Helena, PhD

The new -outfmt 20 in BLAST 😍. No more frustrated googling to remember which column is which.....

agreed. I have so many things to say that I really do not want to hear a judge repeating those words back to me, so I'm just silent instead. So instead of finding community, my partner just ends up hearing all of the complaints they already have. I've taken up other outlets, mixed success.

We turn 25 today!

July 7th marks the 25th anniversary of the human genome going online and the start of the UCSC Genome Browser.

Then vs. now, we have 165k monthly visitors, and our codebase is over three million lines of code.

See our news for more: bit.ly/genomeBrowser...

🚨 New paper alert!
How do you pick the right genomes for public health surveillance—when you’ve got 10,000+ E. coli to choose from?
We built an MLST framework to do just that. 🧵👇
🔗 www.mdpi.com/2076-2607/13...

An eight-year asymptomatic retention of a knife blade in the chest: a case report Abstract. Retained foreign bodies in the thoracic cavity following penetrating trauma are rare and typically identified shortly after injury. However, prol

In many ways, surviving a #PhD and higher education in general, felt like this recent foreign body removal case report.

At least we're both finally free.

doi.org/10.1093/jscr...

New preprint! Deacon is a versatile tool for filtering FASTA/FASTQ files and streams at hundreds of megabases per second using minimizers, built with rapid metagenomic host depletion in mind, but equally useful for search.
github.com/bede/deacon

NIH funding supporting the HMMER and Infernal software projects has been terminated. NIH states that our work, as well as all other federally funded research at Harvard, is of no benefit to the US.

It pains me to say this, but if you are not a US citizen, you should not attend scientific conferences in the US, visit US institutions, or otherwise travel to our country.

Right now it's not worth the risk.

Hopefully that will change. If it doesn't, science in the US is sunk anyway.

🗣️ Quote of #ESHG2025 (so far)

"Who licks bone !?!" 🦴
- Johannes Krause

Anyone have that on your bingo card?

Well apparently archeologists do, to distinguish bone from stones and it causes problems in DNA sequencing. 🤔

Delighted to see this paper from danderson123.bsky.social 's PhD out. We have been building tools for AMR gene detection for over a decade now, but multicopy genes remain challenging. Dan shows that with a gene-space de Bruijn graph and long reads, you can do well
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Honestly, same.

People are like "well you *must* be smart with a PhD!". Absolutely not, I am merely obsessively interested in an extremely niche topic and far more stubborn than is good for my health, and otherwise I am content to bumble through my life, occasionally walking into walls.

A bioinformatician, computer scientist, and geneticist lead bioinformatic tool development—which one is better? AbstractMotivation. The development of accurate bioinformatic software tools is crucial for the effective analysis of complex biological data. This study e

bioinformatician, computer scientist, and geneticist lead bioinformatic tool development—which one is better? academic.oup.com/bioinformati...

We Need Mandatory Masking in Healthcare, and We Need it Now Healthcare facilities should set the tone when it comes to masking. They should help patients protect themselves from Covid and other threats. Instead they push droplet dogma and put lives at risk.

No one should have to choose between care & Covid.

The politicization of masks has led to a reduced infection control in healthcare settings.

Patients are labelled anxious, difficult or worse for asking staff to wear a mask.

We need mandatory masking in healthcare:

An illustration of a home. Two photo-realistic eagles fly out from the sides. The text reads: Two ways out. create a fire escape plan for your family. Make sure there are two ways out of each room, a clear path outside from each exit, make sure everyone knows the plan, practice the plan a few times a year.

I CAN FLY HIGHER THAN AN EAGLE
YOU ARE THE ESCAPE ROUTE OUT MY OFFICE

I think "let's learn together" is going to my mission statement for my postdoc. As a senior scientist in my lab group, I'm often asked questions I just don't know the answer to. I think I'm going to approach those interactions with curiosity and learn with trainees. 🧪

The summary:

Kiwi, Kiwis: 👫🧑🏾‍🤝‍🧑🏾: Homo sapiens

kiwi, kiwi: 🔑🟤: Apteryx spp

kiwifruit, kiwifruit: 🥝: Actinidia cvv

🥁 Announcing the Public Domain Image Archive! 🥁

We are v excited to share our new sister-project, the Public Domain Image Archive (PDIA), a curated collection of 10k+ out-of-copyright historical images, all free to explore and reuse: pdimagearchive.org @pdimagearchive

you'd think I died or something 😅

Thank you Bacon Brigade, this was really really lovely of y'all 💜I'm so happy for the positive impact I could have for y'all, and hopefully many more folks on the future.

Such a brilliant cover!

their commitment to localising the content for a Dutch audience is fantastic. Yes that does look like my breakfast.

"Monday", "you make breakfast for yourself" an image of bread with hagelslag is visible, alongside a cup of coffee and bottle of ikea brand jam It wouldn't be out of place in a visual novel, really.

So excited for the medical research data privacy Visual Novel.

A fire dragon exploding out of a lithium-ion bike battery. The text reads: There’s a monster inside your battery. Never charge your e-bike, hoverboard, or scooter while you are sleeping. Use the charger that came with the product. Only use an approved replacement battery. Always follow the manufacturer instructions for charging.

If you own an ebike, scooter, or hoverboard - make sure you charge it safely.

drawing of a cat at an office desk. text reads "can't believe I'm spending my hottest years at a desk sending emails". the cats head looks like the king from katamari damacy tbh

relatable

via www.instagram.com/byjolyn

Passing the Buck: The story of the 2022 Wings Over Dallas air show collision How unsafe practices in the air show industry caused the deaths of six crewmembers and the loss of two iconic aircraft.

Thank you for your patience! Read my latest long-form analysis of how the 2022 Wings Over Dallas air show went tragically wrong. admiralcloudberg.medium.com/passing-the-...

Postdoctoral position in bioinformatics of the human gut microbiome - VIB About the Lab Thelab of JeroenRaes(VIB, KU Leuven) is home to a vibrant, dynamic and international group of researchers in the field of gut microbial ecology and its clinical applications

We're hiring a postdoc!🚨

Study human-associated microbial communities in health & disease.

🔬Requirements:
- PhD in bioinformatics, microbiology, or related field
- Expertise in omics
- Strong publication record

Apply now!🌟 jobs.vib.be/j/69697/post...
@vibmicrobes.bsky.social

No more stitches? The future of surgery is here! 🚀

Scientists are using lasers to seal wounds—no needles, no scars, just faster healing! 🏥✨

🔗 digitalpatientsafety.com/the-future-o...

🌐 #WomensHealth #DHPSP #MedicalTech #FutureOfSurgery #LaserHealing #CRBIOTECH

Some background on the art here: www.bioinf.wits.ac.za/~scott/mbiom... - and some of the folks involved: www.zenzulu.co.za/index.html

US Navy supercarriers are only named after deceased Presidents because a soul is required to be entombed in the reactor. If you press your ear to the radiation casing, you can hear their howls

Four women having a brunch at a cool brunch place. One of them says, "This is great." The next says, "I know! So fun!" Another says, "I love this place!" The last woman replies, "Isn't it cool?! I come here a few times a year." In the next panel, it is revealed that all of the women are having brunch upside down on the ceiling on top of a giant smoke alarm. The nature of the situation is not explained. The text reads: Happy Galentines Day! Visit friends. Check your smoke alarm batteries.

#GalentinesDay

Prolonged exposure to heat enhances mosquito tolerance to viral infection - Communications Biology Single versus multi-generational exposure to increased temperature alters mosquito immune response to viral infection, with implications for mosquito-virus interactions under global change.

Neat 🦟 paper www.nature.com/articles/s42...