How do transcription factors bind DNA strongly, and in a switch like manner, while remaining sequence specific? Our new paper on a canonical plant TF suggests the answer is a previously underappreciated assembly state: transcription factor nanoclusters. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Nanoclustering of a plant transcription factor enables strong yet specific DNA binding

Transcription factor nanoclusters balance the DNA binding trade-off between weakly binding oligomers and nonspecific condensates.

science.org

The tiny cell that broke a big rule of biology

The tiny cell that broke a big rule of biology

The discovery of a new nitrogen-fixing organelle could change the way we eventually grow food.

dlvr.it

Is the first artificial cell finally here? In this groundbreaking work lead by @kateadamala.bsky.social the team has been able to create a synthetic cell from scratch, capable of genetically encoded growth and division. An impressive achievement biotic.org/research/spu...

🌺 How does a hibiscus flower pattern its petals? A new computational model reveals hidden "boundary" cells can spontaneously emerge during flower development, helping to create stable petal patterns. Prediction confirmed experimentally! 🔗 www.slcu.cam.ac.uk/news/how-hib... #PlantsInTheSpotlight

Exciting collab between modellers in @renskevroomans.bsky.social team and experimentalists in Edwige Moyroud's team turned up a clear example of 'spandrels', first coined by palaeontologists Stephen Jay Gould & Richard Lewontin in 1979. #plantsci

📣 We are now accepting applications for the second Plant Synthetic Biology Hackathon! 📣 Check out this unique opportunity to learn the newest tools and approaches in plant engineering! Hosted by Nicola Patron and myself as part of the Plant Cell Atlas RCN, July 12-13, 2026 at MIT.

Plant Cell Atlas@plantcellatlas.bsky.social · 3mo ago

The Application deadline for the SynBio Hackathon has been EXTENDED until June 8, 2026! Apply Now Here: www.plantcellatlas.org/2026-synbio-... *Participants will be reimbursed up to $800 for travel and lodging costs.

Extremely cool video from Steve Mould on diffraction gratings and structural colour in photography, with a nice link made to how chameleon cells change colour

You've Never Seen a Real Photo

YouTube video by Steve Mould

m.youtube.com

Big news! 🔬 The OpenFlexure Project just won the GW4 Alliance Open Research Prize! 🏆 We’re honoured to be recognised for our commitment to making microscopy transparent, reproducible, and accessible to all. Open Research is at the heart of everything we do. Read more: gw4.ac.uk/orw/

We have a PhD studentship available to develop genome safeguarding technologies for synthetic phage therapeutics www.findaphd.com/phds/project... It is part of an exciting new @officialuom.bsky.social PhD by Enterprise programme www.bmh.manchester.ac.uk/study/resear...

(PhD by Enterprise) Genome safeguarding technologies for synthetic phage therapeutics against multidrug resistant bacterial infections at The University of Manchester on FindAPhD.com

PhD Project - (PhD by Enterprise) Genome safeguarding technologies for synthetic phage therapeutics against multidrug resistant bacterial infections at The University of Manchester, listed on FindAPhD...

findaphd.com

The wobble-skip mechanism of matching two-of-three bases is wildly cool. Most synonymous mutants can’t escape

Kenneth Loi@kenjmloi.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Excited to share our discovery of a new programmable RNA-guided DNA-targeting system hiding inside bacteriophages that predates CRISPR. We call it VIPR (Viral Interference Programmable Repeat), and it uses an entirely new logic to find its targets. Thread + link below.

Excited to share our discovery of a new programmable RNA-guided DNA-targeting system hiding inside bacteriophages that predates CRISPR. We call it VIPR (Viral Interference Programmable Repeat), and it uses an entirely new logic to find its targets. Thread + link below.

"...- the idea that eukaryotic evolution progressively relocated causal power away from individual molecular interactions toward higher levels of organization, and that the surprising sloppiness of eukaryotic transcription factor binding reflects not a limitation but... /11

Giving this another outing, as some people seem to have found it useful.

Philip Ball@philipcball.bsky.social · 3mo ago

My latest column for @chemistryworld.com is on a paper recently published in Science, about which one of the lead authors (Bob Tjian) contacted me out of the blue because of the relevance to what I say in my book How Life Works. 🧵 www.chemistryworld.com/opinion/coll...

This will be amazing. And free!!

Naomi Moris@nmoris.bsky.social · 4mo ago

I am giving a "Crash Course in Embryo Development" for the general public (no science background needed! pitched around GCSE-level) in London on 21st May www.crick.ac.uk/whats-on/cri... We'll dip into development, with a splash of embryo models, and a pinch of ethics. And it's free! Book online 👍

Now published! doi.org/10.1093/plce...

