I had an amazing time yesterday visiting @vdlorenzo.bsky.social and hearing about the many exciting projects underway in his lab. Our evening stroll through the heart of Madrid and dinner of tapas made for an unforgettable experience

It's an honor to visit @vdlorenzo.bsky.social and colleagues at El Centro Nacional de Biotecnología in beautiful Madrid, España. Me alegra estar aquí

Interested in using microbes to degrade plastics? We made the discovery that two breakdown products of PET, MHET and BHET, are readily taken up by E. coli cells Our latest preprint exploits this surprise to realize improvements in cell-based upcycling www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

My students have become very good at cloning. Now I can be in two continents at once this fall

Excited to announce our new methods paper in Methods in Enzymology! We share our pipeline for building high-diversity DNA libraries & exploring protein stability in E. coli. Free access until Sept 4: authors.elsevier.com/a/1lRkeHRzCX... Updated, companion preprint: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Exciting to see this collaborative work about modeling soil microbiomes from the Kuehn, Mani, and Tikhonov labs published today Also delighted to have lead author Kiseok Lee start his postdoc in our lab Check out the paper below!

Looking forward to the amazing program & making new connections at the 17th International Symposium on Biocatalysis and Biotransformations (Biotrans 2025) starting today in Basel I'm honored to present our work on Tuesday at 15:15 in the non-canonical amino acids session #biocatalysis

Wrapping up a fantastic #ME16 #Copenhagen — a success by all measures! Honored to co-chair the meeting w/I. Borodina, M. Chang, A. Mirończuk, C. Vickers, V. Šťovíček, Y. Zhou, M. Köpke & M. Herrgård & to work w/an outstanding team of colleagues, engaging communities & topics all around the world

Congrats on completing your PhD @kiseokmicro.bsky.social! And welcome to our lab - very excited to work with you

I'm enjoying the start of the International Metabolic Engineering 16 #ME16 meeting in Copenhagen this week Thanks to the organizers for providing a chance to share our work Thanks to my students for taking these pics Looking forward to meeting other attendees

Today in Nature we report a systematic strategy to activate & identify gene sets in plants. We identify 8 new genes from the yew tree's Taxol biosynthetic pathway, enabling us to engineer tobacco with 17- & 20-gene pathways to Taxol precursors baccatin III & deBz-deoxy-Taxol #SingleCell #secmet 🧬🧪🌾

It is a real honor and delight to be hosted by @pabnik.bsky.social at DTU Biosustain! Looking forward to meeting folks & sharing info/ideas

Trump Has Cut Science Funding to Its Lowest Level in Decades www.nytimes.com/interactive/... ^ Useful info in this article about the level of funding of various NSF directorates/programs relative to the 10Y avg by this time of year

With the state of US scientific funding it seems like an inappropriate time to celebrate anything But in the last week thanks to years of dedication from my students we were recognized through the Roberta Colman and Gerard Mangone awards, & tenure. Thank you to those who made it possible (1/3)

If you're curious how the first 5 amino acids of newly generated protein N-termini can affect protein stability in E. coli, then check out our latest preprint We find new patterns of exceptions to the usual N-end rule Kudos to Sunny Sen & co-authors #synbio #protein_degradation

Protein degradation in E. coli via N-terminal degradation signals (degrons) defined by the @kunjapur.bsky.social lab. @ispt-proteinterm.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

🚨OUT NOW Engineered orthogonal and obligate bacterial commensalism mediated by a non-standard amino acid by @kunjapur.bsky.social et al. #MicroSky 🦠🔧 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

A more accurate statement than my original post: It seems there may be few known pairs of microbial species, outside of obligate intracellular symbionts/parasites, where one relies exclusively on another. Using a blend of synthetic and chemical biology, we designed such an interaction

It seems there are no free-living organisms known to rely exclusively on one other organism for their survival Until perhaps now Check out our latest publication in @natmicrobiol.nature.com to see how we designed an exclusive microbial reliance using GCE rdcu.be/ekepI 1/2

This move could singlehandedly dismantle American leadership in science and technology innovation. It goes into effect on Monday. How will universities adjust their budgets to support critical ongoing research?

