Inspired by the pioneering work of this year’s Nobel Prize winners in Physiology or Medicine, we developed a new strategy to create mRNA vaccines (chbe.illinois.edu/news/stories/5…). This work was built on our previous unexpected discovery of Z base in DNA (the-scientist.com/news-opinion/s…).

A #CABBI team from ChBE Illinois used light-powered enzymes to modify azaarenes — molecular puzzle pieces crucial to many everyday products — laying the groundwork for new industrially relevant chemical reactions and #sustainable energy solutions. News ➡️ cabbi.bio/pushing-the-bo…

Congrats to the whole team led by Maolin! After more than one year’s waiting, our manuscript describing a repurposed photoenzyme with new-to-nature reactivity was finally published. nature.com/articles/s4155…

✳️ Watch iBioFAB in action! ✳️ The Illinois Biological Foundry for Advanced Biomanufacturing at Genomic Biology accelerates bioengineering by integrating #AI and machine learning with automation, supporting CABBI bioenergy research! 🦾 🤖 🦠 DOE Office of Science Huimin Zhao Research & Innovation at Illinois

We have developed a powerful computational tool to identify proper chromosome integration sites for genome editing in virtually any organism (biofoundry.web.illinois.edu/copies/). Warmest congratulations to the team led by Aashutosh! cabbi.bio/crispr-copies-…

#WeekendReading from #ACSSyntheticBiology! This Editorial from Hector García Martín, Stanislav Mazurenko, and EiC Huimin Zhao has been downloaded over 2000 times! See it here ➡️ go.acs.org/85P AI for Synthetic Biology Special Issue ➡️ go.acs.org/85Q 🤖🔬⚗️

Congrats to Hengqian, Chunshuai, and the team for discovering and characterizing a novel bioactive RiPP-fatty acid hybrid molecule (nature.com/articles/s4155…). This work has opened a new avenue for finding novel bioactive RiPPs (igb.illinois.edu/article/resear…).

Thanks to the hard work by Daniel, Zhixin, Nilmani and Jingxia, a simple strategy has been developed to create a Cas12a system that outperforms the most widely used Cas9 system. nature.com/articles/s4146…. Also see news release: igb.illinois.edu/article/resear….

It was nice to attend another AI related expo in the same building after attending an expo for all 24 NSF AI institutes last September. Enjoyed talking to staff from various lawmakers’ offices to promote the emerging AI+Robotics+SynBio area. igb.illinois.edu/article/igb-re…

We were delighted to present Prof. Dr. Randall Platt with the ACS Synthetic Biology & AIChE Young Innovator Award 🏅 Congratulations, Randall Platt! 🎉 Here's Prof. Huimin Zhao presenting the award at #SEED:

Congrats to the team led by Maolin who developed an exciting new-to-nature enzymatic process to selectively incorporate fluorine motifs into functional molecules (cabbi.bio/new-additive-p…).

Engineered enzyme flirts with fluorine cen.acs.org/acs-news/acs-m… via C&EN (Chemical & Engineering News)

I am very pleased that NSF is now investing in biofoundries after we established the first integrated biofoundry in the world more than 10 years ago (new.nsf.gov/news/nsf-inves…). Also see News from UIUC (news.illinois.edu/view/6367/3864…).

Exited to learn that my NSF global center proposal was selected for funding (new.nsf.gov/news/nsf-inter…). With this grant, we will be able to collaborate with researchers from other countries to establish standards and metrics for biofoundries and democratize biofoundry.

Congrats to Nilmani, Steve, Tianhao, Jingxia, Adrianna, and Ocean for developing an AI-powered autonomous protein engineering platform (nature.com/articles/s4146…). See news release: news.illinois.edu/self-driving-l…).

Congrats to the team led by Zhengyi and Maolin for developing a new strategy for the photoenzymatic stereoablative enantioconvergence of γ-chiral oximes (nature.com/articles/s4192…). See news release: cabbi.bio/using-light-po….

I was very excited that our AI Institute for Molecule Synthesis (MMLI) got renewed for another 5 years. See: NSF announces $100 million investment in National Artificial Intelligence Research Institutes awards to secure American leadership in AI nsf.gov/news/nsf-annou…

AccFG: Accurate Functional Group Extraction and Molecular Structure Comparison pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/ac… Xuan Liu Huimin Zhao #JCIM Vol65 Issue16 #ChemicalInformation

We are very grateful to NSF’s generous support that will enable us to develop a cloud biofoundry and turn it to a national user facility: news.illinois.edu/illinois-celeb….

As a follow-up to our CLEAN tool, we developed EZSpecificity to predict enzyme substrate specificity from sequence (nature.com/articles/s4158…) in collaboration with Diwakar Shukla and his team. See news: news.illinois.edu/new-ai-tool-he…