Robert Castelo

In my latest column, I explain some of my reasons for being deeply skeptical about AI models that claim to understand DNA, genes, and genomes: stevensalzberg.substack.com/p/ai-is-starti…

@joseledecastro Seguramente algo tendrá que cambiar, pero también es verdad que la tesis doctoral es un medio (para la formación de un investigador/a), no un fin. También salimos a hacer deporte y corremos durante 1 hora, a pesar de que un coche haría el mismo recorrido en 5 min.

we just published (in G3) the genome of the oldest living thing on Earth: the bristlecone pine, which can live 5,000 years or more. Do we know yet what allows it to live so long? No, but the genome is a great place to start ucdavis.edu/climate/news/u…

Long reads carry multiple small vars and SVs and their phasing. LongcallD is the only caller that tightly integrates germline/mosaic small/structural vars/MEIs and their phasing in a single C program. One command line to get competitive small variant calls and better SVs.

Wow! Detecten les 5 bases de l'ADN i l'ARN a les mostres de l'asteroide Ryugu! Adenina, guanina, citosina, timina i uracil són l'alfabet amb què s'escriuen els llibres d'instruccions de la vida (ADN i ARN). Què significa aquesta troballa? Fil...

We have two open positions to work on modeling and analysis of cancer sequencing data. If you are interested, check out the links below or write me an email: recruitment.crg.eu/content/jobs/p… recruitment.crg.eu/content/jobs/p…

Steve Jobs literally predicted the iPhone, the Internet, AI and the next 50 years of technology in a single speech from 1983:

Deep learning researchers created fake citations to support their claims in 51 papers at the latest @NeurIPSConf. I have concerns: stevensalzberg.substack.com/p/an-embarrass…

New preprint! 🧵 We introduce jazzPanda, a method for identifying spatial marker genes in imaging-based spatial transcriptomics (Xenium, CosMx, MERSCOPE). Why do we need another marker gene method? Short answer: existing methods ignore spatial coordinates. 👇

Reclamem que la reobertura del servei ferroviari, que es preveu per als propers dies, sigui de la La Garriga fins a ➡️Ribes de Freser⬅️ i no només fins a Ripoll. Animem @AjCampdevanol i @AjRibesdeFreser a pressionar perquè sigui així! @CCRipolles @rodalies @Adif_es @territoricat

A statement from Anthropic CEO, Dario Amodei, on our discussions with the Department of War. anthropic.com/news/statement…

AI can autodetect gene name date swaps. Is this AGI?

It’s finally out! Together with @EMBO and @ReviewCommons, we conducted a structured side-by-side comparison of human peer review and our AI scientific review. Here’s what we did: Authors whose manuscripts had already received journal-agnostic review at Review Commons were provided with an independent AI review generated by @qedScience. The AI analysis was compared to the combined feedback of multiple human reviewers, not to a single report, and had no access to those reviews. We then asked authors how they evaluate the strengths and limitations of both approaches, and how they would actually want to use AI. The conclusion was clear: Scientists want AI feedback to strengthen their work IN ADVANCE, under their control. Not as a gatekeeper, but as a tool for constructive input. That is exactly what we are building at q.e.d! We are on the authors' side. q.e.d. is not working in isolation; we are collaborating with leading pro-scientists organizations, including EMBO (and other journals), Review Commons, and OpenRxiv (@biorxivpreprint), and are working closely with researchers across fields. At the same time, we are building an alternative model that puts agency directly in scientists’ hands. Researchers should be the ones deciding when their work is ready to be shared. We are building the infrastructure to support that. A pleasure doing this with the great Thomas Lemberger @tlemberger and Niv Samuel Mastboim @nivmast

In Rust! A new tool to flag foldback and chimeric artifacts in long reads. They are prevalent in some Nanpore datasets. See the full paper for details: link.springer.com/article/10.118…

theatlantic.com/technology/202… Terry Tao, on AI's promise for math

Segon dilluns seguit q es produeix un accident a la tarda vespre a la C17, per un trajecte en bus de 40-50 minuts, fa una setmana vam estar 3 hores i avui anem camí de superar els 60 minuts. La manca de servei ferroviari també produeix això @defensemR3 @territoricat

I used Claude Opus 4.5/4.6 (and a bit of Codex GPT-5.3) to port edgeR to Python. See edgePython github.com/pachterlab/edg… This allowed me to develop a single-cell DE method that extends NEBULA with edgeR Empirical Bayes. All in one week. Details in doi.org/10.64898/2026.…

Los dos españoles dentro del mayor proyecto de biomedicina de la historia: “Con Trump, no sería posible” elpais.com/ciencia/2026-0…

✅ Aquí se incluye mi modesta opinión sobre este caso. 👉Preocupación por las expectativas creadas por Barbacid sobre el cáncer de páncreas: “El anuncio se ha salido de madre” ⁦@ASEICAnews⁩ ⁦@ContraCancerEs⁩ ⁦@_SEOM⁩ eldiario.es/sociedad/preoc…

The new eLife model championed by @mbeisen has enabled an apples-to-apples comparison of machine and peer review. That's because the machine can review the submitted paper (preprint) which @eLife makes available, and the peer reviews are also published. biorxiv.org/content/10.648… 1/