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Conor McClune

@cmcclune.bsky.social

510 followers 930 following 42 posts

Plants, specialized metabolism, synthetic biology, protein evolution, and everything in between. Postdoc at Sattley & Fordyce Labs, Stanford Previously SynBio @ Voigt & Laub Labs, MIT

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Conor McClune @cmcclune.bsky.social · Jun 11

Today in Nature we report a systematic strategy to activate & identify gene sets in plants. We identify 8 new genes from the yew tree's Taxol biosynthetic pathway, enabling us to engineer tobacco with 17- & 20-gene pathways to Taxol precursors baccatin III & deBz-deoxy-Taxol #SingleCell #secmet 🧬🧪🌾

Discovery of FoTO1 and Taxol genes enables biosynthesis of baccatin III - Nature

An approach that combines single-nucleus RNA sequencing and multiplexed perturbation identifies genes that enable the biosynthesis of direct precursors of the anti-cancer drug Taxol, whose curren...

www.nature.com

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Reposted by Conor McClune

Ivan Radin @radinbio.bsky.social · 23d

Do you know what happens when you touch a carnivorous sundew plant?
If the touch is strong and large enough, a cytosolic calcium wave will spread from the site of touch throughout the whole plant, but if you only touch one tentacle (see post below), the calcium wave will be local and less intense.

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Reposted by Conor McClune

Maddy Seale @maddyseale.bsky.social · Aug 15

Out in @science.org The crazy sequence of events from planting maize in dense fields. Density-dependent linalool release triggers release of compounds into the soil affecting microbes and plants.
Article: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
Perspective: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
#PlantScience

Linalool-triggered plant-soil feedback drives defense adaptation in dense maize plantings

High planting density boosts crop yields but also heightens pest and pathogen risks. How plants adapt their defenses under these conditions remains unclear. In this study, we reveal that maize enhance...

www.science.org

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Conor McClune @cmcclune.bsky.social · Aug 8

Perhaps in a couple years Claude* will pity the slow, handicapped way we now study metabolites’ in planta roles

Conor McClune @cmcclune.bsky.social · Aug 8

Point taken. It’s empowering that we now have easy transient expression, cheap NGS, cheap synthesis, huge databases, computers, electricity, etc now.

Perhaps in a couple years scientists will pity the slow, handicapped way we now study metabolites’ in planta roles

Conor McClune @cmcclune.bsky.social · Aug 8

Agree with @chenxinli2.bsky.social - cloning and testing in bentamiana is fast, but gene discovery is still slow and challenging when our initial hypotheses are incorrect (often). guessing we're also running into silent obstacles like localization, scaffolding, cofactors, etc

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Conor McClune @cmcclune.bsky.social · Aug 7

A truly enabling new approach by @taralowensohn.bsky.social Will Cody and @sattelylab.bsky.social to probe plant genetics at scale.

Single-gene-per-cell delivery coupled to an effective transcriptional selection system

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

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Reposted by Conor McClune

SattelyLab @sattelylab.bsky.social · Aug 7

@cmcclune.bsky.social will be at the GRC for Single-Cell Approaches in Plant Biology! Be on the lookout for his talk on Wednesday (8/13) at 9.10 am. Talk will be about some new approaches and discoveries recently published in Nature! www.nature.com/articles/s41... #grc #singlecell #plantbiology

Discovery of FoTO1 and Taxol genes enables biosynthesis of baccatin III - Nature

An approach that combines single-nucleus RNA sequencing and multiplexed perturbation identifies genes that enable the biosynthesis of direct precursors of the anti-cancer drug Taxol, whose curren...

www.nature.com

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Reposted by Conor McClune

PLOS Biology @plosbiology.org · Jul 31

Elucidating #plant #Biosynthetic pathways: @jjjvanderhooft.bsky.social @marnixmedema.bsky.social &co develop #MEANtools, an unsupervised computational workflow that integrates #MultiOmics data to predict #metabolic pathways by linking transcripts to metabolites @plosbiology.org 🧪 plos.io/4odL94g

Detection of functional clusters (FCs) specific to the phenylalanine (PAL) and p-coumaroyltyramine (THT) pathways. Top left: Network depicting the relationship between transcripts and mass signatures within the PAL FC. Bottom left: Network illustrating the interplay between transcripts and mass signatures within the THT FC. Top right: Heatmap illustrating the expression levels of all transcripts within the PAL and THT FCs. Upper middle right: Heatmap displaying the abundance of all mass signatures present in the PAL and THT FCs. Lower middle right: Correlation matrix highlighting the correlations among transcripts and mass signatures within the PAL FC. Bottom right: Correlation matrix displaying the relationships between transcripts and mass signatures within the THT FC, including Mutual rank and transformed edge weights.

