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Max Fürst

@maxfus.bsky.social
2K followers 1.1K following 496 posts

Asst. Prof. Uni Groningen 🇳🇱 Comp & Exp Biochemist, Protein Engineer, 'Would-be designer' (F. Arnold) | SynBio | HT Screens & Selections | Nucleic Acid Enzymes | Biocatalysis | Rstats & Datavis www.fuerstlab.com orcid.org/0000-0001-7720-9

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Reposted by Max Fürst
Derek Lowe @dereklowe.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Thoughts on Anthropic’s worries about people accessing Claude for possible bioweapons design:
science.org
AI Help for Biological or Chemical Weapons
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Max Fürst @maxfus.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
Join to find out more about our ADD-tagging platform plus a preview on our soon-to-be preprinted follow up presented by my PhD student @wahyuwidodo.bsky.social
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Max Fürst @maxfus.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Hate to conclude this prediction was correct
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Martin Pacesa @martinpacesa.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
ʙɪɴᴅᴄʀᴀꜰᴛ2 is out, and we're not waiting for the paper. The full code drops today, free for academic and industry use. We're releasing it early so you can start designing right now, and bring its full power to the current Adaptyv competition. github.com/PacesaLab/Bi...
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Pedro Beltrao @pedrobeltrao.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
Anthropic has used Claude to optimise structure prediction and design code to improve speed and memory efficiency. 2-3X speed improvements on AF3, 5X on OF3, 5X on BindCraft low memory modes to model large assemblies. All released as open source www.anthropic.com/research/cla...
anthropic.com
How Claude is uplifting biomolecular modeling
Anthropic is an AI safety and research company that's working to build reliable, interpretable, and steerable AI systems.
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Thiago Carvalho @cyrilpedia.bsky.social · 30/08/2026
'Our findings illustrate a curious paradox: despite universities being key producers of evidence and seeking the use of their research to inform public policymaking, they are less adept at using evidence to inform their own decision-making.' blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsoci...
blogs.lse.ac.uk
Universities rarely use research evidence in their decision-making, so why do they expect anyone else to? - LSE Impact
Despite universities’ important role as evidence-producing organisations, they rarely draw upon research evidence for internal decision making, why?
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Max Fürst @maxfus.bsky.social · 29/08/2026
Honestly there probably aren't many papers anymore that at least parts of it haven't been AI written/edited and likewise editors might as well by default run manuscripts through the latest LLM as default reviewer 1
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Elisa Fadda @elisafadda.bsky.social · 29/08/2026
Thought: If scientific journals start requiring authors to declare the use of AI in any part of their work (as they absolutely should!), then they should also require the same declaration from *reviewers* 🧵1/3
static.klipy.com
Seth Meyers: Right?!
Alt: Seth Meyers: Right?!
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Jill Townley @jilltownley.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
How do researchers design an RNA in 3D when no accurate 3D prediction model exists? Eterna's collaboration with the @rdaslab.bsky.social at Stanford was able to design novel pseudoknots using a blend of secondary structure prediction and GenAI design methods. 🧪 #RNAsky
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Max Fürst @maxfus.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
Extraordinary blog post by @moalquraishi.bsky.social moalquraishi.wordpress.com/2026/08/10/a... Starting with the question on whether workaphiles will be dying breed post AGI, it later turns into serious scifi - "The 'easy' solution is to make our brains bigger"
moalquraishi.wordpress.com
A Workaphile’s Apology
Disclaimer: No LLMs were used in the writing of this essay—all em dashes are mine1. Soon after the AlexNet breakthrough burst onto the scene over a decade ago, I became preoccupied with the followi…
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Reposted by Max Fürst
David McQuarrie @davidmcquarrie.bsky.social · 01/08/2026
A multivalent RNA affinity tag enables selective purification of tagged RNAs and bound proteins doi.org/10.1093/nar/...
doi.org
A multivalent RNA affinity tag enables selective purification of tagged RNAs and bound proteins
Abstract. Efficient purification of specific RNAs from lysates remains a major challenge. Existing methods, such as MS2 tagging or oligonucleotide hybridiz
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Reposted by Max Fürst
Kevin Wilson @kwilsonhfx.bsky.social · 01/08/2026
Shocking.
