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Ewan Birney

@ewanbirney.bsky.social

7.2K followers 570 following 1.8K posts

Executive Director EMBL. I have an insatiable love of biology. Consultant to ONT and Cantata (Dovetail)

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Ewan Birney @ewanbirney.bsky.social · 2h

The Celtic Sea to the Orkney/Shetland Islands has relatively low correlation of wind speeds (and Celtic to Baltic I think basically zero) so geographic spreading out can do a lot here. Nevertheless I think weeks like this forthcoming one will be when we burn gas for a while in the future.

Ewan Birney @ewanbirney.bsky.social · 2h

We're about to start on a period of dunkelflaute - dull (cloudy) and windless days in the UK - v. bad for renewables. If the GB grid had more wind turbines in the Celtic sea this would have been ameliorated. North of France and Baltic windy enough it seems, but ... only so much interconnection

Reposted by Ewan Birney

Pedro Beltrao @pedrobeltrao.bsky.social · 3d

new preprint: Ubiquitin is a protein modification linked with degradation but known to regulate other functions. Over 100k ubiquitination sites have been discovered and here we (@julianvangerwen.bsky.social + others) try to prioritize those most critical to the cell www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

The functional landscape of the human ubiquitinome

Protein ubiquitination regulates cell biology through diverse avenues, from quality control-linked protein degradation to signaling functions such as modulating protein-protein interactions and enzyme...

www.biorxiv.org

Reposted by Ewan Birney

Guillaume Bourque @guilbourque.bsky.social · 2d

I was also very impressive by the progress over the last year. GA4GH is really moving into the Age of Implementation!

Ewan Birney @ewanbirney.bsky.social · 2d

Thanks!

Ewan Birney @ewanbirney.bsky.social · 2d

We recruit from anywhere in the world - fluency in English is required - and you will need to have at least 5 years experience post PhD on something around computational science, computational biology or genomics.

Ewan Birney @ewanbirney.bsky.social · 2d

You can think of the job as a senior PostDoc on steroids, with leadership aspects, or as a co-PI position with less money raising responsibilities. It can suit people in the early stage of their careers transitioning across to computational biology or from CS/AI into biology

Ewan Birney @ewanbirney.bsky.social · 2d

My group is part of @ebi.embl.org in the broader @embl.org world, which is a vibrant research community across 6 sites in Europe. EMBL-EBI is just south of Cambridge UK and the person needs to live nearby and spend at least 3 days a week in the office with some travel requirements

Ewan Birney @ewanbirney.bsky.social · 2d

We jointly set the direction of the group and the Staff Scientist line manages Postdocs in the group. PhD students are supervised by myself, and go to the Staff scientist for technical help.

Ewan Birney @ewanbirney.bsky.social · 2d

More on the role: I have had a successful career in research in genomics and computational biology over 25 years (also do strategy, leadership and advocacy) and for my research group I co-run my group with my Staff Scientist.

Ewan Birney @ewanbirney.bsky.social · 2d

I am hiring! - looking for a Staff Scientist to co-run my research group with me. Staff Scientist is a senior professional scientist role at EMBL. Please forward to people you might know who could be interested! embl.wd103.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/EMBL/j...

Staff Scientist

About EMBL-EBI EMBL’s European Bioinformatics Institute is a data powerhouse, utilised on a global scale to advance scientific discovery through bioinformatics and solutions to some of the world’s mos...

embl.wd103.myworkdayjobs.com

Ewan Birney @ewanbirney.bsky.social · 3d

Some thoughts on the blossoming of genomic medicine stimulated by the excellent @ga4gh.org meeting in lovely Uppsala Sweden. www.linkedin.com/pulse/though...

Thoughts from Uppsala - Genomic Medicine blossoming

I have had a wonderful three days in Uppsala Sweden, at the Global Alliance for Genomics and Health plenary hosted locally by the generous SciLifeLab . It was a meeting of course focused on the standa...

www.linkedin.com

Ewan Birney @ewanbirney.bsky.social · 3d

The working language is English; you will have a short and productive course at the start and then work with your supervisor in one of the sites, always in a community of PhD students (predocs in EMBL speak) and postdocs, with support around you over the 4 years of a PhD.

