It is always fun to live another February, the ordered month that either begins the same day as it ends, or the weirdo month with an extra day just because the sun does not like integers… However, in the ConesaLab we squeezed every day out of it. Especially with the International Day of Women and Girls in Science. You know we love outreach, and this was the perfect excuse for us. First, the best excuse to remind our super scientists everything they do to keep this lab afloat. Ana steering the wheel, finding resources even from under the rocks. Carol, full of new ideas and excitement for science. Clara, with all of her tips and tricks to keep the boring bureaucracy in check. Virtu, the lab machine that is the cell saviour, even crossing Europe to bring the cells back to us. Leyre, the youngest of the team, taking her first steps in the world of science and rocking it. Nazli, the visiting researcher full of enthusiasm and a different perspective for us to learn (and hike 😉).
Sharing Science: From Round Tables to Radio
Since we believe that it is key not only to produce science, but also to share it, we have engaged during multiple activities through the month. Firstly, Ana was an invited speaker for the round table session at the IV Bioinformatics Day of Aragon, what an honour! She was happy to be able to share ideas with other Computational Biologists like her and inspire the next generations of Aragonian scientists, who come rocking it hard! As well, Ana was invited to her home region, Murcia, to participate in the “fishbowl” of the AX Aula of Murcia forum. Another great opportunity to discuss and reflect with peers about where we are and what we want to achieve as a society! As always, our dear Ana is unbeatable in spreading the word.
Then, Carol visited the CEE Squema, a special education school, to be interviewed on their own radio program! She had so much fun sharing her love for science and answering all the questions the students had for her. She made quite an impression there, perhaps we will soon have our latest addition to the team. To finish off the outreach of the month, Leyre, Alicia, Victor and Quique joined the science fair in the Alessandra Soler CEIP in Russafa. They showed the kids and parents there which protein was encoded in their name, and they got to build their own DNA bracelet encoding their own name. Who would have said that you could have your genome at your fingertips. If you are curious to find out which protein is encoded in your name, check out the app created by Pablo (conesalab.org/proteinas).
While outreach is incredibly rewarding, we also took our expertise to the classroom. Carol and Pablo lectured the students of the Bioinformatics Master of the University of Valencia on the wonders that long-reads are doing in the transcriptomics community, and how to unlock their full potential through SQANTI3! Clara, curious as ever, finished a CSIC course about “Solving digital challenges creatively with AI”, and now she has joined Tian in his love for using agents to automate everything! We need to be always on the lookout for knowledge.
Expanding the SQANTI-verse
When it comes to additions to the SQANTI-verse, this month we had three pre-releases!! Firstly, SQANTI3 has a pre-release of its version 6.0, with important changes to the rescue module. Then, Carol has put up in GitHub SQANTI-browser, a new tool that integrates UCSC Genome Browser with the SQANTI3 classification and the different orthogonal data you can use to help the users make more informed decisions on their data. Finally, Carlos and Fran have posted the beta-version of SQANTI-SingleCell, for users to try on their sclr-Seq datasets. This seems like an ever-expanding universe, and we hope it to be like that for years to come. Do not hesitate to check them out and leave any comments or improvements you have as a user, we would love that 😊
Hellos and Goodbyes
February was a goodbyes month as well. Carlos left us to do his secondment in the Earlham Lab, under the supervision of Wilfred, and the company of our beloved Fran! Both of them are working toe-to-toe to make SQANTI-sc ready for y’all! He is having a great time there, despite missing sunny Valencia (I mean, why should I lie…) However, the snow and the fish and chips helped to ease the pain 😉 Nonetheless, Carlos will come back in a couple of months, but Raul won’t. He has been a Master Student doing his thesis under Pablo’s supervision, fixing the nightmare that IsoAnnot was. Through sweat and tears, he has been able to tame the beast and produce results once again. We will miss him. To cover up for him, Pablo (a new one), came to do an internship under Pablo’s wing (yes, mini-me). He will stress test the latest release from SQANTI3 and its requantification module, so it is ready for all of you to play around. We also had a temporary addition to the lab, the biker Nadja! She is a fellow PhD student of the LongTREC Network, like Tian and Fabian. She is based in Slovenia, working on potatoes and long reads, but now she is doing her secondment at BioBam. She will join us on Tuesdays for our lab meetings to show us the true power behind potatoes!
And that was all folks, February may be short, but here we enjoyed every moment of it!
See ya next month!
