Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Reposted by Zikang (Dennis) Huang

Seema Grewal @seemagrewal.bsky.social · 1d

So sad to hear the news - John truly was an inspiration to so many, and one of a kind.

www.cam.ac.uk/research/new...

Nobel Laureate Professor Sir John Gurdon dies aged 92

It is with great sadness that the University shares the news of the death of Professor Sir John Gurdon, founder of the Gurdon Institute.

www.cam.ac.uk

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Reposted by Zikang (Dennis) Huang

bioRxiv Synthetic Biology @biorxiv-synthbio.bsky.social · 11d

Generative design of synthetic gene circuits for functional and evolutionary properties https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.09.26.678595v1

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Zikang (Dennis) Huang @dennishuang.bsky.social · 11d

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Predicting protein-protein interactions in the human proteome

Protein-protein interactions (PPI) are essential for biological function. Coevolutionary analysis and deep learning (DL) based protein structure prediction have enabled comprehensive PPI identificatio...

www.science.org

Reposted by Zikang (Dennis) Huang

Ed Boyden @eboyden3.bsky.social · 17d

What if you could think of every possible solution to a problem? Then you might be able to simply pick the best one - even if it was highly nonobvious. With the “tiling tree” method, you can learn, and practice, the skill of doing just that: engineeringx.substack.com/p/the-tiling...

The Tiling Tree Method

How to think of every way of solving a problem

engineeringx.substack.com

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Reposted by Zikang (Dennis) Huang

Nicholas Bellono @nbellono.bsky.social · 20d

Sea slugs steal foreign chloroplasts for photosynthesis and starvation resistance. Photo by Anik Grearson. #evolution #symbiosis. #cellbiology. @cellpress.bsky.social

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Zikang (Dennis) Huang @dennishuang.bsky.social · 20d

Just wanna say great work and beautiful talk at Princeton today!

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Reposted by Zikang (Dennis) Huang

Virginia M. S. Ruetten @vmsruetten.bsky.social · Sep 8

Thanks Misha for the shout-out!
It has been a truly mind-opening journey. WHOLISTIC is one step towards whole-organism neuroscience and a true physiological observatory - with extensions on the way! I am continually amazed by what the data reveals - so much remains to be discovered and mined.

Misha Ahrens @mishaahrens.bsky.social · Sep 8

Preprint -
Excited to present WHOLISTIC, which extends the concept of whole-brain functional imaging to the entire body. Pioneering work by incredibly talented Virginia Ruetten @vmsruetten.bsky.social, this platform reveals whole-organism cellular dynamics in vivo.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

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Zikang (Dennis) Huang @dennishuang.bsky.social · 21d

⚡️⚡️⚡️

Daniel J. Cohen (Princeton) @djcohen.bsky.social · 21d

SCHEPHERD--the bioelectric cell herding platform built for YOU. Single cells, monolayers, organoids--this herds them all + new tricks. Plz try it-- we will *give* you parts! Teaser here of a steering a single cell. GS Yubin Lin's lifeblood with J. Yodh on piano; Celeste R. and Paul K. Thread 1/N

Zikang (Dennis) Huang @dennishuang.bsky.social · 25d

Chimeric capsid tail assembly expanding host range for hosts. Wondering if we can engineer an AND gate delivery system out of this 🤔

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

Chimeric infective particles expand species boundaries in phage-inducible chromosomal island mobilization

Capsid-forming PICIs (cf-PICIs) produce their own capsids and exploit phage tails from unrelated species to transfer their DNA across bacterial hosts. This tail piracy enables broad dissemination and ...

www.cell.com

Zikang (Dennis) Huang @dennishuang.bsky.social · 28d

🤔

Nature @nature.com · Sep 3

A common type of ant in Europe breaks a fundamental rule in biology: its queens can produce male offspring that are a whole different species

go.nature.com/4mOb5T9

‘Almost unimaginable’: these ants are different species but share a mother

Ant queens of one species clone ants of another to create hybrid workers that do their bidding.

go.nature.com

Zikang (Dennis) Huang @dennishuang.bsky.social · 29d

www.biocontrolseminars.org/workshop-2025

Biocontrol Seminars - Workshop 2025

The Second Edition of our Workshop on Biological Control Systems will be held on November 19, 2025

www.biocontrolseminars.org

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Reposted by Zikang (Dennis) Huang

Current Biology @currentbiology.bsky.social · Aug 28

Feeling mitochondrially challenged lately?

Here are two classic reviews on #mitochondria that should help.

www.cell.com/current-biol...

www.cell.com/current-biol...

The Origin and Diversification of Mitochondria

Moving beyond the simplistic view of mitochondria as the power house of the cell, Roger et al. present the immense diversity of mitochondria and mitochondrial functions across eukaryotes, and bring th...

www.cell.com

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Zikang (Dennis) Huang @dennishuang.bsky.social · Aug 23

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

Programmable protein ligation on cell surfaces - Nature

A synthetic biology system called SMART has been developed that uses conditional protein splicing for the programmable ligation of functional proteins from previously defined molecular combinations on...

www.nature.com

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Zikang (Dennis) Huang @dennishuang.bsky.social · Aug 18

Looking forward to trying it out!

