Time to leverage SynBio for tacking environmental pollution. But releasing bioengineered microorganisms still raises alarms. A new narrative is badly needed: bacteria for bioremediation are not alien intrusions but laboratory-trained extensions of life’s creativity link.springer.com/10.1038/s443...

"The changing roles of Escherichia coli" -- a short essay by yours truly. rdcu.be/eVtXT

A study on 1.7 million people in Hong Kong shows superior hybrid immunity to Covid in people who got vaccinated before infection vs. people who got infected first. "Our findings are a direct rebuttal to arguments for natural immunity," the authors write. doi.org/10.1016/j.va...

Confirmation of the new triage line at 65-70% of proposals. Introduction of a new “competitive but ND” class to permit exception pay pickups.

Hot off the press! Our latest paper led by @fernpizza.bsky.social, understanding how plasmids evolve inside cells. These small, self-replicating DNA circles live inside bacteria and carry antibiotic resistance genes, but also compete with one another to replicate. 1/ www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Brand new preprint from my lab, showing that TnpB, the ancestor of Cas12, acts as a gene drive in plasmids! And it turns out in conjugative plasmids that it acts as a primitive anti-self defense system, providing a potential link between its transposon effect and becoming CRISPR!

Public access to the first fly connectome that spans the whole CNS - BANC!: codex.flywire.ai?dataset=banc Different from prior connectomes - it is brain + cord (think spinal cord) We use it to ‘embody’ the system and find it resembles ‘subsumption architecture’ doi.org/10.1101/2025...

The Wilkinson Lab is open for science! @mskcancercenter.bsky.social 🧬We'll be finding funky new RNA biology, mainly by looking at reverse transcriptases (i.e. the Best Enzymes In The World)🧬 annnd: I'm hiring - come join! Especially postdocs and PhD students - please get in touch (NYC is great)

🚨Our paper is out! 🥳 Hijacking a bacterial ABC transporter for efficient genetic code expansion. Many congrats to everyone involved - a multi-year effort led by @taruniype.bsky.social @maxfottner.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/s41... it all started years ago with a failed experiment 🧵👇 1/9

The recently published report on Biosecurity by Drew Endy et al in the context of contemporary & future Biotech & SynBio is worth every word. Check it out 👉🏻 www.hoover.org/research/bio...

Today my @nytimes.com colleagues and I are launching a new series called Lost Science. We interview US scientists who can no longer discover something new about our world, thanks to this year‘s cuts. Here is my first interview with a scientist who studied bees and fires. Gift link: nyti.ms/3IWXbiE

Abhishek Chatterjee @achemsynbio.bsky.social and Michael Krogh Jensen's talks are opening the afternoon session of SynBio @ #BostonDOT

SynBio @ #BostonDOT started with a fantastic morning session, with talks from Farren Isaacs, Shira @shiraweingarten.bsky.social, and Ryan Clarke

If there were a collection of E. coli with every combination of a bunch of resistance markers fluorophores on the chromosome, would this be something people would be interested in using?

New blog post – A quick look at Roche's SBX lh3.github.io/2025/09/11/a...

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...

Looking forward to a terrific symposium on Synthetic Biology and it's implication in therapeutic development ✨

Today, I’m grateful that I can finally share Briana Lino’s @blino237.bsky.social work on engineering eukaryotic release factor 1 (eRF1) for enhanced noncanonical amino acid incorporation. I highlight some key findings in this thread (1/n). www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Excited to chair #BostonDOT 's SynBio symposium with talks from 🔸Farren Isaacs 🔸Jessica Stark @jcstark.bsky.social 🔸Shira Weingarten-Gabbay @shiraweingarten.bsky.social 🔸Abhishek Chatterjee @achemsynbio.bsky.social 🔸Wen Tseng 🔸Michael Krogh Jensen 🔸Ryan Clarke 🔸Alex Reis @alexcampreis.com

This is one of the findings that really motivates my research: yes, antibiotic resistance genes are ancient, but the age of antibiotics has likely contributed to a big change in their mobility and of the landscape of MGEs we see today! Very happy for Arya and to see this published.

Dave Baker, not on bluesky, on the issues of the 600 cycle kit on Illumina NextSeq 2000 instrument.

“We feel like the lost generation.” A story on the collapse of US science, which is hitting young scientists hardest www.washingtonpost.com/education/20...

Our paper is out in its final form! Back in April 2023, my coauthor Aleks Radakovic, then a PhD student, approached me after a talk in Chicago to ask what I thought an aminoacylated tRNA would look like if we pulled it through a @nanopore. doi.org/10.1038/s414...

