Once upon a time Desk Editors quietly fixed minor issues in accepted papers to ensure format compliance. Now, even the smallest formatting slip sends a ms back to the authors for trivial corrections. Is this really about maintaining standards—or just saving salaries of those used to handle this 🤔?

Worse when the cancellation is a few days or hours before. Always count with a 10% last-minute no-show—and have backups handy 😅

You made us feel valued, supported, and confident that with the right guidance we can achieve anything. A special thank-you to my instructor, Daniel Volke, for sharing his expertise and techniques with our team and for celebrating even our smallest wins. 100% recommended! Lifetime experience

Grateful to the organizers @vdlorenzo.bsky.social @pabnik.bsky.social, instructors, and host @cshlaboratory.bsky.social of the CSH-Asia workshop. It was an incredible experience for young scientists diving into synthetic biology and the metabolic engineering of Pseudomonas. (1/n)

Andrew was more than a good researcher—he was a sage. He was able to uniquely fuse timeless wisdom with cutting-edge scientific thinking in his daily life. Even online, we shared many good vibes and great conversations. He will be deeply missed. Sit tibi terra levis.

Random thoughts after visiting the impressive facilities of Suzhou Sci Park & massive investments in SynBio. What's the ultimate bottleneck for the field to deliver its promise—individual creativity & bold ideas, or large infrastructures for high-throughput exploration of the bio-solution space 🤔?

Related: www.cam.ac.uk/research/new... Very interesting research

PFAS are often considered forever chemicals ie virtually impossible to biodegrade. Howeve bond dissociation energy of C-F is ~ 450 kJ/mol (~ 100 kcal/mol), while N≡N triple bond is way up: 941 kJ/mol (225 kcal/mol). If bacteria can break N≡N, give them time—and/or GM-them—and will break C-F also 💪🏻!

Europeans take pride in showing visitors their old but well preserved cathedrals. The Chinese love to show their historic gardens eg the ones in Suzhou we went to visit today. It is a thought-provoking contrast: the ambition of permanence vs enjoying ephemeral beauty here and now 🤔

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...

Spanish schools to teach pupils how to cope with #climatecrisis disasters - Children as young as three will have lessons on wildfires and flooding www.theguardian.com/world/2025/s...

Sub-cellular chemical mapping in bacteria using correlated cryogenic electron and mass spectrometry imaging Congrats Hannah Ochner and authors on this important paper! Strong collaboration with @kiranrpatil.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/cgi/content/... @mrclmb.bsky.social @wellcometrust.bsky.social

Will humans and AI coevolve in the future? As interdependencies grow, the two could come to function not merely as interacting agents, but as an integrated evolutionary individual. Check this paper in @pnas.org by @mkhochb.bsky.social & P Rainey @sfiscience.bsky.social www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Bio-desulfurization of fossil fuels has been a classic env biotech challenge for decades, but the field became stagnant for a while … until @pglekas.bsky.social et al leveraged SynBio tools to develop superior whole-cell catalysts enviromicro-journals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... 😱

Bacterial functions that increase genetic diversification are typically given vilifying names: mutator genes, error-prone polymerases etc. In fact we should call them *evolutionary capacitors* 😱

Alucino escuchando a @perestupinya.bsky.social en @avivirser.bsky.social anunciando la cancelación de El cazador de cerebros y @orbitalaika.bsky.social en @rtvecom.bsky.social cuya nueva dirección no parece tener interés en que la sociedad sepa de ciencia de forma cercana/rigurosa. Un despropósito.

Off to Shanghai with my colleague Esteban Martínez for joining the organizing team of the upcoming CSH-Asia Pseudomonas SynBio hands-on Course in Suzhou and running 2 weeks of intense science with a bunch of international students www.csh-asia.org?content/2645

Seminar @cnb-csic.bsky.social of Prof. Himanshu Sinha of the Indian Institute of Technology Madras, a pioneer of applying ML & AI for tackling gene-to-function prediction. In a further screw turn, using yeast as model he will discuss today how genetic variants collectively influence complex traits 👇

I cannot help being impressed that, at a time when the US did not exist & much of Europe was still recovering from the collapse of the Roman Empire, the science, technology & literature of the East were translated here—often back into Latin—and passed to our northern neighbors through this School 🤔

Starting the term with a visit to the Toledo School of Translators, with Himanshu Sinha (IIT Madras). The place carries forward the legacy of Christian, Jewish, Arab, Persian & Indian scholars who, for centuries, made this city a hub for translating & sharing knowledge across languages & cultures 😍

Contribución de mis colegas del @cib-csic.bsky.social al spanglish científico: REFERATURA = comentarios y críticas emitidas por revisores/árbitros (referees) sobre un artículo enviado a publicar a una revista científica. Ojo con la RAE www.rae.es 😅

Please suggest the last keynote speaker for the 2nd SynBYSS conference on June 8-11, 2026 in Barcelona Until now, the confirmed speakers are Keynote speakers: Víctor de Lorenzo, Sarah O'Connor, Pam Silver, Ian Paulsen, Wilfried Weber, Mark Isalan, Chase Beisel @vdlorenzo.bsky.social @jcvi.org 1/n

Puzzling how often @sevaplasmids.bsky.social and strains requests by individuals from certain parts of the World carefully avoid the words *please* or *thank you* in their messages. A cultural trait, perhaps?

