Particularly grateful to Pawel Mordaka and Alison Smith for the opportunity to be involved in such an exciting project, and their trust and mentorship along the way. Exciting times ahead for chloroplast genome engineering! 5/5

Together, these results expand the toolkit for chloroplast genome engineering and provide new insights into how genetic codes can be redesigned at scale! 4/n

The resulting strains were viable and photosynthetically active strains in all cases, confirming functional expression of the codon-compressed genes. 3/n

We design a recoding scheme eliminating 13 of the 64 possible codons, and successfully applied this to several essential and/or highly expressed genes, representing ~20% of the protein coding sequence in the genome. 2/n

Here we use the chloroplast genome of the green microalga, Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, as a synthetic biology platform to test radical compression of the universal genetic code. 1/n

Together, these results expand the toolkit for chloroplast genome engineering and provide new insights into how genetic codes can be redesigned at scale! 4/n

In all cases, viable and photosynthetically active strains were obtained, confirming the functional expression of the codon-compressed genes. 3/n

We design a recoding scheme eliminating 13 of the 64 possible triplet codes (codons), and successfully applied this to several essential and/or highly expressed genes, representing ~20% of the protein coding sequence in the genome. 2/n

Here we use the chloroplast genome of the green microalga, Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, as a synthetic biology platform to test radical compression of the universal genetic code. 1/n

@stuartmcdaniel.bsky.social @fernway.bsky.social @jcarlosvillarreal.bsky.social @pierremarcdelaux.bsky.social ...know anyone who would like to come to #Copenhagen for 2 years to work with us on the evolution of symbioses? employment.ku.dk/all-vacancie...