Chinese researchers have created a bamboo-based plastic as strong as petroleum-based plastics, which can fully biodegrade in soil in just 2 months phys.org/news/2025-10...

1/2 The regulatory labyrinth for commercialisation of GE bacteria for deliberate env release eg bioremediation, biofertilization or disease control in the EU. Note that each of the 27 member states must emit an opinion & a vote 😱. No wonder the field is altogether stagnant at this side of the pond ☹️

RNA is more than genetic information: it can be a tool for cellular architects. In our new paper, we engineer RNA motifs to physically reorganize intracellular space in living mammalian cells. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

1/25 New paper out in PNAS! We show that the fitness costs of reproductive specialization, where somatic cells give up reproduction, scale inversely with organism size. Larger organisms can afford far more soma, removing a key barrier to multicellular complexity.

🚨 New opportunity! 🚨 We’re looking to recruit a Lecturer in Engineering Biology at the University of Bristol Faculty of Science and Engineering. This is an exciting opportunity to join a vibrant, interdisciplinary research environment at a time of significant institutional investment and growth.

Microbial communities can harbor many species that do not coexist in pairs, yet can coexist in the full community. Here we provide the mathematical foundations of emergent coexistence, and explain why it can't be predicted from pairwise tests journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol...

Cancer Research UK is fed up of paying too much for open access publishing so they are completely stopping funding this activity: news.cancerresearchuk.org/2026/04/01/w...

Recent highlights: Received seed funding from the SynGen Center to explore synthetic genomes in bottom-up synthetic biology. 🚀 The first work of my PhD is now published: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.... Huge thanks to Franziska Gießler, Tobias Abele, Stefan Maurer, and @kgoepfrich.bsky.social

Sustained nitric oxide production by engineered E. coli remodels the tumor microenvironment and potentiates immunotherapy - @pku1898.bsky.social go.nature.com/4sk7MpB

If I skip doing emails tomorrow to instead go watch a movie about a molecular biologist in space, does it count as work?

Single-molecule peptide sequencing through reverse translation of peptides into DNA | Nature Biotechnology https://www.nature.com/articles/s41587-026-03061-z

Come and work with my research group on polymer-based synthetic cells. Apply now for these exciting postdoc positions!

One of the biggest challenges in microbial biotechnology? Unlocking the potential of non-model microbes and synthetic communities! Glad to share our review @sonjablasche.bsky.social @simonemozzachiodi.bsky.social @kiranrpatil.bsky.social @cambridgebiosci.bsky.social🧵(1/7) doi.org/10.1016/j.co...

Excited to have Volker Sieber from TU Munich and others join me in Thailand for the 2026 SynBio/Biocatalysis Symposium at Vidyasirimedhi Institute of Science and Technology (VISTEC) 🇹🇭 Thanks to Pimchai Chaiyen and her team for organising these two days of cutting edge science and good food.

Latest issue of curated #engineeredlivingmaterials feed: biomed.news/bims-enlima/... via @biomednews.bsky.social | #livingmaterials #ELMs includes research on: cell remodeling in synthetic matrices, designing self-healing, printable, and tough conductive hydrogels, matter and microbes & more 🧪

Our paper is now out in Nature: “Ancient co-option of LTR retrotransposons as yeast centromeres” www.nature.com/articles/s41... A short thread on how retrotransposons helped give rise to yeast point centromeres. 1/14

🤖 Announcement for Opentrons users - OT-2 & Flex 🤖 We developed Slowpoke, an open-source, automated Golden Gate cloning tool with Fankang Meng & @proftomellis.bsky.social at @imperialcollegeldn.bsky.social Flex-optimisation by @gregorybatt.bsky.social at @pasteur.fr 👉 pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/...

A toolkit for programmable transcriptional engineering across eukaryotic kingdoms https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.02.10.705154v1

“Everything we know about skin has been learned from so-called scientific studies funded by large corporations who have a financial stake in keeping our musculature covered in an unnecessary layer of man-made flesh,” said Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Does the noncoding genome actually carry more genetic information than coding seqs? Motivated by this question we mutated every bp in the 10kb MYC locus. Results are even more exciting: Decoding the MYC locus reveals a druggable ultraconserved RNA element www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

POV: Your cells died again! 😅 Occupational safety office, please close your eyes 🫣 #lablaughs #memesky #academicsky

Any bio artists out here? I’m interested in commissioning 1-2 pieces, leaning more towards the art side but love stuff that is science-inspired... DM me if you're interested!

