Scott Coyle

Phenotypic landscape of an invasive fungal pathogen reveals its unique biology The construction and high-precision fitness profiling of a C. neoformans knockout library reveals a high-resolution functional map of its genome and allowed for the identification of fungal analogs of...

In today's issue of Cell-->if you are looking for a good distraction from the news (who isn't), check it out!
www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...

Engineered reactivity of a bacterial E1-like enzyme enables ATP-driven modification of protein and peptide C termini Nature Chemistry - In living systems, ATP provides an energetic driving force for protein synthesis and modification. Now, an engineered enzymatic tool has been developed for high-yield, ATP-driven...

Excited to share our latest: we engineered the reactivity of a bacterial E1-like enzyme for ATP-driven modification of C termini. Our tool mimics the logic of peptide bond formation in biology for precision modification of proteins in vitro. 🧪https://rdcu.be/ewN7C

Multi-million project to ‘crack the code’ of cilia – tiny structures with big impact on human health An international team of researchers, led by the University of Exeter, have been awarded a Wellcome Discovery Award grant of almost £5 million to investigate one of the body’s most fascinating microsc...

Excited to share that we have received significant funding from the @wellcometrust.bsky.social for a new interdisciplinary consortium project on #cilia coordination and function across scales and organisms! 🎉🥂@lsiexeter.bsky.social

news.exeter.ac.uk/living-syste...

Chromatin heterogeneity modulates nuclear condensate dynamics and phase behavior Nature Communications - Chromatin heterogeneity in the cell nucleus modulates the size, mobility, and formation of biomolecular condensates; decreasing chromatin heterogeneity correlates with...

Congrats to Jing @jesszhiyuezhao.bsky.social‬
& @dnamystrom.bsky.social‬ on cool manuscript!!! Reveals how cell nucleus is a heterogeneous material, w chromatin organization controlling formation & phase behavior of nuclear condensates. #CellBiology #Chromatin #PhaseSeparation rdcu.be/evWxR

Our new work understanding how phages are detected by the bacterial immune system is posted on bioRxiv! Check out Toni’s thread for a synopsis👇

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...

Officially tenured. Thank you to all the mentors who guided me, and to the trainees who made this possible with your ideas, hard work, and scientific joy.

Lab lunch to send off Mike to his faculty position, welcome Theo to the lab, and mark my BIRTHDAY!

Even though the times are dark, we have to celebrate what we can while we endure the assault on science and reason.

Excited to share our latest by my postdoc Ben KS: we use statistical physics & Bayesian inference to model genome-wide perturbation outcomes. Remarkably, perturbation responses are encoded in gene "chatter" even before the perturbation–a fundamental insight with broad implications
shorturl.at/2LHbw

Evolutionary repurposing of a DNA segregation machinery into a cytoskeletal system controlling cyanobacterial cell shape Bacteria, despite their diversity, use conserved cytoskeletal systems for their intracellular organization. In unicellular bacteria, the ParMRC DNA partitioning apparatus is well known for forming act...

One of the most exciting discoveries from our lab so far is now online as a preprint!

Read a story on how the ParMR and Min systems started to collaborate to create the CorMR cytoskeleton, which now controls cell shape in multicellular cyanobacteria:
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Excited to share that our work building in vivo biosensors for receptor tyrosine kinases (pYtags!) is now out www.cell.com/cell-reports...

Debashrito Deb holding up his poster award at the 2025 Bioorganic GRC

Congrats to Weeks lab graduate student Debashrito Deb @thepeptidetailor.bsky.social, who won a poster prize at the Bioorganic GRC last week! Thanks to conference chairs @doc-jlmeier.bsky.social and Denise Field who knocked it out of the park with a memorable and inspiring meeting this year!

Extremely excited to share I have accepted an offer to be an Assistant Professor in the MCDB department at the University of Michigan! Go Blue! The Ledvina lab will investigate the molecular interworking of the bacterial immune systems including defense against both viral and bacterial pathogens.

Vertebrate retrotransposons are the future of gene therapy. But how do they insert their genes? 🔥🔥

Thrilled to share our new work now published with Kathy Collins, @nogaleslab.bsky.social @berkeleymcb.bsky.social where we investigate this with #cryoEM & biochemistry in 🧪 and cells! #RNAsky #TEsky

Rohith Rajasekaran of the Coyle Lab is Awarded Distinguished Graduate Fellowship The year-long fellowship will support Rajasekaran's research into how to repurpose cellular systems that exist in nature to engineer new functions into cells.

Congratulations to Rohith Rajasekaran, who was awarded a @uwmadisoncals.bsky.social Distinguished Graduate Fellowship! In the @cellraiser.bsky.social Lab, Rajasekaran focuses on the MinDE reaction-diffusion system. Learn more about his research: biochem.wisc.edu/2025/06/12/r...

