Robert Aboukhalil's Avatar

Robert Aboukhalil

@robert.bio

Co-founder at https://omgenomics.com. Creator of https://42basepairs.com, https://sandbox.bio, https://biowasm.com, https://levelupwasm.com. Bioinformatics, genomics. About me: https://robert.bio

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08.09.2023
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Latest posts by Robert Aboukhalil @robert.bio

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I saw a Youtube video by @omgenomics.com profiling the work that @plasmidsaurus.bsky.social has been doing in streamlining sample preparation for their Plasmid sequencing and RNA-seq products.
Interesting to see @OpenTrons instruments *everywhere*, and how they turn operations "pipette triggers".

13.02.2026 07:57 πŸ‘ 16 πŸ” 2 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0
The "Why Not?" Era of Sequencing Has Begun
The "Why Not?" Era of Sequencing Has Begun YouTube video by OMGenomics

We just released a video from our visit to @plasmidsaurus.bsky.social, where we spoke with Mark Budde and team: www.youtube.com/watch?v=nS2o...

Highlights include:
βœ… 3D printed magnetic bead contraptions
βœ… When sequencing more is easier than sequencing less
βœ… Bread machine analogies

12.02.2026 17:50 πŸ‘ 3 πŸ” 2 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
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Playing with sandbox.bio. This was remarkably cathartic.

05.02.2026 23:56 πŸ‘ 14 πŸ” 3 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0
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That tech oligarchs are noisy and incensed about the remote possibility of a wealth tax and utterly silent about the murder of a man who was only using the phone they invented to chronicle the thuggish government goon squads should tell you everything about these desiccated souls.

25.01.2026 01:36 πŸ‘ 3459 πŸ” 831 πŸ’¬ 122 πŸ“Œ 44
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πŸš€ Our new paper on Alignoth just published in Bioinformatics!

Alignoth generates self-contained interactive HTML read alignment plots from BAM files – Rust-based, portable, and ideal for headless workflows.

πŸ“„ doi.org/10.1093/bioi...

#bioinformatics #genomics #rust @johanneskoester.bsky.social

08.01.2026 13:57 πŸ‘ 20 πŸ” 10 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0
Boolean Biotech

Blogpost: I took an oral probiotic for a month and did microbiome sequencing at @Plasmidsaurus.

blog.booleanbiotech.com/oral-microbi...

04.01.2026 16:41 πŸ‘ 5 πŸ” 4 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
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Releasing alignism, a small tool that I have found useful for doing multiple sequence alignment in browser.

hgbrian.github.io/alignism/

- The hard work was done by the awesome biowasm team!
- Does tree building too
- V fast compared to e.g., muscle on EBI
- Not tested that much!

30.12.2025 17:16 πŸ‘ 24 πŸ” 10 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
The Virtual Cell Will Be More Like Gwas Than Alphafold There has been significant discussion recently on the concept of the β€œvirtual cell.” I want to summarize the key concepts regarding what the field wants from a virtual cell and the challenges we face....

I've been thinking about the "virtual cell" concept and wanted to write up a few thoughts. Specifically on how I think the prior experience in GWAS informs the most likely way these models will be useful.

andrewcarroll.github.io/2025/12/23/t...

24.12.2025 01:52 πŸ‘ 37 πŸ” 17 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

Indeeeeed πŸ˜ƒ

22.12.2025 19:26 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
human - s3://openhgl - 42basepairs

You can also use 42basepairs to view public buckets and preview file contents e.g. 42basepairs.com/browse/s3/op... πŸ™‚

22.12.2025 18:38 πŸ‘ 2 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
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One last bioinformatics puzzle before the holidays: Can you figure out the file formats of unlabeled sequence data? πŸŽ…

sandbox.bio/puzzles/form...

22.12.2025 18:35 πŸ‘ 4 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0

These are fun educational puzzles to improve debugging skills of students! thanks to @robert.bio for creating these
sandbox.bio/puzzles

05.12.2025 11:59 πŸ‘ 7 πŸ” 4 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 1
Intro to Bedder – The Quinlan Lab

We are thrilled to announce the first official release (v0.1.8) of #𝗯𝗲𝗱𝗱𝗲𝗿, the successor to one of our flagship tool, #π—―π—²π—±π˜π—Όπ—Όπ—Ήπ˜€! Based on ideas we conceived of long ago (!), this was achieved thanks to the dedication of Brent Pedersen.

1/n

02.12.2025 02:28 πŸ‘ 298 πŸ” 152 πŸ’¬ 5 πŸ“Œ 11
Command-line puzzles Test your command-line knowledge with these puzzles, ranging from fun and easy to throw-your-laptop-out-the-window.

I'm building out a new section on sandbox.bio with debugging puzzles that could be relevant: sandbox.bio/puzzles

01.12.2025 17:17 πŸ‘ 5 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 1

I didn’t realize y’all got Rust tools compiled in a biowasm compatible way, that’s awesome!

