I am delighted to share this work, led by Miguel Alcantar and done in collaboration with Amgen, on the OrthoRep-driven evolution of computationally designed minibinders. Here, we focus not only on getting high affinity, but also on mapping sequence-affinity landscapes of diverse outcomes.

I'm very sad to learn of Prof. Andrew D. Hanson's passing. Andrew was a pioneering plant (synthetic) biologist full of insight, clarity of thought, and vision. He was also exceptionally kind and wise. I will cherish our interactions and collaborations. blogs.ifas.ufl.edu/hosdept/2025...

Excited to share our new preprint, which was years in the making! chemrxiv.org/engage/chemr... New reactions are typically developed by trial and error. How can we speed up this process? Read on to learn how we used DNA scaffolding to perform >500,000 parallel reactions on attomole scale. 1/n

A new paper from @aliceyting.bsky.social reports on LaccID, an engineered laccase, that enables hydrogen peroxide-free proximity labeling and electron microscopy of cell surfaces www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Our new company, K2 Therapeutics, is off to the races to develop new antibody drugs that target multipass membrane proteins. We are hiring so check us out! www.k2-tx.com/home#careers

Happy to see this new T7 replicon based orthogonal replication system in E. coli. Congrats to the Diercks and Schultz lab teams at Scripps Research! www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

The Xue lab at UC Irvine is looking for a staff scientist to support our work investigating how microbes interact and evolve in the gut microbiome! Open to a wide range of previous experience levels, see ad for more. recruit.ap.uci.edu/JPF09601

Happy to share this work, led by Olek Pisera, on dialing in a wide range of copy numbers for the orthogonal plasmid of OrthoRep. We used this ability to study how plasmid copy number influences evolutionary outcomes. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Happy to share the peer-reviewed and updated version of our work on OrthoRep-driven evolution of aaRSs for genetic code expansion with unnatural amino acids. Congrats to Yuichi Furuhata, a true master bioengineer, on leading this excellent work! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

We’re excited to share new work on the continuous in vivo evolution of gene libraries towards arbitrary functions. Led by superstar Olek Pisera, our experiments show that gene evolution is highly versatile... www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

#SyntheticBiology postdoctoral position in our group in University of Florida's Horticultural Sciences department. Work is directed evolution to improve enzymes that underlie important crop traits ⬇️

My story: I’m a single father and cancer researcher whose wife died of a rare cancer. Science and biomedical research is personal to me. Here is my op-ed in my hometown newspaper. Pls fwd. www.vindy.com/opinion/edit...

We have to stand up for science! Anyone who can join these rallies and believes that US science must be protected should come! @standupforscience.bsky.social

Another assault on US competitiveness at a time when biomedicine is roaring with innovation, an own-goal in a high-stakes international tournament. Of course the real losers are American people needing medicines and cures. www.washingtonpost.com/health/2025/...

Integrase-assisted transformation allows OrthoRep-driven evolution to start from very big libraries. Efficiency is even higher than the transformation of normal nuclear plasmids into yeast, because OrthoRep is cytosolic. Great job Olek, Yutong and team! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

We have new postdoc positions available. Please apply if you are interested in protein engineering, continuous evolution, OrthoRep, and/or synthetic biology! recruit.ap.uci.edu/JPF09324. Some particular problems we have a unique angle of attack on include…

We're starting a new Institute for Engineering + Health at UCI to focus on Rapid Antibody Engineering and Evolution! engineering.uci.edu/news/2024/11...

Our work describing molecular recording of sequential information by directing a chain of insertions with prime editor in mammalian cells is now out here - nature.com/articles/s41.... Congratulations to @theresaloveless.bsky.social, Courtney Carlson, and the whole team!

Our work describing extensive gene divergence on laboratory timescales with upgraded OrthoRep systems is now out here - science.org/doi/10.1126/.... Congratulations to Gordon Rix and team!