Researchers have created the first living synthetic bacterium made from non-living parts by killing a bacterial cell and then transplanting the genome of another species into it, blurring the boundary between life and death
I wasn't intending to turn this into a thread, but it seems to have happened anyway.
It's about the great plague on our lives: the extreme wealth of a tiny number of people.
And what to do about it.
New Editorial: "Celebrating photosynthesis" rdcu.be/e6oTm
Photosynthesis is both an elegantly simple and dazzlingly complex process. The year 2026 marks anniversaries of the discoveries of both of these layers.
Scientists have seen Asgard archaea crawling for the first time. When it comes to the origin of eukaryotes, this is like seeing a feathered dinosaur in the wild. (Video courtesy of Philipp Ralder)
i appreciate labour taking a stronger line on racism
but it's a little incongruous when they're separating families, smearing asylum seekers as "illegal", & making the lives of legal residents harder to appease that same bigotry
Plant genome sequencing workflow. Details: https://doi.org/10.1186/s12864-026-12623-z
Need a genome sequence of your favourite plant? We laid out instructions for a complete workflow based on ONT sequencing:
"Cookbook for plant genome sequences"
doi.org/10.1186/s128...
#Genomics #LongReads #PlantSciences #Bioinformatics
@puckerlab.bsky.social @unibonn.bsky.social
I made a map of 3.4 million Bluesky users - see if you can find yourself!
bluesky-map.theo.io
I've seen some similar projects, but IMO this seems to better capture some of the fine-grained detail
Reposting this paper now with a working link! 😅 www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
🚨 2 Fully Funded PhD Projects | Open to UK students 🚨
♻️ We’re recruiting another 2 PhD students to join The Wallace Lab as part of the Carbon-Loop Sustainable Manufacturing Hub, tackling some prolific but unconventional industrial waste streams!
Apply by 27th Feb 🗓️ Details below ⬇️
Project 1.
You can't think about a sustainable chemical industry without considering our most abundant energy source: sunlight.
So how can we engineer microbes to harness this energy for our benefit?
rdcu.be/e1VfW
How does molecular valency shape condensate assembly and function? We used the CO2-fixing organelle in algae—the pyrenoid—to find out… 🧵
Preprint here!:
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
@cellarchlab.com @phaips.vd.st @biologyatyork.bsky.social
#Rubisco #PhaseSeparation #Condensates #Pyrenoid
Check out the the Coli Toolkit (CTK): an extension of the modular yeast toolkit for use in E. coli published in ACS Synthetic Biology by the group of Heinz Koeppl @tuda.bsky.social pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/...
#ProtistsOnSky
no 'swimming' by 𝘝𝘢𝘮𝘱𝘺𝘳𝘦𝘭𝘭𝘢, definitively no 'staying still'. just a relaxed walk towards the lunch...
I know I've shared this before, but seeing as I've just pulled it out for a PhD student for an obscure SDS-PAGE staining technique - CuCl2, as it happens - here it is again. A free SDS-PAGE and western blotting manual! www.researchgate.net/publication/...
🔬 Our shiny new mega review is finally published! If you’re interested in photosynthesis, engineering biology and sustainable chemistry, check it out ⬇️
Fig. 3: Biosynthetic production of industrially relevant chemicals by photosynthetic bacteria.
Fig. 2: Engineering solar microorganisms for chemical production.
Please admire our beautiful figures.
Fig. 1: Overview of phototrophic bacterial metabolism.
FoldMason is out now in @science.org. It generates accurate multiple structure alignments for thousands of protein structures in seconds. Great work by Cameron L. M. Gilchrist and @milot.bsky.social.
📄 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
🌐 search.foldseek.com/foldmason
💾 github.com/steineggerla...
Apologies to anyone expecting more Chlamydomonas content from me - no algae in this one, that would be a whole other review paper...
#cyanobacteria #greenchemistry #purplenonsulfurbacteria #review #sustainablemanufacturing @edinburghbiology.bsky.social
Many thanks also to our reviewers and the fantastic editorial team at @natrevcleantech.nature.com for their hard work getting this paper as polished as possible. It really takes a village 📚
Massive appreciation to my primary collaborators on this paper, Dr Connor Trotter and @jfcsteele.bsky.social, to all other authors involved @louismarlow.bsky.social, @swallacelab.bsky.social, and to friends and colleagues in the cyanobacterial world for helpful conversations.
In this article, we cover:
🌞 How bacteria can harness light energy to drive metabolism
⚙️ Engineering strategies for solar-driven bacterial systems
⚛️ Examples of bulk and high-value chemicals produced this way
♻️ Key challenges and future directions for scaling light-powered biomanufacturing
Light is one of the most abundant resources we have, and through cellular metabolism, microbes can synthesise a huge variety of chemicals, like tiny factories. Bringing these together, we take a deep dive into how light-driven bacterial systems can be used for more sustainable chemical production.
🔬 Our shiny new mega review is finally published! If you’re interested in photosynthesis, engineering biology and sustainable chemistry, check it out ⬇️
Happy 45th birthday to Once in a Lifetime by Talking Heads, released as a single on this day in 1981. Here's David introducing that video
🚨 PhD opportunity | Fully funded | Open worldwide 🚨
♻️ We’re recruiting a fully funded PhD student to join The Wallace Lab at the University of Edinburgh as part of the Carbon-Loop Hub, a £14M national programme re-imagining how chemicals are made.
Apply by 20th Feb 2026 🗓️ Details below ⬇️
🚀 New review paper out! We explore the current achievements and future potential of solar-driven bacterial metabolism to unlock greener routes to chemical synthesis, spotlighting opportunities and challenges for light-powered microbial biomanufacturing 🌞🔬
Check out our new review in Nature Reviews Genetics on de novo emerged genes and proteins. How they emerge, are lost and persist - and how de novo emerged proteins relate to randomized proteins! @bornberglab.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/s41...
