New preprint!! 🎉 A cool collaborative work with @copabio.bsky.social and Chase Beisel teams on the phage editing technology. @sarshad.bsky.social led the work from our side to validate & characterize the lib. #phage #phagesky www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... Work supported by: phagefoundry.org

Latest work from my lab, in which @amycrobes.bsky.social probes the evolutionary consequences of prophages potentiating death at otherwise sublethal antibiotic doses

Recording the codons of E. coli might not be as simple or uneventful as one might imagine Probing the limits of genetic recoding using multi-omics-guided evolution www.nature.com/articles/s41...

I'm hiring a research tech soon for my lab at Harvard Med, starting this fall. We'll work on designing microbes and proteins with New-to-Nature functions. Ideal for a recent grad seeking hands-on research & opportunity to publish before PhD. Job ad soon. Reposts much appreciated!

Please join us in NH (perfect place to be in August!) for this inspiring conference organized by @petrovadmitri.bsky.social and Joy Bergelson. Very interdisciplinary, so I look forward to learning tons of new concepts. www.grc.org/function-of-...

Generating E. coli 0.5 controlled by a half-sized genome www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Thousandfold Expansion Microscopy https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.05.31.729018v1

Artificial initiation codons and engineered initiator tRNAs enable N-terminal noncanonical amino acid incorporation in intact cell-free translation systems https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.05.24.725928v1

🚨🧪🧵URGENT INPUT NEEDED: NIH asks input for next strategic plan-including emphasis on non-animal models (NAMs) to replace animals. Per NIH insider, anti-animal responses now outnumber scientists 200-700x. Please please provide input. Deadline: May 26, 11:59 PM ET. grants.nih.gov/news-events/...

Do you know any students who are planning to apply to graduate school this cycle? Encourage them to apply to the Biology Preview Program! We provide intensive workshops to help students w/ their applications + 1:1 mentorship.

Can engineered mirror life become a threat to humans or the biosphere itself? Despite some recent claims, a life form created in the test tube may be doomed to fail when confronted with established ecosystems. Check our new paper where we do the maths. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

#OpenBind announces its first data drop marking a major milestone for AI‑Enabled #DrugDiscovery! It’s the first initiative to generate open, AI‑ready datasets for protein–drug complexes, produced continuously & at industrial scale to enable the next generation of #AI models. https://loom.ly/eIrsqqg#OpenBind

The Barrick & Lenski Labs in Dept of Microbiology, Genetics, & Immunology at Michigan State Univ seek a Research Assistant II to manage their research operations and participate in projects related to microbial evolution and synthetic biology. See details below. careers.msu.edu/jobs/researc...

Very proud of this work and all the efforts from my team and collaborators on this! You can now use DGRs for in vivo targeted hypermutagenesis in E. coli. We also included some early proof of concept in Yeast thanks to @seth-shipman.bsky.social !

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:

Excited to share this review🔔, we spent sometime thinking about phage–microbiome–immune–oncology axis for phage therapy in cancer! #phage #phagesky Phage therapy in oncology: opportunities for cancer prevention and treatment: Trends in Molecular Medicine www.cell.com/trends/molec...

RiboBA: a bias-aware probabilistic framework for robust ORF identification across diverse ribosome profiling protocols [new] identifies ORFs recovering protocol biases and codon-level occupancy from Ribo-seq data to adjust profiles.

www.simonsfoundation.org/grant/pivot-... - a terrific opportunity for a cross-disciplinary focused postdoc training

New paper 🔔 Collaboration @sullivan-lab.bsky.social Marissa Gittrich led the work Klebsiella phage biology has focused almost entirely on capsulated strains, but capsule loss is the #1 resistance mechanism under phage predation. We used a naturally acapsular host to reveal the receptor landscape

Our paper with @sokrypton.org using AlphaFold2 to predict small-molecule binding sites in proteins is now out in Nature Methods! 🧵 rdcu.be/e7SnX www.nature.com/articles/s41...

With Eugene Koonin, we propose a concept of “the selfish ribosome”, under which evolution of life is viewed as a ribosomal takeover, where the ribosome evolved to consume most of the cell’s resources, while other cellular componentry ensures the propagation of the ribosome. arxiv.org/abs/2602.23268

Happy 38th birthday to the #LTEE! #BOTD in 1988. Keep on evolving! #science #evolution #microbiology

I’m looking to hire a research technician for my lab at Harvard & DFCI, who would primarily work in the wet lab expressing and characterizing designed proteins, starting this summer. A great role for a recent college grad looking for an immersive research experience before grad school.

And save >80% on the cost by pooling 6 or more plasmids into a single sample using our free SAVEMONEY algorithm! elifesciences.org/articles/88794 colab.research.google.com/github/Masaa...

@science.org Mechanisms linking cytoplasmic decay of translation-defective mRNA to transcriptional adaptation | Science www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

#NatMicroPicks FMT for cancers in clinic! 💩🦠🦀⚕️ Three different clinical trials report activity of faecal microbiota transplant against cancer #MicroSky #CancerSky www.nature.com/articles/s41... www.nature.com/articles/s41...

A 28-year evolution experiment on Burkholderia pseudomallei survival in nutrient-depleted sterile water https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.02.06.704356v1

Feel like doing a SynBio PhD in Spain? Check this offer, many fellowships available 👉🏻 lifehub.csic.es/synbio-cofund/

🚨 Hiring Alert! 🚨My lab at Institut Pasteur is recruiting several Postdocs! We have exciting open projects in: 🦠 Synthetic Biology and🛡️ Bacterial Immunity. Come do great science with us in the middle of Paris! 🇫🇷🥐 research.pasteur.fr/en/job/postd...

How do you react when your favorite microbe is renamed by taxonomists who are completely outside your field—and who ignore the community that actually works with it? Here is our clear answer re the case of Pseudomonas putida KT2440 👉🏻 journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/...

Happy to share that our review on mammalian genome writing with Jack Atwater, Ran Brosh, Jef Boeke, @jshendure.bsky.social and Matt Maurano is now out in @cellpress.bsky.social! www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Expanding the Genetic Code of an Animal with Two Non-Canonical Amino Acids https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.01.20.700547v1

We are accepting applications for up to 3 Peggy Cotter Travel Awards ($1,650 each) to support early-career professionals attending ASM Microbe 2026. Apply by Feb 16, 2026 by emailing a 1-page letter to [email protected]. ASM membership required; branch membership may be completed once that is live.

NSF needs to hear from you. Among other points, I suggested: keep politics out of science; stop using the threat of cancelling scientific grants to try to control universities; increase NSF funding for fundamental research. Pls send around. Deadline is January 27. Thanks www.nsf.gov/od/updates/n...

OpenFE is ready for production! chemrxiv.org/engage/chemr... In collaboration with our industry partners, we ran benchmarking simulations of our hybrid-topology RBFE protocol on a large collection of both public and private protein-ligand binding datasets. #compchem

The deadline for our FY26 Functional Genomics call is 1/29/26 👀 We're seeking projects that leverage our DNA synthesis and omics capabilities to enhance understanding of gene and genome function: jointgeno.me/CSPFunctionalGenomics @berkeleylab.lbl.gov @biosci.lbl.gov @nigelmouncey.bsky.social

NEW INTERIM USDA REGS GONNA DROP IN MARCH!!! www.reginfo.gov/public/do/eA...

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