Jake Wintermute

Fair. How many pages would you guess we need to tech transfer a typical piece of biology in, say, 2030?

In 1988 a computer mouse came with a 200-page manual with details like the custom drivers needed to make the device work with your specific hardware

Biology tech transfer is not quite that efficient yet, but I’m hopeful we are entering the 200-page-manual era of biology

Me (the world’s greatest biohacker) typing the DNA sequence I need directly into the raw FASTA file because the genAI agent was too slow

She’s just like me fr!!!

At the Asilomar conference in 1975, biologists chose to be pro-active about calling their own work risky

50 years later, you can’t ask chatGPT for a PCR recipe without getting shut down like a bioterrorist

My fellow biologists: this is our fault. We built this regulatory culture

TIL you can get bottle labels printed directly on actual wood veneer instead of paper which is technically just replacing wood with wood but this way has stronger wood energy

www.wausaucoated.com/wine-spirits...

Yum ants

@synbio1.bsky.social

I guess one can biologize biological processes and go even more archaic/futuristic.

If you’re watching for signs that AI transforms bio, drugs in the clinic will be a lagging indicator

The leading indicator will be fast bioproducts shipped without billion-dollar R&D budgets

Look for the AI-engineered enzyme that beats tomato sauce stains, then start to believe

Oyster-inspired bone healing juice
interestingengineering.com/science/chin...

100% fake

Love to see innovation in the self-eating technology space
www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/09...

My career goal is to become a quest giver in cyberpunk video game where I'm all like "use these biometric keys to infiltrate the megacorp and recover the stolen plans for the symbiote interface"

And on my desk is a CRT TV converted into an aquarium like this

Bioeconomy investing 101 always go long on the forest

If we invest wisely in the science of biomaterials the future of bubble gum can look like endless acceleration into an infinite horizon of bubble gum fun

Family game night with Lorelei and the Laser Eyes (this game is sweet if you like shape rotator puzzles and Italian new wave cinema)

Agree with this. Community maker spaces are the real-world version of the maker videos. People come to be empowered, not to have their misunderstandings corrected.

The point here that institutional science misses is that people don't trust doctors because of their credentials, or because they speak with sciencey caveats like "the evidence suggests"

People trust doctors that make them feel cared for - a sentiment that scientists actively suppress from comms

When you realize that complex assay you needed to run is offered as a pre-made kit but then it still fails

Old timey DNA sequences where they wrote the phosphate groups as lowercase ps make me feel like I'm reading the sPonGEbOb moCkINg SaRcaSTiC vOiCE

I daresay the ism in which the individual is encouraged to believe mainly in themself is called classical liberalism

YouTube video by Mark Rober Backyard Squirrel Maze 1.0- Ninja Warrior Course

An effective alternative might be found in "maker" YouTube channels. They need to be engaging to be supported, so they are keenly aware of how to win an audience.

They don't say "you view is wrong and mine is right." They say "check this out you can do this too."

www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFZF...

I would say that almost all institutional scicomm is based on the "deficiency model", the idea that the public is ignorant and that the expert's role is to correct that ignorance

This premise sets up a power hierarchy and therefore resentment

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Informa...

I wouldn't consider appealing to a bare majority as evidence that a message is "effective."

Particularly when that majority has been in steady decline and the same message provokes a strong backlash in the growing minority.

"Trust the experts" hasn't been an effective public health message since the 90s. But scientists stuck to it, hoping that faith in institutions would return.

It isn't going to return. It's time to rethink how we communicate. We have to win in the messy marketplace of ideas.

Phage-mediated lysis does not determine Cutibacterium acnes colonization on human skin Despite Cutibacterium acnes being the most abundant and prevalent bacteria on human skin, only a single type of phage has been identified that infects this host. Here, we leverage this one-to-one syst...

How much of selection in human microbiomes is driven by phage?

Excited to share our latest, led by A. Delphine Tripp, showing a case where phage is just not that important:

Phage-mediated lysis does not determine Cutibacterium acnes colonization on human skin

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

🧵

“Protein vape” is so dumb it’s genius

I’m not sure what it would be useful for but I bet you could engineer proteins to be effectively delivered through vape aerosols

Anti-inflammatory proteins maybe?

I mean it's easy for me of course

Physics nerds: AI models aren’t real science because they’re not human-interpretable

Also physics nerds:

It may not be our fault but it is certainly our problem

Anti-science views are not particularly popular. The failure of our institutions is that science is not particularly popular either