A simple cell-cycle control system in Marchantia polymorpha provides a framework for understanding plant cell proliferation

The liverwort Marchantia uncovers how cyclin proteins sequentially control cell division phases, revealing ancestral molecular mechanisms that shaped the e

doi.org

Francesco De Batté@francescodb.bsky.social · last yr.

🚨 Cool preprint alert! Not biased at all 😅. It was a privilege to work alongside @fromani.bsky.social and I'm so proud to have contributed to this work at the intersection of plant Synbio and EvoDevo. Enjoy!

“wait… it parses the history too??” yep 😄 OpenCloning now imports SnapGene files with the full cloning workflow, not just the final construct. 🎬 sound on opencloning.org

Interested in synthetic biology & microbiomes? 🧬🧫 We are recruiting a PhD student to develop biosensors to study microbe–microbe & microbe–host interactions. In beautiful Lausanne, Switzerland🏔️⛵ @dmf-unil.bsky.social @fbm-unil.bsky.social Apply by 24.05.2026 👇 shorturl.at/6X7M4 Boosts appreciated!

🚨 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.

This is an early and strong contender for my favourite paper of the year, just after a quick glance. Direct conversion of Arabidopsis tissue to regeneration without callus and normal CIM due to loss of DNA demethylation 🤯 Of course moss does that by default 😉

Ghent Rooting-lab/Steffen Vanneste@stvanneste.bsky.social · 4mo ago

#hormone free regeneration 👍 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

This paper started as an idea @albertomarina.bsky.social had many years ago… which of course means he was right all along 😄. Some of us just needed a few years (and a lot of experiments) to catch up. Grateful (and slightly humbled) to be part of this. Thanks Alberto! www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...

Phages communicate across species to shape microbial ecosystems

Gallego-del-Sol et al. show that arbitrium-coding phages can sense non-cognate peptide signals from other phages to regulate lysis-lysogeny decisions. This crosstalk affects lysis-lysogeny outcomes of...

cell.com

Quantum biological control, now in a multicellular organism! Super exciting to see this work from @scburd.bsky.social et al 🧪

Magnetic resonance control of spin-correlated radical pair dynamics in vivo - Nature

Magnetic resonance control of spin-correlated radical pairs alters red fluorescent protein emission in transgenic Caenorhabditis elegans, demonstrating in vivo magnetic field modulation of biomolecula...

nature.com

Curious about the origin of development during the transition to multicellularity? A very belated preprint alert: bit.ly/4rr2mHU Reproduction emerges from ecological interactions at the onset of multicellularity. A short 🧵 with lots of videos...

And it’s not just this outcome. From the same ingredients, we get a whole zoo of possible solutions: unicellular life cycles, single-cell and multicellular propagules (in the video), and large groups that split by tearing themselves apart.

we talk about carcinization, but never about the many, many times plants have invented the “tree.” Tree is not a kind of plant, it is a thing plats do, and they are by and large unrelated.

The OpenPlant kit is finally available from Addgene as... a kit :) www.addgene.org/kits/haselof... @addgene.bsky.social #marchantia #synbio

Welcome to the world, little spark. You are loved. 💚

In case you missed it: our review titled "Spatial structure: shaping the ecology and evolution of microbial communities" is out! 🚨 Let me hit you with some highlights on why spatial structure matters. (and why you should care!) Sharing is appreciated 🙏 🧵👇 doi.org/10.1093/fems...

🚀 Excited to launch the #OpenCloning Assembler! 🧬 Built to demystify Golden Gate for beginners and save time for experts -> MoClo assembly blazing fast ⚡ ✍️ Use existing syntaxes or design your own! #SynBio #GoldenGate #MoClo #OpenSource #Biotech 👉 Try it: app.opencloning.org Feedback welcome!

Integrase-On-Demand: bioprospecting integrases for targeted genomic insertion of genetic cargo Open Access doi.org/10.1093/nar/...

Integrase-On-Demand: bioprospecting integrases for targeted genomic insertion of genetic cargo

Abstract. Integrases serve as powerful biotechnology tools that catalyze recombination at specific DNA sequences (att sites) and facilitate chromosomal int

doi.org

Next Monday, 9 February at 2:30 pm (UK time), we’re excited to hear from Alex Bisson @archaeon-alex.bsky.social from Indiana University. Don’t forget to subscribe to our mailing list to receive the Zoom link!