Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Emily Greenwald @emilymbgreenwald.bsky.social · Aug 6

🎉🎉🎉🎉🧬⚖️💙💙💙

Reposted by Emily Greenwald

nora @nora.bsky.social · Jun 6

If your DMs are “encrypted” but one org holds all the keys, you haven’t distributed trust – you’ve built a backdoor.

Juicebox only works when boundaries are real. Separation isn’t optional.

Replication != distribution.

Don’t Put All Your Juice in One Box

At Juicebox, we believe key recovery should be secure, user friendly, and actually… work. That means it has to be more than cryptographic theater. It has to reflect the real world, where systems get h...

juicebox.xyz

19 71

Emily Greenwald @emilymbgreenwald.bsky.social · Apr 29

Huge thanks to incredible artists @nora.bsky.social and Janie Kim for collaborating on this project and bringing my vision to life in this beautiful piece!!

1

Emily Greenwald @emilymbgreenwald.bsky.social · Apr 28

The characterization of DragonRNA as a serial, chimeric DNA-->RNA monster expands the possibilities for biotechnology, biology research, and understanding of the interplay of evolving nucleic acids at the dawn of life.

1

Emily Greenwald @emilymbgreenwald.bsky.social · Apr 28

This art piece by Nora Trapp, Janie Kim, and Emily Greenwald alludes to the fantastical nature of synthetic biology’s advancements, while telling the story of DragonRNA.

academic.oup.com/nar/article/...

DragonRNA: Generality of DNA-primed RNA-extension activities by DNA-directed RNA polymerases

Abstract. RNA polymerases (RNAPs) transcribe DNA into RNA. Several RNAPs, including from bacteriophages Sp6 and T7, Escherichia coli, and wheat germ, had b

academic.oup.com

1

Emily Greenwald @emilymbgreenwald.bsky.social · Apr 28

waiting to be extended into their DragonRNA forms. The castle wall depicts an artistic rendition of a fluorescence gel-shift assay designed to demonstrate an enzyme’s potential for DragonRNA activity.

DragonRNA: Generality of DNA-primed RNA-extension activities by DNA-directed RNA polymerases

Abstract. RNA polymerases (RNAPs) transcribe DNA into RNA. Several RNAPs, including from bacteriophages Sp6 and T7, Escherichia coli, and wheat germ, had b

academic.oup.com

1

Emily Greenwald @emilymbgreenwald.bsky.social · Apr 28

A dragon emerges from an egg, within a nest among others waiting to hatch atop a majestic castle. The dragon is embedded with a DragonRNA, a DNA strand covalently extended with an RNA tail. Variants of precursor DNAs are backlit by a glowing polymerase within each egg,

1 2 3

Emily Greenwald @emilymbgreenwald.bsky.social · Apr 28

Thank you!!!

1

Emily Greenwald @emilymbgreenwald.bsky.social · Apr 24

Thank you so much for helping me with figures and especially the beautiful dragon flying through the abstract and the beautiful, fantastical science art telling the story of the paper that I’ll share soon!!! 🥰

1

Reposted by Emily Greenwald

nora @nora.bsky.social · Apr 24

Incredibly proud of the brilliant work Emily has done – these little monsters have so much potential in RNA therapeutics! So glad it’s finally in the world. It was a privilege to help with some figures and artistic renderings (spot the dragon flying through the abstract!). Mazel tov to all involved!

Emily Greenwald @emilymbgreenwald.bsky.social · Apr 23

I’m excited to share our paper in @narjournal.bsky.social on DragonRNA: DNA-primed RNA extension! We developed a fluorescence gel shift assay to detect DragonRNA activity by enzymes, & characterized this activity using gel assays, sequencing, & bioinformatics.
academic.oup.com/nar/article/...

DragonRNA: Generality of DNA-primed RNA-extension activities by DNA-directed RNA polymerases

Abstract. RNA polymerases (RNAPs) transcribe DNA into RNA. Several RNAPs, including from bacteriophages Sp6 and T7, Escherichia coli, and wheat germ, had b

academic.oup.com

1 1 1

Emily Greenwald @emilymbgreenwald.bsky.social · Apr 23

I’m so excited that this project is out there and thankful for the support of my PhD advisors, Andy and @sbmontgom.bsky.social, and fantastic collaborators, Drew, Joon, Nimit, Bijoyita, and Whitney!

1 2

Emily Greenwald @emilymbgreenwald.bsky.social · Apr 23

Finally, this project provides some really interesting insight into the evolution from the RNA world hypothesis to the RNA-protein world to the central dogma, because this shows a further characterization of RNA and DNA to extend each other, and shows flexibility of RNA polymerases.

