iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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Kirill Sechkar @ksechkar.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Last week, I attended the Biocontrol Conference in Oxford! Coming together as a Control x EngBio community was fantastic - thanks so much to the organisers @jblugagne.bsky.social and Christian Cuba Samaniego I report from the event in my latest humorous SKETCH: ksechkar.substack.com/p/sketch-bio...

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Sebastian S. Cocioba @atinygreencell.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

Finally found my first legendary gene in my microbial roguelike!!! This one adds a flagella to the playable character and adds a multi-tile dash to evade hostile microbes. Not too much ATP drain but still need to level up to meet its metabolic burden. I love making this game!

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Hanna Kokko @kokkonut.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

Are you into mathematical modelling of ecological and evolutionary systems? Look at this job ad for a senior lecturer in Lund. I've visited many times, splendid compact city, splendid department! lu.varbi.com/en/what:job/...

lu.varbi.com

Senior Lecturer in Computational Biology

Lund University welcomes applicants with different backgrounds and experiences. Gender equality, equal opportunities and diversity are fundamental principles in all parts of the University’s activit

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Lorraine Reese @lorraine-reese.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

Early booking and abstract deadline for Synthetic Biology UK 2026 is TOMORROW! Sessions will cover protein and enzyme design, genome-scale rewriting, next-generation nucleic acid technologies and the engineering of genetic circuits and cellular control systems #synbio 🧪 bit.ly/Synthetic_Biology_2026

Biochemical Society Scientific Meeting: Synthetic Biology UK. Hampshire, UK, 2-3 November 2026. Abstract submissions now open. Earlybird deadline 2 September 2026. Includes image of delegates during a poster session at a previous Synthetic Biology meeting, and Biochemical Society and event logos

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MadScientist @mads100tist.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

Do you work with microscopy images and segment to quantify or track? Do you study cell biology? development? Gather round! Let me tell you about FOCUS-3D, a segmentation algorithm that is fast, accurate and can be used on any model. We used it here to study zebrafish development. 🧪 (thread)

biorxiv.org

FOCUS‑3D: Robust, generalizable volumetric cell segmentation for three‑dimensional fluorescence microscopy

Understanding how cells establish spatial organization within tissues is a fundamental question in life sciences. While modern three-dimensional fluorescence microscopy captures large-volume tissue ar...

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Christian Kost @kostchristian.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

Very happy that our paper Obligate cross-feeding of metabolites is common in soil microbial communities just came out in Nature Microbiology. See here 👇 Paywalled version: www.nature.com/articles/s41... Free read-only version: rdcu.be/fBHAb

nature.com

Obligate cross-feeding of metabolites is common in soil microbial communities - Nature Microbiology

Cultivation-dependent techniques, computational analyses and genome-scale metabolic models show widespread amino acid auxotrophies, suggesting that soil microorganisms exist within integrated ecologic...

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Joris Sprakel @jorissprakel.bsky.social · 25/07/2026

How do transcription factors bind DNA strongly, and in a switch like manner, while remaining sequence specific? Our new paper on a canonical plant TF suggests the answer is a previously underappreciated assembly state: transcription factor nanoclusters. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

science.org

Nanoclustering of a plant transcription factor enables strong yet specific DNA binding

Transcription factor nanoclusters balance the DNA binding trade-off between weakly binding oligomers and nonspecific condensates.

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Ricard Solé @ricardsole.bsky.social · 02/07/2026

Is the first artificial cell finally here? In this groundbreaking work lead by @kateadamala.bsky.social the team has been able to create a synthetic cell from scratch, capable of genetically encoded growth and division. An impressive achievement biotic.org/research/spu...

