Synthetic Biology

CF2H: a Cell-Free Two-Hybrid platform for rapid protein binder screening

1. Julien Capin
2. Pauline Mayonove
3. Angelique DeVisch
4. Amon Becher
5. Giang Ngo
6. Alexis P Courbet
7. Robert J Ragotte
8. Martin Cohen-Gonsaud
9. Julien Espeut
10. Jerome Bonnet

Reviewed by Arcadia Science

The nanos ^d integral gene drive enables population modification of the malaria vector Anopheles gambiae

1. Pei-Shi Yen
2. Sebald ANR Verkuijl
3. Paolo Capriotti
4. Giuseppe Del Corsano
5. Astrid Hoermann
6. Maria Grazia Inghilterra
7. Irati Aramburu-Gonzalez
8. Moeez A Khan
9. Dina Vlachou
10. George K Christophides
11. Nikolai Windbichler

Reviewed by Review Commons

An in vitro human vessel model to study Neisseria meningitidis colonization and vascular damages

1. Léa Pinon
2. Mélanie Chabaud
3. Pierre Nivoit
4. Jérôme Wong-Ng
5. Tri Tho Nguyen
6. Vanessa Paul
7. Charlotte Bouquerel
8. Sylvie Goussard
9. Pauline Smilovici
10. Emmanuel Frachon
11. Dorian Obino
12. Samy Gobaa
13. Guillaume Duménil

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  In this important study, the authors develop a microfluidic "Vessel-on-Chip" model to study Neisseria meningitidis interactions in an in vitro vascular system. Compelling evidence demonstrates that endothelial cell-lined channels can be colonized by N. meningitidis, triggering neutrophil recruitment with advantages over complex surgical xenograft models. This system offers potential for follow-on studies of N. meningitidis pathogenesis, though it lacks the cellular complexity of true vasculature including smooth muscle cells and pericytes.

  [Editors' note: this paper was reviewed by Review Commons.]

Reviewed by eLife, Review Commons

APEX: Automated Protein EXpression in Escherichia coli

1. Martyna Kasprzyk
2. Michael A. Herrera
3. Giovanni Stracquadanio

Reviewed by Arcadia Science

OT-Mation: an open-source code for parsing CSV files into python scripts for control of OT-2 liquid handling robotics

1. Alex Laverick
2. Katherine Convey
3. Catherine Harrison
4. Jenny Tomlinson
5. Jem Stach
6. Thomas P. Howard

Reviewed by Arcadia Science

Life as a Function: Why Transformer Architectures Struggle to Gain Genome-Level Foundational Capabilities

1. Hassan Hassan
2. Kyle Puhger
3. Ali Saadat
4. Johannes Mayer
5. Maximilian Sprang

Reviewed by Arcadia Science

Machine learning-assisted enzyme engineering through ultra-high throughput sorting and large-scale sequence-function data generation

1. Jingyun Zhang
2. Sangeetha Shanmugam
3. Jing Wui Yeoh
4. Dan Zheng
5. Jan Ron Goh
6. Zhangyuan Lin
7. Chueh Loo Poh

Reviewed by Arcadia Science

Systematic comparison of Generative AI-Protein Models reveals fundamental differences between structural and sequence-based approaches.

1. Alexander J Barnett
2. Rajendra KC
3. Pratikshya Pandey
4. Pamodha Somasiri
5. Kirsten A Fairfax
6. Alex W Hewitt

Reviewed by Arcadia Science

High-resolution deep mutational scanning of the melanocortin-4 receptor enables target characterization for drug discovery

1. Conor J Howard
2. Nathan S Abell
3. Beatriz A Osuna
4. Eric M Jones
5. Leon Y Chan
6. Henry Chan
7. Dean R Artis
8. Jonathan B Asfaha
9. Joshua S Bloom
10. Aaron R Cooper
11. Andrew Liao
12. Eden Mahdavi
13. Nabil Mohammed
14. Alan L Su
15. Giselle A Uribe
16. Sriram Kosuri
17. Diane E Dickel
18. Nathan B Lubock

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  The authors use deep mutational scanning to assess the effect of ~6,600 protein-coding variants in MC4R, a G protein coupled receptor associated with obesity. They develop new, more precise approaches to deep mutational scanning, enabling them to probe molecular phenotypes directly relevant to the development of drugs that target this receptor. In this important work, the authors provide compelling evidence that variants impact signaling through MC4R in different ways, that some defective variants are amenable to a corrector drug and that deep mutational scanning data could guide compound optimization.

Reviewed by eLife

Synthetic gene circuits that selectively target RAS-driven cancers

1. Gabriel Senn
2. Leon Nissen
3. Yaakov Benenson

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This important study demonstrates the potential of synthetic gene circuits to detect and target aberrant RAS activity in cancer cell lines. The circuit design is novel and the evidence supporting the claims is convincing. As a proof-of-concept, this will be of broad interest. Testing the system with other KRAS mutations and clinically relevant output proteins, as well as gaining a better understanding of the underlying molecular mechanism, will both strengthen the study and help translate the technology toward clinical applications in cancer therapeutics.

Reviewed by eLife