Author | Lightnews

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Grantham Institute - Climate Change and the Environment @granthamicl.bsky.social · 5d

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/...

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Tom Ellis @proftomellis.bsky.social · 19d

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.

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Michelle Lacey @nolastatprof.bsky.social · Sep 20

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.

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joe-wade.bsky.social @joe-wade.bsky.social · Sep 11

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

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Constantinos Patinios @copabio.bsky.social · Sep 4

🚀 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

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Adrià Auladell @adriaula.bsky.social · Aug 18

I love this diagram

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Tom Ellis @proftomellis.bsky.social · Aug 11

New paper from our lab on synthetic genome work in yeast is out - Iterative SCRaMbLE for Engineering Synthetic Genome Modules and Chromosomes. Exciting project led by Jane (Xinyu) Lu in our group, now online. t.co/0LuGwgAWlA

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-62356-y

t.co

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Helmholtz Institute Würzburg @helmholtz-hiri.bsky.social · Jul 14

The Friends of the @helmholtzhzi.bsky.social have awarded Gianluca Prezza the HZI PhD Award for his outstanding doctoral thesis. In #HIRI's @westermannlab.bsky.social, he investigated #sRNAs in the gut bacterium B. theta. 🦠👨🎓 Congrats, @gprezza.bsky.social!
www.helmholtz-hiri.de/en/newsroom/...

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Tom Ellis @proftomellis.bsky.social · Jul 11

Online now @ Cell is the yeast multicellular engineering paper from Fankang Meng - the fruits of his productive PhD in our group. He developed modular synthetic biology tools to bring multicellular behaviours to yeast - specific adhesion, juxtacrine signalling and more. www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...

Engineering yeast multicellular behaviors via synthetic adhesion and contact signaling

By designing synthetic toolkits for contact-based signaling (MARS) and cell-cell adhesion (SATURN), we program yeast to form multicellular structures and perform complex tasks, like building logic cir...

www.cell.com

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Gianluca Prezza @gprezza.bsky.social · Jul 11

While writing my thesis, I kept wondering why I was putting so much effort in something that "nobody will ever read". Well, someone did and thought it deserved a prize! 🤯
Many thanks to people @westermannlab.bsky.social and Alex in particular for the support, supervision and, eventually, nomination.

Westermann Lab @westermannlab.bsky.social · Jul 11

Congrats to Gianluca Prezza (@gprezza.bsky.social) for reveiving the 2025 PhD Award from the Friends of the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research (HZI)!👏 The award honours excellent PhD theses from the field of life sciences at HZI partner universities. His thesis focused Bacteroides' RNA biology.

Helmholtz-Zentrum für Infektionsforschung (HZI) @helmholtzhzi.bsky.social · Jul 11

Beim gestrigen Festakt wurden zudem die HZI-Promotionspreise an Wenchao Li @ciim-hannover.bsky.social und @gprezza.bsky.social aus der Gruppe von @westermannlab.bsky.social @helmholtz-hiri.bsky.social verliehen. Wir gratulieren den beiden zu ihren ausgezeichneten Doktorarbeiten!

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Indra Roux @indraroux.bsky.social · Jul 4

Fantastic to see this work published, and the interest it has sparked! A tour de force by Anna Lindell and a interdisciplinary team I was honoured to contribute to.👉 PFAS are already in our environment and bodies, we urgently need ways to mitigate their impact 🧫🧪 www.nature.com/articles/s41... 1/2

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Tom Ellis @proftomellis.bsky.social · Jun 30

We're hiring for 2 postdocs to work in our lab in London on the newly announced Wellcome Trust SynHG project. If you know people looking to work on big-scale ambitious science like this, please RT and share this with them. Apply by 7/20, interviews in Aug. imperial.ac.uk/jobs/search-...

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Tom Ellis @proftomellis.bsky.social · Jun 26

It's 25 yrs to the day since the Human Genome Project & Craig Venter declared joint victory in sequencing the human genome - an ideal time for @wellcometrust.bsky.social to annouce their new project, involving our lab, to begin work towards synthesising human genomes. wellcome.org/news/researc...

Researchers take first steps to creating synthetic human genomes | Wellcome

Scientists are developing technology to create the first synthetic human chromosome. The ability to write large genomes could transform our understanding of health.

wellcome.org

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Elise Bornet @elisebor.bsky.social · Jun 17

Excited to share my PhD work!
We used a low-input RNA-seq protocol to dig into what drives cell shape differences in Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron.
Congrats and big thanks to all co-authors 🧫🧬.

Helmholtz Institute Würzburg @helmholtz-hiri.bsky.social · Jun 17

The study was published in the journal @cp-cellreports.bsky.social‬: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Low-input RNA-seq suggests metabolic specialization underlying morphological heterogeneity in a gut commensal bacterium

Isogenic bacteria can be phenotypically diverse. This heterogeneity is evident in the Bacteroidota, a predominant phylum of the human gut microbiota. …

www.sciencedirect.com

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Gianluca Prezza @gprezza.bsky.social · Jun 18

Bacteroides Theta-Iota-Omicron is polymorphic already in its name. What are the differences between the morphotypes? We tried to answer this with a combination of mechanical separation of cells based on their shape and an ultra-low input RNA-seq protocol. Paper from @elisebor.bsky.social here 👇

Westermann Lab @westermannlab.bsky.social · Jun 17

Our latest: www.cell.com/cell-reports/fulltext/S2211-1247(25)00615-1. Links Bacteroides cell size w/ gene expression. Protocol works even for single cells. 🦠
Shoutout to @elisebor.bsky.social, @emmanuel-saliba.bsky.social, @lbarquist.bsky.social, @jorg-vogel-lab.bsky.social, Till Strowig & KC Huang.