This year: complaining about poor quality AI-generated emails from prospective PhD students Next year: All outreach has to happen on zoom because AI-generated emails are too hard to detect 5 years: All outreach has to happen in person

So, the 'summer break' is over, though it never really stood a chance against the all-time hit: 'Sorry to bother you during your vacation, but …' 😂 Interruptions aside, I had a great time—although quite spoiled by nat & internat news. Time now to head back to my beloved Lab @cnb-csic.bsky.social 😍

Every time I have to write a Deliverable for an @ec.europa.eu project I cannot help remembering the song *Stand and deliver*, quite a hit of the early 1980s 😂 youtube.com/watch?v=4B2a...

Si dejamos aparte bronca política sobre los incendios, he oído argumentos convincentes tanto de los que defienden que hay que limpiar el monte (mitiga la propagación del fuego) como los que no (enriquece la biodiversidad y el microbioma). Quizá un término medio? Opiniones?

Truth… and we have been warned over decades. And even though wind and solar are cheaper and would have significantly slowed down global warming the profit greedy fossil fuel industry decided to continue to “drill” notwithstanding the climate emergency crisis now clearly visible in fires, floods

Spain is on fire. Italy, Greece, Portugal — all burning. We have had summer fires before, but never like this. This is climate breakdown in real time. It is killing people, animals, and our future. DAMN the climate deniers. DAMN those who know and could do but do NOTHING www.bbc.com/news/article...

Cannot believe this insanity is happening ☹️

I don’t know how many dozens of plasmids I prepared with a CsCl gradient during my postdocs decades ago. Only for the brave 💪🏻! Many stories circulated by that time about accidentally puncturing one’s finger with a needle loaded with CsCl+EtBr+DNA! BTW all plasmids are still in perfect condition 😱

Co-authors when you ask them to go over a draft in August

😱

Please note that because of the Summer break, the activity of the @sevaplasmids.bsky.social is halted until September. See you then!

Please spread the word about our Special Collection focused on Pseudomonads! @asm.org #JBacteriology

The future of bioremediation? Not seeding sites with super-degrader bacteria, but super-fortifying microbiomes of target locations with catabolic genes via HGT. Nature has been doing it forever 💪🏻! Eng community-level function is the way! enviromicro-journals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Interesting that new journals advertise primarily not that they offer helpful, solid and reliable peer reviewing to guarantee quality and good science, but that they are quick in making decisions 😱!

Kicking off a (short 😅!) holiday for some much‑needed detox from urban life—and a full reset before September’s big challenges arrive! Crowded beaches? Not my thing. But set me loose in the endless plains and mountains of rural Castile and I am in my element 😍

Microbiología Sintética … en Español 👉🏻 www.gub.uy/ministerio-e... 3er Simposio Biol Sintética en Montevideo dirigido por R. Platero y V. Amarelle, esta edición centrada en el desarrollo de biosensores 🤩

The truth is that walking to the lab @cnb-csic.bsky.social through a completely deserted @uam.es due to summer vacation has a huge charm. In particular, one can experience the refreshing effect of the trees in the midst of high temperatures 😍

This 👇

1/2 Random thoughts. We all complain about excessive, unnecessary bureaucracy in our work. But in fact it keeps on growing ceaselessly over the years. What is the selective pressure/benefit for this evolution towards apparently useless complexity?

Naïve question: When one asks ChatGPT scientific matters, are answers based on or ranked according to peer-reviewed, high-quality literature? Or are all available data—incl from predatory journals—weighted equally during ML? Dilution of scientific rigour & credibility?

A 2 yr postdoc position at the Bacterial Genome Plasticity Unit of the Institut Pasteur (Paris) led by @amazeld.bsky.social in collaboration with Pierre-Alexandre Kaminski, funded by the French National Research Agency 👇

For years I have dreamt of a tool that could neutralize pathogens the moment they emerge. Today we unveil ApexOracle—an AI that, from a pathogen’s genome and phenotypic knowledge alone, predicts which antibiotics will work and invents new molecules for threats it has never seen.

After a long sleep, environmental remediation with live biologics is back to the mainstream R&D agenda at this side of the pond. Wanna join and EU-wide on line conversation with bioremediation stakeholders this Nov 10? Express interest and register here 👉 forms.cloud.microsoft/e/b7xVz7dJcu

What’s behind pSEVA237M? Each #SEVAplasmid name is a standard which encodes 3 modular elements: 1️⃣ 2 → Kanamycin resistance 2️⃣ 3 → pBBR1 origin of replication 3️⃣ 7M → msfGFP cargo And you can add a gadget in position 4️⃣ Find more codes or create yours 👉 seva-plasmids.com

The Section of Structural and Synthetic Biology at Imperial College is seeking to support candidates for leading their own laboratory through independent fellowship schemes eg Wellcome Trust, MRC Career Development Award, UKRI Future Leaders Fellowships www.imperial.ac.uk/infectious-d...

The Systems Biotech & Integrative Biology labs of @cnb-csic.bsky.social offer a PhD thesis associated to project AMBIZIONE (Advanced Microbiome Biotechnology Zips ONE HEALTH) for combining experiments & computational modelling aimed at rational design of synthetic microbial communities (SynComs)

I have very mixed feelings about the format, program & contents of the recent @femsmicro.org Congress 🤔