Frances Arnold
@francesarnold.bsky.social
Engineer/scientist, Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2018 I love evolution, enzymes, protein engineering, AI Linus Pauling Professor at Caltech
Caltech Chemical Engineering is recruiting a long-term lecturer! Reach out if you’re interested and have any questions. applications.caltech.edu/job/chemeng
Long-Term Lecturer in Chemical Engineering | Caltech Applications
applications.caltech.edu
Ik sprak Nobelprijswinnaar Frances Arnold! Zij laat in haar baanbrekende onderzoek naar de perfecte enzymen evolutie het werk doen: ‘Je kunt veertig jaar proberen enzymen te ontwerpen, maar de natuur wéét hoe je iets moet ontwerpen’ 🎁: www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2026/...
Frances Arnold laat evolutie het werk doen: ‘Je kunt veertig jaar proberen enzymen te ontwerpen, maar de natuur wéét hoe je iets moet ontwerpen’
Frances Arnold | biochemicus: Enzymen kun je zien als de startkabels van de natuur. Frances Arnold, voormalig adviseur van president Joe Biden, kreeg in 2018 een Nobelprijs voor haar werk om deze eiwi...
nrc.nl
“According to our observations over the past 24 hours, the vast majority of species on earth have pretty much just been holding steady and staying the course, gene-wise,” said biologist Clarice Abernathy
Biologists Confirm Not Much Evolution Happened Today
STANFORD, CA—Calling it a “pretty slow one” as far as natural selection and genetic drift were concerned, biologists from Stanford University confirmed Tuesday that not much evolution happened today. ...
theonion.com
Such an incredible journey building DISCO 🪩. Love working with this team. DISCO is a co-design model with functional, de novo, new-to-nature enzymes. Huge shoutout to my co-authors for making this a reality! 🚀👇
Marta Skreta@martaowesyou.bsky.social · 4mo agoWhat if AI could invent enzymes that nature hasn’t seen? 👩🔬🧑🔬 Introducing 🪩 DISCO: Diffusion for Sequence-structure CO-design 📝 Blog: disco-design.github.io 📄 Paper: arxiv.org/abs/2604.05181 💻 Code: github.com/DISCO-design...
What if AI could invent enzymes that nature hasn’t seen? 👩🔬🧑🔬 Introducing 🪩 DISCO: Diffusion for Sequence-structure CO-design 📝 Blog: disco-design.github.io 📄 Paper: arxiv.org/abs/2604.05181 💻 Code: github.com/DISCO-design...
Proud of this conversation I helped produce for @scifri.bsky.social between Flora Lichtman and Nobel laureate @francesarnold.bsky.social. I think it's worth a listen. www.sciencefriday.com/segments/fra...
The Evolution Of An Enzyme Engineer Who Changed Chemistry
Frances Arnold's game-changing technique of "directed evolution" creates enzymes with unusual capabilities. Her own evolution made it possible.
sciencefriday.com
Nobel laureate Frances Arnold has had an extraordinary journey from teenage rebellion in Pittsburgh to harnessing AI to evolutionary biology to create new kinds of chemistry. I sat down with her for a Lunch with the FT in the bistro of Stockholm's Nobel Prize Museum. www.ft.com/content/9923...
Nobel chemistry laureate Frances Arnold: ‘Whole swaths of science are just going to die on the vine’
The Caltech professor on using AI to harness the power of enzymes — and what US funding cuts could mean for research
ft.com
New work in Nature Communications! Using generative AI, we designed TrpB enzymes that are not only functional, but outperform natural ones and rival top lab-evolved TrpBs. www.nature.com/articles/s41... Huge thanks to @francesarnold.bsky.social, @anima-anandkumar.bsky.social, and all co-authors!
One of the quiet failures of our time is how rarely we humanize science. We celebrate breakthroughs, but often lose sight of the people behind them. When science feels abstract, it becomes easy to dismiss or distrust it. That's why New Heroes exists www.explorers.com @nationalacademies.org #SciArt
An exciting collaboration with @francesarnold.bsky.social on AI+enzymes. This combines generative protein models with carefully tuned filters that resulted in functional and versatile enzymes beating natural and previously engineered enzymes.
Frances Arnold@francesarnold.bsky.social · 8mo agoGenerated PLP-dependent Trp synthases are functional, stable, and exhibit usefully broad substrate scopes! fun collaboration with @anima-anandkumar.bsky.social @ramanathanlab.bsky.social Amin Takavoli. I love AI + #enzymes!
Generated PLP-dependent Trp synthases are functional, stable, and exhibit usefully broad substrate scopes! fun collaboration with @anima-anandkumar.bsky.social @ramanathanlab.bsky.social Amin Takavoli. I love AI + #enzymes!