#NatMicroPicks Synthetic evolution overdrive 🦠🔧🚅 A highly mutagenic DNA replication system speeds up evolution in Escherichia coli, without harming the host, opening a new way to accelerate protein engineering. #SynBio #MicroSky www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Simulating a for-loop in the human genome: Design and evaluation of recombinase genetic programs that count to three. https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.08.04.668540v1

#NatMicroPicks Engineering Peace in the Gut Microbiome ☮️🔧🦠 BACTRINS, a microbiome engineering platform that precisely edits gut pathogens by inserting therapeutic payloads and neutralizing virulence genes, transforming them into allies. @natbiomedeng.nature.com www.nature.com/articles/s41...

BIG NEWS: “Senate appropriators on Thursday approved an FY26 Labor-HHS bill that included a slight bump in funding for the NIH, with a strong 26–3 bipartisan vote.” Thank you to members of the Senate Appropriations Committee on both sides of the aisle! www.axios.com/pro/health-c...

E. coli, but with only 57 codons! Honey, who shrunk the genetic code? By @carlzimmer.com quoting @akosnyerges.bsky.social about work from Jason Chin's lab at the MRC LMB. "There’s a lot more in genomes than we thought. We are still not great at designing biology.” www.nytimes.com/2025/07/31/s...

Meet Syn57, a living cell that only needs 57 codons, not the standard 64. Here's my story on how synthetic biology is tackling the mystery of our bloated genetic code. Gift link: nyti.ms/3Hf4f9v

We traveled to DC to talk to Congressional Staffers about the impact of NIH and NIBIB funding. It enables us to develop synthetic biology tools to advance cell & genetic medicines for patients in need. REPOST to deliver the message that SCIENCE saves lives & makes America GREAT!

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

Deadline for applications extended to July 22 🔔! An unique opportunity to engage with cutting-edge science in a highly interactive format 👇

Amazing stuff by one of the most hard working lab rats I’ve ever met. In a good way ;p www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Massive prime editing approach to look at synonymous variant effects in human cells. In this assay, synonymous variants do not generally have the same level of effect as non synonymous 1/ www.nature.com/articles/s41...

1/27 We have a new paper out! Turns out that snowflake yeast have been hiding a secret from us - they've evolved a (very!) crude circulatory system. Not with blood vessels or a heart, but through spontaneous fluid flows powered by their metabolism. 🧪🔬 www.science.org/doi/full/10....

Super exciting work! Congrats @shiraweingarten.bsky.social and everyone involved!

How many proteins are in the human body? Excellent question! At least 20,000. But maybe 30,000? Maybe more? Here's my story about scientists exploring the hidden world of microproteins, and what it may mean for the future of medicine. nyti.ms/3HEPQTY 🧪

DNA framework array enables ultra-high throughput DNA synthesis https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.05.30.657018v1

Unsurprising, but nevertheless tragic. Makes it very hard for integrators and multidisciplinarians to exist in academia. #academicsky

1/3 Although the issue of releasing GMOs for env bioremediation has been virtually absent of the mainstream scientific literature in Europe/US for >20 yrs, the topic has continued strong in Asia—alas in less fancy/visible journals. Time to revisit the subject in view of new global challenges 💪🏻!

MIT ACCESS is an opportunity for undergraduates to explore cutting-edge research and graduate education in science and engineering. See for yourself what grad life is like at MIT! Applications open June 1: access.mit.edu @mitdeptofbe.bsky.social @mitcheme.bsky.social @mitchemistry.bsky.social

The latest work from my lab, Phage Disco, a method @ellie-rand.bsky.social developed for targeted discovery of bacteriophages based on the bacterial receptor, defense system, or other component they interact with, is now live in mSystems journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/...

HHMI halting fellowships right after a proposed 10% endowment tax on foundations isn’t a coincidence. The public needs to understand: this directly harms our brightest young scientists. These aren’t slush funds—they’re the pipeline. And their future is what’s being cut.

Experimental Evaluation of AI-Driven Protein Design Risks Using Safe Biological Proxies [new] AI proteins, biosecurity proxies, match templates but lack activity/evade detection reliably.

🧬💊 @science.org Programmable gene insertion in human cells with a laboratory-evolved CRISPR-associated transposase | Science www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... @sternberglab.bsky.social @isaacwitte.bsky.social eitzingersimon.bsky.social + al. #CRISPR #Medicine #Science #Evolution #Genome #evoCAST

Today "a milestone in the evolution of personalized therapies for rare & ultra-rare inborn errors of metabolism" —the 1st human to undergo custom genome editing —from decades of NIH funded research www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.... @nejm.org www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.... www.nytimes.com/2025/05/15/h...

Online now: An in vivo target mutagenesis system for multiple hosts

Lux Capital & @wolfejosh.bsky.social are launching the Lux Science Helpline - a $100M commitment to support American scientists whose research is threatened by funding cuts, bureaucratic hurdles, and career roadblocks - that expands our Lux Labs program. www.luxcapital.com/news/our-hel...

Design of overlapping genes using deep generative models of protein sequences www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

We’re excited to share new work on the continuous in vivo evolution of gene libraries towards arbitrary functions. Led by superstar Olek Pisera, our experiments show that gene evolution is highly versatile... www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...