ZATELLITE: a toolkit to visualize and manipulate human centromeres in live cells using synthetic zinc fingers biorxiv.org/content/10.6... Congrats to Nestor Saiz et al. from the Center of Synthetic Regulatory Genomics!

ZATELLITE: a toolkit to visualize and manipulate human centromeres in live cells using synthetic zinc fingers

Changes in the number of chromosomes or their spatial organization within the nucleus have critical consequences for cell fate. Yet capturing the karyotype or three-dimensional architecture of chromat...

biorxiv.org

Our lab’s latest on synthetic genomics “Synthetic Combinatorial Minimisation of Cell Cycle Control” is up now on BioRxiv - covering ambitious yeast #synbio cell cycle work led by Anastasiya Malyshava and co-supervised by Matteo Barberis.

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Off to @embl.org in Heidelberg for the 6th edition of the hands-on SynBio @embo.org Course share.google/Dg0qMdsNQl55... that I initiated in 2015. Glad to see that many of its earlier students now star senior PI positions in some the best research centers & universities 😀

Synthetic biology in action: maturing tools and their potential

share.google

Our paper "Active-learning-guided optimization of cell-free systems for genome-wide transcriptomic profiling reveals progressive layers of regulation" is online in Nature Communications! Congrats Lea Wagner, very proud of this work! www.nature.com/articles/s41... #cellfree #AI #T7Phage #synbio

Our paper on the evolution of cellular miniaturization is now out in PNAS! www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... A short recap 🧵

Marco Fumasoni@marcofumasoni.bsky.social · 10mo ago

🗞️ New preprint from the lab, led by our postdoc Ana Garoña (not on here) in collab with @andreagiometto.bsky.social: “Experimental evolution of cellular miniaturization reveals a mechanism for cell size evolution”, aka: “honey, we shrank the yeasts!” 🎥 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

5 days left now to apply for the postdoc opportunity in my lab at Imperial in London 🇬🇧 - there’s a chance that we can hire 2 people into the team on this synthetic biology and materials theme. Application link is here - www.imperial.ac.uk/jobs/search-...

LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman has founded an AI drug discovery company with Siddhartha Mukherjee author of “The Emperor of All Maladies" #biotech thenextweb.com/news/reid-ho...

Catalytic Bacterial Nanocellulose Composite That Captures and Degrades PET Microplastics https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.06.05.730390v1

I’d like to invite everyone working on engineering living materials to share this starter pack. Please drop me a message or leave a comment if you like to join the #ELMs community. go.bsky.app/RinsDZh

Off to Barcelona for the 2nd SynBYSS Conf www.jcvi.org/events/synbyss organized by the one and only @taeseokmoon.bsky.social along with Marc Güell of @upf.edu & other local SynBio colleagues. Ready to take the pulse of the field & learn from many of its luminaries 😀. I will honor Gaudí in my talk 👇

CNS humblebrag joke.

Oded Rechavi@odedrechavi.bsky.social · 4mo ago

I won't pay $4,000 for a ticket to see my Knicks play in the NBA Finals for the first time in 27 years, but for some reason I routinely pay three times that much for open access to papers that I wrote myself.

1/n What fraction of the human genome is essential for cells? Excited to share our preprint that explores this question by combining an unusual CRISPR system, phage promoters, and thousands of deletion launchpads. @sudpinglay.bsky.social @jshendure.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

How much of the human genome is essential? Two pieces out today from our lab: 1) a method to map essential genomic intervals at gigabase scale, and 2) an argument that it's time to consider synthesizing a minimal human genome. biorxiv.org/content/10.6... nature.com/articles/d41...

Why a synthetic human genome is still worth building

A decade on from the launch of an ambitious project, it’s time to revisit the reasons for constructing a human genome from scratch.

nature.com

Where can my international postdocs go to attend good conferences? They don't want to go to USA (v.high prices & horror stories of ICE). Can't easily go to the EU as Schengen visa appointments are super hard to get in the UK right now. East Asia? Flights are $$$$ thanks to dumb wars. Sad times.

🚨 An exciting frontier is bringing synthetic biology to MULTIcellular systems. To effectively engineer them, we need design principles. What are the benefits of group formation? What are the costs? See our new preprint led by @heidiklumpe.bsky.social to learn more!👇 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

The preprint from my work @mokhalil.bsky.social and Mary Dunlop's groups at BU is out on bioRxiv! As new tools come online to engineer multicellularity, we asked: how does sticking cells together into larger groups affect their fitness and function?

www.nature.com/articles/s41... #microsky

Engineered Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron sense gut inflammation and deliver therapeutic molecules to alleviate colitis in mice - Nature Microbiology

Engineered Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron, Btbots, use a genetic AND circuit to sense nitric oxide and deoxycholic acid as inflammatory signal in the gut to release therapeutic molecules, TFF3 and IL-35...

nature.com

"Hypothesis generation: pretty good...data analysis: a super power...executing experiments: not so much" AI can help at every stage of the research cycle. Jonah Cool from @anthropic.com discuss the benefits of integrating frontier models and potential concerns youtu.be/sz1vQyBzSgw?...

Interview with: Jonah Cool

YouTube video by CSHL Leading Strand

youtu.be

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...

Bamboo-based plastic can be made to biodegrade quickly, but still holds up in tough conditions

A new method to produce strong, biodegradable plastic from bamboo is reported in Nature Communications this week. The bioplastic resembles oil-based plastics in strength, shapability, and thermal stab...

phys.org

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...

Programmable artificial RNA condensates in mammalian cells - Nature Nanotechnology

Modular RNA nanostar motifs spontaneously assemble into programmable synthetic condensates in the nucleus and cytoplasm, with RNA design controlling localization, sequence-specific target recruitment ...

nature.com

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...

Why we won’t be funding open access publishing any more - Cancer Research UK - Cancer News

The open access movement was bold and promising, but ultimately disappointing. Now is the time to stop and call for a new way to make publishing work…

news.cancerresearchuk.org

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

Growth, Dissolution and Segregation of Genetically Encoded RNA Droplets by Ribozyme Catalysis

Ribozymes enable sequence-encoded turnover of RNA droplet material, resulting in transiently active droplets that selectively segregate based on their genotype. This establishes a direct link between...

onlinelibrary.wiley.com

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

Sustained nitric oxide production by engineered E. coli remodels the tumor microenvironment and potentiates immunotherapy - Nature Biotechnology

Solid tumors are sensitized to anti‑PD‑L1 immunotherapy by engineered E. coli to produce nitric oxide.

go.nature.com

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

Single-molecule peptide sequencing through reverse translation of peptides into DNA - Nature Biotechnology

Peptides are sequenced by converting each amino acid into amplifiable DNA barcodes.

nature.com

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

Centre for Synthetic Biology @TUDarmstadt@synbio.bsky.social · 7mo ago

The Centre for Synthetic Biology @tuda.bsky.social offers two Postdoc Fellowships on synthetic cells🧪🚀. Topics: polymer chemistry, gene/protein circuits, microfluidics, modeling & therapeutics. Apply by Apr 8, 2026 via the TU Darmstadt portal: www.career.tu-darmstadt.de/tu-darmstadt...