Matthaeus Schwarz-Schilling

We found a new mode by which bacteria deplete NAD+ to protect from phages. And then we found how phages overcome this defense

Discovered by talented biochemist Dr Ilya Osterman, read the preprint: tinyurl.com/Narp-ap

A thread 🧵

Mechanistic insights into RNA chaperoning by Ro60 and La autoantigens Structural and functional analyses elucidate the mechanisms by which two ATP-independent RNA chaperones, Ro60 and La, recognize and unfold misfolded RNAs. Diverse noncoding RNAs are associated with this chaperone machine, supporting a wide-ranging role in maintaining RNA homeostasis.

Now online! Mechanistic insights into RNA chaperoning by Ro60 and La autoantigens

Autonomous biogenesis of all thirty proteins of the Escherichia coli translation machinery - Nature Communications The cell-free biogenesis of the protein translation machinery is essential for the creation of a self-regenerating synthetic cell. Here the authors synthesise all 30 E. coli translation proteins in a ...

Excited to share our new paper: we make 30 functional E. coli translation factors in a minimal system (PURE), find threshold concentrations to confirm nascent protein activity and use DNA-brushes to co-localize genes/ribosomes/proteins for simultaneous self-regeneration. doi.org/10.1038/s414...

Ancient DNA Reveals Twisted Roots of Syphilis Go Back 5,500 Years The first known outbreak of syphilis in Europe began at the turn of the 16th century, but on the distant continent of South America, the pathogen's history goes much deeper than that.

I learned about this dark side of syphilis when I took a history of medicine course. It is a remarkably resistant disease that brought armies to their knees and wrought tremendous societal damage.
Ancient DNA Reveals Twisted Roots of Syphilis Go Back 5,500 share.google/V15zBbvnvlbf...

Chirality of malaria parasites determines their motion patterns - Nature Physics Malaria parasites move on helical trajectories when infecting their hosts. Now it is shown that they use right-handed chirality to control their motion patterns, and that this chirality is linked to t...

(1/2) Our work with @freddyfrischknecht.bsky.social on the chirality of malaria parasites has found its home in the January issue of @natphys.nature.com:

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Moreover, we are very happy that it comes with a news and views article 👍❤️😀

A lot of the recent excitement around methods like AF3 (and followup methods which I often joking call YAAFCs: Yet Another Alpha Fold Clone) is the promise of modeling ligand-bound complexes from only a protein sequence + a small molecule SMILES string

(movie from Charm Therapeutics)

A synthetic cell phage cycle
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

PURE makes PURE: reconstitution of the PURE cell-free system from self-synthesized non-ribosomal proteins https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2025.12.17.694911v1

Review: Cell-free protein synthesis in microcompartments towards cell–cell communication
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

I am happy to share that our review on the Controlled Protein Synthesis in Microfluidic Environments has been published 🎉 www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Thanks to @emmacrean.bsky.social, Imre Banlaki, @jankalkowski.bsky.social, and @hniederho.bsky.social for great teamwork!

Delay-facilitated self-assembly in compartmentalized systems | PNAS Self-assembly processes in biological and synthetic biomolecular systems are often governed by the spatial separation of biochemical processes. Whi...

A very cool paper from the Frey lab @physicsoflifelmu.bsky.social. Self-assembly governed by compartment geometry... Testing this in (surface-based) artificial cells would be exciting.
Delay-facilitated self-assembly in compartmentalized systems | PNAS www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Rapid and scalable purification of Escherichia coli active ribosomes using strong anion exchange spin columns - Biotechnology and Bioprocess Engineering Purification of active ribosomes is a prerequisite to studying ribosome functions. However, conventional purification methods such as ultracentrifugation, affinity tagging, and specialized chromatogra...

Rapid and scalable purification of Escherichia coli active ribosomes using strong anion exchange spin columns. Biotechnol Bioproc E (2025).
doi.org/10.1007/s122...

3 more weeks to apply!

🧬 Fully funded PhD opportunity! 🧬

We are looking for a curious and motivated candidate to join our new team in Utrecht. Our goal is to develop biomimetic mechanisms for protein folding using DNA origami.

More info:
🔗 www.uu.nl/en/organisat...
🗓️ Deadline: 15.08

Excited to share my first PhD student’s @biorxivpreprint.bsky.social!

Tracking 5 dyes simultaneously Kavan Gor @embl.org tracks nascent #RNA folding during #ribosome assembly to correlate structural with functional information on single RNA molecules!

Check it out!

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

Big news! I am starting my own research lab at the University of Bordeaux as a @cnrs.fr researcher. Excited to turn my dream job into a reality!

