jared toettcher
@toettch.bsky.social
Dad, bioengineer, climber, skier, surfer (in that order, more or less).
Chaotic good alignment, or so my lab tells me...
Chaotic good alignment, or so my lab tells me...
Reposted by jared toettcher
Domesticated animals have pulled our heavy carts and turned our large mills for centuries. But what about the opposite end of the spectrum—what if the wheel you want to turn is so small you can’t see it?
Turns out we can harness the power of bacteria to power the world’s smallest machines.
1/7 ⚛️🧪
Turns out we can harness the power of bacteria to power the world’s smallest machines.
1/7 ⚛️🧪
October 26, 2025 at 2:01 AM
Domesticated animals have pulled our heavy carts and turned our large mills for centuries. But what about the opposite end of the spectrum—what if the wheel you want to turn is so small you can’t see it?
Turns out we can harness the power of bacteria to power the world’s smallest machines.
1/7 ⚛️🧪
Turns out we can harness the power of bacteria to power the world’s smallest machines.
1/7 ⚛️🧪
Reposted by jared toettcher
Great Job - Great Colleagues - Great Science👍
Help us pick the next generation of @hhmi.org Investigators, Freeman Hrabowski Scholars, Hanna Gray Fellows, Gilliam Fellows
Relocation to DC is required, perfect for academic PIs looking for their next chapter
hhmi.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/External/job...
Help us pick the next generation of @hhmi.org Investigators, Freeman Hrabowski Scholars, Hanna Gray Fellows, Gilliam Fellows
Relocation to DC is required, perfect for academic PIs looking for their next chapter
hhmi.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/External/job...
Senior Director - Scientific Officer
Primary Work Address: 4000 Jones Bridge Road, Chevy Chase, MD, 20815 Current HHMI Employees, click here to apply via your Workday account. The Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) advances the disco...
hhmi.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com
October 9, 2025 at 9:48 PM
Great Job - Great Colleagues - Great Science👍
Help us pick the next generation of @hhmi.org Investigators, Freeman Hrabowski Scholars, Hanna Gray Fellows, Gilliam Fellows
Relocation to DC is required, perfect for academic PIs looking for their next chapter
hhmi.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/External/job...
Help us pick the next generation of @hhmi.org Investigators, Freeman Hrabowski Scholars, Hanna Gray Fellows, Gilliam Fellows
Relocation to DC is required, perfect for academic PIs looking for their next chapter
hhmi.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/External/job...
Reposted by jared toettcher
Want to get started with smart microscopy? 🧠🔬
Check out our online repository with implementations from labs and industry -- lots of practical tips and links to sample code! smartmicroscopy.github.io/implementati...
More details in the ✨updated preprint!✨
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Check out our online repository with implementations from labs and industry -- lots of practical tips and links to sample code! smartmicroscopy.github.io/implementati...
More details in the ✨updated preprint!✨
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
October 1, 2025 at 9:43 AM
Want to get started with smart microscopy? 🧠🔬
Check out our online repository with implementations from labs and industry -- lots of practical tips and links to sample code! smartmicroscopy.github.io/implementati...
More details in the ✨updated preprint!✨
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Check out our online repository with implementations from labs and industry -- lots of practical tips and links to sample code! smartmicroscopy.github.io/implementati...
More details in the ✨updated preprint!✨
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Reposted by jared toettcher
🚀 Our new paper is out @natmethods.nature.com!
Kuffer & Marzilli engineered conditionally stable MS2 & PP7 coat proteins (dMCP & dPCP) that degrade unless bound to RNA, enabling ultra–low-background, single-mRNA imaging in live cells.
🔗 www.nature.com/articles/s41...
🧬 www.addgene.org/John_Ngo/
Kuffer & Marzilli engineered conditionally stable MS2 & PP7 coat proteins (dMCP & dPCP) that degrade unless bound to RNA, enabling ultra–low-background, single-mRNA imaging in live cells.
🔗 www.nature.com/articles/s41...
