Kerstin Göpfrich
@kgoepfrich.bsky.social
1.8K followers 510 following 1.3K posts
Excited to engineer a synthetic cell from scratch with lipid vesicles and DNA/RNA origami-based molecular hardware. Professor @ZMBHh @UniHeidelberg
Posts Media Videos Starter Packs
Pinned
kgoepfrich.bsky.social
RNA droplets that grow and segregate by ribozyme catalysis. Check out our latest preprint www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.08.29.673008v1
kgoepfrich.bsky.social
Curious about RNA, aptamers, lipid membranes, molecular dynamics simulations, synthetic cells - and how these topics come together? Join @floppleton.bsky.social's talk in the unano webinar blogs.ed.ac.uk/unanowebinars
kgoepfrich.bsky.social
RNA droplets that grow and segregate by ribozyme catalysis. Check out our latest preprint www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.08.29.673008v1
kgoepfrich.bsky.social
@tranmai.bsky.social handed in her PhD thesis! Celebrating in style with egg coffee from Hanoi, Mai's place of birth. P.S.: Mai is looking for a PostDoc position! Check out her latest RNA nanostructures for synthetic cells @natnano.nature.com doi.org/10.1038/s415...
Reposted by Kerstin Göpfrich
floppleton.bsky.social
DNA hydrogels as mechanical sensors in cell-culture systems by @towalther.bsky.social 🧬🧬🧬

If you catch him at a conference bar, ask him the story, it’s an adventure and a half!
kgoepfrich.bsky.social
Preprint by @towalther.bsky.social at al! We design DNA hydrogel microparticles with sequence-controlled stiffness from 30 Pa to 6.5 kPa. They are remodelled in fibroblast spheroids www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... Thanks @ibecbarcelona.eu @xaviertrepat.bsky.social @pcusachs.bsky.social
Reposted by Kerstin Göpfrich
towalther.bsky.social
So excited to finally be able to share this manuscript!! Thanks to all collaborators for making this possible! Special thanks to @kgoepfrich.bsky.social and @xaviertrepat.bsky.social for their guidance and supervision in this!
kgoepfrich.bsky.social
Preprint by @towalther.bsky.social at al! We design DNA hydrogel microparticles with sequence-controlled stiffness from 30 Pa to 6.5 kPa. They are remodelled in fibroblast spheroids www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... Thanks @ibecbarcelona.eu @xaviertrepat.bsky.social @pcusachs.bsky.social
kgoepfrich.bsky.social
Preprint by @towalther.bsky.social at al! We design DNA hydrogel microparticles with sequence-controlled stiffness from 30 Pa to 6.5 kPa. They are remodelled in fibroblast spheroids www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... Thanks @ibecbarcelona.eu @xaviertrepat.bsky.social @pcusachs.bsky.social
Reposted by Kerstin Göpfrich
laborjournal.bsky.social
Leben aus toter Materie zu erschaffen ist ein zentrales Thema der Synthetischen Biologie. @kgoepfrich.bsky.social‬ et al. liefern dazu RNA-Origami-Strukturen, die sich selbst organisieren und eine cytoskelettartige Architektur aufbauen. Holger Dill berichtet mehr: www.laborjournal.de/rubric/journ...
Screenshot der ersten halben Seite des im Post verlinkten Print-Artikels mit Überschrift "Künstliche Cytoskelette aus RNA-Origami" sowie Vorspann und einigen Textzeilen. Zentral das Foto einer Konfokalmikroskopie von Cytoskelett-ähnlichen RNA-Origami-Nanoröhrchen.
kgoepfrich.bsky.social
#SCNAC2025 we are looking forward to hear about your thoughts on our RNA design tool #PyFuRNAce pyfurnace.streamlit.app developed by @monari-luca.bsky.social
pyFuRNAce
Alt Text
pyfurnace.streamlit.app
kgoepfrich.bsky.social
Good, well educated PhD student
kgoepfrich.bsky.social
I watched too many traction force microscopy talks - maybe that community recognizes the characteristic move!
kgoepfrich.bsky.social
I am excited to be talking to @neildegrassetyson.com soon! What should I tell him from his German fan community?
kgoepfrich.bsky.social
Thank you! Lots of new synbio funded in Germany with Biosystem Design in Munich, Microbes for Climate in Marburg and SynthImmune in Heidelberg, I think that's a win for the field as a whole - following Evolve in the Netherlands!
Reposted by Kerstin Göpfrich
syncelleu.bsky.social
News on clusters of excellence in Germany. The DFG has announced the continuation of 45 projects already funded and 25 new clusters