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Reposted by Conor McClune

Stephen Spitewinter @spitewinter.bsky.social · Jul 16

#plants #trees #history #botany #art 🌲

Taxus baccata - English Yew, Common Yew

Folk lore has it that the English used Churchyard Yew longbows - not true. Spanish Yew was straighter and better quality. (Confirmed by an Olympian archer I knew.)

Bows and trees:
www.longbow-archers.com/longbow.html

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Reposted by Conor McClune

Larry Hunter @proflhunter.bsky.social · Jul 11

Scientists, please take a moment to comment on these plans to limit animal testing in drug regulation and biomedical research. Use whatever experience you have to make your comments specific to you. The law requires regulators take these comments into account, so it might help. Mine is attached.

I am a full professor of pediatrics at the University of Chicago, and a world renowned expert in artificial intelligence and molecular biology, particularly AI and drug discovery. I obtained a Ph.D. in artificial intelligence (computer science) from Yale University in 1989, was a staff scientist at NIH from 1989 to 2000, when I moved to the University of Colorado School of Medicine to become a professor of Pharmacology. I have published more than 200 scientific papers and hold two US patents. In addition to my faculty position, I am also the chief technology officer of TenZero Biosciences, an early stage drug discovery company. Not incidental to this letter, I am also a frequent volunteer participant (subject) in clinical trials.

I have spent my career trying to create artificial intelligence systems that facilitate the discovery of new pharmaceuticals. In 2003, I won the American Association for Artificial Intelligence's Engelmore Prize for Innovative Applications of AI for my work in AI and molecular biology. In that talk, I proposed a better version of the "Turing Test" for whether a computer system is actually intelligent would be one getting credit for inventing a new drug. We are quite close to that mark now, with InSilico's Rentosertib in phase II trials. I am proud of our industry's ability to realize that vision from 20 years ago, and of my small part in that progress.

The excitement of the first AI-discovered drug is wonderful, but should not be taken as evidence that AI is ready to usurp the FDA's traditional regulatory role. Even under the current very stringent regulatory scrutiny, mistakes are made that cost lives. Rofecoxib is perhaps the most obvious example, but there are of course many others. There are many published methods to assess the safety of novel compounds for human beings, including ones based on AI. However, none of them are perfect. The complexity and diversity of human biology means that the effects of novel compounds on …

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Conor McClune @cmcclune.bsky.social · Jul 11

ah, thanks for the fix!

Conor McClune @cmcclune.bsky.social · Jul 11

Also crazy that the long-term-storage genome can be ~20x larger

And it’s chopped up into the just the useful pieces to form the get-shit-done genome (doi.org/10.1371/jour...)

Almost like ciliates have encrypted their genome 🤯

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Reposted by Conor McClune

Rebecca R Helm @rebeccarhelm.bsky.social · Jul 11

I just learned these this elephant-trunked-shaped cells, known as ciliate, put their sexy DNA into a special pocket (called a generative nucleus), and the rest of their DNA in a normal get-shit-done nucleus.

It has functional specialization nuclei.

Respectfully: holy shit 🧵🧪

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Conor McClune @cmcclune.bsky.social · Jul 11

There are many total syntheses, but since Taxol is large and has a 11 chiral centers it's hard to compete with enzymes for yield/affordability…

And we were missing about half of the 22 enzymes in the pathway until this year

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Reposted by Conor McClune

Quinn Sievers @quinnsievers.bsky.social · Jul 11

I didn’t know this but apparently paclitaxel is still derived from the yew tree!? I had just assumed we had found a way to synthesize it.

www.nature.com/articles/s41... Discovery of FoTO1 and Taxol genes enables biosynthesis of baccatin III | Nature

Discovery of FoTO1 and Taxol genes enables biosynthesis of baccatin III - Nature

An approach that combines single-nucleus RNA sequencing and multiplexed perturbation identifies genes that enable the biosynthesis of direct precursors of the anti-cancer drug Taxol, whose curren...

www.nature.com

1 1 1

Conor McClune @cmcclune.bsky.social · Jul 11

🙏

Conor McClune @cmcclune.bsky.social · Jul 11

Thank you Carolyn Bertozzi @carolynbertozzi.bskyverified.social for highlighting our Taxol work!

Carolyn Bertozzi @carolynbertozzi.bskyverified.social · Jul 11

Check out this amazing new work from @sattelylab.bsky.social along with collaborator and @stanford-chemh.bsky.social Institute Scholar @pollyfordyce.bsky.social !