NTSB graph showing the relationship between miles biked per person per year and cyclists killed per billion miles biked. There's an obvious negative trend (people bike more in place where it's safer to do so.
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Reposted by Max Fürst
David Neuzerling @md.neuzerl.ing · 29/07/2026
Programming tip: never type out a 10-character command when you could instead press the up arrow for 5 minutes until you find that command in your history
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Reposted by Max Fürst
Retraction Watch @retractionwatch.com · 23/07/2026
A couple paid more than $800,000 for a gene-editing therapy for their daughter. She died, and it wasn’t made public. An exclusive from us and @science.org.
science.org
Exclusive: Death of girl in Chinese gene-editing trial was never made public
Parents want accountability after study went disastrously wrong, Science and Retraction Watch investigation reveals
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Reposted by Max Fürst
Claus Wilke @clauswilke.com · 21/07/2026
This "scalable" template for oral examination requires 20 minutes per student per exam, or 67 total hours for a class of 200 students. It would appear the authors and I have a different understanding of what "scalable" means. www.insidehighered.com/opinion/care...
insidehighered.com
A Practical, Scalable Template for Oral Exams (opinion)
Yes, it can be done, even in classes with dozens of students.
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Max Fürst @maxfus.bsky.social · 18/07/2026
Submit your research on designed branched sheethelix proteins now
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FX Coudert @nanoporous.net · 17/07/2026
Ironically, as @mart1oeil.eu showed, there are telltale signs that the piece was edited with ChatGPT: many links include "?utm_source=chatgpt.com" If even Science editorial team cannot afford good human editing, that's worrying
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Rafael Pinilla-Redondo (Rafa) @rafomics.bsky.social · 16/07/2026
1/10 🚨Preprint! One RING to rule them all (phages)👑💍⚔️ Bacteria build giant DNA-scaffolded RNase rings (larger than the ribosome!) to shut down viral infection🧬🧵👇 biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
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Max Fürst @maxfus.bsky.social · 14/07/2026
Couldn't care less about football but love meself a random chart
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Osterman Ilya @ostermanilya.bsky.social · 13/07/2026
🚨 We're hiring! My new lab at EMBL Hamburg is looking for a Research Technician. I'm looking for someone excited by phages, metabolism, enzymes, structural biology and bacterial immunity—if you know the right person, please share this post!🧵⬇️ Apply here: embl.wd103.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/EMBL/j...
embl.wd103.myworkdayjobs.com
Research Technician (Osterman Group – Metabolism-driven immunity)
EMBL Hamburg / CSSB The European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) is Europe’s flagship life sciences organization, with more than 110 independent research groups across Heidelberg, Hamburg, Grenobl...
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Max Fürst @maxfus.bsky.social · 09/07/2026
Domain swap is a staple in protein engineering. But instead of trial & error, can we predict an ideal crossover w/ comp modeling? Happy to share a wonderful collaboration w/ Jürgen @lassak-lab.bsky.social at my alma mater LMU Munich to convert a protein ligase to an aaRS for β amino acids t.ly/lNpVw
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Reposted by Max Fürst
Pedro Beltrao @pedrobeltrao.bsky.social · 08/07/2026
The @qedscience.bsky.social "impact" score generated a lot of discussion on ranking preprints, including ideas on multi-dimensional rankings that are user specific. Besides describing the ideas, we can now prototype them (with Claude in this case). Here is Salient salient-sgeu6fs5ua-uc.a.run.app
salient-sgeu6fs5ua-uc.a.run.app
Rising — Salient
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Reposted by Max Fürst
Indigo V. L. Rose @ivlrose.bsky.social · 02/07/2026
Not Claude advertising their new model to me using a left-handed helix
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Rosetta Commons @rosettacommons.bsky.social · 30/06/2026
Please note the image is from AI and is not scientifically accurate. We intended to add visual appeal to the post, and apologize for posting this fanciful but unfortunately misleading depiction. In future posts, we will ensure scientific images are based on actual data.
