On Modality Commoditization centuryofbio.com/p/commoditizat… For two of the hottest new product areas in all of biopharma, Merck, one of the most prolific American drugmakers of all time, looked to Chinese companies for innovation. China's ability to compete on such important drugs has

“America appears to be copying the worst aspects of China’s recent history (when Mao Zedong smashed China’s established universities), China is copying the best aspects of America’s, striving to take the edge as the United States goes through its own cultural revolution. “;

Thrilled to share our preprint led by Xinyi Chen on programmable molecule delivery via engineered trogocytosis called TRANSFER! a 🧵 Sarafan ChEM-H Stanford Bioengineering

Happy Sunday to all! This morning, we are excited to share Chase’s work developing a simple, scalable method to assemble 100s-1000s of custom genes from oligo pools using standard lab tools! (Small 🧵 below)

Small proteins can be more complex than they look! We know proteins fluctuate between different conformations- but how much? How does it vary protein to protein? Can highly stable domains have low stability segments? Állan Ferrari experimentally tested >5,000 domains to find out!

Science is not tap water that you just turn off and expect to be there the moment you need it later. Starting biomedical research projects, letting them get 75% of the way to the end, then shutting them down is wasteful, not to mention harmful because you don't get the results.

LIDAR is out! rdcu.be/efugD We've improved a lot, e.g., making MESA-like LIDAR work, RNAseq of on-/off-target editing, and optimizing RNA delivery. We are one baby step closer to making it useful for therapeutics. NIH high-risk high-reward program provides key support.

Out today! LIDAR, a new class of synthetic receptors expanding the cell engineering toolbox. We demonstrate orthogonal sensing of secreted & membrane-bound ligands, spatial patterning & mRNA delivery! Thanks to co-authors, especially co-first Xiaowei Zhang rdcu.be/efugD

Super excited — We hope this new modular post-transcriptional synthetic receptor platform will further broaden the horizon of RNA compatible therapies! Huge thanks to everyone on LIDAR, especially Xiaojing who enabled the whole story & fantastic collaboration with Santiago Mille

Fellow academics, please consider signing. I did. sites.google.com/view/we-must-l…

Congrats to Chappell Lab (a Northwestern CSB alumni!) on their latest in Nature Biotechnology : nature.com/articles/s4158… Amazing RNA engineering applied to track microbial ecosystems!

Editing 14 genes is no small feat, but I am not seeing enough evidence that "it is a dire wolf". Our community needs to communicate better to the public, now mor than ever, and imo that includes not exaggerating what we can deliver.

Splitting proteins into two segments that reconstitute protein function by proximity is a great #synbio tool for recognition of proteins, cells and even regulation of therapy. BUT it requires two proteins, so twice the work and cost. Could it be done with just a single protein?🧵

Our new paper is just online. Congratulations to Junjie and the team.Super Recombinator (SuRe): An in vivo recombination system for scalable and efficient transgene assembly at a single genomic locus | bioRxiv biorxiv.org/content/10.110…

Did you miss the abstract submission deadline for #mSBW2025? We have a few spots open, but you must submit by tonight (May 12) at midnight, ET. The sessions will cover cutting-edge developments and offer a dynamic forum for discussion and collaboration. bit.ly/3WwfChK

nature.com/articles/s4158… Awesome new paper from Shan Za and Biochemistry & Molecular Biophysics and systems biology colleague Chaolin Zhang Chaolin Zhang