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

Discovery of FoTO1 and Taxol genes enables biosynthesis of baccatin III - Nature

An approach that combines single-nucleus RNA sequencing and multiplexed perturbation identifies genes that enable the biosynthesis of direct precursors of the anti-cancer drug Taxol, whose curren...

www.nature.com

Reposted by Conor McClune

Carolyn Bertozzi @carolynbertozzi.bskyverified.social · Jul 11

Check out this amazing new work from @sattelylab.bsky.social along with collaborator and @stanford-chemh.bsky.social Institute Scholar @pollyfordyce.bsky.social !

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

Discovery of FoTO1 and Taxol genes enables biosynthesis of baccatin III - Nature

An approach that combines single-nucleus RNA sequencing and multiplexed perturbation identifies genes that enable the biosynthesis of direct precursors of the anti-cancer drug Taxol, whose curren...

www.nature.com

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Reposted by Conor McClune

Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · Mar 20

A friend of my compared gutting of federal agencies to a wrecking a car: if you remove 30% of the parts of the car, it does not go 30% slower. It stops working.

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Reposted by Conor McClune

The EMBO Journal @embojournal.org · Jul 4

A million shades of green: understanding and harnessing plant metabolic diversity
Rocky Payet, Anne Osbourn et al presents a step-by-step guide to starting a project that characterises plant secondary metabolites
www.embopress.org/doi/full/10....

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Reposted by Conor McClune

Steven Burgess @sjb287.bsky.social · Jul 5

Further advanced in synbio systems for expression of plant rubiscos in E. coli, exploring importance of Raf1 variants:
academic.oup.com/jxb/article-...
and accompanying perspective via @jxbotany.bsky.social doi.org/10.1093/jxb/...

Effects of chaperone selectivity on the assembly of plant Rubisco orthologs in E. coli

We used an E. coli system to examine recognition of plant Rubisco chaperones for different Rubiscos. Identified factors influencing chaperone selectivity e

academic.oup.com

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Conor McClune @cmcclune.bsky.social · Jul 5

It makes sense that skin microbes would have an intimate relationship with our immune cells.

But engineering these bugs into topical vaccines still feels like sci-fi.

Congrats @djenetbousbaine.bsky.social on the well deserved prize

Djenet Bousbaine @djenetbousbaine.bsky.social · Jul 5

It’s truly an honor to receive this year’s
@science.org Noster Microbiome prize.

Here’s my essay on how we can engineer skin microbes to build topical vaccines:

Science Magazine @science.org · Jul 4

🎉 Congratulations to Djenet Bousbaine, winner of the 2025 NOSTER & Science Microbiome Prize for her work to illuminate how the immune system responds to the beneficial skin microbiome.

Learn more: scim.ag/4lVwpFx

Reposted by Conor McClune

Carolyn Bertozzi @carolynbertozzi.bskyverified.social · Jul 4

Check out this prize-winning essay by postdoc @djenetbousbaine.bsky.social on her work with @mfgrp.bsky.social @stanford-chemh.bsky.social 👏

Stella Hurtley @smhsci.bsky.social · Jul 4

Check out the Noster prize winning essays @science.org The vaccine we all wear: Skin microbiota can be engineered into topical vaccines | Science www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

The vaccine we all wear: Skin microbiota can be engineered into topical vaccines

Skin microbiota can be engineered into topical vaccines

www.science.org

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Reposted by Conor McClune

Ari Pekka Mähönen @apmahonen.bsky.social · Jul 2

How plants sense injury in their barrier tissue, periderm? Painstakingly detailed and amazing work by post doc Hiroyuki Iida shows that wounding is sensed by the diffusion of two gases: ethylene and oxygen. @treebiocoe.bsky.social‬ @erc.europa.eu‬ 1/x 🧵 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Plants monitor the integrity of their barrier by sensing gas diffusion - Nature

A study using Arabidopsis shows that plants can monitor the integrity of their outer barriers by sensing gas diffusion, enabling them to initiate wound repair to prevent water loss and pathogen entry.

www.nature.com

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Conor McClune @cmcclune.bsky.social · Jul 2

Pithy coverage by @plantaeofficial.bsky.social of our recent Taxol work

#chemsky #medsky

Plantae.org @plantaeofficial.bsky.social · Jul 2

Plant Science Research Weekly -- Elucidation and recreation of the biosynthetic pathway for taxol (Nature) @cmcclune.bsky.social‬ (Summary by Mary Williams @PlantTeaching.bsky.social)
buff.ly/miccEK3

#PlantaePSRW

Elucidation and recreation of the biosynthetic pathway for taxol | Plantae

Paclitaxel (sold as Taxol) is taxane diterpene natural product of yew trees (Taxus spp.) and a potent stabilizer of microtubules that is effective in treatment of cancers. However…

buff.ly

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