Doing a PhD is - at heart - one long discussion with your mentor. The discussion changes over time - with unexpected turns and ups & downs - but through it all is a pair of people discussing a topic endlessly to make sense of it. PhD students: choose someone you like to talk to!

🚨 Postdoctoral Opportunity for Female Scientists🚨 The University of Vienna is awarding at least 20 fully funded 4 year postdoctoral positions to outstanding female scientists Interested? Get in touch via direct message careers.univie.ac.at/en/postdoc/e... #MicroSky 🧪 #PostDoc @univie.ac.at

For all PhD candidates interested in #syntheticbiology consider our #EMBOSynBio course! Applications open!

Our new paper is out: we present a quantitative framework to assess how (bio)tech interventions in plant agriculture could meaningfully contribute to climate mitigation. This may be the most important paper I ever publish #SyntheticBiology #ClimateAction #Agriculture #Biochar doi.org/10.1093/plph...

Opportunity to join the lab of @ettema.bsky.social in our department as postdoc! 👇

Newest preprint from our lab: a new family of promising synthetic CO2 fixation cycles that may outcompete the Calvin cycle and that Vittorio Rainaldi realized to a great extent in E. coli! Up to 11 heterologous enzymes in a cascade supporting CO2 fixation & growth! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Great to see our MOSAIC story about an easy, cloning-free efficient protocol for mutating plasmids using recombineering is out now officially and the cover story of ASC Synthetic Biology pubs.acs.org/toc/asbcd6/1... ! Great shoutout to Marijn van den Brink, Tim Althuis and Christophe Danelon!

'hey mela' is the first vegan pregnancy test in the world. Now available in Germany. What could be vegan about it? These tests are based on antibodies that are usually farmed from small rodents kept in cages, infected with hybridoma cells. This test is based on AB expressed from algae!! 🧪

Archaeal Virus Ph.D. project! (With Tessa Quax) www.rug.nl/about-ug/wor...

Please repost! Postdoc in adaptive laboratory evolution and C1 synthetic metabolism! Location: DTU Biosustain 🦠🧬🔬 Starting in 01/2026! Fell free to reach out if you have questions! efzu.fa.em2.oraclecloud.com/hcmUI/Candid...

Fijn dat het deze verkiezingen een keer over belastingen gaat. Nu nog zorgen dat de feiten het winnen van de framing. De middenklasse in NL betaalt de belastingkortingen van de allerrijksten. Hoe rijker je bent, hoe lager je belastingdruk. Dit komt door politieke keuzes. Ga stemmen 29 oktober.

🧵 Our study on the elusive titration control mechanism of the replication initiator DnaA in Escherichia coli is now out on @natcomms.nature.com‬! @stephkoe.bsky.social @hohlbeinlab.bsky.social‬ @nicoc-micsynmet.bsky.social @ettema.bsky.social‬ @mib-wur.bsky.social doi.org/10.1038/s414...

I'm going to be advertising for a few positions in my group in the next couple of months for a big project on synthetic microbial communities. I would love to hear from you if you are interested and I'd also appreciate if everyone could share this far and wide!

New paper from our lab on synthetic genome work in yeast is out - Iterative SCRaMbLE for Engineering Synthetic Genome Modules and Chromosomes. Exciting project led by Jane (Xinyu) Lu in our group, now online. t.co/0LuGwgAWlA

Outstanding Faculty opportunity in the broad area of 'life sciences engineering' @EPFL School of Life Sciences, open to both junior and senior researchers. We may prefer metabolism-centric applications but remain open to outstanding applications across domains: www.epfl.ch/about/workin...

#Growth-coupled #selection just got an update ! In the last years, E. coli selection strains for #central , #amino #acid and #energy metabolism intermediates were created by the community. So, we compiled them and revisit the core concepts of growth coupling. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Proteins of amino acid metabolism form large structures and determine diffusion in the cytoplasm! Our 7-year-long tour-de-force is now out on Bioxriv www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... Thanks everyone involved! And especially to Jose Losa who pioneered this!

I get annoyed at the narrative that all the awareness and work on climate change hasn't done anything. Yes, global CO₂ emissions indeed continue to climb, but we don't know the counterfactual. When I was in grad school, we were on track for 5°C of warming. Now it's below 3°C. That's progress.

Bachelor open avond Wageningen Universiteit: 5 juni van 16-21h www.wur.nl/nl/onderwijs...

New vacancy in my team! PhD student position on microbial genome evolution, focusing on the evolutionary principles underlying bacterial genome architecture. Please repost and share with talented MSc students in #evobio, bioinformatics or related :) www.uu.nl/en/organisat... #MEvoSky #MicroSky

Very nice lab to do a PhD

Ik vind deze campagne erg belangrijk - doe je ook mee? actie.degoedezaak.org/petitions/mo...

I got hit by some rather sudden and extreme financial hardship so if anyone is in need of remote wetlab contract research, strictly BSL1, do let me know. Currently scrambling for gigs. Plant, Bacterial, Archaeal Non-model Bioeng Custom Lab Hardware Turn Key Genetic Design Please repost for reach 💚

>4 megabase synthetic genome assembled in E.coli with 7 of life's 64 codons removed throughout. A new landmark for synthetic genomes. I wonder how well this little cell grows...