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Albert Vilella, PhD. @albertvilella.bsky.social · 01/07/2026
Roche throws the axe 🪓 at illumina with Axelios open.substack.com/pub/albertvi...
open.substack.com
Roche throws the axe at Illumina with Axelios
What changes, and what doesn't, now that SBX has a commercial SKU
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Max Fürst @maxfus.bsky.social · 01/07/2026
Can't believe it Sent a cryo dewar with crystals via #FedEx to @esrf.fr and they lost it. Since 2 weeks gone without a trace and of course they're doing nothing to try find it. Equipment worth €8000, dozens of priceless xtals from our projects gone 4ever 😭 Compensation? €600 from FedEx (by weight) 😡
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Philippe Bastin's Lab @bastinlab.bsky.social · 26/06/2026
Beautiful videos nicely explaining microtubules! Congratulations to Renaud Chabrier and Casten Janke 👍 www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVbv...
youtube.com
Microtubules | Scientific Animated Short Film 2026
YouTube video by Drawing Intelligence
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Reposted by Max Fürst
Nikolai Slavov @slavov-n.bsky.social · 24/06/2026
Since the 1960s, the genetic code has been used to predict protein sequences from DNA and mRNA sequences. Our @nature.com article demonstrates that these predictions miss thousands of protein sequences present in human tissues. www.nature.com/articles/s41... 1/
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Reposted by Max Fürst
Pedro Beltrao @pedrobeltrao.bsky.social · 16/06/2026
Here is an example of what I expect we will start seeing more of, a single author bioinformatics paper that looks like it was made with AI assistance. The figures look very much straight out of Claude Code. It does have a "Use of AI tools" disclaimer section journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol...
journals.plos.org
A zero-parameter first-principles gate framework for full-length TP53 missense variant interpretation
Author summary Most tools that predict whether a TP53 mutation is disease-causing rely on machine learning trained on large datasets. These models can be accurate but typically cannot explain why a pa...
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Max Fürst @maxfus.bsky.social · 10/06/2026
wtaf biology, as if you hadn't had enough enzyme mechanisms for adding oxygen already
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Zeynep Baharoglu @zeynepbaharoglu.bsky.social · 10/06/2026
Unconventional monooxygenation by the O2-dependent tRNA wobble uridine hydroxylase TrhO www.nature.com/articles/s41... 🦠 cryo-electron microscopy structure of Bacillus subtilis TrhO–tRNAAla complex
nature.com
Unconventional monooxygenation by the O2-dependent tRNA wobble uridine hydroxylase TrhO - Nature Chemical Biology
Shin et al. report the cryo-electron microscopy structure and catalytic mechanism of TrhO, a cofactor-independent enzyme that hydroxylates tRNA wobble uridine using molecular oxygen through a…
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Sasha Gusev @sashagusevposts.bsky.social · 07/06/2026
I wrote about AI in academia. "PhD-level thinking", LLM bias, grunt work, alignment, AGI, data center water use, AI politics -- something for everyone.
open.substack.com
Thoughts on AI in academia
PhD-level thinking, LLM bias, alignment, AGI, data centers, and AI politics
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The Register @theregister.com · 06/06/2026
Grep this: Microsoft grafts (most) Linux commands onto Windows
theregister.com
Grep this: Microsoft grafts (most) Linux commands onto Windows
Coreutils serves over 75 Unix commands in Windows and PowerShell command lines
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Max Fürst @maxfus.bsky.social · 05/06/2026
well if you liked this you might also be interested in the graph I made for the same course on the abundance of elements. Green are the CHNOPS element, which constitute 98% of living matter on earth. Fun to speculate about the ones way off the axis
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Reposted by Max Fürst
Sebastian S. Cocioba @atinygreencell.bsky.social · 05/06/2026
Why does tryptophan have only one codon, UGG?
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Daniel Gorelick @danielgorelick.bsky.social · 03/06/2026
Paying peer reviewers works. Expanded Fast & Fair experiment @biologyopen.bsky.social: • 5.5 vs 37.7 working days to decision with reviews • ~3 vs ~9 reviewer invitations per manuscript • no reduction in editor-assessed review quality • similar acceptance rates www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
Scatter plot showing that Fast & Fair peer review reached first decision with reviews much faster than conventional peer review: mean 5.5 versus 37.7 working days. Most Fast & Fair manuscripts met the 7-working-day target, while conventional manuscripts were slower and more variable, up to 116 working days.
