Ewan Birney Profile picture
Aug 19, 2019 8 tweets 2 min read Read on X
I found this piece on the #1619Project very moving; excellent long read writing on the African American arc of history and it’s role in American history. nytimes.com/interactive/20…
When I worked in the Mayor’s office in Baltimore, just before I started my PhD it was the start of a still on going education into African American history and culture.
It’s hard not to cry or rage as one understands the African American story; probably the most heart rending moment was when I spent two days with the adult literacy project in Baltimore. Exceptionally dedicated and patient teachers helping grown men and women learn how to read
(That the education system was so systematically biased and bad for African Americans was simply breathtakingly shocking even more so now I am older, have my own children etc)
I was assigned to a charming man, my age, who had built an elaborate story of how he was going to escape West Baltimore, make his fortune, marry a beautiful woman and have his own house with a porch in the suburbs. This story started with him learning how to read.
The teachers never quashed this fantasy but were patient and consistent in bringing him back to the everyday- that he was making progress, and that learning to read was a good thing whatever his future
This is one of a whole series of experiences that summer (I met pastors; spent time with an unmarked police unit; visited Alex Brown+Legg Mason same day as west Baltimore) that completely changed my understanding of African American life
But pieces like this #1619Project shows there is (unsurprisingly!) lots more to learn and far more depth to fundamental process of reconciliation needed across the world (America and worldwide)

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More from @ewanbirney

Oct 13
So @JeremyFarrar asked for an "explainer thread" on Noble Prizes in Chemistry around AlphaFold and Protein design, so here goes.
First off, this is an old problem. It starts with observations in the 1950s/1960s, leading to a Noble Prize in 1972 to Anfinsen, Moore and Stein where in particular Anfinsen convincingly shows that the particular sequence of amino acids in a protein determines its 3D structure
Just to visualise this; think of amino acid chain as different sorts of beads on a string. The beads come in 20 types - some type like to stick to other types; some types like to be hidden away from water; some are small and some are large. A protein is somewhere around 50 beads
Read 46 tweets
Sep 3
Great to see this paper out by @D_Westergaard and colleagues - including myself - leveraging the just jaw-droppingly good combination of the Danish pedigree data (across the entire country!) and their highly detailed EHR. nature.com/articles/s4146…
This is pedigree based genetics - the correlation of phenotypes (in this case diagnoses of diseases) - as was done in the 1910s - formalised by RA Fischer and S. Wright from ideas at the turn of the 20th Cent.
This concept of the correlation of phenotype to pedigree predates the identification of DNA as molecular mechanism for inheritance - this is old school genetics updated in the modern age.
Read 24 tweets
Sep 1
One of the more depressing things re-engaging on social media is the undercurrent of pseudo-scientific racism which continues to pop up with exciting data rich plots, often lots of maths and just lots of class A bullshit justifying tired anti-woke (but just ol' fashioned racist)
I'm not going to amplify the crappy threads/blogs/messages forwarded to me, but I do want to arm my followers with the most cogent arguments against this if this does come up in conversation around you.
First off, humans are a super-young species - we exploded out of Africa very quickly and although lots of the details we still don't know (and the science changes quickly) it's pretty clear we adapted to the changing environment main by behaviour
Read 27 tweets
Jul 24
A reminder ( it’s an evergreen topic) - humans are a genetically undiverse species - we exploded out Africa in a heartbeat of evolutionary time and we predominantly adapted to the multitude of environments by our behaviour, passing that knowledge down culturally in groups
Although there are genetic adaptations to some environments- eg lack of sunlight (fair skin), regular milk consumption (lactase persistence) or reduced sweat for humid environments (less sweat pores and thicker hair) these have two features
Firstly these adaptions are sparse in the context of the genome - its small regions which do this
Read 8 tweets
Apr 2
A short, personal thread on what is odd about other cultures when interacting with Brits, and then also what I think is odd about Brits when interacting with other cultures - highly, highly personal, but from >30 years working internationally.
German+Dutch do not have to preface a challenge with "I think you might have missed something..." or some other British-style softening up. It is entirely fine - indeed polite/shows respect - just come out "you are wrong because X,Y" - this directness is surprising for a Brit.
Northern (Protestant/river/Prussian) Germans are very different from Southern (Catholic, Mountain+Forest) Germans. Don't confuse them. External stereotypes of Germans (in particular in Britain) is a weird mixture of both and you have to untangle this.
Read 20 tweets
Feb 20
The publication of the whole genomes from the US @AllofUsResearch cohort is great to see, but the choice of how to represent an overview of the genetic relationships has (rightly) drawn controversy, in particular how the concepts of ethnicity and race are mapped to it.
This is not in bad faith - the AllofUs cohort should be applauded in its diversity push and much of the but it is an illustration of the messiness of genetics and the inability to represent our complex relationships in any 2D space. Longer thread below>>
A reminder that genetics (the variation in DNA sequence passed down from your parents, +their parents etc) and race or ethnicity (a box people tick on surveys or on census) are quite different concepts, strongly linked only by visible features which are genetic, eg, skin colour
Read 28 tweets

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