🧬 www.addgene.org/John_Ngo/
September 22, 2025 at 6:27 PM
🚀 Our new paper is out @natmethods.nature.com!
Kuffer & Marzilli engineered conditionally stable MS2 & PP7 coat proteins (dMCP & dPCP) that degrade unless bound to RNA, enabling ultra–low-background, single-mRNA imaging in live cells.
🔗 www.nature.com/articles/s41...
🧬 www.addgene.org/John_Ngo/
Kuffer & Marzilli engineered conditionally stable MS2 & PP7 coat proteins (dMCP & dPCP) that degrade unless bound to RNA, enabling ultra–low-background, single-mRNA imaging in live cells.
🔗 www.nature.com/articles/s41...
🧬 www.addgene.org/John_Ngo/
Reposted by jared toettcher
SCHEPHERD--the bioelectric cell herding platform built for YOU. Single cells, monolayers, organoids--this herds them all + new tricks. Plz try it-- we will *give* you parts! Teaser here of a steering a single cell. GS Yubin Lin's lifeblood with J. Yodh on piano; Celeste R. and Paul K. Thread 1/N
September 17, 2025 at 5:20 PM
SCHEPHERD--the bioelectric cell herding platform built for YOU. Single cells, monolayers, organoids--this herds them all + new tricks. Plz try it-- we will *give* you parts! Teaser here of a steering a single cell. GS Yubin Lin's lifeblood with J. Yodh on piano; Celeste R. and Paul K. Thread 1/N
Reposted by jared toettcher
Out in @science.org! We found that the intestine doesn’t just push out cells when crowded. Instead, cells are in a mechanical tug-of-war, and weaker ones are extruded. A new view of how our gut keeps its balance and stays healthy.
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
Epithelial tension controls intestinal cell extrusion
Cell extrusion is essential for homeostatic self-renewal of the intestinal epithelium. Extrusion is thought to be triggered by crowding-induced compression of cells at the intestinal villus tip. In th...
www.science.org
September 6, 2025 at 9:28 AM
Out in @science.org! We found that the intestine doesn’t just push out cells when crowded. Instead, cells are in a mechanical tug-of-war, and weaker ones are extruded. A new view of how our gut keeps its balance and stays healthy.
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
Reposted by jared toettcher
Very excited to be co-organizing this meeting next February. Fellow collective behavior enthusiasts, this one is for you!
✨ How do bird flocks form or diseases emerge?
Join the brand-new EMBO | EMBL Symposium #EESCollectivity and explore how collective behaviours arise from fundamental principles across biological systems 🧬🦠🐒
💻 s.embl.org/ees26-01-bl
✒️ Submit your abstract by 18 Nov
Join the brand-new EMBO | EMBL Symposium #EESCollectivity and explore how collective behaviours arise from fundamental principles across biological systems 🧬🦠🐒
💻 s.embl.org/ees26-01-bl
✒️ Submit your abstract by 18 Nov
August 21, 2025 at 12:04 PM
Very excited to be co-organizing this meeting next February. Fellow collective behavior enthusiasts, this one is for you!
Reposted by jared toettcher
Latest paper elifesciences.org/articles/107... closes an important cycle in our efforts to study regeneration: week-long recordings allow us to observe the behaviour of cells during the entire course of regeneration in a crustacean leg – bright objects in movie are fluorescent nuclei of cells. 1/6
August 8, 2025 at 5:39 PM
Latest paper elifesciences.org/articles/107... closes an important cycle in our efforts to study regeneration: week-long recordings allow us to observe the behaviour of cells during the entire course of regeneration in a crustacean leg – bright objects in movie are fluorescent nuclei of cells. 1/6
Reposted by jared toettcher
🤩Wow huge opportunity alert!
EMBL Cell Biology and Biophysics department is searching for a new director. A major position to lead this field in Europe and beyond.
embl.wd103.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/EMBL/j...
embl.wd103.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/EMBL/j...