1 1

Emily Greenwald @emilymbgreenwald.bsky.social · Apr 23

DragonRNA may be more stable than mRNAs in biotechnology due to the 5’ DNA cap. It will be essential to determine whether DragonRNA activity takes place in vivo or in cells, though we found promoter-containing double-stranded templates under the right conditions did limit this activity (Fig 10).

1 1

Emily Greenwald @emilymbgreenwald.bsky.social · Apr 23

We propose a mechanism (Figs 12) of DragonRNA activity that begins with the input DNA priming between its 3’ end and elsewhere in the sequence & the DNA covalently extended with RNA. In some reactions, the now DragonRNA performs multiple rounds of synthesis to generate longer DragonRNAs.

1 1

Emily Greenwald @emilymbgreenwald.bsky.social · Apr 23

We also found that multi-round extension could re-prime in the RNA portion & thus allow for a portion of DragonRNA to be templated, at least in part, by the RNA tail (Fig 4, Supp Files S2 and S3). We showed DragonRNA activity across 7 out of 8 tested RNA polymerases in our gel shift assay (Fig 9).

1 1

Emily Greenwald @emilymbgreenwald.bsky.social · Apr 23

The ability to prime between a free 3’ end & elsewhere in the sequence was sufficient to allow DragonRNA extension (Figs 5, 6), & such priming could take place in cis (with the same strand as both primer and template) or in trans (with one strand as primer and another as template) (Figs 7, 11).

1 1

Emily Greenwald @emilymbgreenwald.bsky.social · Apr 23

We describe our discovery of DragonRNA activity by mitochondrial RNA polymerases (Figs 1-3), determined that the RNA portion is templated by the DNA input (Fig 4), & that DragonRNA can be engineered using designed distinct DNA primers & templates to engineer DragonRNAs (Figs 11, S10, & S11).

1 1

Emily Greenwald @emilymbgreenwald.bsky.social · Apr 23

I’m excited to share our paper in @narjournal.bsky.social on DragonRNA: DNA-primed RNA extension! We developed a fluorescence gel shift assay to detect DragonRNA activity by enzymes, & characterized this activity using gel assays, sequencing, & bioinformatics.
academic.oup.com/nar/article/...

DragonRNA: Generality of DNA-primed RNA-extension activities by DNA-directed RNA polymerases

Abstract. RNA polymerases (RNAPs) transcribe DNA into RNA. Several RNAPs, including from bacteriophages Sp6 and T7, Escherichia coli, and wheat germ, had b

academic.oup.com

1 1 7

Emily Greenwald @emilymbgreenwald.bsky.social · Apr 1

Thank you for sharing with me!!!

1

Emily Greenwald @emilymbgreenwald.bsky.social · Apr 1

@roshnipatel.bsky.social @raungar.bsky.social

3

Emily Greenwald @emilymbgreenwald.bsky.social · Mar 28

YESSSS!!!! Congratulations! So happy to hear this!

1

Reposted by Emily Greenwald

The Forward @forward.com · Mar 21

Yeshiva University agreed to recognize an LGBTQ+ student group Thursday, settling a lawsuit that once seemed destined for the Supreme Court and delivering a landmark victory to queer Jews at the school and in the Orthodox community beyond.

Yeshiva University recognizes LGBTQ+ student group in landmark settlement

The YU Pride Alliance settled its discrimination lawsuit against Yeshiva University, winning recognition as an official student group.

forward.com

3 13

Emily Greenwald @emilymbgreenwald.bsky.social · Mar 14

Recipe courtesy of Nosh cookbook by Micah Siva!

Emily Greenwald @emilymbgreenwald.bsky.social · Mar 14

Made Funfetti Hamantaschen with apricot and chocolate fillings with @nora.bsky.social! Chag Purim Sameach!

nora @nora.bsky.social · Mar 14

Purim reminds us that resilience and joy go hand in hand. The world is uncertain, but at least we get cookies (made with @emilymbgreenwald.bsky.social!). Chag Purim Sameach!

Four hamantaschen arranged on a clear plate. Two have chocolate filling and two have apricot jam filling. Colorful rainbow sprinkles are visible in the cookies.

1 4

Emily Greenwald @emilymbgreenwald.bsky.social · Mar 10

One approach could be to teach about sources to trust—primary, peer reviewed research literature that they read and took time to critique methods and think about if the results and interpretations are reliable versus people and websites without sources or with unreliable sources.

1