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.
Gianluca Prezza
@gprezza.bsky.social
Fan of dogs, bugs, and making bugs do stuff. Postdoc in the Ellis lab, dept of Bioengineering, Imperial College London.
7/10 Our model 🧬👇 🔴OFF: RT-synthesized DNA scaffolds the ring and restrains the toxic RNase. 🟢ON: phage nucleases cut msDNA → ring collapses → RNase fires → host tRNAs shredded → infection blocked! 🛡️
China cools on overseas publication of scientific research ft.trib.al/HFVNKtA
China cools on overseas publication of scientific research
Policymakers discuss reducing incentives for academics to submit papers to international journals over leak concerns
ft.trib.al
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.
Cell-to-cell cooperation through membrane vesicles enhances antibiotic persistence @science.org @bcmfromthelabs.bsky.social www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
“Academic science is not only about productivity, it is also about deep understanding, exploring creative solutions and training critical thinkers to be the next generation of researchers.” www.nature.com/articles/d41...
The uncritical adoption of AI in science is alarming — we urgently need guard rails
Artificial intelligence is rapidly accelerating scientific output, but risks narrowing inquiry, weakening judgement and undermining how scientists are trained.
nature.com
High-throughput engineering of ligand-activated splicing ribozyme through domain insertion https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.05.21.726912v1
How diverse is bacterial immunity ? We report in @science.org how language models allowed us to predict 2.4M antiphage proteins spanning >23K novel potential systems. 👏 @emordret.bsky.social, @alexhv.bsky.social & al doi.org/10.1126/scie... Explore them here defensefinder.mdmlab.fr/wiki/refseq_...
science.org
A new paper in Science measured the prevalence of social sycophancy across 11 leading large language models. The model’s responses were nearly 50% more sycophantic than humans’, even when users engaged in unethical, illegal, or harmful behaviors. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
The ERC's new white paper examines the gap in participation and success rates between Europe’s strongest research systems and a group of countries performing less well. It also calls for coordinated efforts at national and European level. Read more: erc.europa.eu/news-events/...
New review out! Bacterial pathogens diversify to survive during infection - using bet-hedging and division of labor to generate specialized subpopulations. We explore how host signal actively drive this process www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Hedging their bets: how bacterial pathogens diversify to survive infection
Phenotypic heterogeneity within isogenic bacterial populations represents a fundamental adaptation strategy that enables pathogen survival across the …
sciencedirect.com
One of the biggest challenges in microbial biotechnology? Unlocking the potential of non-model microbes and synthetic communities! Glad to share our review @sonjablasche.bsky.social @simonemozzachiodi.bsky.social @kiranrpatil.bsky.social @cambridgebiosci.bsky.social🧵(1/7) doi.org/10.1016/j.co...
Just amazing what evolution can come up with. Naturally occurring nuclease deficient Cas12 family members use gRNAs to bind DNA and recruit sigmaE family members that drive txn initiation proximally. 2 papers! 1- describes 2- structure! www.nature.com/articles/s41... www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Exapted CRISPR–Cas12f homologues drive RNA-guided transcription - Nature
Specialized σ factors interact with nuclease-dead, CRISPR–Cas12f proteins to form potent, RNA-guided gene activation systems that function independently of fixed promoter motifs.
nature.com
Excited to share a preprint from my postdoc work in Shipman’s lab! We developed Detectrons — programmable biosensors that convert RNA signals into stable DNA barcodes inside living cells, enabling multiplexed RNA sensing. 🧵👇 biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
biorxiv.org
🤖 Announcement for Opentrons users - OT-2 & Flex 🤖 We developed Slowpoke, an open-source, automated Golden Gate cloning tool with Fankang Meng & @proftomellis.bsky.social at @imperialcollegeldn.bsky.social Flex-optimisation by @gregorybatt.bsky.social at @pasteur.fr 👉 pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/...
