“ERFZONDE” now out in Dutch translation! I’m particularly excited about this edition because of the outsized role that Dutch scientists have played & still play in the genomics revolution. To all my Netherlands BG colleagues, this is a love letter to your work
www.debezigebij.nl/boek/erfzonde/
To add an apophatic lens to this: she is not not neuroskeptic.
academic.oup.com/book/35164/c...
two images of the human body's circulatory system. One of them with good cable management
The human circulatory system, before and after proper cable management.
I suspect we only get so invested in whether the Central Dogma is broken or not because Crick called it that. If it had been "the principle of protein synthesis" or the "rules of transcription & translation" or something, it would seem less of a big deal. Remember, it's not a "dogma" at all.
NAKO (Germany) also has N~200,000 now
Already available or still building? I know they're building a 1M database at Mount Sinai in New York. Eimear Kenny talked about this at the Gene Forum last year: mountsinaimillion.org/en
Two pictures of the pillsbury dough boy: once is on a purple background with the caption “he is risen! happy Easter!”, and the other is tan and brown, similar to a cracker, on a white background saying “he is not! Happy Passover!”
It’s time to post one of my favorite memes of the year.
In the science of human behaviour, nature & nurture aren't competing accounts that we must choose between. Each individual person is the outcome of the interweaving of genetics, environmental factors & random events, cascading through development.
Me & @aysuo.bsky.social are hiring a postdoc to study gene–environment interplay in health & social inequalities 🧬
You'll analyze genomic data as part of a collaboration with Uppsala & Oslo at @amsterdamumc.bsky.social (NL)
werkenbij.amsterdamumc.org/en/vacatures...
Please RT for karma points ♥️
An electronic machine can carry out mathematical calculations, remember historical facts, play chess and translate books from one language to another. It is able to solve mathematical problems more quickly than man and its memory is faultless. Is there any limit to progress, to its ability to create machines in the image and likeness of man? It seems that the answer is no. It is not impossible to imagine the machine of future ages and millennia. It will be able to listen to music and appreciate art; it will even be able to compose melodies, paint pictures and write poems. Is there a limit to its perfection? Can it be compared to man? Will it surpass him? Childhood memories . . . tears of happiness . . . the bitterness of parting .. . love of freedom .. . feelings of pity for a sick puppy... nervousness ... a mother’s tenderness ... thoughts of death ... sadness ... friendship ... love of the weak ... sudden hope ... a fortunate guess ... melancholy ... unreasoning joy ... sudden embarrassment .. . The machine will be able to recreate all of this! But the surface of the whole earth will be too small to accommodate this machine — this machine whose dimensions and weight will continually increase as it attempts to reproduce the peculiarities of mind and soul of an average, inconspicuous human being. Fascism annihilated tens of millions of people.
🤯"... this machine whose dimensions and weight will continually increase as it attempts to reproduce the peculiarities of mind and soul of an average, inconspicuous human being.
Fascism annihilated tens of millions of people."
— Vasily Grossman, Life and Fate, 1960/tr. 1985
(via @masalmon.eu)
“the population history of modern humans was different from that of Neandertals and perhaps other archaic groups in that modern human populations were never small enough to allow drift on the scale that affected the Neandertals” Important new work on Neandertals by @massilanilab.bsky.social 🧪💀
Multi-panel cartoon by Tom Gauld. A person is giving a tech presentation to unveil a new company product, standing in front of a sign that reads "peoplBOTS". The presenter's speech goes as follows: "Our journey began with a simple question: Can we create a robot that is enormously powerful, but also completely safe?" It is revealed that the person is standing next to a large robot. The person continues: "The answer to that question was no." The robot is armor-plated, runs on caterpillar tracks, one of its arms is a huge flame-thrower, and the other is a giant pincer-claw. "So I give you Dangerbot900!!"
Our journey began with a simple question...
🚨New preprint🚨, sharpening our characterisation of regulatory changes and human brain evolution. Thanks to new FANTOM6 data, we now focus on noncoding RNAs and how ncRNA–TF cooperation + selective cis-regulatory rewiring could have contributed to sapiens-specific aspects of cortical development 🧪🧠🧬
Very cool!
