Anush Chiappino-Pepe
@anush-chp.bsky.social
Engineering the code of life for cellular insights + new chemistries/functions/technologies w #SynBio #CompBio | Research Associate w GM Church @ Harvard/Wyss, G Stephanopoulos @ MIT | #BioChemE #GeneticCodeExpansion #Metabolism www.anushchiappinopepe.com
Excited to release BoltzGen which brings SOTA folding performance to binder design! The best part of this project is collaborating with a broad network of leading wetlabs that test BoltzGen at an unprecedented scale, showing success on many novel targets and pushing the model to its limits!
Empathy and kindness are becoming rather rare traits these days. There is nothing more important than treating each other like the finite mortal short-lived nociceptive beings we are. A life lived in apathy feels so much shorter and far too cold. Try to love more while you live.
(1/n) DNA-PAINT imaging inside the nucleus at single antibody resolution using TIRF? Ultrathin sectioning makes it happen! Grateful to share my postdoctoral work introducing “tomographic & kinetically-enhanced DNA-PAINT” or in brief: tkPAINT. Out in @pnas.org! doi.org/10.1073/pnas... 👇🧵
Important work for engineered microbial therapeutics @science.org "Controlled colonization of the human gut with a genetically engineered microbial therapeutic" "a therapeutic candidate that reduced hyperoxaluria, a cause of kidney stones" www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
Controlled colonization of the human gut with a genetically engineered microbial therapeutic
Precision microbiome programming for therapeutic applications is limited by challenges in achieving reproducible colonic colonization. Previously, we created an exclusive niche that we used to engraft...
science.org
Excited to launch our AlphaGenome API goo.gle/3ZPUeFX along with the preprint goo.gle/45AkUyc describing and evaluating our latest DNA sequence model powering the API. Looking forward to seeing how scientists use it! @googledeepmind
This is wild! Engineering E. coli bacteria to turn plastic waste into paracetamol (Tylenol) www.nature.com/articles/s41... www.nature.com/articles/s41...
We're one step closer to recreating the brain’s immune system in a dish thanks to researchers at @wyssinstitute.bsky.social & @harvardmed.bsky.social!🧫 Dr. George Church's (@geochurch.bsky.social) lab created #microglia from #iPSCs that resemble microglia from humans: bit.ly/4jPxYTJ
I was among a few people at Columbia interviewed by Chemical and Engineering News (this is one of my faculty colleagues on the cover): cen.acs.org/policy/resea...
At Columbia, dismay among chemical scientists
Some have already lost grants, while others fear for students and future funding
cen.acs.org
The US has been a preeminent force in the global economy for the past 50 years, mainly due to its leadership in technological innovation. The abrupt changes in government funding for scientific research can stop this innovation engine. Hear more from our community about the importance of science.
The Importance of Science
The United States has been the preeminent force in the world economy for the past 50 years because it has been the leader in technology innovation. The abrupt changes in government funding for scienti...
wyss.harvard.edu
Happy to share the peer-reviewed and updated version of our work on OrthoRep-driven evolution of aaRSs for genetic code expansion with unnatural amino acids. Congrats to Yuichi Furuhata, a true master bioengineer, on leading this excellent work! www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Directed evolution of aminoacyl-tRNA synthetases through in vivo hypermutation - Nature Communications
Genetic code expansion (GCE) enables the incorporation of new amino acids into proteins. Here, authors demonstrate the rapid OrthoRep-driven evolution of aminoacyl-tRNA synthetases for GCE, increasing...
nature.com
A lot is happening, but science keeps me excited and energized. This is how much we scientists care about discovery and making a positive impact on society. Thank you to everyone who supports us.
Harvard today, your institution tomorrow. It's all part of the Project 2025 plan to destroy high education in America. All leading US universities depend on federal funding and tuition dollars from international students. They severely curtailed the former. Now they're eliminating the latter.
The New York Times@nytimes.com · last yr.Breaking News: The Trump administration halted Harvard’s ability to enroll international students, a major escalation in its battle with the school.
Let's talk about these two department store owners: brother and sister Louis Bamberger and Caroline Bamberger Fuld. From Newark, New Jersey. They are random people, basically. But in the late 1920s, with fascism taking over Europe, they made a choice that profoundly changed the world: 🧵
Vibrio natriegens has been engineered for bioremediation of complex organic pollutants - biphenyl, phenol, naphthalene, dibenzofuran and toluene - in saline wastewater and soils 🧪 www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Bioremediation of complex organic pollutants by engineered Vibrio natriegens - Nature
A synthetic biology approach was used to engineer Vibrio natriegens into a strain capable of bioremediating complex organic pollutants in saline wastewater and soils, thereby addressing notable threat...
nature.com
Elizabeth Hann imagines a future where food production is more sustainable. She's developing microbes that produce commodities more sustainably. Learn more about Elizabeth & her work in this month’s #HOWyss.
