iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Niko McCarty

Asimov Press @asimovpress.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

New Essay: Great Leaps in Biological Theory Two of biology’s greatest theories completely predate direct experimental evidence. In this article, @ulkar_aghayeva traces their origins and completes our mini-series on theory in biology. Read: press.asimov.com/articles/gr...

press.asimov.com

Great Leaps in Biological Theory

Two of biology’s greatest theories completely predate direct experimental evidence. Tracing their origins could help us understand how to make the next ones.

086

Niko McCarty @nikomccarty.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

New Asimov Press episode with Kate Adamala. Her group made SpudCell, a synthetic cell capable of eating, growing, and dividing for at least five generations. Adamala thinks it might reproduce perpetually by 2030, a feat she claims would finally make it “alive.” youtu.be/D4WywVQfIV4

youtube.com

"SpudCell will replicate continuously by 2030" | Kate Adamala

Chemists at the University of Minnesota, led by Kate Adamala, recen...

130

Niko McCarty @nikomccarty.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

I'm in the UK with @NickDesnoyer studying flower design. This is my favorite creation of his. Left: Normal Arabidopsis with small white flowers. Right: The same species of Arabidopsis, but designed to form spectacular micro-Roses. (Just a few mutations + one gene inserted.)

0101

Niko McCarty @nikomccarty.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

I'm spending two weeks studying flower design in the UK with @nickdesnoyer.bsky.social He's teaching me how to use breeding, genetic engineering, and even pathogen infections to change the shapes, colors, and smells of flowers. Excited!

2142

Niko McCarty @nikomccarty.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

Remember SpudCell, the cell researchers made that eats, grows, and divides? Well, I wanted to see it for myself. So I flew to Minneapolis to interview Kate Adamala. She said it took her group five years to finally get the synthetic cell working! Full podcast coming soon...

110

Reposted by Niko McCarty

Saloni @scientificdiscovery.dev · 12/06/2026

New post! @nikomccarty.bsky.social and I have been writing regular round ups for a little while now, but so much has happened recently that this month’s post feels like it contains a year’s worth of breakthroughs. Read it here!

worksinprogress.news

What’s new in biology: June 2026

The most effective weight-loss drug so far, cancer breakthroughs, gene editing for cholesterol, ancestral CRISPR systems, and more.

13717

Niko McCarty @nikomccarty.bsky.social · 12/10/2025

I think this is one of the finest essays we've ever published at @asimovpress.bsky.social It tells the entire story of a liver transplant, without sparing any detail. Every cut, every incision...the race to the next hospital... I learned a ton. Highly recommend Donna Vatnick's article.

030

Niko McCarty @nikomccarty.bsky.social · 01/10/2025

Hyperspectral cameras, mounted to drones, can be used to see microbes from > 90 meters away. It's now possible to monitor microbes across entire ecosystems. My new Asimov Press essay explains how it works & regulations on releasing genetically-engineered microbes into the wild.

141

Niko McCarty @nikomccarty.bsky.social · 29/09/2025

Today we are launching Issue 08 of @AsimovPress. There will be at least 2x new articles each week for the next two months (and...a podcast?) Coming up: - A deep history of electron microscopy. - How to see microbes from the sky. - Making computers smell. ... and much more.

230

Reposted by Niko McCarty

Saloni @scientificdiscovery.dev · 16/09/2025

New post! A round up of the latest advances in biotech and medicine by @nikomccarty.bsky.social and me. Prime editing, curing whipworm, a new narcolepsy drug, designing protein nanoparticles, the 3D structure of E. coli's genome and more! Read it all here: www.worksinprogress.news/p/whats-new-...

worksinprogress.news

What’s new in biology: September 2025

Gene therapy, narcolepsy drugs, parasite removal, protein nanoparticles, the 3D structure of genomes, and more.