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Sainsbury Laboratory Cambridge University (SLCU) @slcuplants.bsky.social · 18/06/2026

🌺 How does a hibiscus flower pattern its petals? A new computational model reveals hidden "boundary" cells can spontaneously emerge during flower development, helping to create stable petal patterns. Prediction confirmed experimentally! 🔗 www.slcu.cam.ac.uk/news/how-hib... #PlantsInTheSpotlight

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Sainsbury Laboratory Cambridge University (SLCU) @slcuplants.bsky.social · 18/06/2026

Exciting collab between modellers in @renskevroomans.bsky.social team and experimentalists in Edwige Moyroud's team turned up a clear example of 'spandrels', first coined by palaeontologists Stephen Jay Gould & Richard Lewontin in 1979. #plantsci

Wild-type phenotype showing normal bullseye pattern formation

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Jenn Brophy @jennbrophy.bsky.social · 22/05/2026

📣 We are now accepting applications for the second Plant Synthetic Biology Hackathon! 📣 Check out this unique opportunity to learn the newest tools and approaches in plant engineering! Hosted by Nicola Patron and myself as part of the Plant Cell Atlas RCN, July 12-13, 2026 at MIT.

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Francesco De Batté @francescodb.bsky.social · 12/05/2026

Extremely cool video from Steve Mould on diffraction gratings and structural colour in photography, with a nice link made to how chameleon cells change colour

m.youtube.com

You've Never Seen a Real Photo

YouTube video by Steve Mould

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OpenFlexure @openflexure.bsky.social · 30/04/2026

Big news! 🔬 The OpenFlexure Project just won the GW4 Alliance Open Research Prize! 🏆 We’re honoured to be recognised for our commitment to making microscopy transparent, reproducible, and accessible to all. Open Research is at the heart of everything we do. Read more: gw4.ac.uk/orw/

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Michael Baym @baym.lol · 28/04/2026

The wobble-skip mechanism of matching two-of-three bases is wildly cool. Most synonymous mutants can’t escape

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Kenneth Loi @kenjmloi.bsky.social · 27/04/2026

Excited to share our discovery of a new programmable RNA-guided DNA-targeting system hiding inside bacteriophages that predates CRISPR. We call it VIPR (Viral Interference Programmable Repeat), and it uses an entirely new logic to find its targets. Thread + link below.

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Philip Ball @philipcball.bsky.social · 23/04/2026

"...- the idea that eukaryotic evolution progressively relocated causal power away from individual molecular interactions toward higher levels of organization, and that the surprising sloppiness of eukaryotic transcription factor binding reflects not a limitation but... /11

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Philip Ball @philipcball.bsky.social · 24/04/2026

Giving this another outing, as some people seem to have found it useful.

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Philip Ball @philipcball.bsky.social · 20/04/2026

This will be amazing. And free!!

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Manuel Lera-Ramirez @handle.invalid · 13/04/2026

“wait… it parses the history too??” yep 😄 OpenCloning now imports SnapGene files with the full cloning workflow, not just the final construct. 🎬 sound on opencloning.org

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Yolanda Schaerli @yschaerli.bsky.social · 12/04/2026

Interested in synthetic biology & microbiomes? 🧬🧫 We are recruiting a PhD student to develop biosensors to study microbe–microbe & microbe–host interactions. In beautiful Lausanne, Switzerland🏔️⛵ @dmf-unil.bsky.social @fbm-unil.bsky.social Apply by 24.05.2026 👇 shorturl.at/6X7M4 Boosts appreciated!

shorturl.at

Career Opportunities: PhD position in microbial synthetic biology (22753)

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EngBio CDT @engbiocdt.bsky.social · 08/04/2026

🚨 New opportunity! 🚨 We’re looking to recruit a Lecturer in Engineering Biology at the University of Bristol Faculty of Science and Engineering. This is an exciting opportunity to join a vibrant, interdisciplinary research environment at a time of significant institutional investment and growth.

