microviro&beers
723 posts

microviro&beers
@MicroviroB
the inarticulate musings of a (micro)biologist. BLM. he him
Sumali Nisan 2019
90 Sinusundan110 Mga Tagasunod
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This is really cool (and wild):
Scientists simulated a complete living cell for the first time. Every molecule, every reaction, from DNA replication to cell division.
The paper (Luthey-Schulten et al., Cell 2026, doi.org/10.1016/j.cell…), just out today, used JCVI-Syn3A — a synthetic minimal bacterium with fewer than 500 genes. A 3D+time simulation of the full 105-minute cell cycle: DNA replication, protein translation, metabolism, division. Every gene, protein, RNA, and chemical reaction tracked through physical space.
It took years to build. Multiple GPUs. Six days of compute time per run.
And this is the simplest possible cell.
A human cell has ~20,000 genes. It lives in tissue. It interacts with neighbors. It differentiates. It responds to drugs in ways that depend on context we haven't fully measured.
Mechanistic simulation of the minimal cell costs 6 GPU-days for 105 minutes of biology. You cannot scale that to human cells. The complexity isn't 40x harder. It's exponentially harder.
This is why the field pivoted to data-driven models. You can't hand-encode the regulatory wiring of a human hepatocyte. But you can learn it — if you have the right perturbation data collected across enough diverse biological contexts.
The two approaches aren't competing. Papers like this generate the ground truth that future ML models need for validation. But the path to a clinically useful virtual cell runs through foundation models, not through scaling up mechanistic simulation.
Amazing work!
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Next time somebody asks about sudden deaths after COVID vaccines: the actual number is as close to 0 as it can be journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/a…
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Wait! I thought he invented the ACIP… and drama.
nytimes.com/2026/03/24/hea…
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We've come a long way, but current policies risk reversing the progress we've made in the fight on AIDS. You can read more about the decreased access to HAART here: thehill.com/policy/healthc…
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@AJ12909562 @florian_krammer We do not vaccinate against HIV because there's no effective vaccine.
Even assuming that 99.7% measles cases don't develop severe measles symptoms, 0.3% do, with consequenxes that include death. We vaccinate to prevent the severe complications and illness in general
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@MicroviroB @florian_krammer Unless the goal is to defeat the virus entirely, but thats impossible with a govt that wont enforce the border depending on whose in charge.If state wont control disease entry whats the point?
We vax every gen 4ever and ever? What happened to only intervention if someone is sick?
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Here is some basic information about measles in an accessible podcast format:
open.spotify.com/episode/2JtARN…
or
podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/2-m…
Sen. Bernie Sanders@SenSanders
This is what happens when the Secretary of HHS rejects science and adopts conspiracy theories. And, unless we stop it, epidemics could become much worse.
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@AJ12909562 @florian_krammer Currently there is no widely available cure for HIV infection but there are very good antiretroviral meds.
The measles vaccine provides excellent protection and is very safe.
The costs (actual and human) of hospitalization and deaths are way higher than that of vaccination
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@MicroviroB @florian_krammer 8% of cases in this outbreak are vaxxed..
92% unknown aka no papers.
Big Pharma has no incentive to develop therapeutics bc every human buying a drug is way more revenue than just the 5% who get sick enough to be hospitalized.
We cured AIDS. Why are we using 1960s vax tech still?
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@AJ12909562 @florian_krammer Huh? Measles vaccination gives virtually lifelong protection. If you get measles you might require hospitalization with the associated costs and potential for lasting damage.
"Big pharma" benefits more from lack of vaccination than from the vaccine
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@florian_krammer Yes, eliminated in the USA. The virus was no longer here. Then the left decided borders dont matter and tossed generations of sacrifice injecting our babies in the trash.
Open borders reintroduced it.
R we supposed to just vax forever? Thats the plan?
Infinity revenue 4 Pharma?
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For those worried about #Nipah virus: Yes, it's a dangerous disease. Yes, India has recently reported 2 cases. But Nipah doesn't spread as easily as Covid.
"WHO assesses the risk posed by Nipah to be moderate at the sub-national level, and low at the national, the regional and global levels." who.int/emergencies/di…
Animal Disease Insights@DiseaseInsights
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I would offer that Alex Pretti putting his body—with his hands up—between a woman and the BP agent who had just violently shoved her into the snow, offer stark competing visions of manhood. Pretti, a nurse caring for veterans, who took a face full of pepper spray to shield that woman, is a much better masculine ideal that the masked coward shoving the woman and executing a man on his knees. MAGA may venerate the latter, but most people in a healthy society want the former.
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The number of confirmed #measles cases in South Carolina has hit an astonishing 558 in an outbreak that started in October. For context: that is more cases in 4 months than the entire US racked up most years in the past 30+ years. reuters.com/business/healt…
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@NobelPrize Perhaps this is a good moment to remind @NobelPrize that the peace prize was once handed to Henry Kissinger, who extended the Vietnam war, was behind the Christmas bombing, and has been called a war criminal. So maybe it's best not to receive that prize
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Statement from the Nobel Foundation
One of the core missions of the Nobel Foundation is to safeguard the dignity of the Nobel Prizes and their administration. The Foundation upholds Alfred Nobel’s will and its stipulations. It states that the prizes shall be awarded to those who "have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind," and it specifies who has the right to award each respective prize. A prize can therefore not, even symbolically, be passed on or further distributed.
For additional information, please refer to the Norwegian Nobel Committee: nobelpeaceprize.org/press/press-re…

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@florian_krammer Was this supposed to be "the snap"?
(See avengers films)
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@florian_krammer Vaccine was a bit of misnomer in that case
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Does anybody remember the Sputnik vaccine?
Sustained superior humoral immune responses of mRNA vaccines compared to Sputnik V viral vector COVID-19 vaccines in naïve and convalescent populations
sciencedirect.com/science/articl…
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#CDC has been advised of another 3 children who died from #flu in the 2024-25 season, bringing the confirmed pediatric death toll to 270. This number could rise further; pediatric deaths are often reported months later.
Most weren't vaccinated.
This is beyond tragic.
cdc.gov/fluview/survei…

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#NIH director Jay Bhattacharya doubles down on his assertion that the US is moving away from mRNA vaccine research because the public does not trust these vaccines.
Distrust of mRNA is not universal; where it exists, the flames have been very actively fanned. washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/…
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Pandemic preparedness in the US has been leveled a crippling blow with the cancellation of multiple #BARDA contracts to help develop mRNA vaccines. No other vaccine platform produces vaccine so quickly; without mRNA, Americans will have a long wait for pandemic vax. statnews.com/2025/08/05/mrn…
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@jakescottMD I've met Bob Malone and he's not someone I'd listen to. Glad you found the motivation to reply to his gobbledygook
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