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Sholto David @sholtodavid.bsky.social · 22/05/2026
Earlier this week I posted an example of a fake western blot provided by ThermoFisher to demonstrate the validity of a p53 antibody. I considered it an amusing curiosity. In fact Thermo Fisher Scientific has systematically manipulated antibody validation data!
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Max Fürst @maxfus.bsky.social · 25/05/2026
Took a while, but happy to share the published version of our article on ADDing, our highly efficient new enzymatic protein labelling platform that made it on the cover of ACS bioconjugate chemistry 😁 pubs.acs.org/toc/bcches/c...
pubs.acs.org
Bioconjugate Chemistry
The molecular structure of flavin transferase ApbE in complex with an ADD tag-bearing protein substrate, GFP: The transferase is depicted in the process of installing the click handle onto the target threonine, facilitated by the use of the ADD substrate that is generated enzymatically with ADP-ribosyl cyclase from NAD+. View the article.
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Kevin K. Yang 楊凱筌 @kevinkaichuang.bsky.social · 15/05/2026
Screen 1M random protein sequences to discover that biology-like folds are accessible from random sequences with surprising frequency www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
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Protein Data Bank in Europe (PDBe) @pdbeurope.bsky.social · 14/05/2026
PDBe-SIFTS is now open source 🎉 Developed in collaboration with PDBe (@pdbeurope.bsky.social) and UniProt, it enables fast, accurate residue-level mapping between protein sequences and structures, achieving >93% agreement with curated mappings. Get started: github.com/PDBeurope/SI...
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Max Fürst @maxfus.bsky.social · 12/05/2026
Can't comment on the science at the basis of this article, but the visualization is just stunning. Imagine this alongside every paper as SI www.nytimes.com/interactive/...
nytimes.com
Inside the Interstitium, the Human Body’s Hidden Pathways (Gift Article)
The detection of another circulatory system in the human body could have enormous scientific implications.
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Max Fürst @maxfus.bsky.social · 09/05/2026
Merck biocatalysis dep struck again. And they've expanded their team it seems 👀
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Bri Barbu @bribarbu.bsky.social · 08/05/2026
Hi #chemsky were you affected by the Canvas outage? We at @cenmag.bsky.social would love to hear from you for a potential story! My DMs are open!
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Tae Seok Moon @taeseokmoon.bsky.social · 30/04/2026
I came back to the United States, hearing about a very sad news: Craig Venter passed away today. He is a pioneer, successfully sequenced the first Human genome, and tried to create Synthetic Cells. We lost a giant in Science. RIP. @jcvi.org
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European Research Council (ERC) @erc.europa.eu · 29/04/2026
NEWS: The ERC Scientific Council has listened to the concerns from members of the research community about changes to the re-submission rules, intended to manage the surge in demand for grants. The Scientific Council will readjust some of the changes: link.europa.eu/TBqRQJ
link.europa.eu
ERC Scientific Council readjusts rules for reapplication
The ERC Scientific Council has listened to the concerns from members of the research community about the recent announcement on changes to the re-submission rules. The changes, intended to manage the ...
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Ethan Mollick @emollick.bsky.social · 26/04/2026
This is a useful image for thinking about the curve we are on and what likely comes next in an intuitively understandable way. (Roon is a long time member of the technical staff at OpenAI)
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Max Fürst @maxfus.bsky.social · 22/04/2026
Rather, "What should have been done". Journals could have implemented and unanimously supported a centralised article repo *decades ago*. Would have saved us countless hours of hand-correcting citations, enabled meta research, and would be a simple firewall against this crap.
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Pujuan Poppy Deng @poppy-pujuan-deng.bsky.social · 16/04/2026
I am so excited to share our new findings with you! We provide the structural evidence for a direct protein-to-DNA information pathway, showing how a bacterial enzyme 'reads' its own structure to 'write' DNA. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
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Max Fürst @maxfus.bsky.social · 15/04/2026
We got internal info today that hints at what at least ERC thinks is a good (=their only) idea to counter the proposal flood: vastly stricter resubmission criteria! Retroactively even! 🤬
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Sebastian S. Cocioba @atinygreencell.bsky.social · 11/04/2026
Makin a bunch more stability updates and bug fixes for my TUI plasmid editor. Currently workin on a pLannotate wrapper module so you can annotate plasmids imported where the author did not fully annotate all the features. I'll eventually try to pull plasmidsaurus seq results too
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