0297

Niko McCarty @nikomccarty.bsky.social · 12/09/2025

Asimov Press party // September 30 // Boston // Asimov HQ There will be trivia. There will be winners (and losers). And there will be prizes. Come celebrate, answer questions, and show everyone how much esoteric biology stuff you know. Hope to see you there!

100

Niko McCarty @nikomccarty.bsky.social · 01/09/2025

Out today: A useful review on AI-designed protein binders. It covers the history of this work + has lots of good case studies, including how these tools are being used to make snake anti-venoms. The tables are particularly valuable.

1113

Niko McCarty @nikomccarty.bsky.social · 10/08/2025

E. coli copies 600 bases of DNA/second. It makes one error every few billion bases, or one mutation per 1,000 generations. I made an animation to show just how crazy this is. Every green square is a copied nucleotide. The red squares (very rare) are mutations. 🔻

150

Niko McCarty @nikomccarty.bsky.social · 30/07/2025

Behold the cursed noodles. Researchers mixed together chicken muscle cells and microalgal cells, and then extruded them with a 3D printer, to make a "plant and animal cell-based hybrid noodle." The reason for doing this, they say, is to tune textures, nutrition levels, etc.

151

Niko McCarty @nikomccarty.bsky.social · 23/07/2025

Cable bacteria link together (thousands of cells, end-to-end) to conduct electrons across distances up to 7 centimeters. They are living batteries. They were discovered in Aarhus, Denmark in 2012. I visited Aarhus last year to see them in person, and wrote about it today.

170

Niko McCarty @nikomccarty.bsky.social · 12/07/2025

What is a specific problem in biology that would be useful to solve, and could be solved for ~$10,000?

021

Niko McCarty @nikomccarty.bsky.social · 06/07/2025

The flagellum motor is biological design of the highest order. The motor hits rotational speeds >1,000 rpm. The basal disk (that purple ring) alone is built from 51 tethered subunits. The tail whips at high torques thanks to interlocking cogs, an axial driveshaft, and propeller.

141

Niko McCarty @nikomccarty.bsky.social · 23/06/2025

Using E. coli to convert post-consumer PET plastic into acetaminophen. The researchers discovered a biocompatible Lossen rearrangement; it uses phosphate as a catalyst. They start the Lossen rearrangement in phosphate buffer and add E. coli; PET to acetaminophen at 92% yield.

130

Niko McCarty @nikomccarty.bsky.social · 22/06/2025

YouTube channel idea: Recreating famous biology experiments. Explain what was known at the time, go through the initial observations, and make the "discovery." e.g. Monod's biphasic E. coli growth curves, T.H. Morgan's fly breeding programs, and so on.

080

Niko McCarty @nikomccarty.bsky.social · 20/06/2025

It's sad, in a way, that a magazine spending $4M a year to hire additional, talented writers is seen as "throwing a lot of money." It's good that The Atlantic is spending more money on writers. It is the anti-status quo. May their poaching drive up salaries elsewhere, too.

001

Niko McCarty @nikomccarty.bsky.social · 20/06/2025

Biotech papers & news this week: 1. Chemical reactions can be affected by stir bars. 2. A tool to drag membrane transporters into peroxisomes. 3. Full computational design of Kemp eliminase enzymes. 4. UK government to approve crops made using precision breeding. & more...

130

Niko McCarty @nikomccarty.bsky.social · 20/06/2025

"...we establish an all-cell-free viral cycle where T7 phages infect synthetic cells, equipped with lipopolysaccharides on the outer leaflet of the lipid membrane while encapsulating a cell-free gene expression system." Looks useful; an in vitro system to study viral infections.

260

Niko McCarty @nikomccarty.bsky.social · 15/06/2025

Much like fingerprints, humans can be identified using their nasal airflow patterns. By measuring air as it flows in and out of the nose over a 24-hour period, researchers identified individuals with up to 96.8% accuracy (in a cohort of 97 people).

