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Category: bioengineering

We are already gene editing humans

You just haven’t noticed.

George Church, Harvard geneticist and Human Genome Project pioneer, explains why CRISPR wasn’t the real breakthrough, how multiplex gene editing unlocked organ transplants and de-extinction, and why aging will likely require rewriting many genes at once.

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0:00 — Gene Editing Mammals → Humans
8:36 — Germline vs Somatic
14:56 — Modified Humans Are Already Here
18:50 — Enhancing Healthy Humans
25:00 — Aging Therapies vs Cognitive Enhancement
30:20 — Embryo Selection
38:10 — Is US Losing To UAE?
42:33 — Biotech Failures
49:31 — Next Dire Wolf Moment
54:21 — AI x Science
1:02:07 — Synthetizing Entire Genomes.

The Accelerate Bio Podcast explores the future of humanity in the age of Artificial Intelligence. Subscribe for deep-dive conversations with founders, scientists, and investors shaping AI, biotechnology, and human progress.

This episode discusses George Church, gene editing, CRISPR, human enhancement, longevity, aging, embryo selection, synthetic biology, multiplex editing, AI biotech.

Continue reading “We are already gene editing humans” | >

The scientist using AI to hunt for antibiotics just about everywhere

When he was just a teenager trying to decide what to do with his life, César de la Fuente compiled a list of the world’s biggest problems. He ranked them inversely by how much money governments were spending to solve them. Antimicrobial resistance topped the list.

Twenty years on, the problem has not gone away. If anything, it’s gotten worse. Infections caused by bacteria, fungi, and viruses that have evolved ways to evade treatments are now associated with more than 4 million deaths per year, and a recent analysis, published in the Lancet, predicts that number could surge past 8 million by 2050. In a July 2025 essay in Physical Review Letters, de la Fuente, now a bioengineer and computational biologist, and synthetic biologist James Collins warned of a looming “postantibiotic” era in which infections from drug-resistant strains of common bacteria like Escherichia coli or Staphylococcus aureus, which can often still be treated by our current arsenal of medications, become fatal. “The antibiotic discovery pipeline remains perilously thin,” they wrote, “impeded by high development costs, lengthy timelines, and low returns on investment.”

Reprogrammed SimCells for antimicrobial therapy

SimCells are a very exciting way of delivering toxins in a targeted fashion to antibiotic resistant bacteria. It reminds me of my past synthetic biology research in an adjacent area. Love this approach!

In addition to the T6SS system, close contact between attacker and prey cells also allows local delivery of high concentrations of antimicrobial compounds around the targeted cells. To exploit this, we introduced a constitutively expressed salicylate hydroxylase (NahG) into our system (SI Appendix, Fig. S8 A), which catalyzes the conversion of acetylsalicylic acid (aspirin) into catechol (70, 71) (Fig. 4 A). Catechol has a broad-spectrum antimicrobial activity (67 – 69) by generating hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) through auto-oxidation processes (SI Appendix, Fig. S7 A –C), during which catechol polymerizes to form cross-linked polymers without external catalysts (80 – 83) (Fig. 4 A). When 800 μM aspirin 84)] was added to the parental cell and SimCell cultures, the filtered supernatants from overnight NahG+ cultures exhibited a dark-brown color (SI Appendix, Fig. S8 B), which is associated with the oxidation products of catechol. The collected supernatants showed a significant inhibitory effect on bacterial cell growth (SI Appendix, Fig. S8 B and C). These results indicate the generation, permeability, and extracellular antimicrobial activity of SimCell-produced catechol and associated production of H2O2.

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Optogenetics, Biohybrid Implants And The Future Of Brain-Computer Interfaces | Dr. Alan Mardinly

Optogenetics, Biohybrid Implants And The Future Of Brain-Computer Interfaces — Dr. Alan Mardinly Ph.D. — CSO & Co-Founder, Science

What if we could restore vision, communicate directly with the brain, and even extend human life—not with machines alone, but with living, engineered biology?

Dr. Alan Mardinly, Ph.D. is the Chief Scientific Officer and Co-Founder of Science Corp. (https://science.xyz/), a neurotechnology company developing next-generation brain interfaces and biohybrid neural implants aimed at restoring human function.

Dr. Mardinly leads the company’s biohybrid program, focused on combining genetically engineered cells with advanced optical hardware to create optogenetic therapies for vision restoration and new types of brain-machine interfaces.

Dr. Mardinly has spent more than 15 years working at the intersection of neuroscience, genetics, and neural engineering.