Enjoyed listening to @adrianwoolfson.bsky.social on BBC 4 this week talking about synthetic biology at genome scale and what kind of step-change in capabilities are happening this decade. Interesting debate on the value of full redesign of genomes, versus iterative work. www.bbc.com/audio/play/m...

Excited for the first LSN of 2026✨ See you there! events.humanitix.com/london-synbi...

Please 🔁 My group at UBC received an allocation from the school to apply for the Canada Impact+ Training Awards (postdoc). Everything is moving fast but please email me in 48 hours with a CV if you are outside Canada and interested😎 Yachie lab: yachie-lab.org sshrc-crsh.canada.ca/en/funding/o...

I wrote a guide on constructive peer review. This is a polished version of an internal guide I had for my group. Of course, constructive feedback is welcome, peers! deboer.bme.ubc.ca/2025/12/09/g...

Which is worse - believing everything online is fake or believing everything online is real?

So cool - someone finally hacked 'the vault'. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Disney Geneticists Debut New Child Stars

New Engineered Living Materials #ELMs preprint up on BioRxiv #SynBio from our group in collaboration with the Hub for Biotechnology in the Built Environment at Northumbria University and with some help from CSIC, Madrid.

HAPPY HOLIDAYS TO ALL OF YOU!🎄✨

New preprint! 🐝 We engineered a bacterial biosensor to reveal micron-scale arabinose gradients in the honeybee gut. Congratulations to Audam and all co-authors. Great collaboration with @pengellab.bsky.social as part of the NCCR Microbiomes at @fbm-unil.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

A long standing goal in synthetic biology is ‘PURE makes PURE’ - effectively the start of self-replicating biology in a tube from just adding biochemicals and DNA instructions. This looks like a promising breakthrough from the Maerkl lab. 👀

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 work from Francesca Ceroni's mammalian #synbio group - really cool study by Tom Copeman with input from AstraZeneca. I've been lucky to be part of this one.

Robotic petals plentyofroom.beehiiv.com/p/dna-flower...

Just when you thought we’d be safe from mirror life, then they come up with backwards life.

Congratulations to Dr Oliver Hernandez Fernandez who passed his PhD viva exam on Friday after 4 years at Imperial co-supervised by myself, Naomi Nakayama and Vahid Shahrezaei.

Great talk today at VISTEC from Thapakorn Jaroentomeechai whose setting up his SynGlyco Lab at Mahidol University in Bangkok 🇹🇭 - great use of synbio and cell-free systems to study and apply glycobiolgy.

A couple new #PhD opportunities to join my lab at the intersection of #synbio, #plantsci and #biotech as part of the Plant BioDesign doctoral programme spanning the University of York, University of Cambridge, University of Bristol and John Innes Centre. 1/4

Using prime editing to generate large deletions across the human genome www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Today marks my first day at VISTEC in Rayong 🇹🇭 - warm hosts for my sabbatical in Thailand 🙏🏻 My family and I will be spending time here and Bangkok over the next 8 months making connections and collaborations in synthetic biology and living materials work.

🎄 Join us 6pm Thurs. Dec. 4 at Imperial! 🧬 How to build a protein Noah Sprent (Change Bio) 🦠 Engineering altruism: How metabolic exchanges shape synthetic microbial communities in bio-manufacturing Diego Ruiz (Ledesma-Amaro Lab / Imperial) t.co/4tHIVGUJzc

Join us and these amazing speakers next March'26 at Synthetic Biology for Health and Sustainability - an international conference held at the Wellcome Genome campus near Cambridge UK. Abstracts deadline: December 1st, 2025 Register here - x.com/gallowaylabm...

An artificial flower design toolkit

#Lichens form their complex thalli through a partnership involving at least a fungus and an alga. But can these living structures be rebuilt in vitro? For more than a century, people have tried. With @spribille.bsky.social we revisited 150 years of #lichen #resynthesis to ask: has anyone succeeded?

@sacrozhangt.bsky.social and I wrote a commentary on Jordi van Gestel and Carol Gross's latest paper, check it out! www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... Sadly, the Editors at PNAS rejected our initial introduction, which was a David Attenborough style voice over of the microbial Serengeti (included below)

Was interesting to hear today about the annual “SynBio Challenges” competition that has got going in China as a cheaper/free alternative to iGEM - m.synbiochallenges.com/application/...

Share your synthetic based-biology insights at #SynBio26! We welcome contributions from experts in biotech, genomics, computational, plant, or medical sciences to showcase the impact of advances in engineering biology on agriculture, personalised medicine, and diagnostics. 📎 bit.ly/3ZaYdwH