I finally read this paper! I wonder how much of the effect is also psychological and social. Top athletes often talk about "hunger." Could early success satiate and diminish that hunger? Being in multi-disciplinary setting must also affect the number and kind of people one meets. 🤔

as many of you know, I'm not Christian but always loved Christmas. My wish: may the light in you and your loved ones shine bright may that light comfort and inspire others may our lights dispel darkness and fear may they give the gift of hope may we walk in light, unafraid, towards what is to be

This paper from the @geochurch.bsky.social lab introduces Plasmid2MC, a simple, cell-free protocol using ΦC31 integrase to produce minicircle DNAs out of plasmids without backbreaking labor and endotoxin contamination. I hope I can try it in the lab soon. ⭕🧬 www.nature.com/articles/s42...

It's a neat idea to use self-assembling peptide with LPS binding domain to coat therapeutic bacteria! I am not fully sure how and if this coating improves efficacy and safety for cancer treatment, but maybe I am missing something? 🧬🦠🧐 1/2 www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Changing research topic for postdoc training:

I finally got to watch this recorded lecture titled "The Pursuit of Collective Intelligence" by Radhika Nagpal from 2018, and it's an absolute gold. This talk delves into collective intelligence of humans and its relationship with academic culture. 📽️🍿 cornell.hosted.panopto.com/Panopto/Page...

An existential contemplation for bioengineers. I guess it's a good way to end a tumultuous year by wondering who we are and where we are going. 🧘‍♂️🧘🧘‍♀️🪷🦠🧬

Nice piece on @jcstark.bsky.social’s work on antibody-lectin chimeras (AbLecs), a new type of bispecific for cancer immune therapy and more #glycotime news.mit.edu/2025/new-imm...

Also, recall that I examined grant title changes for evidence of “remediation” and found 777 grants with titles changed from 2024 to 2025. Here is a word cloud of the removed words.

When your PI presents your work

About 1 in 10 people have an autoimmune disease. There's great news here on current efforts that are achieving cures. erictopol.substack.com/p/the-exhili...

📢 New extended abstract submission deadline: 6 January 2026! Outstanding speaker list, plus many slots for short talks by students, postdocs, and junior PIs. Join us in March in Barcelona! events.ibecbarcelona.eu/embl-ibec-co...

Why Supporting Science Matters: Now More Than Ever - Oliver Bogler @oliverbogler.bsky.social oncodaily.com/voices/olive... #OncoDaily #Oncology #Cancer #Health #Medicine #MedEd #MedOnc #MedNews

I am a student at Brown in communication with a friend at RIBC. There is an urgent need for blood donations to support RI. Donations in NY, NJ, MN, NB, DE or NJ can help supply RI. Spread the word. www.ribc.org/donate-blood/

#microsky #phagesky Gut #phage biobank www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Our paper is out in @natcomms.nature.com "Engineering microbial consortia for mixed plastic upcycling!" This achievement was possible thanks to collaborative efforts by Jinjin Diao, Yuxin Tian, Seong-Min Cho & Sunkyu Park! Thanks, NSF Global Center team! The link: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Looking forward to the workshop and already have a long list of potential projects for the hackathon! 🧬

Huge news for #biocomputation! In a major call (€30M total) for AI proposals, Spain just funded an initiative for implementing AI with living matter using #synbio as the programming tool. The 'AI in vivo project' is a massive, official recognition of biocomputation as a leading field in computing.

Question for DNA origami enthusiasts: how do you think the authors bias the "Nanosheet" to roll up one way over the other in this paper to make sure that their cargoes are inside instead of exposed outside? 🧬 1/2 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

I was re-reading Dr. Radhika Nagpal's article about her experience as an assistant professor to reinvigorate my faculty job search (I highly recommend if you haven't!), and I found this passage to stand out even more now due to the recent scandal at Harvard: 1/2

Damn, y'all knew about parallel strands of nucleic acids forming base-paired duplex in addition to the usual antiparallel orientation? I am almost four decades too late, and I thought I worked with nucleic acids. Better late than never... right? 🙈🧬 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

I don't think scientists should work for anyone else. They should work for discovery and for their own curiosity. –Maria Leptin, ERC President @marialep.bsky.social on 'The Night Science Podcast'

There’s an art to writing a grant proposal so that your creativity is on full display. Maria Leptin - president of the ERC - talks about it on the new episode of the Night Science Podcast.