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James Lloyd 🧬 @jamespblloyd.bsky.social · 01/04/2026

This is an early and strong contender for my favourite paper of the year, just after a quick glance. Direct conversion of Arabidopsis tissue to regeneration without callus and normal CIM due to loss of DNA demethylation 🤯 Of course moss does that by default 😉

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José R Penadés @jrpenades.bsky.social · 31/03/2026

This paper started as an idea @albertomarina.bsky.social had many years ago… which of course means he was right all along 😄. Some of us just needed a few years (and a lot of experiments) to catch up. Grateful (and slightly humbled) to be part of this. Thanks Alberto! www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...

cell.com

Phages communicate across species to shape microbial ecosystems

Gallego-del-Sol et al. show that arbitrium-coding phages can sense non-cognate peptide signals from other phages to regulate lysis-lysogeny decisions. This crosstalk affects lysis-lysogeny outcomes of...

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Enrico Sandro Colizzi @escolizzi.bsky.social · 10/03/2026

Curious about the origin of development during the transition to multicellularity? A very belated preprint alert: bit.ly/4rr2mHU Reproduction emerges from ecological interactions at the onset of multicellularity. A short 🧵 with lots of videos...

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Enrico Sandro Colizzi @escolizzi.bsky.social · 10/03/2026

And it’s not just this outcome. From the same ingredients, we get a whole zoo of possible solutions: unicellular life cycles, single-cell and multicellular propagules (in the video), and large groups that split by tearing themselves apart.

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Scott 𐚁 Cataloochee Hogtoe 𐚁 Cave @hellabarnes.bsky.social · 02/03/2026

we talk about carcinization, but never about the many, many times plants have invented the “tree.” Tree is not a kind of plant, it is a thing plats do, and they are by and large unrelated.

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Sebastian S. Cocioba @atinygreencell.bsky.social · 26/02/2026

Welcome to the world, little spark. You are loved. 💚

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Bram van Dijk 🏳️‍🌈 @bramvandijk.bsky.social · 25/02/2026

In case you missed it: our review titled "Spatial structure: shaping the ecology and evolution of microbial communities" is out! 🚨 Let me hit you with some highlights on why spatial structure matters. (and why you should care!) Sharing is appreciated 🙏 🧵👇 doi.org/10.1093/fems...

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Manuel Lera-Ramirez @handle.invalid · 20/02/2026

🚀 Excited to launch the #OpenCloning Assembler! 🧬 Built to demystify Golden Gate for beginners and save time for experts -> MoClo assembly blazing fast ⚡ ✍️ Use existing syntaxes or design your own! #SynBio #GoldenGate #MoClo #OpenSource #Biotech 👉 Try it: app.opencloning.org Feedback welcome!

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Cambridge Morphogenesis Seminar Series @cammorphoseries.bsky.social · 06/02/2026

Next Monday, 9 February at 2:30 pm (UK time), we’re excited to hear from Alex Bisson @archaeon-alex.bsky.social from Indiana University. Don’t forget to subscribe to our mailing list to receive the Zoom link!

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Manuel Lera-Ramirez @handle.invalid · 28/01/2026

Working on a tool to define Golden Gate syntaxes for #OpenCloning. You define your syntax, and then you can drag-and-drop your plasmids in OpenCloning, they will be sorted into the right categories, and you can do combinatorial assembly. Reach out if you'd like to contribute: syntax.opencloning.org

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Jerónimo Rodríguez-Beltrán @jerorb.bsky.social · 27/01/2026

New paper out in @pnas.org, and it made the cover! 👁️ We represent plasmids as circles and mutations as dots, resembling an eye, because in this paper we literally 𝑤𝑎𝑡𝑐ℎ plasmids evolve. ‼️Check Paula’s 🧵 and the paper👇 𝗣𝗹𝗮𝘀𝗺𝗶𝗱 𝗺𝘂𝘁𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗲𝘀 𝘀𝗰𝗮𝗹𝗲 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝗰𝗼𝗽𝘆 𝗻𝘂𝗺𝗯𝗲𝗿 www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Cover of PNAS in which we show plasmids as colourful concentric circles, with dots scattered. The image kind of resembles an eye, although it’s visibly a plot.

