Will Shaw

New paper from our lab on synthetic genome work in yeast is out - Iterative SCRaMbLE for Engineering Synthetic Genome Modules and Chromosomes. Exciting project led by Jane (Xinyu) Lu in our group, now online. t.co/0LuGwgAWlA

Engineering yeast multicellular behaviors via synthetic adhesion and contact signaling By designing synthetic toolkits for contact-based signaling (MARS) and cell-cell adhesion (SATURN), we program yeast to form multicellular structures and perform complex tasks, like building logic cir...

Online now @ Cell is the yeast multicellular engineering paper from Fankang Meng - the fruits of his productive PhD in our group. He developed modular synthetic biology tools to bring multicellular behaviours to yeast - specific adhesion, juxtacrine signalling and more. www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...

Sentinel bacteria: engineering a soil bacteria to sense and record soil health

🚨 PhD project alert: Engineering a soil bacteria to sense and record soil health. 🦠 🪴 🥼 🧑‍💻 🌍

Fully funded PhD studenship in my group, open for international students. @earlhaminst.bsky.social

Please share widely! Deadline: 14th of May

www.earlham.ac.uk/studentship/...

Thrilled to share that I will be moving back to the UK later in the year to start my next chapter as a Career Development Fellow at the Earlham Institute! 🌱🧬

Our Sleep, Brain Aging, and Waste Clearance How sleep prevents "dirty" brains that age faster

Publications in the past week built substantially on our knowledge of the brain's waste disposal system—glymphatics—and the implications on sleep and brain aging.
Featuring exceptional work by Nedergaard Lab and @jonykipnis.bsky.social
erictopol.substack.com/p/our-sleep-... open-access

Logo for the Department of Plant Sciences, University of Cambridge, consisting of text and a green gingko leaf. The words ‘work with us’ are underneath.

We’re looking for 3 postdocs to join our lab and work on engineering plant gene expression, metabolism and growth. If you have enthusiasm & skills in synthetic biology or metabolic engineering, apply by Jan 31.
www.jobs.cam.ac.uk/job/49767/
www.jobs.cam.ac.uk/job/49773/
www.jobs.cam.ac.uk/job/49769/

A simple method to efficiently generate structural variation in plants Phenotypic variation is essential for the selection of new traits of interest. Structural variants, consisting of deletions, duplications, inversions, and translocations, have greater potential for ph...

Do you want an EMS-like drug that you can easily use in your lab or your garden shed to generate structural variation in your favorite plant? We show here that the topo2 inhibitor & common chemotherapy drug etoposide works really well to generate structural variation .

Judge blocks rule that eased U.S. reviews of biotech crops Some plant researchers fear the setback could last years and will stifle innovation

Judge blocks rule that eased U.S. reviews of biotech crops
Some plant researchers fear the setback could last years and will stifle innovation. (From Science) #PlantScience
www.science.org/content/arti...

Latest preprint from Jane (Xinyu Lu) in our group explores what happens when we build a synthetic genome cluster in yeast for Histidine biosynthesis and SCRaMbLE it to see whether selected-for gene rearrangements can guide better design.