39 papers
Synthetic biology is like engineering for life, where scientists design and build new biological parts or rewire existing ones to solve real-world problems. Instead of just studying how nature works, this field asks what we can create, from bacteria that produce biofuels to smart materials that heal themselves. It sits at the exciting intersection of biology, engineering, and computer science, turning the code of life into something we can read, edit, and program.
At Gist.Science, we bring you the very latest discoveries in this rapidly evolving space directly from bioRxiv. We process every new preprint in this category as soon as it appears, offering both plain-language explanations for the curious mind and detailed technical summaries for researchers. This ensures you never miss a breakthrough, regardless of your background or how deep you want to dive into the science.
Below are the newest preprints in synthetic biology, carefully curated and summarized just for you.
This study demonstrates that chemically functionalized alpha-hemolysin nanopores can be engineered to provide tunable, selective molecular transport across synthetic cell membranes through a scalable, one-pot modification strategy validated by high-throughput assays, electrophysiology, and molecular simulations.
This paper presents a versatile, chemically inducible platform using engineered streptavidin biomolecular condensates to rapidly sequester and release endogenously tagged proteins in mammalian cells, enabling precise temporal control of diverse protein functions without the artifacts associated with protein overexpression.
This study enhances the genetic toolkit for *Campylobacter jejuni* by sequencing two clinical isolates to identify cryptic plasmids and by engineering a mobilizable plasmid system that enables efficient conjugation from *E. coli* to *C. jejuni*.
Researchers engineered the oleaginous green alga *Auxenochlorella* to biosynthesize human milk fat substitutes enriched with structured medium- and long-chain triacylglycerols, linoleate, and sn-2 palmitate, thereby replicating the critical structural and compositional features of human milk fat for infant nutrition.
By screening one million synthetic random proteins with a high-throughput FRET biosensor and machine learning, the study reveals that biology-like, compact protein folds are surprisingly accessible and learnable from random sequence space, challenging the notion that functional structures are rare singularities.
This paper presents a deep learning framework combining RFdiffusion for structure generation and AlphaFold3 for off-target screening, which successfully designed sequence-specific DNA-binding proteins with a ~100-fold improvement in success rates over previous methods.
This study identifies and functionally validates a novel 7SK RNA polymerase III promoter in the Mediterranean fruit fly (*Ceratitis capitata*), providing a critical new tool for multiplexed CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing and enhanced genetic control strategies against this agricultural pest.
This study reports the discovery of orthogonal aminoacyl-tRNA synthetases capable of incorporating eleven diverse non-canonical monomers into proteins and macrocycles, and demonstrates that evolving orthogonal tRNAs can overcome severe sequence-context dependencies to achieve high-efficiency incorporation across nearly all genetic contexts.
The paper introduces ADAR-Sense, a user-customizable, open-access web tool that automates the design of species-agnostic ADAR-based RNA sensors (sesRNAs) to facilitate precise, cell-targeted biotechnological interventions across diverse research and translational applications.
This study identifies a novel class of arylamine N-acetyltransferases that catalyze a convergent amidative condensation between polyketide chains, establishing a new paradigm for combinatorial biosynthesis of complex amide-linked polyketides and enabling the generation of diverse non-natural therapeutics.