We have 3 openings for ambitious postdocs or PhD students in our #CDlab - for exciting single-molecule biophysics research on nuclear pores, peroxisomes, or archaeal divisomes. Check it out and apply: ceesdekkerlab.nl/come-join-us/ RT=nice!

Wij zeggen: Er is wél een rode lijn. Onze advertentie, vandaag in het AD, Trouw en de Volkskrant. Deel dit statement en help ons om meer partijen te overtuigen! 👇🏼👊🏼

✨ Our #SynBio map is growing! 🌍🔬 Excited to welcome 3 new labs to the #EUSynBioMap, connecting #SyntheticBiology labs and associations across Europe! Find out more here 👉 www.linkedin.com/posts/eusynb... ⭐️ Want to add your lab? Contact us!

Ik vind deze campagne erg belangrijk - doe je ook mee? actie.degoedezaak.org/petitions/ee...

NTR weg......? Het lijkt wel alsof we ook een DOGE hebben. Teken de petitie als protest. Heb ik ook net gedaan.

Sam Lovat, Elad Noor, Ron Milo run the numbers on #VerticalFarming to get ⚡️ cost ≈$10/kg dry plant matter. Which explains why it's viable only for high-value 🥬 ('fru-fru baby lettuce') Vertical farming limitations & potential demonstrated by back-of-the-envelope calculations doi.org/10.1093/plph...

During our recent consortium meeting in Marburg, we visited the cutting-edge research facilities at @mpimicrobiomarburg.bsky.social. Thank you, Nicole Paczia & Timo Glatter, for showing us around your Metabolomics and Proteomics installations! 🧪 #Microbiology #SynBio #SolarFuels #HorizonEU

Our partners @w-u-r.bsky.social and @mpimicrobiomarburg.bsky.social demonstrated how synthetic metabolism can outperform the Calvin cycle—nature’s mechanism for CO2 fixation. Read the full, open-access Nature Microbiology article at doi.org/10.1038/s415... #SyntheticBiology #MetabolicEngineering

📢 Preprint alert! In this study we provide new genomic insights into #CupriavidusNecator for #C1Biomanufacturing: - Genome assemblies for more strains - Species definition refined - Traits & methylation systems explored Great job by @magnusgj.bsky.social and team www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Very happy to contribute to this work (a bit) and see Simona, Enrico and Costas finally cracking the CRISPR-Cas genome engineering challenge in my favorite bug C. necator!

Our brand new CRISPR/Cas toolkit for genome editing of Cupriavidus necator is out🦠🧬 A joint effort w/ @dellavallesimo.bsky.social and Costas (and many more!) Check 🧵 our long journey for developing a new state-of-the-art for the manipulation of this promising bug 1/n www.cell.com/trends/biote...

Interested in Sustainability, Metabolic Engineering and Evolution? Check out how we convinced E. coli to grow on the CO2-derived substrate formic acid using the synthetic Serine Threonine Cycle! ♻️🌱🦠 OPEN ACCESS publication to be found here: 🚨 doi.org/10.1016/j.ym... 🚨 #MEvoSky #microsky (1/🧵)

Very happy and proud of this work led by @beaubd.bsky.social with many others involved, in which we show that synthetic C1 metabolism can do better than nature for biotech!

Super excited to see my main PhD project finally out in @naturemicrobiol.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/s41.... We show for the first time that a synthetic and engineered pathway can indeed exceed nature at one-carbon fixation.

Super intriguing paper from Rainey's Lab. It is possible to experimentally evolve *evolvabiliy*. But could we evolve bacteria also towards non-evolvability or non-evolution 🤔 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Dit is dus wat er nu al gebeurt door de bezuinigingen op onderwijs en onderzoek. We zouden als land juist meer moeten investeren in onze toekomst!

Congratulations to our very own John van der Oost!!!! #BeijerinckPrize

Interested in forefront SynBio? 14 positions offered in Patrick Cai Lab www.cailab.org in Manchester www.cailab.org/open-positio... 😱!

The current Trump disaster for US science may prompt scientists to move (back) to Europe. It would be great if funding agencies (ERC, NWO, DFG,..) would grap the opportunity and facilitate this. Unfortunately in the Netherlands, the current right wing government is also cutting science budgets.

Really nice work by Farren Isaacs‘ lab! An E. coli strain with one stop codon and 2 free codons for non-standard amino acid (nsAA) incorporation! Stop codons are a smart choice for nsAA work www.nature.com/articles/s41...

And now our department can also be followed pn Bluesky!! Follow us!!

Hello Bluesky! Follow us for updates on our Microbiology research here @w-u-r.bsky.social

Great to be part of SUN-PERFORM EU Project! Want to know more about our project, follow us on Blue sky @sunperform.eu @mib-wur.bsky.social

This sums it all up. 😅

great! A pity I could not join this time, was an important demonstration against harmful cuts in Dutch higher education!

My first paper post on BlueSky: today our preprint on an an efficient SIBR-Cas tool for genome editing of my favorite C. necator (bug growing on H2, CO2 and formate came online www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... #syntheticbiology #C1