Characterizing protein sequence determinants of nuclear condensates by high-throughput pooled imaging with CondenSeq Nature Methods - CondenSeq is an imaging-based, high-throughput platform for characterizing condensate formation within the nuclear environment, uncovering the protein sequence features that...

In the nucleus, many intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs) form condensates. What IDP sequence features drive this behavior? We developed CondenSeq, a high-throughput approach to measure nuclear condensate formation, and applied it to ~14,000 IDPs to find out!

rdcu.be/eq975

Does stability matter in biology? My article on the cover of this month’s @PLOSCompBiol explores how large ecosystems develop supertransients, a manifestation of computational hardness (1/N)

doi.org/10.1371/jour...

Phenotypic landscape of an invasive fungal pathogen reveals its unique biology The construction and high-precision fitness profiling of a C. neoformans knockout library reveals a high-resolution functional map of its genome and allowed for the identification of fungal analogs of...

My postdoctoral work with @hitenmadhani.bsky.social is now online at @cp-cell.bsky.social! We profiled the fitness of >4300 Cryptococcus neoformans deletion strains in >140 conditions, identifying unexpected mammalian-like biology and drivers of fungal pathogenesis.

www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...

Omaya Dudin Interview with Omaya Dudin, who uses Ichthyosporea as models to study how and why unicellular organisms evolved multicellularity at the University of Geneva.

90% of you probably don’t need to read this.
But maybe some of you are curious & 10% will feel seen. Or a little less alone. This isn’t about seeking sympathy.
It’s about sharing something hard to say out loud;
partly to heal, partly in case someone needs to hear it too. (1/3)
tinyurl.com/DudinO

The machine-guided humanization paper is out after peer review! doi.org/10.1016/j.ce... Key contributions from current and previous international students on visas, representing 5+ countries.

Tuning the interaction of a ParA-type ATPase with its partner separates bacterial organelle positioning from partitioning The maintenance of carboxysome distribution (Mcd) system comprises the proteins McdA and McdB, which spatially organize carboxysomes to promote efficient carbon fixation and ensure their equal inherit...

New @biorxiv-microbiol.bsky.social PrePrint from the Vecchiarelli Lab! 🧵
In collaboration with Jian Liu's lab at Johns Hopkins

doi.org/10.1101/2025...

Congratulations to first author Jordan Byrne!
@sickbyrne.bsky.social

P.S. She is looking for jobs!

Pls ReSkeet

Nucleoli as biomolecular bubble tea! Congrats to former Princeton ugrad Holly Cheng (now GS @MIT) ->Holly's senior thesis work, a close collab w Roggeveen Wang & @zs-biophys.bsky.social‬ &Stone. Come for the cool movies & stay for the viscoelasticity! www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2407423122

Persistent nitrogenase isotope signatures over two billion years of engineered evolution Nitrogen isotope fractionation (e15N) in sedimentary rocks has provided evidence for biological nitrogen fixation, and thus primary productivity, on the early Earth. However, the extent to which molec...

🧬 New preprint out today, years in the making!

Rucker et al. traces ancient nitrogen fixation over 2 billion years through engineering & synthetic evolution. Supports reliability of N-isotope biosignatures on Earth & beyond.

Congrats @hollyrucker.bsky.social! 🚀

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

Fun Q&A with Curr Bio in which I discuss mammoths, Don Quijote, and why you should not fall in love with a hypothesis authors.elsevier.com/a/1l2MF3QW8S...

Congratulations to Dr. Love!

Robust and resource-optimal dynamic pattern formation of Min proteins in vivo Nature Physics - Oscillatory Min protein patterns prevent abnormal bacterial cell division. Now it is shown that Min pattern formation is resource efficient and involves wavelength-invariant...

Our paper on the E. coli Min system in vivo with @physicsoflifelmu.bsky.social & Judy Kim (UCSD) has been published in Nature Physics today. Tight integration of experiment and theory, and physiology and biophysics. Incredible perseverance of our young students. rdcu.be/ekIpO

huge congrats to first author @kyle-flickinger.bsky.social, who drove this study as the major component of his PhD thesis & in the process became our resident expert in folate/1C metabolism! also grateful for contributions from @carlosmf.bsky.social @thebiokimist.bsky.social, Gavin…1/n

excited to share our latest work now online
@natmetabolism.nature.com, led by
@kyle-flickinger.bsky.social, where we unravel a mechanistic basis for the conditional essentiality of NADK, one of the many interesting hits from our previously reported CRISPR screening with HPLM rdcu.be/ekpu6

Meet John Ngo, Winner of the 2025 ACS Synthetic Biology Young Innovator Award | ACS Publications Chemistry Blog Read an exclusive interview with Prof. Ngo covering his research, his history with the journal, and advice to early career researchers.

Honored to be the 2025 recipient of the ACS Synthetic Biology Young Innovator Award. Hope to see you in Houston for #SEED2025!