Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Ed Boyden @eboyden3.bsky.social · 6d

Wonderful to collaborate with, and to support as an advisor, E11 Bio - and to announce PRISM, a technology for mapping brains in a self-correcting way, by barcoding neurons followed by expansion microscopy! Thread below by E11 Bio CEO Andrew Payne, with preprint at, www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Andrew Payne @andrewcpayne.bsky.social · 7d

E11 Bio is excited to unveil PRISM technology for mapping brain wiring with simple light microscopes. Today, brain mapping in humans and other mammals is bottlenecked by accurate neuron tracing. PRISM uses molecular ID codes and AI to help neurons trace themselves.

Read more: e11.bio/blog/prism

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Reposted by Ed Boyden

Ali Shaib @alishaib.bsky.social · 9d

Kicking off #GEF25, the Morning Presidential Lecture features @eboyden3.bsky.social on the origins and mission of the event, who calls it 'the first conference of its kind'.

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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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Ed Boyden @eboyden3.bsky.social · Jul 12

Just posted, by Nina Khera, @clairebookworm.bsky.social, and myself: “Involuntary collaboration: a strategy for decentralized science”! Discussing the "invent-deploy-discover-design" model, and why the Bell Labs of the 21st century might be the whole earth. engineeringx.substack.com/p/involuntar...

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Convergent Research @convergentresearch.bsky.social · Jun 9

- @ZachinBoston, for @mit.edu News, on the story of Convergent Research and our FROs

feat. @eboyden3.bsky.social, @adammarblestone.bsky.social, @andrewcpayne.bsky.social, @sgrodriques.bsky.social, Tom Kalil, @anastasiag.bsky.social...

news.mit.edu/2025/former-...

Former MIT researchers advance a new model for innovation

Developed by former MIT researchers, focused research organizations (FROs) undertake large research efforts and have begun to contribute to scientific advances.

news.mit.edu

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Ed Boyden @eboyden3.bsky.social · Jun 7

MIT News reports on focused research organizations (FROs), non-profit startups, developed by some of our group members and alumni. FROs can work on problems that are a poor fit for academia or the for-profit startup world. news.mit.edu/2025/former-...

Former MIT researchers advance a new model for innovation

Developed by former MIT researchers, focused research organizations (FROs) undertake large research efforts and have begun to contribute to scientific advances.

news.mit.edu

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Ed Boyden @eboyden3.bsky.social · Jun 6

Down to my last few post-it notes, that my group members made for me in 2014, after I got tenure at MIT. Each post-it note contains something that I said often enough, that my group members thought it would save me time, to simply hand out a post-it note, whenever the wisdom was needed :)

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Ed Boyden @eboyden3.bsky.social · Jun 2

Just posted, “Engineering Serendipity,” a lightly edited (to accommodate the transition from spoken to written form) version of the commencement speech I gave at my high school, the Texas Academy of Mathematics and Science, May 8, 2025: engineeringx.substack.com/p/engineerin...

Engineering Serendipity

Three Short Stories About How to Increase Luck Through Skill

engineeringx.substack.com

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Ed Boyden @eboyden3.bsky.social · May 30

Just published, expansion in situ genome sequencing, where you can sequence DNA while still inside the cell, mapping its organization relative to proteins and other markers, with the help of expansion microscopy! Led by @jbuenrostro.bksy.social. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

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Andrew Leifer @andrewleifer.bsky.social · May 13

New op-ed in @nature.com: The Trump administration's assault on freedoms and the rule of law is an existential threat to US science. We urge scientists to speak out in defense of freedoms, not just funding. With Andrea Liu @upenn.edu and Sidney Nagel of UChicago! www.nature.com/articles/d41...

US researchers must stand up to protect freedoms, not just funding

Curtailment of freedoms and disregard for the rule of law in the United States is destroying the ability of science to serve the nation’s, and the world’s, interests. Researchers can take action.

www.nature.com

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Ed Boyden @eboyden3.bsky.social · May 28

"In Down syndrome mice, 40Hz light and sound improve cognition, neurogenesis, connectivity." MIT News: news.mit.edu/2025/in-down... Paper: journals.plos.org/plosone/arti...

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Ed Boyden @eboyden3.bsky.social · May 22

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Ed Boyden @eboyden3.bsky.social · May 22

Congrats to Lisa Yang - who founded so many visionary centers at MIT, and other places, to do daring and creative research with huge amounts of real-world impact - for being named to the TIME 100 Philanthropy list, for 2025! Grateful to be part of the Yang Tan Collective. time.com/collections/...

TIME100 Philanthropy: K. Lisa Yang

Find out why K. Lisa Yang is on the TIME100 Most Influential People in Philanthropy 2025 list.

time.com

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Ed Boyden @eboyden3.bsky.social · May 16

New blog at "Engineering {X}," where X = serendipity, understanding, or existence! @clairebookworm.bsky.social, Nina Khera, and I are co-editors. Our first post, "The Dropout Curriculum," asks: what should you learn, to disrupt fields from the outside? engineeringx.substack.com/p/the-dropou...

