Efficient generation of epitope-targeted antibodies with Germinal - @brianhie.bsky.social @synbiogaolab.bsky.social @stanford.edu @arcinstitute.org www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Don't feel bad about missing the mSBW abstract deadline. We have extended it! We also keep the registration fee affordable ($150 for students) so that mammalian synbio-curious trainees can check it out, especially if you are in the Atlanta area. Meeting link below:

A neat amplification system to improve the limited sensitivity/dynamic range of RADAR pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/...

We just updated our Germinal preprint for de novo antibody-like binder design! Featuring additional scFv designs, extensive experimental validation of epitope specificity and polyreactivity, and CryoEM structure courtesy of Jim Zhang and Bing Rao from Feng Liang's lab.

SEED 2026 Abstract due in 3 days! We've got an excellent line up of keynotes & invited speakers. Join us to present your work & hear the latest SynBio breakthroughs. A major theme this year is AI+Bio! 🧬🔬🤖💻🦠 synbioconference.org/2026

Excited to share our latest preprint on work led by postdoc Robert Lusi (@rflusi.bsky.social)! Introducing ALTER (AGO-Led Targeted Editing of RNA) for non-downregulatory RNA manipulation by repurposing hAGO2, non-immunogenic and capitalizing on evolution. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

So you think your mammalian plasmids have nothing to fear from cloning and propagation in E.coli? Quantitative profiling of millions of nucleotides by Tom Copeman will prove you wrong! Supervised with the amazing @proftomellis.bsky.social and AZ, now on BioRxiv: doi.org/10.64898/202...

New in ACS SynBio: led by Dennis Bolshakov, we used the awesome power of yeast to define how expression levels, noise, and sequence program the dynamics of synthetic protein waves, allowing us to genetically encode new cellular timescales stable over generations! pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10....

Have you ever wondered what it would've been like to live in a different kind of society? After a record number of rejections, I'm self-archiving my first attempt at... flash fiction, featuring "Hemingway-esque economy" and "Ishiguro's measured revelation" (if you ask Claude).

Whether you think limiting student visas to 4 years is a good or bad thing, please comment. Be heard.

With 2 postdocs moving on to faculty positions🥳, we're looking to hire someone new. If you're interested in norepinephrine and neural circuits, please apply! tinyurl.com/42bfe24k

Having often dealt with the frustration of binder-limited projects, we sought a more accessible source for nanobodies than yeast display or llama. Here we introduce Germinal, computationally designing antibody-like binders with such a hit rate that only tens need to be screened for each target.

We previously built programmable RNA sensors based on editing by housekeeping ADAR enzymes. But they can't sense arbitrary sequences due to design constraints (analogous to PAM for CRISPR). With our new "modulADAR", we overcome that constraint by leveraging ADAR's modularity.

Excited to share our latest: we engineered the reactivity of a bacterial E1-like enzyme for ATP-driven modification of C termini. Our tool mimics the logic of peptide bond formation in biology for precision modification of proteins in vitro. 🧪https://rdcu.be/ewN7C

Have you always wanted to take a protein from its native context and make it work elsewhere? Our novel sampler computationally “cytosolize” a secreted enzyme while maintaining its structure, generalizable to other multi-objective guided generation tasks www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

The machine-guided humanization paper is out after peer review! doi.org/10.1016/j.ce... Key contributions from current and previous international students on visas, representing 5+ countries.

Our latest work developing AND-gate probes for imaging caspase-1 mediated inflammation is out. Very productive collaboration with Merck & Co. in South San Francisco. #chembio. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Hello Community! Are you a postdoc/grad student preparing to launch a faculty search? Do you have a track record of excellence in research, leadership, mentorship & community engagement? Apply to the 2025 Next Generation Faculty Symposium: www.berkeleystanfordnextgensymposium.com! Pls repost! (1/3)

Grateful for the recognition and for my team's dedication. When I wrote it in Oct, I didn't anticipate that the title would feel defiant. The original draft even had a now quaint reference to "the comparative comfort of the ivory tower", which was wisely removed.

LIDAR is out! rdcu.be/efugD We are one baby step closer to making it useful for therapeutics. NIH high-risk high-reward program provides key support.

If you have time in your life to read only one of @jeremymberg.bsky.social’s bluetorials, please read this one

So we beat on. Gene/cell therapies would benefit many patients, but often use proteins that could be recognized as non-self by our immune system and cause problems. We combine algorithms to build proteins that are therapeutically relevant and can masquerade as our own parts doi.org/10.1101/2025...

