Aditya Kunjapur

I had an amazing time yesterday visiting @vdlorenzo.bsky.social and hearing about the many exciting projects underway in his lab. Our evening stroll through the heart of Madrid and dinner of tapas made for an unforgettable experience

It's an honor to visit @vdlorenzo.bsky.social and colleagues at El Centro Nacional de Biotecnología in beautiful Madrid, España. Me alegra estar aquí

Robust cellular transformations of PET deconstruction products by import of glycol esters Efforts to transform polyethylene terephthalate (PET) deconstruction products using live cells have been limited by terephthalic acid (TPA) uptake. Here, we used an intracellular carboxylate reduction...

Interested in using microbes to degrade plastics?

We made the discovery that two breakdown products of PET, MHET and BHET, are readily taken up by E. coli cells

Our latest preprint exploits this surprise to realize improvements in cell-based upcycling
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

My students have become very good at cloning. Now I can be in two continents at once this fall

Excited to announce our new methods paper in Methods in Enzymology!

We share our pipeline for building high-diversity DNA libraries & exploring protein stability in E. coli.

Free access until Sept 4: authors.elsevier.com/a/1lRkeHRzCX...
Updated, companion preprint: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Exciting to see this collaborative work about modeling soil microbiomes from the Kuehn, Mani, and Tikhonov labs published today

Also delighted to have lead author Kiseok Lee start his postdoc in our lab

Check out the paper below!

www.biotrans2025.com/programme

Looking forward to the amazing program & making new connections at the 17th International Symposium on Biocatalysis and Biotransformations (Biotrans 2025) starting today in Basel

I'm honored to present our work on Tuesday at 15:15 in the non-canonical amino acids session

#biocatalysis

Wrapping up a fantastic #ME16 #Copenhagen — a success by all measures! Honored to co-chair the meeting w/I. Borodina, M. Chang, A. Mirończuk, C. Vickers, V. Šťovíček, Y. Zhou, M. Köpke & M. Herrgård & to work w/an outstanding team of colleagues, engaging communities & topics all around the world

Congrats on completing your PhD @kiseokmicro.bsky.social!
And welcome to our lab - very excited to work with you

I'm enjoying the start of the International Metabolic Engineering 16 #ME16 meeting in Copenhagen this week

Thanks to the organizers for providing a chance to share our work
Thanks to my students for taking these pics

Looking forward to meeting other attendees

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...

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 🧬🧪🌾

It is a real honor and delight to be hosted by @pabnik.bsky.social at DTU Biosustain!

Looking forward to meeting folks & sharing info/ideas

Trump Has Cut Science Funding to Its Lowest Level in Decades The lag in funding extends far beyond D.E.I. initiatives, affecting almost every area of science: chemistry, computing, engineering, materials and more.

Trump Has Cut Science Funding to Its Lowest Level in Decades www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

^ Useful info in this article about the level of funding of various NSF directorates/programs relative to the 10Y avg by this time of year

I don't take tenure for granted anymore as universities are under unprecedented attack

I'm also looking forward to sabbatical. I'll start as an Otto Mønsted Visiting Professor at Denmark Technical University next week and look forward to connecting more with my European colleagues
(3/3)

We have a vibrant and supportive culture in the Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering department @udelaware.bsky.social. Thanks to the faculty and staff who create the environment to succeed

I've benefited from great mentors at all stages & especially Wilfred Chen

But most of all, the students (2/3)

With the state of US scientific funding it seems like an inappropriate time to celebrate anything

But in the last week thanks to years of dedication from my students we were recognized through the Roberta Colman and Gerard Mangone awards, & tenure. Thank you to those who made it possible (1/3)

If you're curious how the first 5 amino acids of newly generated protein N-termini can affect protein stability in E. coli, then check out our latest preprint

We find new patterns of exceptions to the usual N-end rule

Kudos to Sunny Sen & co-authors

#synbio #protein_degradation

Combinatorial mutagenesis of N-terminal sequences reveals unexpected and expanded stability determinants of the Escherichia coli N-degron pathway Although it is known that penultimate N-terminal residues can influence protein stability by the N-degron pathway, there has not been a comprehensive effort to document nor predict these effects for n...

Protein degradation in E. coli via N-terminal degradation signals (degrons) defined by the @kunjapur.bsky.social lab. @ispt-proteinterm.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Engineered orthogonal and obligate bacterial commensalism mediated by a non-standard amino acid - Nature Microbiology A genetically engineered microbial symbiosis based on synthetic auxotrophy is created, with potential implications as a biocontainment strategy.

🚨OUT NOW

Engineered orthogonal and obligate bacterial commensalism mediated by a non-standard amino acid by @kunjapur.bsky.social et al.

#MicroSky 🦠🔧

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

Thank you, Abhishek! Very glad you liked it

Thanks, Pat!!
Hope you've been doing well.

All three of the contexts you mentioned are under investigation by some combination of us, us and collaborators, or folks we have shared synthetic auxotrophs with

A more accurate statement than my original post:
It seems there may be few known pairs of microbial species, outside of obligate intracellular symbionts/parasites, where one relies exclusively on another.

Using a blend of synthetic and chemical biology, we designed such an interaction

Ah, thanks for sharing this example. "Free living" may be a bit of a misnomer, but you correctly interpreted that I wanted to exclude the category of obligate intracellular symbionts/parasites

This work represents a first step towards developing safeguards that could contain and sustain engineered microbes in a specific environment

That could be useful for addressing myriad challenges in planetary health

Work led by Amanda Forti, who is tenacious, meticulous, & entering the job market

Engineered orthogonal and obligate bacterial commensalism mediated by a non-standard amino acid Nature Microbiology - A genetically engineered microbial symbiosis based on synthetic auxotrophy is created, with potential implications as a biocontainment strategy.

It seems there are no free-living organisms known to rely exclusively on one other organism for their survival

Until perhaps now

Check out our latest publication in @natmicrobiol.nature.com to see how we designed an exclusive microbial reliance using GCE

rdcu.be/ekepI
1/2

Thanks, Tae Seok!

This move could singlehandedly dismantle American leadership in science and technology innovation.

It goes into effect on Monday. How will universities adjust their budgets to support critical ongoing research?

Engineering a genomically recoded organism with one stop codon - Nature Ochre, a strain of Escherichia coli engineered to have a single stop codon, enables reassignment of four codons for non-degenerate functions, such as incorporation of non-standard amino acids into pro...

See here for an exciting development in genome engineering for genetic code expansion and for understanding the pliability of components involved in protein translational termination - from the Isaacs Lab
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Overview of the engineered biosynthesis and incorporation platform. A single strain was designed to express two to four enzymes for the biosynthesis of phenylalanine derivates from supplemented acid or aldehyde precursors. The biosynthesized nsAA was then incorporated into a target protein using amber stop codon suppression and an orthogonal translation system. Source: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.12.17.628963v1.full

Biological materials are built with a limited number of building blocks based on polysaccharides, proteins, and minerals. A diversity of structures leads to a diversity of functions in tooth, bone, artery wall, tendon, spider web, beak, feather, wool, fingernail, tree, cotton, beetle carapace, lobster shell, snail shell, mussel shell, and the skeleton of the glass sponge (clockwise from top). Primary source: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aat8297

2025-01-12 Issue of #engineeredlivingmaterials feed
biomed.news/bims-enlima/...
h/t @biomednews.bsky.social

includes @kunjapur.bsky.social lab's preprint @biorxivpreprint.bsky.social on combined biosynthesis and site-specific incorporation of phenylalanine derivatives in engineered bacteria