Congrats to the SynCellEU community members - Kerstin Gopfrich, Tobias Erb and more - whose applications have been successful and who will receive funding for 7 years
kgoepfrich.bsky.social
#SynthImmune is getting real! Super excited that our excellence cluster got funded today @dfg.de Thanks to everyone involved @uniheidelberg.bsky.social, especially @dimichelelab1.bsky.social and Oliver Fackler!
kgoepfrich.bsky.social
A nice thread on our recent paper in Nature Nanotechnology by the first author and PhD student from the group @tranmai.bsky.social 👇
tranmai.bsky.social
🧬 Thrilled to share that our work is featured on the cover of @natnano.nature.com (May issue)!
We genetically encoded RNA origami that self-assembles into cytoskeletal nanotubes inside synthetic cells.
📄 Paper: www.nature.com/articles/s41...
🧵👇
kgoepfrich.bsky.social
#SynthImmune is getting real! Super excited that our excellence cluster got funded today @dfg.de Thanks to everyone involved @uniheidelberg.bsky.social, especially @dimichelelab1.bsky.social and Oliver Fackler!
Reposted by Kerstin Göpfrich
nheinzelmann.bsky.social
New technology challenges communication inside and outside the classroom, as my recent paper explains. Fingers crossed we get to explore this question soon for emerging synthetic biotechnology within SynthImmune
www.tandfonline.com/doi/epdf/10....
Moral education and the psychology of moral discourse: Journal of Moral Education: Vol 0, No 0 - Get Access
www.tandfonline.com
Reposted by Kerstin Göpfrich
sfb1638.bsky.social
Our PIs Kerstin (@kgoepfrich.bsky.social) and Michael (@meineckelab.bsky.social) joined Wolfgang Heim to talk about scientific CVs, engaging in public outreach and the wonders of cellular membrane remodelling. Don’t miss the SFB1638 edition of Überlebensstrategien — now streaming!
SFB 1638 Umbau von zellulären Membranen – wie veränderte Form Funktion schafft
YouTube video by UniHeidelberg
www.youtube.com
kgoepfrich.bsky.social
On the show, we also talk about the potential of bottom up synthetic biology approaches for immunology - the aim of our excellence cluster SynthImmune (in German). We hope to get funded!
kgoepfrich.bsky.social
Awesome, congrats! Looking forward to take this further together, hopefully within our excellence cluster SynthImmune - fingers crossed for 22nd May!
wkhuber.bsky.social
How to do differential expression with scRNAseq data? State of the art is "pseudo-bulk" analysis with RNA-seq methods like edgeR or DESeq2, where "cell type" is encoded as discrete categories. Biologically, discrete categories are not always the most appropriate concept.(1/3)
doi.org/10.1038/s415...
Analysis of multi-condition single-cell data with latent embedding multivariate regression - Nature Genetics
Latent embedding multivariate regression models multi-condition single-cell RNA-seq using a continuous latent space, enabling data integration, per-cell gene expression prediction and clustering-free ...
doi.org
Reposted by Kerstin Göpfrich
wkhuber.bsky.social
The SynthImmune project by Heidelberg University& partner institutes advances a "bottom-up" synthetic biology approach to immunotherapies.
Hoping they do well in the German government's Excellence Strategy—anticipating the announcement on 22 May.

Perspective article: www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Bottom-up synthetic immunology - Nature Nanotechnology
This Perspective highlights bottom-up molecular engineering and modular nanobiotechnological approaches for developing effective immunotherapeutics and their potential in personalized medicine.
www.nature.com
Reposted by Kerstin Göpfrich
floppleton.bsky.social
Boosting to the 🧬Molecular Programming🧬 feed! Check out our new design tool at PyFuRNAce.de! I particularly like the “make simple origami” button, which makes it so easy to get a base structure which you can functionalize!