030

Niko McCarty @nikomccarty.bsky.social · 09/06/2025

Today is my first day as Writer-in-Residence at @arcinstitute I'll be writing about the Virtual Cell, genome editing + much more. Grateful for the invitation to spend my summer here and learn more about AI+Bio!

050

Niko McCarty @nikomccarty.bsky.social · 07/06/2025

I recently visited Rocinha, which is Rio de Janeiro's most populous favela. It is quite unsafe and sad, in many ways. I wouldn't recommend going there yourself. But here are some photos from that visit, which I plan to write about soon.

060

Niko McCarty @nikomccarty.bsky.social · 06/06/2025

This study estimates that "a brain performing active tasks consumes just 5% more energy compared to a resting brain." Cognition is extremely energy efficient. Glucose provides most of this energy. The estimate was made by looking at fMRI, PET, and other data sources together.

010

Niko McCarty @nikomccarty.bsky.social · 05/06/2025

We made a huge poster that illustrates all of the major genome editing tools in one place. You can download a copy for free from the @AsimovPress website. press.asimov.com/articles/cr...

030

Niko McCarty @nikomccarty.bsky.social · 04/06/2025

I'll be living near Stanford this summer, from ~June 10 to August 10. I'm hoping to meet lots of people and learn a lot more about AI+Bio efforts. Let's hang out!

010

Niko McCarty @nikomccarty.bsky.social · 02/06/2025

Journey of a pill. This article traces the making of a common drug, clonazepam, from the mining of raw materials in India to manufacturing in New Jersey and packaging in Tennessee. "The total distance travelled in this scenario is approximately 63,162 km..."

121

Niko McCarty @nikomccarty.bsky.social · 01/06/2025

I'm doing weekly Links posts again. Maybe you'll hate it. But there's too much good stuff on the Internet not to share it!

130

Niko McCarty @nikomccarty.bsky.social · 24/05/2025

I'm offering free copies of the @AsimovPress book to iGEM students, or college students enrolled in biotechnology courses, in the U.S. If you'd like copies for your team/class, DM me. I'll send out 1 book per student & 1 DNA capsule per shipment. While (limited) supplies last.

020

Niko McCarty @nikomccarty.bsky.social · 15/05/2025

A new device "measures...milk volume during breastfeeding" and then sends the data "to a smartphone" for real-time tracking so that mothers can track how much milk is consumed by the infant. Seems really useful.

030

Niko McCarty @nikomccarty.bsky.social · 13/05/2025

Another insane example of insect evolution. Female digger wasps: 1. Remember locations of <10 nests at once. 2. Feed their offspring in order, by age, to reduce chances of starvation. 3. Will delay feeding a child if that child was given a larger amount of food previously.

142

Niko McCarty @nikomccarty.bsky.social · 12/05/2025

The first experimentally-solved, 3D structures of the human sweetness receptor. Resolved in complex with sucralose and aspartame; but the structures were identical. Upon binding, these molecules cause the protein to *slightly* bend & trigger a signaling cascade in the cell.

020

Niko McCarty @nikomccarty.bsky.social · 12/05/2025

> be plant > leaves attacked by insect > warn neighbors by releasing molecules into air > neighbors get the signal > neighbors trigger molecular cascade and "talk to" soil bacteria > soil microbes "increase plant growth and enhance plant defences." Plants are highly underrated.

061

Niko McCarty @nikomccarty.bsky.social · 15/04/2025

The first step toward solving big problems is often just figuring out what to work on. To that end, this "Gap Map" is an extraordinarily useful starting point for learning about bottlenecks in biology & other scientific domains. Highly recommend!

142

Niko McCarty @nikomccarty.bsky.social · 11/04/2025

> bacteria were engineered to make molecules that absorb light in unique ways. > the microbes were buried in soil. > using a drone with a hyperspectral camera, one can "see" where the microbes are buried from ~300 feet away. one of the most sci-fi papers I've seen in awhile.

