This 1679 “Sabionari” Stradivarius is the only playable guitar by Antonio Stradivari left in this world.🤗 So take just a moment to hear a sound that’s well over 300 years old! @55SweetThing #globalmuseum #music #guitar #Stradivarius

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

🧬 DNA nanostars are great way to build biomolecular condensates. Add an aptamer and you can build "host condensates" that recruit & release targets. But where should the aptamer go? We show that there are several great options in our new @nanoscale-journals.rsc.org paper pubs.rsc.org/en/content/a...

Molecular recruitment and release using DNA host condensates

Artificial biomolecular condensates are a promising tool to achieve spatial self-organization in active materials and synthetic cells. DNA branched motifs known as nanostars are a particularly versati...

pubs.rsc.org

New from us in @pnas.org : We considered the limits of condensate diversity, and engineered DNA droplets to form 9 distinct, homotypic, coexisting phases. Very hard to do this except with nucleic acids. Probably you can make more than 9. (1/3)

Some good news today, let's hope other countries follow suit! www.theguardian.com/australia-ne...

Australia’s world-first social media ban begins as millions of children and teens lose access to accounts

Accounts held by users under 16 must be removed on apps that include TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, X, YouTube, Snapchat, Reddit, Kick, Twitch and Threads under ban

theguardian.com

NIH award reinstated 🧬 happy to be able to continue our work!

Come learn about UCLA research projects that have been suspended under the Trump administration, and why they matter for all of us. 🧪 Wednesday, Sept 10 | 11:30 AM – 1:30 PM 📍 Northwest corner of Westwood & Le Conte

Thrilled to share this new Adv. Sci. paper by @dianatanase.bsky.social with Dino Osmanovic @rogerrubiosanchez.bsky.social @laylamalouf.bsky.social @francolab.bsky.social. We demonstrate a modular approach to program internal phase separation in DNA condensates 1/n doi.org/10.1002/advs...

Internal Phase Separation in Synthetic DNA Condensates

The modular, programmable system of DNA nanostructures developed provides programmatic control over multiphase condensate behavior, enabling mapping onto a predictive Flory-Huggins model. This combin...

doi.org

Simulations by Dino Osmanovic @francolab.bsky.social, based on Flory-Huggins, map well onto the experimental trends and allowed us to establish a link between the experimental order parameter and the F-H interaction parameter. Experimental (top) and simulated (bottom) snapshots below 4/n

200 engineering/life science/medical grants, including my lab's NIH MIRA, have been suspended. In case you are wondering, this means immediately stop spending = stop paying salaries for students & postdocs. www.latimes.com/california/s...

Trump freezes $200 million in UCLA science and medical research funding, citing antisemitism

The Trump administration has frozen roughly $200 million in National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health and other federal agency-funded research at UCLA, citing allegations the school d...

latimes.com

We demonstrated how to make and dissolve #RNA #condensates through strand displacement using synthetic genes - excited to see this new paper out in @narjournal.bsky.social Collab w/ the Andersen group @esandersen.bsky.social academic.oup.com/nar/article/...

Switchable RNA motifs for dynamic transcriptional control of RNA condensates

Abstract. RNA-driven phase separation is emerging as a promising approach for engineering biomolecular condensates with diverse functionalities. Condensate

academic.oup.com

2025 Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Course in Synthetic Biology - apply! Deadline: April 14, 2025 Financial Aid: Stipend awards are available. Notifications: Applicants will be notified by May 15, 2025. meetings.cshl.edu/courses.aspx...

Synthetic Biology

Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Meetings & Courses -- a private, non-profit institution with research programs in cancer, neuroscience, plant biology, genomics, bioinformatics.

meetings.cshl.edu

Unlike a lot of other universities right now, we are still hiring for new faculty here at Imperial in London 🎉🚨🇬🇧🫖 If you want to come and run a research group in the theme of bioengineering then apply to be my colleague before the end of April. www.imperial.ac.uk/jobs/search-...

Description

Please note that job descriptions are not exhaustive, and you may be asked to take on additional duties that align with the key responsibilities ment...

imperial.ac.uk

Michael Faraday was the father of electromagnetism. He changed our world experiment by experiment, without any formal education, and without ever writing equations - now you can check out his original "lab books"! www.theguardian.com/science/2025...