29.11.2025 02:21 πŸ‘ 3 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0

Workshop landing page with demos here -> wasmodic.github.io

29.11.2025 01:18 πŸ‘ 11 πŸ” 5 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0
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Hmmm 🧐

19.11.2025 23:59 πŸ‘ 2 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0
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GitHub - COMBINE-lab/mim: A small, auxiliary index to massively improve parallel fastq parsing A small, auxiliary index to massively improve parallel fastq parsing - COMBINE-lab/mim

@wytamma.bsky.social : so, it took a little bit of extra time (not the flight back from the CZI meeting), but I decided to just f#&$ing do it, and the basic code to build and parse with the auxiliary fastq index is working (github.com/COMBINE-lab/...). 1/2

19.11.2025 03:01 πŸ‘ 25 πŸ” 15 πŸ’¬ 3 πŸ“Œ 0
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Efficient sequence analysis with bqtools Interactive bqtools tutorial: learn to analyse sequence data efficiently with BINSEQ files using a command-line interface in your browser.

Excited to announce a new bqtools tutorial on sandbox.bio by @noamteyssier.bsky.social! Learn about the BINSEQ file format, and how it can replace FASTQ files for better data compression and faster parallel processing: sandbox.bio/tutorials/bq...

18.11.2025 20:35 πŸ‘ 8 πŸ” 4 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
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Efficient sequence analysis with bqtools Interactive bqtools tutorial: learn to analyse sequence data efficiently with BINSEQ files using a command-line interface in your browser.

BINSEQ is a high-performance format for sequencing data and bqtools is a CLI tool that lets you create and manipulate these files in the style of samtools.

Excited to release a tutorial with @robert.bio showcasing how to use it to encode, decode, and grep sequences in the browser on sandbox.bio!

14.11.2025 18:12 πŸ‘ 5 πŸ” 2 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0
Call for Applications: Pathogen Data CUREsβ€”Curriculum Development Workshop

Interested in learning materials to prepare undergraduate students for working with pathogens and pathogen data? I’m hosting a small curriculum development sprint/workshop. Industry/clinical and educators needed.

Please share. Apply by November 28, 2025
dnalc.cshl.edu/pdn-2026-wor...

11.11.2025 20:29 πŸ‘ 10 πŸ” 13 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 1
15 Bioinformatics Project Ideas
15 Bioinformatics Project Ideas YouTube video by OMGenomics

Students often ask me how to get bioinformatics experience, and I say "projects, projects, projects!". And inevitably they say "okay but how do I find a project to do?". So I made this video with 15 project ideas:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfJK...

24.10.2025 16:35 πŸ‘ 6 πŸ” 3 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
Illustration of Burrows-Wheeler Transform and many auxiliary structures from the input string how$now$brown$cow$#

Illustration of Burrows-Wheeler Transform and many auxiliary structures from the input string how$now$brown$cow$#

New tool "bwt-svg" for making illustrations of the BWT and the many auxiliary arrays and other structures related to it. Pyodide-based no-installation-necessary interface here: benlangmead.github.io/bwt-svg/. (H/t to @robert.bio for pointing me to pyodide!) Full repo: github.com/benlangmead/....

14.10.2025 20:48 πŸ‘ 40 πŸ” 21 πŸ’¬ 4 πŸ“Œ 1

Ah, by sorting the matrix, I meant sorting the set of 9 strings defined by each row of the matrix, not sorting the 2 strings defined by each column of the matrix.

14.10.2025 13:35 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

Oh wow, BWT in a Google Sheet, that’s awesome!

10.10.2025 01:51 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

This is wonderful to play with, highly recommended for anyone who wants to understand the BWT

09.10.2025 20:31 πŸ‘ 21 πŸ” 4 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
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Just published an interactive article about a magical algorithm known as the Burrows-Wheeler Transform, which powers sequence alignment tools like bowtie and bwa: sandbox.bio/concepts/bwt

It's also notoriously unintuitive so I'm hoping this article helps you build that intuition.

09.10.2025 17:05 πŸ‘ 99 πŸ” 29 πŸ’¬ 3 πŸ“Œ 2
Screenshot of the sandbox.bio playground for running a linux environment in the browser

Screenshot of the sandbox.bio playground for running a linux environment in the browser

"Pro tip": If you are in a restricted environment & need quick access to a linux terminal running locally in the browser for some #bioinformatics messing around - check the sandbox.bio terminal playground. Made a bitly link for for convenience: bit.ly/bioterminal

06.10.2025 10:09 πŸ‘ 10 πŸ” 3 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 1

Interesting! Have you written about this somewhere?

17.09.2025 14:18 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0
sandbox.bio - Interactive bioinformatics tutorials

I still need to get around to reading the binseq paper, but I imagine a sandbox.bio tutorial might help spread the word? @noamteyssier.bsky.social let me know if you’d be interested

17.09.2025 13:51 πŸ‘ 3 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0