Ewan Birney @ewanbirney.bsky.social · 3d

You get to work in Europe's flagship molecular biology laboratory in one of our 6 sites, getting a degree from our local partner universities (Sapienza, U. Heidelberg, U. Cambridge, U. Hamburg, U. Grenoble+UPF, Barcelona), be part of a vibrant scientific community and diverse future career options

Ewan Birney @ewanbirney.bsky.social · 3d

A reminder that the PhD program for EMBL is open for winter recruitment round. If you want to understand life at a molecular level and have a quantitative science (you don't have to have done biology - we love our mathematicians/physcists/chemists!) apply www.embl.org/about/info/e...

Application – EMBL International PhD Programme

Reposted by Ewan Birney

Pragati Kore @pragskore.bsky.social · 6d

📃 We’re excited to share our latest work, now published in Nature Communications — a major update to the Genome Aggregation Database (gnomAD) that improves allele frequency resolution for two gnomAD-defined genetic ancestry groups using local ancestry inference (LAI).

Improved allele frequencies in gnomAD through local ancestry inference - Nature Communications

This study incorporates local ancestry into the Genome Aggregation Database (gnomAD) to improve allele frequency estimates for admixed populations, enhancing variant interpretation and enabling more accurate and equitable genomic research and clinical care.

Reposted by Ewan Birney

Protein Data Bank in Europe (PDBe) @pdbeurope.bsky.social · 5d

📣Important update for #AlphaFold API users! New API fields launched on October 7th, 2025. We’ll maintain BOTH fields until June 25, 2026! Check the docs! 🔗
For more information, read the news item: www.ebi.ac.uk/pdbe/news/br...

Ewan Birney @ewanbirney.bsky.social · 5d

So sorry to hear this. He was a great - and generous - scientist

Reposted by Ewan Birney

The Guardian @theguardian.com · 5d

Sunder Katwala on race, patriotism and flag-waving: ‘The far right is vocal and angry because it is shrinking’

Sunder Katwala on race, patriotism and flag-waving: ‘The far right is vocal and angry because it is shrinking’

The director of British Future has spent his career trying to find common ground when it comes to race and immigration. He describes his own experience of racism – and why he’s still hopeful for the UK

www.theguardian.com

Reposted by Ewan Birney

Joannes Laveyne @jolaveyne.bsky.social · 5d

It may have escaped your attention, but the Belgian energy system has quietly passed an important test. During the weekend of 4-5 October 2025, our consumption was almost entirely covered by renewable energy. And yet the system ticked like a Swiss watch. /

Ewan Birney @ewanbirney.bsky.social · 5d

I’d love to know what happens next but presumably no one knows (or just Macron knows ??)

Ewan Birney @ewanbirney.bsky.social · 5d

So my French colleagues - am I right that France has had a prime minister with a shorter tenure than Liz Truss - 50 days. Or could he patch it all up this week? French parliamentary politics is murky enough from the outside but … this is pretty impressive

Ewan Birney @ewanbirney.bsky.social · 5d

10,000 foot take home message is ... biology is very complex. Gob-smakingly complex!

Bart Deplancke @bartdeplancke.bsky.social · 6d

🧵1/ Excited to share our new paper introducing a new #singlecell assay: scTF-seq, a high-throughput single-cell approach to explore how transcription factor (TF) dose shapes cell identity and reprogramming outcomes. 🔗 www.nature.com/articles/s41... Big congrats to the entire team @EPFL & @SIAT_China

Dissecting the impact of transcription factor dose on cell reprogramming heterogeneity using scTF-seq - Nature Genetics

This study introduces single-cell transcription factor (TF) sequencing, a single-cell barcoded and doxycycline-inducible TF overexpression approach that reveals dose-sensitive functional classes of TFs and cellular heterogeneity by mapping TF dose-dependent transcriptomic changes during the reprogramming of mouse embryonic multipotent stromal cells.

Reposted by Ewan Birney

Randall Munroe @xkcd.com · 5d

Ping

xkcd.com/3150/

4-panel comic. (1) [person finds bottle on shore] (2) [person reads message from inside bottle: ICMP ECHO REQUEST...] (3) [person writes on message ICMP ECHO REPLY...] (4) [person puts bottle back in water and leaves]

Reposted by Ewan Birney

Jonathan Pritchard @jkpritch.bsky.social · 5d

I want to try something again at #ASHG25 this year: I'll block some time on Thursday and Friday afternoons to meet with trainees who would be interested to chat on any topic.

I did this last year and it was great to meet a whole bunch of new people, at all career stages!