Head of the Cell Biology and Biophysics Unit
The European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) is Europe’s flagship life sciences organisation, and one of the world’s leading research institutions. An intergovernmental organisation of 29 Member S...
embl.wd103.myworkdayjobs.com
July 29, 2025 at 4:30 PM
🤩Wow huge opportunity alert!
And for your Friday afternoon, some in vivo ERK and RTK biosensor eye candy :)
pYtags - our in vivo biosensors for receptor tyrosine kinases - in all their beauty on the cover of Cell Reports! Read more here: www.cell.com/cell-reports...
July 22, 2025 at 9:16 PM
And for your Friday afternoon, some in vivo ERK and RTK biosensor eye candy :)
Reposted by jared toettcher
NIH will only accept six applications per PI per calendar year. drugmonkey.wordpress.com/2025/07/17/n...
NIH will only accept six applications per PI per calendar year.
NIH has issued NOT-OD-25-132 Supporting Fairness and Originality in NIH Research Applications which informs us that NIH will only accept six new, renewal, resubmission, or revision applications fro…
drugmonkey.wordpress.com
July 17, 2025 at 5:44 PM
NIH will only accept six applications per PI per calendar year. drugmonkey.wordpress.com/2025/07/17/n...
Reposted by jared toettcher
I was explaining to my Ukrainian colleague the phrase ‘There’s no such thing as a free lunch’. She told me the equivalent in Ukrainian is ‘The only free cheese is in the mousetrap’ - which is so much better
July 16, 2025 at 6:39 AM
I was explaining to my Ukrainian colleague the phrase ‘There’s no such thing as a free lunch’. She told me the equivalent in Ukrainian is ‘The only free cheese is in the mousetrap’ - which is so much better
Reposted by jared toettcher
Two new preprints from the @arjunraj.bsky.social on #gastruloids. Both excellent. Exploring the relationship between macroscopic reproducibility v microscopic heterogeneity. Stunning experiments and much to think about
biorxiv.org/content/earl...
biorxiv.org/content/earl...
biorxiv.org/content/earl...
biorxiv.org/content/earl...
July 15, 2025 at 1:28 PM
Two new preprints from the @arjunraj.bsky.social on #gastruloids. Both excellent. Exploring the relationship between macroscopic reproducibility v microscopic heterogeneity. Stunning experiments and much to think about
biorxiv.org/content/earl...
biorxiv.org/content/earl...
biorxiv.org/content/earl...
biorxiv.org/content/earl...
Reposted by jared toettcher
Beautiful work on the development of protein kinase reporters. Congrats all! www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Molecular recording of cellular protein kinase activity with chemical labeling - Nature Chemical Biology
Molecular recorders based on kinase activity-dependent protein labeling track specific kinase activities to understand their link to cellular phenotypes in heterogeneous cell populations and in vivo.
www.nature.com
July 13, 2025 at 9:53 AM
Beautiful work on the development of protein kinase reporters. Congrats all! www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Reposted by jared toettcher
We built pYtags to detect RTK activity in Drosophila embryos and used them to learn about how developmental patterns form bsky.app/profile/emko...
Have you ever wanted to *see* receptor activity in embryos? If so, our new preprint is for you! In it, we showcase a new live-cell biosensor for visualizing receptor tyrosine kinase activity in living embryos – pYtags!
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
July 1, 2025 at 1:58 PM
We built pYtags to detect RTK activity in Drosophila embryos and used them to learn about how developmental patterns form bsky.app/profile/emko...
Reposted by jared toettcher
Excited to share that our work building in vivo biosensors for receptor tyrosine kinases (pYtags!) is now out www.cell.com/cell-reports...
July 1, 2025 at 1:58 PM
Excited to share that our work building in vivo biosensors for receptor tyrosine kinases (pYtags!) is now out www.cell.com/cell-reports...