Glioblastoma is a deadly brain cancer (~1 in 15 survives over 5 years) with limited treatment options. The Quintana lab at @broadinstitute.org shows how engineered oncolytic viruses can better target cancer cells and reprogram immune cells to attack cancer cells! 🧬🦠🧠 www.nature.com/articles/s43...

Assistant professor & people rank below it: If interested in giving a talk in 2027 as a #rising star (45 min talk), paired with a pioneer (5 min), please send your CV to [email protected] Relevant papers 👇 www.science.org/content/arti... www.nature.com/articles/s41... www.cell.com/trends/biote...

New to RNA design? Please try pyFuRNAce! Looking forward to your feedback 🧬

Congrats to our team on building a technology that enables virtually all PROTAC protein degrader drugs to be delivered to tumors! “Tumor microenvironment–targeted PROTAC nanoparticle self-assembly broadly predicted by structural descriptors” | Science Advances www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Rolling-circle replication of extracellular DNA by prophage activation in bacterial biofilms ⭕🧬🦠 Biology is crazy and beautiful 🤯 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

The answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything: 🍖

Movie you've watched more than six times with a gif. Hard mode: no Stars (either War or Trek), LOTR, or Marvel

Demand that NIH Maintain the Scientific Credibility of its Institute Directors open.substack.com/pub/sciencea...

Many PhD students have told me that they want to leave academia because they don't want to be like their PhD advisors. The reason varied from day-to-day work as a professor (grants, grants, grants) to management style (I don't want to mistreat my students to succeed). WE DON'T HAVE TO BE LIKE THAT!

I finally read @taeseokmoon.bsky.social's article about realizing his ambition as a professor (sorry, it took so long since you shared it with me 😭). It's short yet profound and powerful. I definitely recommend it if you feel stuck right now in your academic journey. www.science.org/content/arti...

"the Royal Society — a group of scientifically minded individuals that was founded in 1660 in London — captured the philosophy in its motto, nullius in verba, meaning ‘take nobody’s word for it'." The Royal society was the OG "do your own research" pusher!

Darwin's regrets: "If I had to live my life again I would have made a rule to read some poetry and listen to some music at least once every week.. The loss of these tastes is a loss of happiness, and may possibly be injurious to the intellect and more probably to the moral character"

@nature.com asked me to write an op-ed on the perspective of the AI reviewing process, prompted by the recent partnership between @biorxivpreprint.bsky.social and @qedscience.bsky.social Hope my perspective adds value to the conversation. www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Fig. 7: Real biology

They mean to blow up this RNAscicle stand 🧬🧊💣💥

🦋🆚🪳

@itaiyanai.bsky.social wrote a nice book review of 𝘔𝘦𝘵𝘢𝘮𝘰𝘳𝘱𝘩𝘰𝘴𝘪𝘴 by Oren Harman 🦋 www.nature.com/articles/d41... Not to be confused with 𝘔𝘦𝘵𝘢𝘮𝘰𝘳𝘱𝘩𝘰𝘴𝘪𝘴 by Franz Kafka 🪳

Why does it matter to me? Fewer jobs. The graph shows # of tenure-track faculty job openings in biomedical engineering for this year (purple), last year (green), and yearly average of 2021–2024 (gray curve). 3 out of 10 jobs are projected to be gone this year. ericaprattlab.com/bme_jobs_list/ 1/2

The latest from RNA-designer extraordinaire @monari-luca.bsky.social is out in @natcomms.nature.com. We introduce PyFuRNAce.de, a design tool for RNA origami. It simplifies design with a rich motif library and automatic 2d/3d modeling and routing optimization 🧬 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

I probably should study this paper if I want to continue working with bacteria... 😅

in the emergency room for a snake bite and they rush in a camel to watch The Notebook

81% of the carbon footprint for an iPhone14 is in its production (source: Apple, 2025). Do you really need a new phone?

The long-awaited Dipids paper is finally out www.nature.com/articles/s41...! Check out the largest containers ever self-assembled from DNA origami🧬, and the amazing person and story behind it www.linkedin.com/feed/update/... Congrats to Christoph🎉 and thanks for letting me be part of this journey🥹!

Chromoproteins are very cool, but I misread it as chro"N"oprotein. Most circadian oscillators are based on transcription-translation feedback loop; that's cheating! My quick search has taught me that cyanobacteria keep their rhythm through dynamic protein activities! Chronoproteins 😎🕰️🧬

Fig. 6: Mathematical model