Back at the lab after a week in Copenhagen for @aliceworkshop.org! A brilliant week—full of ideas and enthusiastic colleagues. So many things to discuss with the lab now. Kudos to the organizers, and thanks for bringing this energy to #ALIFE topics.

On my way to Copenhagen for the ALICE workhsop @aliceworkshop.org! Discussions around #ALIFE topics for a full week — looking forward. I'll be talking about cellular computing (what else? :-)

New tech adventure: co-founded Newton Biotwins together with @mirobueno.bsky.social. We're building #DigitalTwins for the lab — starting with a flow cytometry twin. Turning #biology into an information science! newtonbiotwins.com/en/home_en/

Next in Lab's conference agenda: AI, Engineering Biology and beyond. It starts today in Bristol hosted by @chofski.bsky.social. Looks great: aiebab.github.io. From our side, @lewisgrozinger.bsky.social will be talking about our approach to the use of evolutionary algorithms for biocomputation.

Just published our workflow for genotyping transposon libraries. All methods, files, scripts... are open source and publicly available. 🔗 link.springer.com/article/10.1...

The biological messiness, as the quantum weirdness, as a source of (unconventional) computing.

New paper out!📢 Exploring the computing power of microbes that shapes the environment. In this short review we talk about the "complexity gap", the distance between bottom-up genetic circuits and microbial information processes. Key questions to improve #biocomputation. 🔗 doi.org/10.1016/j.mi...

Bacteria do compute and can be reprogrammed for new capacities—but not exactly by following Turing’s rules. Evolution, context dependence, and the soft-matter nature of living hardware redefine what computation means in biology. From @angelgm.bsky.social Lab 👉🏻 www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Side story: NAND gates where one input deals directly with growth control, and it is the actual physical body doing the computation. This is our initial approach to morphological computing in living cells. #biocomputation #alife Our new strain KT-TTX is truly fascinating. Feedback welcome!

Preprint of our work tuning bacterial growth, something that changes context for genetic circuits and therefore, their behaviour. Very interesting observations from both experimental results and a model describing it in this piece of work with @mirobueno.bsky.social and @angelgm.bsky.social! :)

Preprint out! By controlling growth, via RNAP, we control the entire cellular machinery, and tune the cellular context into distinct, stable states. See how NOT gates behave! Kudos to @angeles-hg.bsky.social and @mirobueno.bsky.social 🔗https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2025.12.19.695408v1

🔔 Exciting News from the ALIFE Community 🔔 We are pleased to share that the proceedings of ALIFE 2025, the 2025 edition of the premier conference on artificial life, held in Kyoto are now published and accessible - direct.mit.edu/isal/proceed...

This book is brilliant. Impossible to read without current scenarios in mind...

Huge news for #biocomputation! In a major call (€30M total) for AI proposals, Spain just funded an initiative for implementing AI with living matter using #synbio as the programming tool. The 'AI in vivo project' is a massive, official recognition of biocomputation as a leading field in computing.

2⃣ equipos #CNB participan en nuevos proyectos de investigación en #InteligenciaArtificial 'GRAINS', coordinado desde la @uc3m.es, y 'AI en vivo', coordinado por @upm.es ➡️Iniciativas subvencionadas en la convocatoria de la #AEI ( @cienciagob.bsky.social) www.cnb.csic.es/nuevos-proye... @csic.es

The CSIC @csic.es Doctoral Programme in #SyntheticBiology is currently offering 10 PhD positions on a number of projects. Good opportunities! syntheticcell.eu/synbio-csic-...

El disco de Ana Crismán es alucinante! Como aficionado al flamenco me ha encantado. Muy valiente, muy bonito. Como guitarrista me he quedado un poco descolocado 😅 arpaflamenca.es

Our #ALIFE2025 paper is out! 🎉 We show that even when two circuits produce the same output, their evolutionary potential can differ greatly. #Evolution at the smallest scale. “Parameter Evolvability in Gene Expression Models Drives Phenotypic Adaptation” 🔗 direct.mit.edu/isal/proceed...

In Wikipedia, the German entry for DNA computer mentions the cellular supremacy de.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA-Com...

Next in the Lab's conference agenda: Synthetic Biology UK #SBUK. Always a target event for us! Look for Lewis @lewisgrozinger.bsky.social to hear about biocomputation and evolution: "Evolutionary algorithms to design biocomputing circuits beyond logic gates" - an upgrade of our #ALIFE 2023 story.

If you are at the Emerging Applications of Microbes conference in Leuven, go to poster #24: Engineering growth control to modulate circuit host dependencies, by @angeles-hg.bsky.social. This is a brilliant story about growth rates vs. genetic circuit function. And, of course, noise! #synbio

The 2025 Retreat of the Biocomputation Lab (in wonderful Chinchón, Madrid) comes to an end. Three days of fantastic discussions, with new (and revisited) goals ahead. What a brilliant team!

Vuelvo de dar un seminario sobre biocomputación en la escuela de teatro de Jorge Eines. Cosas de aquí, de Madrid.