See here for an exciting development in genome engineering for genetic code expansion and for understanding the pliability of components involved in protein translational termination - from the Isaacs Lab www.nature.com/articles/s41...

2025-01-12 Issue of #engineeredlivingmaterials feed biomed.news/bims-enlima/... h/t @biomednews.bsky.social includes @kunjapur.bsky.social lab's preprint @biorxivpreprint.bsky.social on combined biosynthesis and site-specific incorporation of phenylalanine derivatives in engineered bacteria

Let's go horns 🤘🏾 #hookem

Bill Bentley from Maryland kicks off our microbial communities session by discussing mediated electrochemical probing for mAbs and cells #MASBN

Day 2 of #MASBN kicks off with our keynote speaker Chris Voigt discussing his inspiring work on engineering microbes for environmental release #synbio

Our last speaker in the New to the Mid Atlantic session at this year's #MASBN symposium is @saramol.bsky.social who recently started her lab at U. Maryland. Cool results on asymmetric cell division for patterning #synbio

We're excited to hear about electromicrobiology from @electromicrobe.bsky.social who recently started his lab @princetonupress.bsky.social #MASBN #synbio

Next up at MASBN is @victoriagmuir.bsky.social , my new colleague at @udelaware.bsky.social who is studying how cells navigate complex environments and host-pathogen interactions #MASBN #synbio

In our New to the Mid Atlantic session, we're pleased to have Ophelia Venturelli tell us about multi-scale dynamics in gut microbial communities @oventurelli2.bsky.social #MASBN #synbio

And the MASBN Symposium is now in full swing as Sherry Gao from UPenn kicks us off

Super excited to join for the 2025 Mid-Atlantic Synthetic Biology Network Symposium today and tomorrow! Welcome to #UDelaware to all of the attendees! #synbio

It's a frigid but otherwise lovely winter day here at U. Delaware where we are gearing up to host the 2025 Mid-Atlantic Synthetic Biology Network Symposium. A big welcome to our 230 attendees, and a big thank you to our sponsors NSF, DBI, IFF, NIIMBL, & more #synbio

Genetic code expansion - meet synthetic ecology! We can design an exclusive reliance of one engineered bacterial strain on another mediated by a non-standard AA Such exclusive reliances between free-living organisms aren't known in nature Tremendous work led by NSF GRFP recipient Amanda Forti

Our one-pot biocatalytic cascade for synthesis of Phe derivatives is now available online at ChemCatChem chemistry-europe.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/... Also online now on bioRxiv is our larger story where we couple this pathway to GCE tools in live cells www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Check out our latest pre-print on building biocatalytic cascades for the synthesis of phenylalanine derivatives for applications in genetic code expansion www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... Andrew Buller's lab at Wisconsin is also doing terrific work in this area - stay tuned for that too #synbio

In the last 2 weeks my feed on X has turned into almost entirely conspiracy theories and content NSFW. In contrast, my feed on BlueSky is increasingly showing more relevant scientific papers. So glad this site exists

Ready for the SEC title game to avenge the one loss for Texas, the one game I happened to attend this season #hookem A throwback youtu.be/Mm63vZ8Cakw?...

Proud of my wife for having led this effort to expand access to gene therapies for sickle cell disease www.fiercehealthcare.com/payers/cms-n...

Final @ebrc.org SPA workshop of the year on Wed! Please RT/share! 🧬 Are you a student or postdoc interested to learn more about project design and selection? 📺 Attend our workshop + panel discussion about choosing a research topic! 🔗 Register here: forms.gle/yxfxon4WoEPB...

Interested in #synbio & in the Mid-Atlantic? The next regional SynBio symposium will be on Jan 9-10 @udelaware.bsky.social Register for free thanks to NSF & other sponsors below. www.midatlanticsynbionetwork.org Great lineup of speakers. 170+ registered so far. Registration closes on 11/27. (1/2)

Started creating a synthetic biology starter pack. Still missing many so reply here if I forgot you or someone else. go.bsky.app/SjfpxTK #synbio

www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc... The analysis and suggestions here are reasonable in my opinion, as someone who is generally skeptical towards proposals to redefine merit in college admissions

Nice to be at #AIChE2024 in San Diego. Check out our posters and talks Monday through Wednesday