Reposted by jared toettcher
Nature research paper: Spatiotemporal orchestration of mitosis by cyclin-dependent kinase
https://go.nature.com/444lRhe
https://go.nature.com/444lRhe
Spatiotemporal orchestration of mitosis by cyclin-dependent kinase - Nature
Experiments in fission yeast show that cyclin-dependent kinase is first activated in the nucleus, from which the mitotic signal is propagated from CDK at the centrosome to the cytoplasm.
go.nature.com
June 25, 2025 at 5:50 PM
Nature research paper: Spatiotemporal orchestration of mitosis by cyclin-dependent kinase
https://go.nature.com/444lRhe
https://go.nature.com/444lRhe
Reposted by jared toettcher
Synthetic biology could enable new types of programmable therapeutics. Our new preprint introduces synthetic protein circuits that selectively trigger cell death in Ras-mutant cancer cells, with interesting advantages compared to existing approaches.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
www.biorxiv.org
June 3, 2025 at 12:11 AM
Synthetic biology could enable new types of programmable therapeutics. Our new preprint introduces synthetic protein circuits that selectively trigger cell death in Ras-mutant cancer cells, with interesting advantages compared to existing approaches.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Reposted by jared toettcher
This is incredible.
Mechanisms and timing of programmed DNA elimination in songbirds www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Mechanisms and timing of programmed DNA elimination in songbirds
It is commonly assumed that multicellular organisms contain the same genetic information in all the cells of an individual. However, there is a growing list of species in which parts of the genome are...
www.biorxiv.org
June 1, 2025 at 9:48 PM
This is incredible.
This is a beautiful paper first authored by a (brilliant) Princeton undergrad!
Nucleoli as biomolecular bubble tea! Congrats to former Princeton ugrad Holly Cheng (now GS @MIT) ->Holly's senior thesis work, a close collab w Roggeveen Wang & @zs-biophys.bsky.social &Stone. Come for the cool movies & stay for the viscoelasticity! www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2407423122
May 29, 2025 at 1:24 AM
This is a beautiful paper first authored by a (brilliant) Princeton undergrad!
Reposted by jared toettcher
Reposted by jared toettcher
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
May 13, 2025 at 11:37 PM
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
Reposted by jared toettcher
“Punk isn’t a hairstyle; it’s getting your friends together to make useful stories outside approved systems”
www.nytimes.com/2025/05/11/o...
www.nytimes.com/2025/05/11/o...
Opinion | Today’s Young People Need to Learn How to Be Punk
www.nytimes.com
May 11, 2025 at 3:33 PM
“Punk isn’t a hairstyle; it’s getting your friends together to make useful stories outside approved systems”
www.nytimes.com/2025/05/11/o...
www.nytimes.com/2025/05/11/o...
Reposted by jared toettcher
I talked to Nature about the latest development at NSF, which is a five-alarm fire for American science. The scale of immediate impact is massive. We narrowly escaped this affecting @viralemergence.org for now, but will have to shut down in a few months if this stays.
www.nature.com/articles/d41...
www.nature.com/articles/d41...
Exclusive: NSF stops awarding new grants and funding existing ones
US science funder also plans to screen grant applications for compliance with ‘agency priorities’.
www.nature.com
May 1, 2025 at 11:06 PM
I talked to Nature about the latest development at NSF, which is a five-alarm fire for American science. The scale of immediate impact is massive. We narrowly escaped this affecting @viralemergence.org for now, but will have to shut down in a few months if this stays.
www.nature.com/articles/d41...
www.nature.com/articles/d41...
I'd like to share a little bit of happy lab news in these chaotic times: a new preprint, driven by the brilliant Qinhao Cao!
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
We address a big challenge in synbio: If you give me a protein "X", how can I give you a version of X whose activity is controlled by a kinase?
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
We address a big challenge in synbio: If you give me a protein "X", how can I give you a version of X whose activity is controlled by a kinase?
April 21, 2025 at 4:07 PM
I'd like to share a little bit of happy lab news in these chaotic times: a new preprint, driven by the brilliant Qinhao Cao!
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
We address a big challenge in synbio: If you give me a protein "X", how can I give you a version of X whose activity is controlled by a kinase?
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
We address a big challenge in synbio: If you give me a protein "X", how can I give you a version of X whose activity is controlled by a kinase?