Unearthed notebooks shed light on Victorian genius who inspired Einstein

Michael Faraday’s illustrated notes that show how radical scientist began his theories at London’s Royal Institution to go online

theguardian.com

Bluetorial: Non-Competitive Renewal (Continuation) Awards Normally, multiyear NIH grants are paid with awards each year, pending administratively reviewed progress reports. “NIH” has been slow in making these awards. This has led to $1.83 B being withheld from institutions through February 2025.

a cartoon of homer simpson holding a card

ALT: a cartoon of homer simpson holding a card

media.tenor.com

Seriously. If you are that good you shouldn’t have to work so much. Get over this BS bro culture.

Jess Calarco@jessicacalarco.com · last yr.

The celebration of "hardcore" work culture is keeping us from gender equality. If men can only be "successful" by working so much they're eating every meal at the office, then they have incentive to avoid any care work that might pull them away. Which means pushing all the care onto women instead.

Francis Collins, the NIH Director for 12 years, led the Human Genome Project and other NIH efforts for 32 years, resigned today. Key words from his resignation letter www.nytimes.com/2025/03/01/u...

2025-02-23 Issue of #engineeredlivingmaterials feed: biomed.news/bims-enlima/... @biomednews.bsky.social includes, metabolite-responsive control (h/t wilfriedweber.bsky.social), light-modulated self-assembly (h/t francolab.bsky.social), single-protein quant (h/t naturemethods.bsky.social), & more 🧪

Deeply concerned about NSF. They fired more people than they needed and now leadership is illegally reclassifying employees as probationary. www.reuters.com/world/us/us-...

US science agency reclassifies hundreds of workers as probationary, US lawmaker says

National Science Foundation administrators reclassified hundreds of employees from permanent to probationary status in violation of labor contracts, according to a U.S. lawmaker and agency employee.

reuters.com

How can complex dynamics emerge from phase-separated matter? 🤔 Simple chemical reactions can trigger periodic or chaotic behavior in dense phases! Cool simulations by Dino Osmanovic 💥 w/ support by @sloanfoundation.bsky.social #PhaseSeparation #Matter2Life journals.aps.org/pre/abstract...

1/ I am seeing a lot of comments on the slashing of NIH support along the lines of “universities should just spend their huge endowments.” I’m the last person to cheer on the institutional stratification rising endowments have contributed to. But let me explain why this is not a solution.

Happy #Valentine's day with some colorful #DNA #condensates that decided to assemble into a heart ❤️ 💚 ❤️ 💚 ❤️ 💚

🚨 New Preprint Alert! 🚨 Dose-response curves measure how cells react to inputs, but what about how long the input stays high? Our latest work shows that some circuits can flip the script of temporal dose: short stimuli can trigger sustained responses & vice versa! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

NIH to implement a 15% indirect cost rate. "This policy shall be applied to all current grants for go forward expenses from February 10, 2025 forward as well as for all new grants issued." Devastating for US scientific institutions. Am I understanding this right? grants.nih.gov/grants/guide...

If you’ve been directly impacted by a pause or cancellation of an NIH study session, we @forbes.com would like to talk to you

Jane Liebschutz, MD MPH (she/her)@liebschutz.bsky.social · 2y ago

All NIH study sections canceled indefinitely. This will halt science and devastate research budgets in universities.

#UCLA QCbio qcb.ucla.edu is looking for a new director! recruit.apo.ucla.edu/JPF10007 Please share

Director, Institute for Quantitative and Computational Biosciences

University of California, Los Angeles is hiring. Apply now!

recruit.apo.ucla.edu

Abstract submission for FNANO is now open! They’re due Feb 1! Join us at molecular programming’s annual celebration of design, interfaces and applications (and also skiing) 🧬 www.fnano.org

Foundations of Nanoscience

fnano.org

The coolest thing about the @bluesky experiment? It shows that no social network is indispensable! 💡 When users have a real reason to make the switch, they can move together to better, more open platforms - happy to find so many colleagues here 🚀 #SocialMedia #AcademicSky #Xodus