Kevin K. Yang 楊凱筌@kevinkaichuang.bsky.social · 8mo agoFinetune a codon-level language model with 30k tryptophan synthases, then generate diverse, functional, enzymes with broad substrate scopes. Théophile Lambert @jsunn-y.bsky.social @francesarnold.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Enzyme Engineering Database (EnzEngDB): a platform for sharing and interpreting sequence–function relationships across protein engineering campaigns @francescazfl.bsky.social @jsunn-y.bsky.social @francesarnold.bsky.social @arianemora.bsky.social Paper: doi.org/10.1093/nar/... DB: enzengdb.org
Friday night at Adams pack station. 9 miles and a century from @caltech.
A new round of layoffs at Nasa’s jet propulsion lab will result in ‘an untold loss of scientific knowledge and expertise’ according to congresswoman Judy Chu.
Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Lab and home of Mars rovers loses 10% of its staff
The dismissal of 550 JPL workers is the fourth round of recent layoffs at the lab, prompting fears of a brain drain
chemistryworld.com
Looking for PhD or postdoctoral opportunities in #AI+biology #proteinengineering? the brilliant @arianemora.bsky.social has joined @aithyra.bsky.social in beautiful #vienna. I wish I could start over again!
AITHYRA Research Institute of the Austrian Academy of Sciences@aithyra.bsky.social · 12mo agoWelcome ARIANE MORA! With great pleasure we announce that Ariane Mora is one of the Starting Principal Investigators AI/LS who will join AITHYRA in November 2025. Ariane combines molecular biology, AI, and software engineering. More information: www.oeaw.ac.at/aithyra/rese... #AITHYRA #StartingPI
Our new paper on AI-generated TrpBs with @anima-anandkumar.bsky.social. GenSLM generated very useful promiscuous TrpB #enzymes, bypassing a lot of #directedevolution! great work by the whole team, especially Theophile Lambert. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
biorxiv.org
A compelling review of how ML/AI could help in the quest to find an enzyme for every reaction. @jsunn-y.bsky.social @francescazfl.bsky.social Yueming Long @francesarnold.bsky.social www.cell.com/cell-systems...
Private tour of the Louvre is a special treat. They were vacuuming the Sphinx. You may not have seen a Sphinx being brushed, so I am sharing.
On the beautiful @Caltech campus with two new professors @reisenbauerlab.bsky.social and @arianemora.bsky.social headed to start their careers in Vienna. Prospective graduate students take note! This is the future of #enzymes #proteinengineering. @caltechcce.bsky.social @caltech.edu
Loved seeing so many former #Arnoldgroup members at GRC #ProteinEngineering this week! Protein engineering is in good hands.
I'm really proud of this work by Jae Kennemur and Yueming Long. #Enzymes rock, with some help from #directed evolution to do chemistry not known in nature (and really hard for humans, too). @caltechcce.bsky.social pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/...
Enzymatic Stereodivergent Synthesis of Azaspiro[2.y]alkanes
Azaspiro[2.y]alkanes are increasingly valuable scaffolds in pharmaceutical drug discovery; however, an asymmetric catalytic method for their synthesis remains unknown. Here, we present a stereodiverge...
pubs.acs.org
I saw it firsthand at the Lindau Nobel Laureates meeting--international young scientists welcomed and recruited in Germany and elsewhere. www.wsj.com/politics/pol...
America’s Brain Drain Could Become the World’s Brain Gain
Research-funding cuts and immigration changes threaten some of America’s economic advantages.
wsj.com
📅July 7-11 The 2025 Onassis Lectures in Biology and Chemistry will be held @forth-ite.bsky.social, Heraklion, Crete. This year’s Lectures are devoted to the advances, challenges, and future prospects of #Re-engineeringBiology through #DirectedEvolution and #Synthetic cellular pathways.
Join us! We are looking for a new team member (PhD student) with strong background in organic chemistry. 🙏 RETWEET (We want to recruit internationally) Organic chemistry meets #DirectedEvolution Highly interdisciplinary & passionate research group uni-bielefeld.hr4you.org/job/view/433...
Research Position (PhD) in organic chemistry and b...
<div style="text-align: justify;">The research group „Organic Chemistry and&nb...
uni-bielefeld.hr4you.org
Really enjoying #Repartzymes Repurposed and Artificial Enzymes meeting organized by #TomWard of Uni. Basel. Many former group members are here! rep.artzymes.info
I'm honored to be involved in the SDSS @stanforddoerr.bsky.social --we need it now more than ever. Let's continue to be bold about building the future.
Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability@stanforddoerr.bsky.social · last yr.Join us in welcoming @francesarnold.bsky.social to the @stanforddoerr.bsky.social Advisory Council. As the @caltech.edu Linus Pauling Professor and a Nobel Laureate in Chemistry, she will make important contributions to the school’s bold ambition of building a more sustainable future for all.
Steered generation for protein optimization: On datasets with ~10^2 measurements, steering a discrete diffusion model outperforms RL on a protein language model for generating improved variants. @jsunn-y.bsky.social @francesarnold.bsky.social @yisongyue.bsky.social arxiv.org/abs/2505.15093
Took a walk in the woods this weekend. So good for the soul.
Such a pleasure to gather with current and former Arnold group members in San Diego! Thank you one and all. #ACSSpring2025
