Sadly there was no A.L.E. in the proposal so we can’t claim credit for anything in this movie.

A.L.E.? It’s definitely a universe saver!
I once wrote a grant proposal with Andy Weir. It wasn’t funded but he said he would use the idea in a future book.

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...

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…

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...

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...

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

The Sigma Catalog. 13 year old me was fascinated with how expensive things with long names were.

Our screening got paused after a person in the row behind us had a seizure during the dentist drill scene. That was about the only thing I remember about it. Definitely the worst film of the Craig era

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.

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

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

Single-molecule peptide sequencing through reverse translation of peptides into DNA | Nature Biotechnology https://www.nature.com/articles/s41587-026-03061-z

At the very least UEFA should wipe all the ‘club coefficient’ points off Chelsea that were gained in the abramovich era. They shouldn’t be receiving more prize money per match in Europe right now than other teams based on dodgy historical success. Easy for UEFA to implement this.

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

Framework for microbiome-inspired functional synthetic communities

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...

Excited to have Volker Sieber from TU Munich and others join me in Thailand for the 2026 SynBio/Biocatalysis Symposium at Vidyasirimedhi Institute of Science and Technology (VISTEC) 🇹🇭 Thanks to Pimchai Chaiyen and her team for organising these two days of cutting edge science and good food.

Ultrafast-relaxing and photopolymerizable PEG hydrogels enable viscoelasticity-mediated cell remodeling in synthetic matrices Photopolymerizable BELA hydrogels combine dynamic boronate ester and elastic dithiolane-ene crosslinks to achieve ultrafast stress relaxation and tunable viscoelasticity. By adjusting formulation and ...

Latest issue of curated #engineeredlivingmaterials feed:
biomed.news/bims-enlima/...

via @biomednews.bsky.social | #livingmaterials #ELMs

includes research on: cell remodeling in synthetic matrices, designing self-healing, printable, and tough conductive hydrogels, matter and microbes & more 🧪

Ancient co-option of LTR retrotransposons as yeast centromeres - Nature Evolutionarily related ‘proto-point’ centromeres providing resolution to the evolutionary origins of point centromeres are identified in yeast, and comparison shows they evolved in an ancestor with re...

Our paper is now out in Nature:

“Ancient co-option of LTR retrotransposons as yeast centromeres”

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

A short thread on how retrotransposons helped give rise to yeast point centromeres.

1/14

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...

🤖 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/...

A toolkit for programmable transcriptional engineering across eukaryotic kingdoms www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.02...

RFK Jr. Questions Efficacy Of Skin WASHINGTON—In a firm dismissal of decades of scientific research and real-world data on the organ’s benefits and safety, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. publicly questioned t...

“Everything we know about skin has been learned from so-called scientific studies funded by large corporations who have a financial stake in keeping our musculature covered in an unnecessary layer of man-made flesh,” said Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Does the noncoding genome actually carry more genetic information than coding seqs? Motivated by this question we mutated every bp in the 10kb MYC locus. Results are even more exciting: Decoding the MYC locus reveals a druggable ultraconserved RNA element www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

POV: Your cells died again! 😅

Occupational safety office, please close your eyes 🫣

#lablaughs #memesky #academicsky

Any bio artists out here? I’m interested in commissioning 1-2 pieces, leaning more towards the art side but love stuff that is science-inspired... DM me if you're interested!

Enjoyed listening to @adrianwoolfson.bsky.social on BBC 4 this week talking about synthetic biology at genome scale and what kind of step-change in capabilities are happening this decade. Interesting debate on the value of full redesign of genomes, versus iterative work. www.bbc.com/audio/play/m...

Excited for the first LSN of 2026✨ See you there!
events.humanitix.com/london-synbi...

Looking forward to my first zoom call with an AI author trying to persuade me that he's a real scientist so he can post to ArXiv.

Please 🔁

My group at UBC received an allocation from the school to apply for the Canada Impact+ Training Awards (postdoc). Everything is moving fast but please email me in 48 hours with a CV if you are outside Canada and interested😎
Yachie lab: yachie-lab.org
sshrc-crsh.canada.ca/en/funding/o...

I wrote a guide on constructive peer review. This is a polished version of an internal guide I had for my group. Of course, constructive feedback is welcome, peers!
deboer.bme.ubc.ca/2025/12/09/g...

I think we are reaching a point in time where believe first and doubt second, will be flipped to doubt first and believe second - and that mindset transition is going to have a painful hit on online life and society in general. Depressing. #iwanttobelieve