hirenj

7 ms·

1.
by hirenj 4mo ago
Yes, that is exactly what I meant! Here’s an experiment to try: Frances Arnold got a nobel prize for work related to directed evolution. However, we know evolution is limited by the tools available to it as you mention. If we add random cha
2.
by hirenj 4mo ago
I think there was a Twitter/Bluesky thread on the results from adding all the predicted folds from metagenomics too, and not ending up with many new clusters. If this continues to hold true as we keep looking at stuff, I will be reliev
3.
by hirenj 4mo ago
This approach is pretty much like the TED approach from a few years back. As far as I remember there wasn’t a ridiculous amount of fold diversity there either. It turns out evolution isn’t averse to a bit of liberal protein plagiarism. htt
4.
by hirenj 6mo ago
This looks very cool. Does the window picker for multi-window apps work with the pinning? So if I have a safari windows I want to have associated with a profile, and the option-tab will ignore all the other windows? It is a constant pain wh
5.
by hirenj 7mo ago
Even better, don’t ban it, but require companies to do age verification (above a certain age?) before displaying advertising. You get two wins in one: make the child market less attractive for algorithmic feeds, and you also can get a bette
6.
by hirenj 8mo ago
Can you say what field that is? I hear this sometimes, but my feed there is significantly low signal to noise, and I have had to pollute my “connections” to the point where I accept everything, as I have been trying to advertise job opening
7.
by hirenj 8mo ago
It is a huge worry for me that unless we decouple the publishing “system” from the career pathways (i.e., rewards), we are going to lose access to both the careers (to robot-weilding bullshitters) and even worse, the shared space where scie
8.
by hirenj 9mo ago
For prosterity, the original report on the pilot program with the checklist including introducing names of participants (doi 10.1056/NEJMsa0810119). Possibly popularised by Atul Gawande “The Checklist Manifesto”. Meta-comment: LLMs con
9.
by hirenj 9mo ago
That is really insightful regarding the ritual improving outcomes through better communication - something I see reflected in many meetings I turn up to now which involve an introduction round between participants, and anecdotally improves
10.
by hirenj 11mo ago
This is great - now I can get the authentic conference experience of a disengaged speaker reading out the slides in a monotone, without all the hassle of international travel and scheduling. In all seriousness, there could be more utility i
11.
by hirenj 1y ago
I was ruminating about how Atproto would be great for re-thinking the peer review system for scientific journals. Imagine a world where a preprint is “published” onto the social web, from which you could aggregate reviews/comments. I e
12.
by hirenj 1y ago
Arc institute probably.
13.
by hirenj 1y ago
It is a real shame that peer review reports were only first published relatively recently. These would have provided valuable training information as to what peer review performs. Unfortunately now, I fully expect the public peer review rep
14.
by hirenj 1y ago
Not my subject area, but at least one other group looked at ABCA1, and judging from this abstract, it has been linked via GWAS already, and furthermore concludes it doesn’t play a role (I haven’t looked at the data though). I don’t know, bu
15.
by hirenj 1y ago
I guess that whatever recognises the enhancers must be conserved ish in mice for us to be able to drop this region into the mouse genome. That might be interesting alone apart from the functions of the frizzleds. Always a curious question a
16.
by hirenj 1y ago
My innate immune system is here for chewing gum and binding viral glycans, and I’m all out of specific lectins. Looks like this works by apparently binding complex N-glycans on the viral envelope. I can’t imagine this is particularly specif
17.
by hirenj 2y ago
This is pretty interesting, also that they get it down to the amount of mannan in the fungal cell walls being somehow related to the β cell amounts. There's probably a nice project in here to figure out what the receptors are on the ma
18.
by hirenj 2y ago
Ancient medicine solves that problem https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43196488
19.
by hirenj 2y ago
I think what you mean is the MUC1-20 (ish, numbering is a bit sloppy but hopefully we can clean it up in near future) genes encode for mucins, that are synthesised on a ribosome, threaded into ER, shuffled off into the Golgi and then enzyma
20.
by hirenj 2y ago
Mucins aren't enzymes (as far as we know!), and the gut mucins are a bit different from those found on the endothelium, largely because they have different functions. The gut (and generally mucous epithelial) mucus is there for (amongs
21.
by hirenj 2y ago
Yes, something along these lines, and maybe the other pathways as the most interesting possibility. I don’t know if there any reports of sTn in older mice, but that would be pretty wild.
22.
by hirenj 2y ago
Catflap is a surprisingly apt analogy. In this case it is an endocytosis receptor, that selects cargo for uptake. Differs from virus to virus of course, but I could see changes in the sugars on these proteins altering behaviour. Mucus/
23.
by hirenj 2y ago
Fun fact: The AAVR (AAV receptor) is itself a glycoprotein (carrying the precise type of glycosylation they are trying to repair with the “gene therapy”). Haven’t read up what replacement gene dose ended up being, but entirely within realms
24.
by hirenj 2y ago
We don’t know is the answer. However, if you were coral, then I would suggest increasing the amount of symbiotic algae, which stimulates mucin secretion (probably a nutrient boost). A brain normally doesn’t receive enough sunlight for this
25.
by hirenj 2y ago
This area is very much in my wheelhouse (both the biosynthetic process, and functions of mucins). They’re a pretty interesting biomolecule, present in all animals (slightly different molecules in other branches of life). It kind of surprise
26.
by hirenj 2y ago
First question I have is what kind of nutrient base conditions can we expect to start from? Should it be like Earth, or somewhere a bit more resource constrained (and how would it be constrained)? I’d like to imagine solar reactors mimickin
27.
by hirenj 2y ago
Colour me unsurprised - even not knowing data leakage had occurred, the hypothesis was underwhelming, as I mentioned in a comment on an earlier discussion. I sometimes despair for the state of thinking in science these days given how quickl
28.
by hirenj 2y ago
I read the cf-PICI paper (abstract) and the hypothesis from the AI co-scientist. While the mechanism from the actual paper is pretty cool (if I'm understanding it correctly), I'm not particularly impressed with the hypothesis from
29.
by hirenj 2y ago
Absolutely agree that this is a fast-moving area, so we're not aiming to teach them specific details for anything. Instead, our goals are to demystify the ML and AI approaches, so that the students understand that rather than being ora
30.
by hirenj 2y ago
This is a great resource, thanks. We (myself, a bioinformatician, and my co-cordinators, clinicians) are currently designing a course to hopefully arm medical students with the required basic knowledge they need to navigate the changing wor

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