Oops - DMs now open!

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!

I've heard biologists complain that AI isn't useful because new bio data doesn't make the models better... but what if AI is a mirror showing us that a lot of data isn't as insightful as we think it is? How do we identify experiments that are maximally informative to a model?

Original Apple I in wooden case designed and built by Steve Wozniak

When I close my eyes and dream about bioproducts this is what I see if you even care

Are There Accumulating Microplastics in Human Tissue or Not?

Not to upset anyone but I'm coming down on the side of microplastics in the human body being mostly an experimental artifact until someone puts out stronger data: www.science.org/content/blog...

X is cooked I hope people I like are still here instead. Please don't make me go to LinkedIn

This wasn’t an easy decision for me - I’m both excited and confident in the direction that Ginkgo is headed. While I won’t be part of Ginkgo moving forward, I will continue to be Ginkgo’s biggest supporter and a proud alum. As for me personally, I’m looking forward to taking a quick break to recharge before I start building the next thing. This is a pivotal time for the scientific community, and I don’t plan to stay on the sidelines. If you’re interested in chatting about the future of designing biology, I’m looking forward to catching up!

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Last week I wrapped up at Ginkgo after 13 amazing years. It was, without a doubt, the best postdoc I could have asked for. I knew there was something special about Ginkgo’s founding team when I joined back in 2012, and I’m forever grateful that Jason, Reshma, Barry, Austin, and Tom took a chance on me back then. It’s been an incredible honor to be part of growing Ginkgo, going from a tiny pre-seed company, to seeing our work in fermentation tanks, field trials, and clinical trials. If you’ve been here, you’ll know that some of the most talented, creative people in the Boston area and beyond have made it a special place.

💚 Some personal news… 💚

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evolution really went off with brassica oleracea

Inglorious bastards three fingers meme

“Komagataella phaffii”

Few papers perfectly intersect my interests better than this paper on advanced baseball bat designs via genetic algorithms from the Centre for Advanced Wood Processing mdpi-res.com/d_attachment...

Text excerpt: In 2004, Blue Heron Biotechnology (http://www.blueheronbio.com/), a leading gene synthesis company, organized the Big DNA Contest. They offered to synthesize, free of charge, the most interesting genetic construct longer than 40 kb that people would send them. One of the stated goals of this initiative was to encourage scientists to consider the potential impact of large synthetic DNA fragments on their research strategies. The company did not receive a single submission even though the estimated value of the grand prize exceeded US$250 000.

I think about this a lot

Props to the guy playing a clearly AI-generated TikTok on loop in a public bathroom, will file that in my “dystopian vignettes” folder

The Age of AI in the Life Sciences: Benefits and Biosecurity Considerations Read online, download a free PDF, or order a copy in print.

A new report I worked on for NAS on AI and biosecurity is out today - we looked at risks posed by SOTA AI and opportunities to use AI to improve biosecurity. It builds on a report we wrote back in 2018, which feels like a million years ago in AIxBio!

nap.nationalacademies.org/catalog/28868

Robust Soldier Crab Ball Gate Soldier crabs Mictyris guinotae exhibit pronounced swarming behaviour. The swarms of the crabs tolerant of perturbations. In computer models and laboratory experiments we demonstrate that swarms of so...

Today, everything's computer, but tomorrow, everything's crabputer arxiv.org/abs/1204.1749

I’m doing my part bsky.app/profile/patr...

I'll be with the Ginkgo team at Nvidia GTC next week! Sign up here to for a demo: automation.ginkgo.bio/nvidia-gtc-2...

Yeah, I think the custom feed stuff also fragments the userbase - would be nice to have one main algorithmic feed (in addition to the non-algo following feed) so that all users are in one place. I was hoping "Discover" would be that feed but it needs a little bit more juice

Oh weird I had no idea

Yeah same - just give us a little bit of an algo, as a treat

Engage with my post, I'm starting to lose consciousness

Since twitter is down I'll mention that I'd spend more time here if engagement was higher (with real people not the bot slop X has). Feels like tuning the algo to boost replies a bit more would be useful - my feed is mostly people shouting facts into the void

Support for the Ribosome Panspermia Hypothesis grows unabated

It's that AI-generated figure of a rat with giant balls. You know the one

It's been just over a year, and either no new papers have been published with AI-generated rat balls, or the newer models are just that good at generating anatomically correct rat balls

It’s been a tough few weeks. My 10yo daughter was diagnosed with a very rare, aggressive cancer called interdigitating dendritic cell sarcoma (IDCS). I’m reaching out to identify clinicians/patients who have encountered pediatric IDCS or other (non-LCH) dendritic or histiocytic sarcomas cases.

We're Hosting Our 6th Annual Ferment as a Boston-based Conference Series | Ginkgo Bioworks Headquartered in Boston, Ginkgo Bioworks uses the most advanced technology on the planet—biology—to grow better products. Our cell programming platform enables the growth of biotechnology across diver...

We're excited to announce our 2025 Ferment Series, an evolution of our flagship annual conference dedicated to advancing our mission of making biology easier to engineer! We can't wait to see you in Boston

Read more: www.ginkgo.bio/resources/bl...
Sign up for updates: www.ginkgo.bio/ferment-2025...

I’m gonna be straight with you, the only animal I know of is the raccoon. Final answer

Closeup of an airplane seat with USB-A and Ethernet on the back

It must be hard for designers to keep up with rapid tech changes for long-lasting stuff like airplane seats, but I wish I could’ve been a fly on the wall for the meeting where they locked in the seatback Ethernet jack

Chief Miles O’Brien

Was this him

Me in 2005: it would be fun to connect with my fellow students on the facebook

Me in 2025: the new meta is getting your message out via tradwife accounts on xiaohongshu before either government sees it