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Nick Desnoyer @nickdesnoyer.bsky.social · 16/01/2026

Inspired by the story, I created a petunia with 5 differently colored petals using new genes I made, AMBER & GOLD that I just published here: doi.org/10.64898/202... Similar to RUBY, these polycistronic genes encode yellow, fluorescent betaxanthins 💛🧡

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Thomas Gorochowski @chofski.bsky.social · 06/01/2026

If you are looking to integrate your latest genetic creation into the genome of your favourite bug, you might find our latest review now out in OUP Synthetic Biology useful. 🧬⚒️ Work led by Riesa Rohmat with input from Thea Irvine and Shivang Joshi. #genome #synbio doi.org/10.1093/synb...

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Zamin Iqbal @zaminiqbal.bsky.social · 20/12/2025

@peterfineran.bsky.social and colleagues develop Tn-seq for phages by leveraging anti-CRISPR (Acr) as a positive selectable marker in the presence of CRISPR-Cas counter-selection, and identify essential genes in phage from non model orgs www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

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Renske Vroomans @renskevroomans.bsky.social · 12/12/2025

It's been a great experience to start a team here, I highly recommend applying!

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Thomas Gorochowski @chofski.bsky.social · 02/12/2025

A couple new #PhD opportunities to join my lab at the intersection of #synbio, #plantsci and #biotech as part of the Plant BioDesign doctoral programme spanning the University of York, University of Cambridge, University of Bristol and John Innes Centre. 1/4

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Everyone's least favorite lab mate @kepatitis-c.bsky.social · 20/11/2025

What is the best strategy to win any contest? Eliminate your opponents of course. Recently, my friend @fernpizza.bsky.social showed how plasmids compete intracellularly (check out his paper published in Science today!). With @baym.lol, we now know they can fight. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

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Manuel Lera-Ramirez @handle.invalid · 24/11/2025

#OpenCloning is a an Open Source alternative to SnapGene/Benchling that supports automation and integration with other software ✅ Free 🔓 Open Source 🧬 More cloning methods than SnapGene 🤖 Can be automated with python 👨‍🔬 Built by a researcher — for researchers! 👉 Check it out at opencloning.org

A cloning strategy as depicted in the OpenCloning website

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Tom Ellis @proftomellis.bsky.social · 23/10/2025

A new review paper from our lab courtesy of @jazzsynbio.bsky.social is published in Trends in Biotechnology In this review, we look at the many opportunities for synthetic biology to be used in the research and applications of Holobionts.

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Wolfgang Busch @rootstrapping.bsky.social · 23/10/2025

Moments like this, a sunrise in the desert, remind me that science begins with wonder. Discovery starts when we pause long enough to notice. Isn't it amazing how life always finds a way to adapt and persist? And how are Plants so good at this? #Science #Discovery #Nature #AnzaBorrego #PlantScience

Early morning today in the Anza Borrego desert

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Cauã Westmann @cauawest.bsky.social · 20/10/2025

I’m excited to announce the launch of my lab at EPFL in Jan 2026 🎉. We’ll combine evolution & synthetic biology to study and (re)engineer bacterial communication. I’m recruiting PhD students to start in the first semester of 2026. Apply via EPFL PhD programs by Nov 1 drive.google.com/file/d/1cm-t...

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Olivier Borkowski @oborkowski.bsky.social · 21/10/2025

Emergence of population-level feedback control by transposon-plasmid coevolution doi.org/10.1101/2025...

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Alex Fedorec @ajfedorec.bsky.social · 20/10/2025

1 week left to apply for a postdoctoral position in my group to lead the experimental component of a 5 year BBSRC project on synthetic microbial communities www.ucl.ac.uk/work-at-ucl/...

ucl.ac.uk

UCL – University College London

UCL is consistently ranked as one of the top ten universities in the world (QS World University Rankings 2010-2022) and is No.2 in the UK for research power (Research Excellence Framework 2021).

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