I will join the @crpp-bordeaux.bsky.social and the fantastic team of @baretjc.bsky.social, Nicolas Martin and @lauraal.bsky.social. Check dupinlab.com.

Engineered orthogonal translation systems from metagenomic libraries expand the genetic code https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.10.30.685624v1

Excited to release BoltzGen which brings SOTA folding performance to binder design! The best part of this project is collaborating with a broad network of leading wetlabs that test BoltzGen at an unprecedented scale, showing success on many novel targets and pushing the model to its limits!

Delighted to share my first first author paper, where we realized multi-μm membrane-like shells made entirely of DNA! Huge thanks to co-first author Christoph without whom this wouldn't be possible. This was born from his side-project involving Dipids, stay tuned for the soon-to-be-published paper!

Online monitoring of the mitochondrial respiration activity and protein formation in the Almost Living Cell-free Expression (ALiCE) system - BMC Biotechnology Cell-free protein synthesis (CFPS) is one approach to address the increasing demand for complex recombinant proteins in various applications, especially in the pharmaceutical sector. CFPS offers a var...

Online monitoring of the mitochondrial respiration activity and protein formation in the Almost Living Cell-free Expression (ALiCE) system
bmcbiotechnol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10....

Constructing synthetic nuclear architectures via transcriptional condensates in a DNA protonucleus - Nature Communications Nuclear biomolecular condensates are functional sub-compartments within the cell nucleus. Here, the authors develop a synthetic DNA protonucleus that enables RNA transcription and condensation into di...

🚨Miao's and Weixiang's work on RNA transcription in DNA based condensates as nucleus mimics is now out in @natcomms.nature.com www.nature.com/articles/s41...
#syncell #DNA #condensate #LLPS.
Great work to understand transcription and LLPS in #crowded #viscoelastic environments @sfb1551.bsky.social

Systematic attribution of heatwaves to the emissions of carbon majors - Nature Climate change made 213 historical heatwaves reported over 2000–2023 more likely and more intense, to which each of the 180 carbon majors (fossil fuel and cement producers) substantially contributed.

A paper in Nature suggests a quarter of heatwave events from 2000-23 would have been near impossible without anthropogenic climate change. The paper also indicates that major carbon emitters are responsible for around 50% of the increase in intensity of these events. ⚒️ 🧪

Magnetic activation of spherical nucleic acids enables the remote control of synthetic cells - Nature Chemistry The programmability of synthetic cells, comprising lipid vesicles that are capable of imitating the structure and function of living cells, facilitates their application as drug delivery devices. Now,...

We’ve developed the first-ever method to control nucleic acid activity and gene-expressing synthetic cells with a deeply tissue penetrating alternating magnetic field 🧬 🧪 🧲!!!

Published in *Nature Chemistry*

Led by Ellen Parkes
@syncelleu.bsky.social #chemsky
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Simultaneous in vitro expression of minimal 21 transfer RNAs by tRNA array method - Nature Communications tRNAs are essential for translating genetic information into proteins. Here, the authors develop a method to synthesize all 21 essential tRNAs from a single DNA in vitro, enabling protein production a...

Simultaneous in vitro expression of minimal 21 transfer RNAs by tRNA array method
by Miyachi, R., Masuda, K., Shimizu, Y., Ichihashi, N.

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Rules all PIs should follow

NextGen Voices: Rules all PIs should follow | Science www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Inkscape plugin to rescale figures without distorting the text, and other useful features!
github.com/burghoff/Sci...

Synthetic cell preservation strategies enable their storage and activation at the point of use Synthetic cells encapsulating cell-free protein synthesis machinery are currently limited to laboratory use due to preservation challenges. They are typically produced and used immediately. We present...

A new article from the Elani group looks at the challenge of preserving synthetic cells, a hurdle to their use in real-world applications. The paper presents how cell mimics can be dried, stored and reactivated at the point of use.
#syncell

pubs.rsc.org/en/content/a...

Congratulations Noa! One step forward ... We stand on the shoulders of giants.

@pianocktailiste.bsky.social did you check who is Ada Yonath?

Engineering Plasmids with Synthetic Origins of Replication Plasmids remain by far the most common medium for delivering engineered DNA to microorganisms. However, the reliance on natural plasmid replication mechanisms limits their tunability, compatibility, a...

Engineering Plasmids with Synthetic Origins of Replication
Baiyang Liu, Xiao Peng, Matthew R. Bennett, Matthew R. Lakin, James Chappell
bioRxiv 2025.02.21.639468; doi: doi.org/10.1101/2025...