle. We have an open-rank search (umd.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/UMCP/j...). Consider applying to join our department; we’re a pretty cool group if I say so myself ☺️!

31.10.2025 03:14 πŸ‘ 10 πŸ” 8 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
Counts of the merged Ensembl/GENCODE, RefSeq and UniProtKB coding genes with the most likely explanations for the outliers for each gene set. For example, most Ensembl/GENCODE singletons are readthrough genes.

Counts of the merged Ensembl/GENCODE, RefSeq and UniProtKB coding genes with the most likely explanations for the outliers for each gene set. For example, most Ensembl/GENCODE singletons are readthrough genes.

So, our definitive paper on the human reference gene set is out this week in Database (Oxford).

We merged and compared @ensembl.org / @gencodegenes.bsky.social , RefSeq and UniProtKB coding genes and investigated the agreements and discrepancies.

Details of what we found in the thread ...

30.09.2025 14:25 πŸ‘ 9 πŸ” 5 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 1

And it's posted! If you're interested and eligible, please consider applying through the UMD portal: umd.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/UMCP/j....

If you're a PI working in algorithmic genomics (& you can recommend my lab to your top graduating students ;P), please let them know!

08.10.2025 16:53 πŸ‘ 22 πŸ” 21 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 3
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Burrows-Wheeler Indexing - YouTube Videos on : (a) the Burrows-Wheeler Transform (BWT), (b) the FM Index, which uses the BWT to construct a full-text index, (c) Wheeler graphs, (d) r-index, an...

I've added 7 videos to my Burrows-Wheeler indexing playlist (www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...), rounding out the r-index series and adding a 5-part series on the move structure. Now 27 videos in that playlist. I aim to add videos on prefix-free parsing, PBWT, Wheeler languages/automata in the future.

07.10.2025 14:17 πŸ‘ 62 πŸ” 15 πŸ’¬ 2 πŸ“Œ 1

@garushyants.bsky.social

26.09.2025 12:01 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
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A complete diploid human genome benchmark for personalized genomics Human genome resequencing typically involves mapping reads to a reference genome to call variants; however, this approach suffers from both technical and reference biases, leaving many duplicated and ...

Delighted to finally announce a preprint describing the Q100 project! β€œA complete diploid human genome benchmark for personalized genomics” For which we finished HG002 to near-perfect accuracy: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... 🧡[1/14]

22.09.2025 17:01 πŸ‘ 97 πŸ” 57 πŸ’¬ 4 πŸ“Œ 4
Careers | Emory University | Atlanta GA

Now hiring a computational postdoc (evolutionary genomics, molecular evolution) in my lab at Emory University.
If you’re interested in population genetics, fitness landscapes, and viral evolution β€” get in touch.
faculty-emory.icims.com/jobs/151181/...

18.09.2025 15:38 πŸ‘ 15 πŸ” 28 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

Yes, I am on the academic job market looking to start my own lab at the intersection of molecular, computational, and systems neuroscience! If you think my work may be interest to your department, please don't hesitate to reach out.

Thank you, Keri!

18.09.2025 01:31 πŸ‘ 17 πŸ” 12 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

hey bluesky πŸ‘‹ visa hurdles mean I’m looking for opportunities outside the US. I’m a computational biologist (bacterial + phage genomics, postdoc in Koonin’s group @ NIH). I am interested in teaming up on funding apps. reach out if this resonates!

15.09.2025 17:26 πŸ‘ 69 πŸ” 89 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 3
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Efficient sequence alignment against millions of prokaryotic genomes with LexicMap - Nature Biotechnology LexicMap uses a fixed set of probes to efficiently query gene sequences for fast and low-memory alignment.

Sometimes you meet absolutely incredible bioinfo-magicians.
It was a huge privilege when @shenwei356.bsky.social
joined our group for a year on an @embl.org sabbatical.
While here, he developed a new way of aligning to
millions of bacteria, called LexicMap 1/n
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

10.09.2025 09:12 πŸ‘ 190 πŸ” 99 πŸ’¬ 5 πŸ“Œ 4

Congratulations! Epic win of a result.

10.09.2025 16:21 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0
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Comprehensive analysis of microbial content in whole-genome sequencing samples from The Cancer Genome Atlas project An analysis of TCGA whole-genome sequencing samples yields a comprehensive resource for investigating the role of microbes in cancer.

We're still not finding any good evidence for a microbiome in any cancer type: see our new paper in @ScienceTM led by PhD student Yuchen (Peter) Ge www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... and the accompanying news piece, www.science.org/content/arti...

03.09.2025 20:45 πŸ‘ 19 πŸ” 7 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0