Low-input RNA-seq suggests metabolic specialization underlying morphological heterogeneity in a gut commensal bacterium

Bornet et al. investigate the morphological heterogeneity of Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron cells observed both in laboratory culture and inside the mammalian GI tract. The authors show that cell size i...

www.cell.com

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Gianluca Prezza @gprezza.bsky.social · Jun 12

Did you think you needed a promoter for CRISPRa? Think again!

Sternberg Lab @sternberglab.bsky.social · Jun 11

6/10 dCas12f-Sigma factors are able to recruit their native RNA polymerase (RNAP) to drive RNA-guided transcription at programmable sites. Remarkably, we were able to generate RNA (see RNA-seq) without relying on promoters in intergenic sequences, even within genes, and on either DNA strand.

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Michael Baym @baym.lol · May 13

Yesterday, the NIH R35 “Outstanding Investigator” grant to fund scientists in my lab studying antibiotic resistance was terminated for reasons not related to the content of the science, or any actions taken by me or members of my lab

A screenshot of the termination notice showing "Outstanding Investigator Grants"

A screenshot of the termination notice with "This award is terminated effective the date of this award, due to unsafe antisemitic actions that suggest the institution lacks concern for the safety and wellbeing of Jewish students." highlighted

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Mathis Riehle @mornorse.bsky.social · May 13

“Hello World”

written with living flies 🪰

🧪
doi.org/10.1073/pnas...

The fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster, as a microrobotics platform | PNAS

Engineering small autonomous agents capable of operating in the microscale environment remains a key challenge, with current systems still evolving...

doi.org

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Gianluca Prezza @gprezza.bsky.social · May 9

I'm sorry what 🤯

Ewerslab @ewerslab.bsky.social · May 9

Madhavi Krishnans lab with an absolutely amazing new measurement technique:
Measurements of molecular size and shape on a chip | Science www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Measurements of molecular size and shape on a chip

Size and shape are critical discriminators between molecular species and states. We describe a microchip-based high-throughput imaging approach offering rapid and precise determination of molecular pr...

www.science.org

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Gianluca Prezza @gprezza.bsky.social · May 9

Awesome, congratulations Eloi!

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Erik van Nimwegen @erikvannimwegen.bsky.social · May 9

Here is the Bonsai visualization of a realistic dataset. In contrast to UMAP or PCA, the Bonsai tree accurately reflects the structure in the data. Not only visually, but the
correlations between the true distances and distances in the Bonsai representation are close to 1 for almost all cells.

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Aditya Kunjapur @kunjapur.bsky.social · May 1

It seems there are no free-living organisms known to rely exclusively on one other organism for their survival

Until perhaps now

Check out our latest publication in @natmicrobiol.nature.com to see how we designed an exclusive microbial reliance using GCE

rdcu.be/ekepI
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Engineered orthogonal and obligate bacterial commensalism mediated by a non-standard amino acid

Nature Microbiology - A genetically engineered microbial symbiosis based on synthetic auxotrophy is created, with potential implications as a biocontainment strategy.

rdcu.be

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Yolanda Schaerli @yschaerli.bsky.social · Apr 15

Very happy to share our newly published work! We engineered phages for intercellular communication in multicellular consortia and integrated it with CRISPR-based gene regulation for biocomputing. Congratulations to @astrikusuma.bsky.social @dmf-unil.bsky.social @fbm-unil.bsky.social
rdcu.be/ehORO

Engineering intercellular communication using M13 phagemid and CRISPR-based gene regulation for multicellular computing in Escherichia coli

Nature Communications - Engineering multicellular consortia, where information processing is distributed across specialized cell types, offers a promising strategy for implementing sophisticated...

rdcu.be

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ᐯIᑕTOᖇ ᑎIᘔET, ᗰᗪ @nizet.bsky.social · Apr 14

PRETTY AWESOME

Sidor et al. PNAS take a single enzyme from a marine sponge and express it in E. coli, conferring the ability to self-assemble bioglass from silica precursors present in ocean water

End result? Living, light-focusing microlenses that persist for months

Cheap, durable photonics

Engineered bacteria that self-assemble bioglass polysilicate coatings display enhanced light focusing | PNAS

Cutting-edge photonic devices frequently rely on microparticle components to focus and manipulate light. Conventional methods used to produce these...

www.pnas.org

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Jörg Vogel @jorg-vogel-lab.bsky.social · Apr 9

If you want to do single-cell RNA-seq on your favourite bacterium, here‘s our detailed Nature Protocol for microbial MATQ-seq. It profiles up to 600 genes in a single bacterial cell!

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

Transcriptomic profiling of individual bacteria by MATQ-seq - Nature Protocols

Bacterial single-cell sequencing via MATQ-seq combines index sorting, random priming and rRNA depletion, and offers high cell retention and transcript capture rates, making it ideal for experiments wi...

www.nature.com

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