242

Niko McCarty @nikomccarty.bsky.social · 11/04/2025

TIL that intelligence likely evolved twice; once in birds and then again in mammals. Key evidence seems to be that distinct cell types and brain regions are used to perform similar computations in both birds and mammals. From Quanta magazine.

https://www.quantamagazine.org/intelligence-evolved-at-least-twice-in-vertebrate-animals-20250407/

030

Niko McCarty @nikomccarty.bsky.social · 10/04/2025

A single E. coli is 70 percent water. The other 30 percent is mostly proteins. A single type, called Lpp, accounts for ~1/3 of all proteins in a cell. It takes less energy to build a cell than it takes to lift an apple from the ground to a height of one meter. New post by me🔻

171

Niko McCarty @nikomccarty.bsky.social · 08/04/2025

New op-ed argues that prions, infectious proteins that causes devastating conditions like Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease and kuru, may also be our best model for understanding protein dynamics.... ...and, thus, improve our ability to design better proteins in the laboratory.

040

Niko McCarty @nikomccarty.bsky.social · 04/04/2025

It blows my mind that human engineers have figured out how to build towering machines, which fill small rooms and cost ~$6 million dollars, capable of imaging INDIVIDUAL AMINO ACIDS in proteins by blasting them with electrons. Who can explain how these machines really work?

031

Niko McCarty @nikomccarty.bsky.social · 03/04/2025

The plight of Gaston Ramon: - Made effective vaccines against diphtheria and tetanus. - Discovered adjuvants, which make many modern vaccines far more effective. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize >150 times, but never won it. Chart from an @AsimovPress article; out tomorrow.

040

Niko McCarty @nikomccarty.bsky.social · 01/04/2025

A 3D map of mRNA transcripts in a zebrafish embryo. This video was not made using a microscope. Researchers tag nucleotides with barcodes, which then "link" together in the tissue. Sequencing those links can then be used to computationally infer the 3D positions of genes.

100

Niko McCarty @nikomccarty.bsky.social · 31/03/2025

Computational design of filaments made from 2- or 3 different proteins. Earlier work made fibers from one designed protein. But this paper more closely reflects the switch-like behavior of natural cytoskeletal filaments, which are made from multiple self-assembling components.

131

Niko McCarty @nikomccarty.bsky.social · 29/03/2025

More photos of the Asimov Press book. Our book printer (based in Minneapolis) had to custom-make several parts for each order, including a display stand to hold each DNA capsule. The DNA was made by CATALOG DNA, sealed by Imagene in France, and sequenced by Plasmidsaurus.

110

Niko McCarty @nikomccarty.bsky.social · 29/03/2025

We're now shipping out the second book from Asimov Press (the first commercial book sold in DNA + print). We're packing and shipping thousands of books today! Here are some photos. We think the final product turned out really well.

120

Niko McCarty @nikomccarty.bsky.social · 23/03/2025

The "Protein Design Archive" catalogs and tracks "designed" proteins, dating back to 1991. It currently includes 1,553 structures. You can download the whole dataset for free; it gives a description of each protein, its PDB ID, and much more. Link below.

261

Niko McCarty @nikomccarty.bsky.social · 23/03/2025

"Our nano-PeLEDs with characteristic pixel lengths down to about 90 nm represent the smallest LEDs reported, enabling a record-high pixel density of 127,000 pixels per inch (PPI)...." For context, ~2.5 trillion E. coli could fit on a 1 square inch surface.

110

Niko McCarty @nikomccarty.bsky.social · 23/03/2025

When we got the pitch for this story, I hadn't even *heard* of Serratia marcescens. But then I learned that it's: 1. First bacterium named after a person. 2. First microbe grown as a pure culture. 3. Used for >100 years to study how microbes spread through built environments...

093

Reposted by Niko McCarty

Asimov Press @asimovpress.bsky.social · 22/03/2025

Our latest book was mentioned in The New Yorker magazine. Specifically, in a March 20th article on DNA data storage. Bucket list item ✅

131