Drs. Shawn Fayer, left, and Noelia Ferruz Capapey: 'Much of what was presented was cutting-edge unpublished data.'
[EDITOR’S NOTE: BBI’s Shawn Fayer, a Post-Doctoral Researcher in Dr. Lea Starita’s lab, and Noelia Ferruz Capapey, a Group Leader at the Centre for Genomic Regulation in Barcelona, reflect on the 8th annual Mutational Scanning Symposium.]
Which presentation(s) did you find the most interesting or compelling?
Dr. Ferruz: As a researcher in protein research, I particularly enjoyed talks about variant prediction in proteins. I learned a great deal from the presentations by Pascal Notin, Julia Domingo, Albert Escobedo, Charles Pugh, Polly Fordyce… But also, Patrick Hsu’s talk about training large genomic language models was outstanding, and I was surprised to see how many DNA-related presentations turned out to be relevant to my work. Choosing a single favourite would be impossible!
Dr. Fayer: The 2025 MSS meeting was the best one yet. The talks were amazing and much of what was presented was cutting-edge unpublished data. The organizers did an excellent job putting together an agenda with a great balance of new technologies (both experimental and computational), MAVEs with mechanistic insights, and translation of MAVE and computational data in clinical settings.
Nicky Whiffin’s talk, “Interpreting variation in small nuclear RNAs in neurodevelopmental disorders” was particularly inspiring. She told the story of discovering RNU4-2 association with a developmental disorder, generation of RNU4-2 saturation genome editing data in collaboration with Findlay lab, and how the data could be translated to other unsolved cases giving families a definitive diagnosis. In addition to Nicky’s talk, and keeping to the rare disease theme, I really enjoyed Chloe Terwangne’s talk on using pooled prime editing as a high throughput method to identify variants that are likely to be causative of rare diseases.
What new information or insights did you acquire that will be used in your work?
Dr. Ferruz: The latest benchmark on ProteinGym 1.3 was very inspiring to see. Scaling from models alone is not the only solution to better predict fitness in protein variants, and I found retrieval strategies, and new methods like likelihood-fitness bridging very compelling. In protein engineering, steering from models is a strategy that I found very appealing, as a possible alternative to alignment techniques, which iterate over the models and improve over time with feedback.
Dr. Fayer: I was fortunate enough to present a relatively new project: “A cluster-based method for guiding the use of variant effect predictors in clinical variant classification.” Many participants in the meeting were machine learning experts who offered suggestions for analyses that will help boost the impact of the project.
Did the symposium meet – or exceed – your expectations? Why or why not?
Dr. Ferruz: It absolutely exceeded my expectations. I had anticipated only limited overlap with my research, yet most presentations proved highly relevant and directly applicable. I ended up attending every talk and gained valuable insights from the poster sessions as well. The atmosphere was excellent—there were plenty of opportunities for interaction during the multiple poster sessions. I would definitely recommend the symposium!
Dr. Fayer: Exceed - which is no small feat. The MSS has been my favorite meeting for several years, so my expectations are super high. What makes this meeting so great is that the mutational scanning field is highly collaborative, and open to sharing data/protocols. It was also great to connect with a higher concentration of European colleagues than is typical for meetings in North America.
What are your suggestions/recommendations for MSS 2026?
Dr. Ferruz: The organization was spectacular. If I had to suggest anything, my only point would be to make the workshops more hands-on so that students can try out some of the techniques on the spot.
Dr. Fayer: More of the same!