Continue reading “Optogenetics, Biohybrid Implants And The Future Of Brain-Computer Interfaces | Dr. Alan Mardinly” | >

What this AI epitope library means for vaccines, immunotherapy and biosensors

A new tool makes it possible to screen millions of tiny protein fragments and select those that can be recognized by the immune system. The CIC biomaGUNE Center for Cooperative Research in Biomaterials has developed epiGPTope, a system that uses machine learning to generate and classify epitopes, in collaboration with the company Multiverse Computing.

The immune system is triggered by the presence of viruses or bacteria. When the antibodies produced recognize the epitopes, a small part of these viruses or bacteria, they launch an attack strategy. These epitopes are small fragments of protein recognized by antibodies or by immune cell receptors. So discovering new epitope sequences that target specific antibodies is essential for the development of diagnostic tools, immunotherapies and vaccines.

CIC biomaGUNE’s Biomolecular Nanotechnology laboratory, led by the Ikerbasque Research Professor Aitziber L. Cortajarena, is creating a library or database of hundreds of thousands of synthetic epitopes using this AI-based technique. The work is published in the journal ACS Synthetic Biology.

Advancing synthetic cells: A more flexible system to replicate cellular functions

Creating artificial systems that mimic the functioning of cells is one of the goals of what is known as synthetic biology. These models, known as synthetic or biomimetic cells, allow some of the basic processes of life to be reproduced in the laboratory to better understand how natural cells work and develop new technologies. In this context, a study involving a team of researchers from the Center for Research in Biological Chemistry and Molecular Materials (CiQUS) of the University of Santiago (USC) proposes a more flexible chemical strategy to create this type of system.

The objective, explain the researchers, is to design structures that mimic certain cellular functions and that can be used as small chemical reactors. The study is published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

“The idea is to try to replicate cellular functions at the level of encapsulation of communication enzymes,” explains researcher Lucas García, referring to artificial systems capable of recreating processes that in real cells allow, for example, different reactions to take place within the same compartment.

New genetic toolkit enables genome-wide analysis

Researchers at Cornell University have developed a powerful new genetic toolkit that allows scientists to study how genes function at the level of individual cells, an advance that could accelerate discoveries in development, neuroscience and disease.

The system builds on MAGIC (Mosaic Analysis by gRNA-Induced Crossing-over), a method originally created by the labs of Chun Han, associate professor in the Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (CALS) and the Weill Institute for Cell and Molecular Biology. MAGIC uses CRISPR gene editing to generate individual mutant cells within otherwise normal tissue, enabling precise comparisons within a living organism.

In the new study, graduate researcher Yifan Shen expanded the approach into a genome-wide toolkit for Drosophila melanogaster, creating resources that work across all chromosomes and allow researchers to study genes that were previously difficult, or impossible, to analyze at single-cell resolution.

Reconstructing tumor tissues in 3D: From organoids to bioengineered niches

Tumor tissue engineering has opened new avenues for cancer research. With an emphasis on gastrointestinal malignancies, we summarize capabilities and limitations of patient-derived and engineered organoid models. We then discuss how innovations in biomaterial design, biofabrication, microfluidics, benchmarking, and AI converge to better emulate tumor tissues and advance translational modeling.

Seed banks may complicate gene drives aimed at controlling weeds

Gene drives—a genetic engineering approach that quickly spreads specific genetic changes throughout a population, whether to kill it off or add a new trait—may have potential for controlling weeds. But so far, gene drives have primarily been studied in mosquitoes, and have yet to be deployed in the real world.

In a first-of-its-kind study, researchers modeled how a gene drive would proceed in plants. Their simulations suggest that a gene drive’s success may hinge on seed banks—underground reservoirs of seeds that can germinate years or even decades later. Without proper consideration, they found, these stored seeds can slow down or even doom the gene drive, because they continually reintroduce plants without the gene drive into the population.

Modeling studies like this one can help scientists design successful gene drives in plants and discover and mitigate potential problems before deployment in the wild, the researchers said.

Impacts from meteors may have helped start life on Earth by creating hydrothermal vents

Meteor impacts may have helped spark life on Earth, creating hot, chemical-rich environments where the first living cells could take shape, according to research integrated by a recent Rutgers University graduate. Shea Cinquemani, who earned her bachelor’s degree from the School of Environmental and Biological Sciences in May 2025, has published a paper based on research she started during the spring of her senior year.

“No one knows, from a scientific perspective, how life could have been formed from an early Earth that had no life,” said Shea Cinquemani, who earned her bachelor’s degree in marine biology and fisheries management from the Rutgers School of Environmental and Biological Sciences in May 2025. “How does something come from nothing?”

Cinquemani is the lead author of a review, published in the Journal of Marine Science and Engineering, examining where life may have first formed on Earth. The paper focuses on hydrothermal vents, places where hot, mineral-rich water flows through rock and emerges into surrounding water, creating the chemical conditions and energy gradients needed for complex reactions.

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