Juggling beanbag Chickens: a Tweetorial from @coregenomics
My niece is 1. Her Dad said for Christmas she wanted; chickens, something to throw, or something musical. I made her these juggling beanbags in the shape of Chickens as an almost perfect solution – 2 out of 3 ‘aint bad! Instructions: 1 through 5
1) Cut out three 20cm x 10cm pieces of fabric and line with iron-on interfacing. Cut out three felt combs, beaks and wattles

Two recent preprints report almost opposite views on the use of #TMB in IO therapy.
For: @CharlesSwanton et al researchsquare.com/article/rs-764…

Against: @leonidmirny biorxiv.org/content/10.110…

Who's right...answers on a postcard please! For (1) Clonal TMB had the strongest effect size across all 15 studies in the (Odds Ratio for “CR/PR” vs “SD/PD” = 1.88, 95% confidence interval [1.52 – 2.33], p=8.08 x 10-9).

Here's my first take on the @illumina @GrailBio acquisition. It'll be interesting to see how people in the cancer diagnostics space react to this over the next days/weeks.
@AlbertVilella @OmicsOmicsBlog @mason_lab @sbarnettARK @manal_mehta @Varro_Analytics @VIBTechWatch et al

https://twitter.com/coregenomics/status/1308030494563590144

No bounce back this morning on @illumina stock price after @GrailBio acquisition..yet?

Here's what I've learned over the weekend:

1) never give up hope - there's loads of possibility and until my friend has a confirmed diagnosis it's not worth speculating on the future too gloomily.

Please continue to comment and get in touch.

https://twitter.com/coregenomics/status/1304776376944414723

2) for brain tumours most patients can be stratified effectively by histology and genomics/epi is currently a prognostic indicator.

3) IDH mutation testing and MGMT methylation are the only predictive biomarkers in routine clinical use (and only in glioblastoma)

What has had the biggest "positive" impact on the environment Airborne Nitrogen Dioxide Plummets Over China
earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/146362/… from @NASAEarth

Applying "Keep It Simple Stupid" to #COVID19 testing is the theme of @metricausa's article in @naturemethods. The article focuses on simple tests - paper-based assays by @jac_linnes and @UniofOxford's Zhanfeng Cui & Wei Huang's no purification (RT-LAMP?) assay...

https://twitter.com/metricausa/status/1248711428317622274

...and highlights the advances being made in PCR by (here goes) @dnanudge, @ubiquitomebio, @miniPCR, BackPackPCR (using NaOH-based DNA extraction a'la
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/P…), colorimetric LAMP, GNA Bio (a new one for me), @openpcr, @BiomemeInc, @theBentoLab, @AzuraGenomics!

Beautiful paper from @fmarass and @DNA_tsui showing how Fragment Size analysis distinguishes CHIP mutations in ctDNA #liquidbiopsy. All in under 750 words!
academic.oup.com/clinchem/artic… @FlorentMouliere was one of the first people to show that tumour derived ctDNA is shorter than blood-derived cfDNA (see pnas.org/content/112/11…). Francesco and Dana use this to push mutant reads into "short" and "long" bins on 44 patients from the @sloan_kettering IMPACT assay

A Comprehensive Multi-Center Cross-platform Benchmarking Study of Single-cell RNA Sequencing Using Reference Samples a new preprint on bioRxiv by the SEQC team @maqcsociety
biorxiv.org/content/10.110… This one's not as comprehensive as previous comparisons and technologies weren't run in as many replicates or labs as before. Unfortunately this makes the paper a little lightweight and it would be difficult for the reader to make any informed decision about which platform to buy

@greateranglia does anyone actually listen to complaints? Once again a single carriage stops at Cambridge North 1/2 full of people going to Ely but no-one going towards Norwich was allowed on. One enterprising @greateranglia guard about 3 years ago announced that a similar train was NOT stopping at Ely (even though it did really) and many fewer passengers were inconvenienced. Brilliant!

Back from holidays and a 4 carriage train is coming to take me home on the 17:14 CBN to WYM... @greateranglia is this one of the new rolling stock? Yes it was but all 4 carriages were rammed full and noone thought to suggest we catch the bloody Great Northern why can't you fuckwits sort shit like this out?

Here's my list of Twitter contributors to the references in RNA sequencing: the teenage years
rdcu.be/bMoVq

In no particular order...

@Taka_Nojima
@ncloonan
@Al__Forrest
@actually_alan
@seangrimmond
@MarioniLab
@coletrapnell
@mason_lab
Jernej Ule
@BioMickWatson @ryanlisterlab
@daniel_garalde
@mitenjain
@melissafullwood
@veronika_herzog
@XAdiconis
@chris_zie
@ConesaLab
@coletrapnell
@si_hardwick
@infphilo
@elapertea
@lpachter
@pmelsted
@hjpimentel
@AmeresSL
@mitenjain
@sergekoren
@khmiga
@Scalene