Science Magazine @science.org · Aug 14

Researchers have developed a #DeepLearning system called BioEmu that rapidly generates diverse protein conformations, enabling fast, accurate insights into protein flexibility and function.

Learn more this week in Science: https://scim.ag/3JdQVD4

Zikang (Dennis) Huang @dennishuang.bsky.social · Aug 18

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Design of soluble Notch agonists that drive T cell development and boost immunity

The rational design of receptor agonists to control cell signaling is an emerging strategy for developing disease therapeutics. Creating a soluble cyt…

www.sciencedirect.com

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Reposted by Zikang (Dennis) Huang

Itai Yanai @itaiyanai.bsky.social · Aug 11

The creative process in science has a set of thinking tools that we could do a better job teaching. Here are the 12 articles that Martin and I wrote about them, including "It takes two to think", "A hypothesis is a liability" and "The two languages of science". night-science.org/home/learn/r...

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Zikang (Dennis) Huang @dennishuang.bsky.social · Jul 16

Congrats Jason!

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Zikang (Dennis) Huang @dennishuang.bsky.social · Jul 11

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40593783/

An orthogonal transcription mutation system generating all transition mutations for accelerated protein evolution in vivo - PubMed

Targeted mutagenesis systems are critical for protein evolution. Current deaminase-T7 RNA polymerase fusion systems enable gene-specific mutagenesis but remain limited to certain model organisms. Here...

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Zikang (Dennis) Huang @dennishuang.bsky.social · Jul 9

Wished it had more details, it weighs half after replication does not reject the dispersive replication hypothesis.

Ardem Patapoutian @ardemp.bskyverified.social · Jul 9

Franklin W. Stahl, 95, Dies; Helped Create a ‘Beautiful’ DNA Experiment. Gift article:
www.nytimes.com/2025/07/07/s...

Franklin W. Stahl, 95, Dies; Helped Create a ‘Beautiful’ DNA Experiment

www.nytimes.com

Reposted by Zikang (Dennis) Huang

Petter Brodin @petterbrodin.bsky.social · Jun 25

New paper 📣! Pixelgen reports its incredible new Proximity Network Assay (PNA)->3D maps of 155 proteins in single cells by sequencing by barcoded antibodies and in situ rolling circle amplification yields >40,000 spatial nodes/cell: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

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Zikang (Dennis) Huang @dennishuang.bsky.social · Jun 22

Now at molecular mechanisms in evolution GRC! Please stop by my poster tmr #1 and Mon/Tues #52! Will be presenting the Synergistic tuning of intramolecular feed-forward regulation shapes adaptive response of photoreceptors through domain co-evolution! Also see an earlier thread here:

Zikang (Dennis) Huang @dennishuang.bsky.social · Apr 15

How can an individual protein show adaptation? The light- and temp-sensitive BcLOV4 gives a pulse of translocation during a step input of light. Answer in our preprint: *intra-molecular* feed-forward regulation. bit.ly/3Rg9veD
A @bugajlab.bsky.social collab with @nmrkaygee.bsky.social 🧵

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Reposted by Zikang (Dennis) Huang

John Murray @jisaacmurray.bsky.social · Jun 20

Happy to announce our paper comparing embryonic gene expression between C. elegans and C. briggsae, work led by Christopher Large with Rupa Khanal and in collaboration with Junhyong Kim and Bob Waterston. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Lineage-resolved analysis of embryonic gene expression evolution in C. elegans and C. briggsae

The constraints that govern the evolution of gene expression patterns across development remain unclear. Single-cell RNA sequencing can detail these constraints by systematically profiling homologous ...

www.science.org

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Reposted by Zikang (Dennis) Huang

Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems @mpipks.bsky.social · Jun 17

🐠🦠Why can’t bacteria swim like fish?
At microscopic scales, physics changes — viscosity rules! Researchers at our institute study how microbes like E. coli overcome this challenge with clever strategies like run-and-tumble.

Watch our new video:

youtu.be/drwCRRD7CGY?...

Tiny swimmers

YouTube video by MPIPKS

youtu.be

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Zikang (Dennis) Huang @dennishuang.bsky.social · Jun 17

Beautiful work Kalli and team! Congrats!🎉

Kalli Kappel @kallikappel.bsky.social · Jun 17

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

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...

rdcu.be

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Zikang (Dennis) Huang @dennishuang.bsky.social · Jun 16

www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Wild that loss of Y chromosome seems contagious 🤯

Concurrent loss of the Y chromosome in cancer and T cells impacts outcome - Nature

Comprehensive pan-cancer analysis of loss of the Y chromosome (LOY) in benign and malignant cells establishes a new model linking LOY in circulating and tumour-infiltrating immune cells to LOY in...

www.nature.com