New study: Population-wide variation in connectopic organization of cerebral language hubs www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
Summary over on my LinkedIn account: www.linkedin.com/feed/update/...
Structural and functional brain asymmetry in relation to heterogeneous causes of situs inversus totalis. New paper by @meng-yun.bsky.social & al. with Nicole Ying Ting Ng, Else Eising, @profsimonfisher.bsky.social , @clydefrancks.bsky.social
doi.org/10.1007/s00429-026-03098-5
A triumph of genetic engineering - three Minions stand together, with one holding a guitar, smiling and posing for the camera.
In light of the latest news from Colossal Biosciences, now is the perfect time to announce my laboratory's groundbreaking Minion de-extinction project, which depends on state-of-the-art gene editing at 20 key sites in the genome of the common banana.
Douglas Adams' birthday, time to launch my new business.
Cappuccinome, the coffeeshop of today. On entry you spit in a tube, the barista (a skilled bioinformatician) analyses the DNA, derives your innate taste preferences & delivers a cup of liquid that's almost but not quite entirely unlike coffee.
Almost half of Gen Z uses AI for dating advice.
@mpi-nl.bsky.social publicly tested this with social robot Olivia, Chinmaya Mishra and Tila Pronk. Fascinating experience.
I wrote a longread about it for TalkLing:
www.mpi-talkling.mpi.nl?p=2867&lang=en
#AI #LLMs #dating #scicomm #neuroskyence
a drawing of a monk wearing dark glasses and rolling dice at a table
gambling monk, germany, 15th century
Last week, InScience Film Festival visitors could dive into a showcase in human–robot interaction by Chinmaya Mishra and Tila Pronk to a fascinating talk by Koen de Reus on seal communication, and Selim Sametoğlu’s discussion on 'doomscrolling'.
Read the full wrap-up here www.mpi.nl/news/mpi-res...
Follow up on the genetics of chills from art and poetry. This time, including chills from music too 🧵 ⬇️
“It would be foolish to suppose that black box AI can save us from the daunting task of understanding how genomes work. But who would want to forego that anyway, given the intellectual richness & beauty that, for all its messiness, modern molecular biology is revealing?” @philipcball.bsky.social 🙌🎯🧪
God duikt óók op in je hersenen 🧠
Welke rol speelt ons brein in onze geloofsbeleving?
André Aleman heeft een helder en nuchter overzicht geschreven over wat de huidige stand van zaken is in de neurowetenschap van religie. Ik besprak zijn boek met veel plezier
www.theologie.nl/god-duikt-oo...
Roses are red,
Violets are blue,
May your mating be assortative,
With traits well matched to you
Our multi-ancestry GWAS of EXTernalizing conditions (ADHD, substance use...) in ~4M people reveals neurodevelopmental risk, drug-repurposing targets, and yields one of the strongest psychiatric polygenic indices yet! 🧬🎉 doi.org/10.64898/202...
Cartoon showing a street in the rain. A man on a bike is delivering food, while another courier is delivering packages from Amazon. Two other workers are collecting garbage. Inside one of the houses on the street, we see robots labeled 'AI' sitting dry and warm, engaged in making a paining, playing the violin and writing.
The robot apocalypse hasn't happened yet, but still I can't escape the feeling that something has gone horribly wrong... Cartoon for Dutch newspaper @trouw.nl.
More of my work for Trouw: www.trouw.nl/cartoons/tje...
#ArtificialIntelligence #creativity #work #GenerativeAI
Why did consciousness evolve at all? A superb special issue of @royalsocietypublishing.org brings together experts across disciplines to explore the functions of consciousness and why it emerged in some species but not others. @tecumsehfitch.bsky.social royalsocietypublishing.org/rstb/issue/3...
Why does life explore so few of the forms it could possibly take? Using fractal descriptors, this #scienceadvances paper shows that Earth’s biosphere clusters around simple shapes, reflecting deep evolutionary constraints. @artemyte.bsky.social @manlius.bsky.social www.science.org/doi/pdf/10.1...
