Xenobiology in a nutshell I worked with Faculti (Faculti.net) to create a short (20 min) explanation of Xenobiology and its general scope. Link: faculti.net/xenobiology/ Xenobiology is the science of estranged life forms...

frontiersin.org/articles/10.33… Photoprotection of cyanobacteria -> H-bond network -> cofactor <-> protein matrix; "molecular surgery" -> removal of individual H-bonds -> system parameterization -> principle of evolutionary design ...a beautiful work by Thomas and colleagues!

I am happy to share my last PhD project. In search for a better variant of the PylRS system we looked for psychrophilic homologs. biorxiv.org/content/10.110… tl,dr: We discovered a far more efficient PylRS (at least in E. coli)

We found that this variant exhibits superior in vivo incorporation efficiencies for all major ncAA classes. Additionally, this variant seems to tolerate mutations better than other variants which is demonstrated by S-allyl-cystein incorporation on wild-type level.

How to make a cell? From the man that did it. #SynCell2023 keynote by John Glass from J. Craig Venter Institute showing the process of making a Mycoplasma based synthetic cell. #biotech #bioengineering BaSyC

Thought-provoking talk by Ned Budisa at #SynCell2023: how to re-think #life as we (don't yet) know it? One of the scientific highlights of this meeting #Xenobiology #SynBio #OriginOfLife

If you want some hands-on tips and tricks to engineer your PylRS check out our new book chapter. link.springer.com/protocol/10.10…

🌿 Introducing Prairie iGEM's Sustainable Solution: PLAnet Zero! 🔬 Genetically engineering bacteria into producing PLA degrading enzymes. Let's turn pollution into a solution🦠 #PrairieiGEM #PLAnetZero #GeneticInnovation #PlasticBiodegradation #iGEM2023

Exploiting the inductive effect of the trifluoromethyl group in Au-catalyzed hydration. Nice work from Raphaël Gauthier in collaboration with Steven Nolan and Nikolaos V. Tzouras from UGent. More details here: doi.org/10.1039/D3CC02… #fluorine ULaval Chemistry Department FSG ULAVAL Université Laval

The 23rd Intl. Symposium on #fluorine #chemistry & 9th Intl. Symposium on Fluorous Technologies starts this Sunday! Here’s the weather forecast for the ones joining us. Have a safe trip and looking forward to welcoming you all in Destination Québec cité. #isfc2023

Frontiers in Synthetic Biology could be a journal in which you could publish your research. Link: frontiersin.org/journals/synth…

TOWARDS A SYNTHETIC LIFE WITHOUT STRESS: We have demonstrated that Escherichia coli is able to overcome the frozen state of the genetic code by mitigating its own stress response.

This is covered in our latest article: ‘Evolving a mitigation of the stress response pathway to change the basic chemistry of life’ in Frontiers in Synthetic Biology frontiersin.org/journals/synth…

I commented on the paper and recent research in a related commentary, highlighting our evidence that the genetic code is "guarded" by the broader network of metabolism, signal transduction, and general physiology frontiersin.org/journals/synth…

Therefore, any work on synthetic cells with alien genetic codes requires a holistic approach: the engineering and reconfiguration of entire cellular processes, structures and fundamental chemistries.

The recent orthogonalization of processes like protein translation and metabolism has opened new avenues for synthetic cells (top-down approach) but faces plasmid challenges.

The first step is to produce genetically stable chassis for orthogonalization. See our recent manuscript in ACS Synthetic Biology: pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/ac…

Our Escherichia coli platforms with chromosome-integrated orthogonal components function as biosafe, genetically isolated (genetic firewall) production units.