ALICE Workshop 2026 | Artificial Life, Intelligence, Complexity & Evolution Submission deadline: October 31 #Workshop #ALife #Intelligence #Complexity #Evolution ./19 amahury.github.io/posts/ALICE-...

I'm at a meeting on Unconventional Computing in... Bristol docks! Notes: 1) discussions around Turing Machines are endless, as infinite as the tape, and 2) reservoir computing with all physical substrates (not sure about this trend being the best but here we are).

This year's ALICE guest speakers 🧑‍🔬 - Angel Goñi-Moreno - @angelgm.bsky.social - Alyssa Adams - @alyssa-m-adams.bsky.social - Alexander Mordvintsev - Eric Medvet - @ericmedvetts.bsky.social - Kyrre Glette - @kyrre2000.bsky.social - Stefano Nichele - @stenichele.bsky.social - Susan Stepney

Off to Madrid from an amazing #ALIFE2025 conference in beautiful Kyoto. Kudos to the organisers.

Last day in #ALIFE2025 talking about evolutionary robotics. Sounds like here "evolution" and "learning" are clearly separated. I'm still unsure what is the interplay between #evolution, #learning and #adaptability. Surely, #information, #knowledge and #memory are keywords in this discussion.

I am a bit skeptical here I guess... At least when it sort of matches the lego brick metaphor in #synbio.

#ALIFE2025 Day 3 keynote Chris Kempes discusses the possibility of universal laws of life

1st evolution session of the day at #ALIFE2025. Our story on evolvability by Pablo Japón. In evolution, it is not only the visible that matters!

My first day at #ALIFE2025 was about 1) noise and 2) information. Noise as a perturbation that pushes a system outside viability, or as a resource for computation. Two views that are not the same but complementary. Information leads to (is?) correlation and knowledge (memory?). Most inspiring talks!

Making the most of Kyoto after a great #ALIFE2025 first day. Here training with the Kyoto University #Judo Club!

I hear new definitions of evolution and open endedness every now and then. I wonder if the definition itself is evolving.

Off to #ALIFE conference @alife2025.bsky.social in Kyoto! Although I've been involved in many, this is the first ALIFE I attend since Odense 2012 😅. Pablo Japon will be presenting our work on evolvability in #synbio - Wed at 9 in the Auditorium.

Pleased to announce that our book on the evolution of biological agency is now available, thanks to @templetonfdn.bsky.social It condenses +2 years of discussions between a philosopher and a biochemist, including our conversations in the Jardí Botànic @uv.es @ehu.eus @i2sysbio.es @dicv.csic.es

Breaking News: Jane Goodall, one of the world’s most revered conservationists, died at 91. Her discoveries in the 1960s about how chimpanzees behaved in the wild broke new ground and represented what was called “one of the Western world’s great scientific achievements.” nyti.ms/42kpGxt

¡Qué bonita está Madrid esta tarde!

The use of evolutionary algorithms offer an interesting advantage for optimising #synbio designs: exploring non-intuitive solutions. We showed this at ALIFE 2023 (paper linked) and will again at #ALIFE 2025 next month! direct.mit.edu/isal/proceed...

Wow!! This work is great - I'll need to dig out some old ideas on "quantum synthetic biology". This from our 2019 cellular supremacy paper:

Tomorrow, Monday 18 at 2PM, join us at room 131 for "The future meets the beginning: Synthetic biology, evolution, and the origin of life", which I'll be co-chairing with Evrim Fer and Katusmi Hagino. Both amazing topic and speakers ! :-D #ESEB25

Good news everyone! Our new paper in OUP SynBio is out: Construction of a syntrophic Pseudomonas putida consortium with reciprocal substrate processing url: academic.oup.com/synbio/artic... Many thanks to Barbora and our collaborators @mirobueno.bsky.social and @angelgm.bsky.social

Very happy to see the final version published of our collaboration with Pavel Dvorak's lab! 🦠🧬 doi.org/10.1093/synb...

Journals struggling with LaTeX submissions in 2025.

Brilliant news here! Our manuscript on evolvability was accepted for presentation at @alife2025.bsky.social. So there is a new item in the Lab's conference agenda: #ALIFE Kyoto! More on this coming soon...

🚨 Israeli forces have killed hundreds of starving Palestinians seeking food in Gaza. These are not isolated incidents; these are war crimes. Our latest investigation lays out the evidence. #Gaza #WarCrimes 🔗 www.hrw.org/news/2025/08...

Next in Lab's conference agenda: Designer Biology! www.efbiotechnology.org/designerbiol... Paula Múgica has a poster on her recently published quorum sensing tools, and Crislaine Rocha will talk about environmental biosensors as input to logic gates.

#SEVAplasmids for standardisation! In @angelgm.bsky.social 's lab they have used SEVA plasmids for the development of three standardised quorum sensing systems comprising transmitter and receiver modules 👉 doi.org/10.1021/acss...