Elizabeth Hann on Using Microbes to Save the Earth
The Humans of the Wyss (HOW) series features members of the Wyss community discussing their work, the influences that shape them as professionals, and their collaborations at the Wyss Institute and be...
wyss.harvard.edu
Super excited to share a new preprint from our lab on design of small-molecule binding proteins using neural networks! The paper has a bit of everything. A new graph neural network, new design algorithms, and experimental validation. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... 🧵🧪
Zero-shot design of drug-binding proteins via neural selection-expansion
Computational design of molecular recognition remains challenging despite advances in deep learning. The design of proteins that bind to small molecules has been particularly difficult because it requ...
biorxiv.org
i'm just a senior postdoc, standing in front of a career that i have worked really hard for, asking higher education in the united states to not completely implode in front of my eyes before i even get a chance to say the words 'my lab studies'
Huge opportunity for postdocs gearing up for an academic job search, hosted by @stanford-chemh.bsky.social @berkeleymcb.bsky.social and UCSF!
Flora Rutaganira@frutag33.bsky.social · last yr.Hello Community! Are you a postdoc/grad student preparing to launch a faculty search? Do you have a track record of excellence in research, leadership, mentorship & community engagement? Apply to the 2025 Next Generation Faculty Symposium: www.berkeleystanfordnextgensymposium.com! Pls repost! (1/3)
This is very sad and wasteful. A lot of the value comes from longitudinal data. Stopping early wastes all of the startup costs. NIH cancels its first and largest study centered on women | Science | AAAS www.science.org/content/arti...
NIH cancels its first and largest study centered on women
The Women’s Health Initiative has produced numerous influential findings
science.org
AAU updates their excellent explainer about indirect costs to cover the current attacks... www.youtube.com/watch?v=NtqK... 1/2
Facilities and Administrative (F&A) Costs Explainer
YouTube video by Association of American Universities
youtube.com
Ever wonder how many lives have been saved by NIH-funded research - including your own? Enter any medical condition and instantly see how your tax dollars transformed science into survival. www.ourhealthroi.com
Our Health ROI
Explore how your tax dollars fund life‑saving medical research.
ourhealthroi.com
A huge, new resource for plasmid research - PlasmidScope is a database of 852,000 #plasmid sequences with a rich set of annotations, automated online analysis and interactive visualisation academic.oup.com/nar/article/...
PlasmidScope: a comprehensive plasmid database with rich annotations and online analytical tools
Abstract. Plasmids are extrachromosomal genetic molecules that replicate independent of chromosomes in bacteria, archaea, and eukaryotic organisms. They co
academic.oup.com
From the Editor-in-Chief of @plosbiology.org journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...
Vaccines work… and do not cause autism
Vaccines have saved millions of lives, yet their importance and safety is repeatedly in question. W e cannot let disinformation campaigns get in the way of global public health – it is not time to def...
journals.plos.org
Our study exploring the evolutionary mechanism of alphavirus opal codon retention is now online! www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
A conserved opal termination codon optimizes a temperature-dependent trade-off between protein production and processing in alphaviruses
Alphaviruses optimize viral polymerase production and polyprotein processing at distinct temperatures via a premature stop codon.
science.org
#SynBYSS seminar with Prof. Maciek Antoniewicz at the University of Michigan & Dr. Anush Chiappino-Pepe at Harvard Medical School @umich.edu @anush-chp.bsky.social @harvardmed.bsky.social The video link is below: www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qu2P...
SynBYSS with Prof Maciek Antoniewicz at U. of Michigan & Dr Anush Chiappino-Pepe at Harvard Medical
YouTube video by TAESEOK Moon
youtube.com
Glad to share my personalized link "Be a GEM: Biocontained, environmentally applied, genetically engineered microbes" authors.elsevier.com/a/1kxe%7E,3s... Published in Advanced Drug Delivery Reviews Thank Nathan Crook & Juliane Nguyen for the invitation! @elsevierconnect.bsky.social
#SynBYSS Thur 10 am USA CT 159th, Apr 17: Prof Maciek Antoniewicz at U Michigan & Dr Anush Chiappino-Pepe at Harvard Med @anush-chp.bsky.social 160th, Apr 24: Prof Kelvin Lee at U Delaware & Dr Haosheng Shen at Natl U. Singapore Zoom link for the general audience: us02web.zoom.us/j/88380504839
PRETTY AWESOME Sidor et al. PNAS take a single enzyme from a marine sponge and express it in E. coli, conferring the ability to self-assemble bioglass from silica precursors present in ocean water End result? Living, light-focusing microlenses that persist for months Cheap, durable photonics
Engineered bacteria that self-assemble bioglass polysilicate coatings display enhanced light focusing | PNAS
Cutting-edge photonic devices frequently rely on microparticle components to focus and manipulate light. Conventional methods used to produce these...
pnas.org
🧬 🦠 Synthetic biologist: We engineered ocean bacteria to enhance production of siderophores 🪨 🧪 Geochemist: We observed iron solubilization orthogonal to silica passivation 🔁🚰 Process engineer: We showed that wild microbes will not accelerate rock weathering - they simply don't need that much iron