Join us! Science Homecoming helps scientists reconnect with communities by writing about the importance of science funding in their hometown newspapers. We’ve mapped every small newspaper in the U.S. and provide resources to get you started. Help science get back home 🧪🔬🧬 🏠 sciencehomecoming.com

It’s been a tough few weeks. My 10yo daughter was diagnosed with a very rare, aggressive cancer called interdigitating dendritic cell sarcoma (IDCS). I’m reaching out to identify clinicians/patients who have encountered pediatric IDCS or other (non-LCH) dendritic or histiocytic sarcomas cases.

Your biggest power is as a constituent who cares about the issue and may be directly or indirectly affected by them My format is generally: NIH is important for the nation, both in terms of health knowledge and economics/competitiveness 1/n

Excited to share this beast of a review on the potential of protein-based degraders from trainees who are all not on the Sky! Herein we cover choice of binders, selection strategies, E3 ligases, and DELIVERY! pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/...

Proteases might serve as versatile control knobs for gene and cell therapies, but there looms the risk of immunogenicity as we and others have been using viral proteases. We now report a control system based on a an engineered human protease and its clinically approved inhibitor. rdcu.be/d6kVt

If you’re feeling too boxed in focusing on one protein, take a journey across the evolutionary tree of life. It’s full of cool surprises. A spider ortholog of my favorite protein sequence, the chromodomain, shares a feature with an enhanced version we engineered. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Super excited to finally share PANCS-Binders: our group's decade-long quest to accelerate protein binder discovery. TLDR: PANCS-binders is fast (2 days), cheap (pennies), has extremely high fidelity (low false positive and negatives), and high-throughput. 1/n

I'm happy to see this paper I handled finally out! -- Directed evolution in mammalian cells using an orthogonal alphaviral RNA replication system with antiviral-induced mutagenesis #ChemBio #synbio www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Thank you to @urochester.bsky.social for writing this nice piece about our new PNAS article, which explains how we engineered bacteria to encapsulate themselves in glass, allowing them to focus light like microlenses! @pnas.org www.rochester.edu/newscenter/w...

qPCR can measure expression of virtually any gene... in homogenized tissues. Here, we show an "in-vivo qPCR" equivalent, where we measure a sequence-specific transcript with synthetic serum markers and enzyme-based signal amplification. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

1/ In two back-to-back papers, we present our de novo TRACeR platform for targeting MHC-I and MHC-II antigens TRACeR for MHC-I: go.nature.com/4gcLzn5 TRACeR for MHC-II: go.nature.com/4gj5OQk

Kudos to the attendee who called out "cultural generalization". I admire her courage and composure. x.com/xwang_lk/sta...

In our preprint we show how one can use synthetic organizers to control patterning of nephrons in kidney organoids. shorturl.at/ZXJuR Morsut + Lindstrom Labs led by Fokion Glykofrydis shorturl.at/CScsg and Connor Fausto shorturl.at/SBJKw in our first bluesky original post!

Today we report that an engineered skin bacterium, swabbed gently on the head of a mouse, can unleash a potent antibody response against a pathogen. Could lead to topical vaccines that are applied in a cream. @djenetbousbaine.bsky.social led the charge... @natureportfolio.bsky.social 1/55

Could one envision a synthetic receptor technology that is fully programmable, able to detect diverse extracellular antigens – both soluble and cell-attached – and convert that recognition into a wide range of intracellular responses, from gene expression and real-time fluorescence to modulation..

We designed MS2 and PP7 binding coat proteins that are degraded in cells except when bound by their hairpin RNAs. You can check out our pre-print here: tinyurl.com/27p7hyt9, and listen to a Google AI-generated podcast on it here: notebooklm.google.com/notebook/d71...

Excited to share our work @science.org. led by our incredible @tommyz626.bsky.social at @rockefelleruniv.bsky.social! By profiling 21 million single cells across life stages, we reveal aging as distinct, development-like transitions, with dramatic cell population changes in specific time windows!

I will be starting my lab at Stanford in 2025. We are looking for talented postdocs / grad students to join us to develop single cell sequencing, spatial genomics, machine learning, functional genomics, live cell imaging tools to understand the cell communication across space and time. Please RT!Thx

An update on our engineered PPI prediction challenge originally posted on the other platform... www.dickinsonlab.uchicago.edu/ppi-challenge We got many submissions. Interestingly, most approaches were able to get ~25% accurate (meaning the #1 predicted interaction was the real one) 1/n

Please share! Here is a starter pack dedicated to Mammalian SynBio! It is still incomplete so if you would like to be added/removed please let me know! go.bsky.app/SsxHKoV

Here's a great opportunity for undergrads to apply for a summer internship at the NIH! Applications are due Jan. 8th. Follow link for more details and to apply: www.nibib.nih.gov/labs-at-nibi...

Hi bskyers (is that the right word?)! Though we don't have a lot of new contents to contribute yet, we did just update our preprint on the modular post-transcriptional "LIDAR" receptors doi.org/10.1101/2024....

Exactly what I was looking for. Thank you, Calin!