Slowpoke: An Automated Golden Gate Cloning Workflow for Opentrons OT-2 and Flex
In synthetic biology, DNA assembly is a routine process where increasing demands for standardization, high-throughput capacity, and error-free execution are driving the development of accessible, auto...
pubs.acs.org
Aude Bernheim @audeber.bsky.social and Eugene Koonin discuss one of most interesting questions in the field connecting bacterial and animal immunity! www.nature.com/articles/s41...
The paradox of immune systems conservation between prokaryotes and eukaryotes - Nature Reviews Microbiology
The widespread prokaryotic immune systems, in particular restriction–modification, CRISPR–Cas and defensive toxin–antitoxin systems, are absent in eukaryotes, whereas relatively rare ones, such as Arg...
nature.com
A Bacteroides synthetic biology toolkit to build an in vivo malabsorption biosensor doi.org/10.1016/j.ce...
A genetic platform for a biocementation bacterium https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2025.12.05.692644v1
An unexpected mechanism for population heterogeneity in the gut microbiome: www.cell.com/cell-host-mi...
A commensal bacterium secretes effector proteins to establish population heterogeneity in the gut
Zagieboylo and colleagues demonstrate that the human commensal Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron secretes two self-targeting proteins that induce heterogeneity within its own population. Differential expre...
cell.com
How does linguistic bias reinforce privilege in science? #AppEnvMicro Editor in Chief @microgem.bsky.social offers insights and discusses how reviewers can identify it to support a more equitable review process. Read the article: asm.social/2Hp #COPE #PublicationIntegrity
Linguistic Bias and the Science Lost in Translation | ASM.org
Explore how linguistic bias subtly reinforces privilege in science by constraining scientific dissemination.
asm.social
Pretty science and pretty colours is a combination hard to beat
Michael Baym@baym.lol · 9mo agoWith this working, as a first test we took two plasmids, identical save for 8 point mutations changing the color, and competed them against one another. Here’s a video of what it looked like when we activated the recombinase. You can see the two compete in real time: 4/
Now that we understood neutral dynamics, we turned to competition. What could cause one plasmid to replicate better than another? Our first thought was transcription might interfere with replication, and it turns out there was a much larger tradeoff than we expected! 7/
1/9 Metagenomics lets us read microbiomes in nature without cultivation, but writing (editing) them in their native context is still a major challenge. Meet MetaEdit: a platform for pathway-scale metagenomic editing inside the gut microbiome. science.org/doi/10.1126/...
Metagenomic editing of commensal bacteria in vivo using CRISPR-associated transposases
Although metagenomic sequencing has revealed a rich microbial biodiversity in the mammalian gut, methods to genetically alter specific species in the microbiome are highly limited. Here, we introduce ...
science.org
In the UK, SUVs accounted for 63% of new sales in 2024. The proliferation of SUVs is one aspect of “carspreading,” whereby cars are becoming steadily larger over time and with this comes potential harms to health 🧵 www.bmj.com/content/391/...
A new review paper from our lab courtesy of @jazzsynbio.bsky.social is published in Trends in Biotechnology In this review, we look at the many opportunities for synthetic biology to be used in the research and applications of Holobionts.
The logic of sabotaging the ability to hire trained researchers from abroad while simultaneously sabotaging the ability of US universities to train American researchers is truly baffling.
Check out our new paper: a review of translational coupling, the phenomenon where translation of one prokaryotic gene can promote translation of the gene downstream. We cover the history, and delve into the mechanism, which is still not fully understood. journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/...
Translational coupling of neighboring genes in prokaryotes | Journal of Bacteriology
Prokaryotic genes are arranged in operons, with functionally related genes often located adjacent to one another (1). There are several ways in which the operonic organization of genes facilitates the...
journals.asm.org
🚀 New publication alert! 🚀 We just published in @natbiotech.nature.com: 👉 Targeted DNA ADP-ribosylation triggers templated repair in bacteria and base mutagenesis in eukaryotes doi.org/10.1038/s415...
Targeted DNA ADP-ribosylation triggers templated repair in bacteria and base mutagenesis in eukaryotes - Nature Biotechnology
Append editing of ADP-ribosyl to thymine is used for precise modifications in bacteria and eukaryotes.
doi.org