The Dropout Curriculum

How do you plan what to learn, to solve the problems you care about?

engineeringx.substack.com

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Ed Boyden @eboyden3.bsky.social · May 10

Honored to give the 2025 commencement speech for my amazing high school, the Texas Academy of Mathematics and Science (TAMS) at the University of North Texas (students skip years of high school, and go straight to college). My topic - how to engineer serendipity: www.youtube.com/live/nVknJwk...

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Shiwei Wang @shiweiw.bsky.social · May 1

Join me May 20 @ 11 AM ET for a webinar with Bio-protocol!

I'll walk through our single-shot 20-fold expansion microscopy (20ExM) method + share the full protocol so you can try it too.

Bio-protocol @bio-protocol.bsky.social · Apr 29

📢 Bio-protocol Webinars present: Next-generation expansion microscopy: 20× magnification in one step

🔗Register now!

Join us on:
🗓 Date: May 20, 2025
⏰ Time: 11:00 AM EST
Speaker: Shiwei Wang

#Webinar #LifeSciences #Microscopy

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Reposted by Ed Boyden

Protocol Labs @protocollabs.bsky.social · Apr 8

📹 Revisit the discussion on the intricate complexity of brain circuitry with @eboyden3.bsky.social, renowned MIT professor and director of the Synthetic Neurobiology Group, as he seeks to understand human existence.

Technologies for Stimulating and Simulating the Brain | Ed Boyden

YouTube video by Protocol Labs

www.youtube.com

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Gal Haspel @galhaspel.bsky.social · Mar 28

Fun with worms on @WIRED
www.wired.com/story/openwo...
We've been thinking about how #celegans can revolutionize science again, together with @kordinglab.bsky.social @eboyden3.bsky.social @wormsense.bsky.social and many other (also find our preprint on #arXiv)

The Worm That No Computer Scientist Can Crack

One of the simplest, most over-studied organisms in the world is the C. elegans nematode. For 13 years, a project called OpenWorm has tried—and utterly failed—to simulate it.

www.wired.com

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Reposted by Ed Boyden

Protocol Labs @protocollabs.bsky.social · Mar 21

MIT’s Ed Boyden is pioneering methods like expansion microscopy to create detailed 3D maps of neural structures, enhancing our understanding of the brain's networks to maybe even fathom life's meaning. 🧠

What if we could understand the meaning of life?

YouTube video by Protocol Labs

youtube.com

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Ed Boyden @eboyden3.bsky.social · Mar 11

Expansion microscopy (ExM) of the entire mouse body (pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/...), developed by the labs of Profs. Jae-Byum Chang and Young-Gyu Yoon (former SynthNeuro postdocs running labs at KAIST), could empower studies of how multiple systems (nervous, immune, etc.) interact across scales.

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Ed Boyden @eboyden3.bsky.social · Mar 10

The MIT McGovern Institute’s story celebrating the 10th birthday of expansion microscopy (ExM). One highlight: ExM is not only easy to do, it’s easy to modify - so lots of people are altering and applying ExM for custom purposes, leading to unexpected innovations: mcgovern.mit.edu/2025/03/03/t...

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Carolyn Bertozzi @carolynbertozzi.bskyverified.social · Mar 8

Exciting new work from Barna Lab @stanfordmedicine.bsky.social

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

A subcellular map of translational machinery composition and regulation at the single-molecule level

Millions of ribosomes are packed within mammalian cells, yet we lack tools to visualize them in toto and characterize their subcellular composition. In this study, we present ribosome expansion micros...

www.science.org

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Reposted by Ed Boyden

Kevin Cox Jr @kcox-bioguy.bsky.social · Mar 7

Some of my postdoc work has been "exposed" today in @theplantjournal.bsky.social! 😁🎉🔬 We developed ExPOSE - a method to perform expansion microscopy in plant protoplast systems. Here's a quick🧵of the details: @meter76.bsky.social @lily-oconnor.bsky.social
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

ExPOSE: a comprehensive toolkit to perform expansion microscopy in plant protoplast systems

This method provides a robust approach for performing expansion microscopy in plant protoplasts for imaging single-cell and subcellular compartments at greatly enhanced resolution.

onlinelibrary.wiley.com

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Reposted by Ed Boyden

Communications Biology @commsbio.nature.com · Mar 7

Genetically encoded dense core vesicle markers, compatible with immunohistochemistry and expansion microscopy, enable single-vesicle resolution in Drosophila using confocal microscopy.

www.nature.com/articles/s42...

Genetically-encoded markers for confocal visualization of single dense core vesicles - Communications Biology

Genetically encoded dense core vesicle markers, compatible with immunohistochemistry and expansion microscopy, enable single-vesicle resolution in Drosophila using confocal microscopy.

www.nature.com

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Ed Boyden @eboyden3.bsky.social · Mar 3

Published in final form, Feb 12, 2025: Shin et al., "Dense, continuous membrane labeling and expansion microscopy visualization of ultrastructure in tissues." Journal link: www.nature.com/articles/s41... PDF link: synthneuro.org/publications... News story: mcgovern.mit.edu/2025/02/18/s...

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