Harris Wang

1/ Excited to share our new paper in Science @science.org: “Toward life with a 19-amino acid alphabet through generative artificial intelligence design.” A great collab w/ Sergey's group @sokrypton.org at MIT @columbiasysbio.bsky.social science.org/doi/10.1126/... 🦠🧬🛠️🖥️💥

10/ This is an important milestone for us, but also just the start. Building a complete 19 amino acid organism remains a major goal, w/ many open questions about genome-wide recoding, fitness, evolution, and the design rules of modern and early life. Lots of fun work ahead!

1/ Excited to share our new paper in Science @science.org: “Toward life with a 19-amino acid alphabet through generative artificial intelligence design.” A great collab w/ Sergey's group @sokrypton.org at MIT @columbiasysbio.bsky.social science.org/doi/10.1126/... 🦠🧬🛠️🖥️💥

8/ Through a lot of hard work and troubleshooting by the team, we were able to individually recode all 50+ ribosomal subunits to replace all 382 isoleucine residues. Some functional AI designs were pretty wild, like this RpSJ where an entire stretch was replaced.🤯

1/ Excited to share our new paper in Science @science.org: “Toward life with a 19-amino acid alphabet through generative artificial intelligence design.” A great collab w/ Sergey's group @sokrypton.org at MIT @columbiasysbio.bsky.social science.org/doi/10.1126/... 🦠🧬🛠️🖥️💥

6/ We explored different protein language models (ESM, MSATr) and structure-based sequence models (MPNN, AlphaFold Design) to computationally generate isoleucine-less proteins!

1/ Excited to share our new paper in Science @science.org: “Toward life with a 19-amino acid alphabet through generative artificial intelligence design.” A great collab w/ Sergey's group @sokrypton.org at MIT @columbiasysbio.bsky.social science.org/doi/10.1126/... 🦠🧬🛠️🖥️💥

4/ Isoleucine is also more costly than Valine or Leucine (L) to produce -- an energetic saving for the cell if we can get rid of isoleucine entirely! ⛽️ 🫰

1/ Excited to share our new paper in Science @science.org: “Toward life with a 19-amino acid alphabet through generative artificial intelligence design.” A great collab w/ Sergey's group @sokrypton.org at MIT @columbiasysbio.bsky.social science.org/doi/10.1126/... 🦠🧬🛠️🖥️💥

2/ This work asks a simple but fundamental question: ❓Can life be built with fewer than the 20 standard amino acids used by all organisms on Earth 🌎 today? Achieving this would rewrite the molecular building blocks of life itself.

Introducing Foli-seq in @natbiotech.nature.com today. Foli-seq can be used to measure gut-derived RNA from fecal matter (signals of immune, secretory & epithelial cells). We used this to map gut inflammation, drug response, and host-microbe interactions. 💩🧬💊🦠 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

In 💩 samples from patients with Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) from the @crohnscolitisfdn.bsky.social, we can distinguish different patient cohorts with increase clinical severity of disease and stratifying biomarkers that associated with immune pathway involvement.

Introducing Foli-seq in @natbiotech.nature.com today. Foli-seq can be used to measure gut-derived RNA from fecal matter (signals of immune, secretory & epithelial cells). We used this to map gut inflammation, drug response, and host-microbe interactions. 💩🧬💊🦠 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Very excited to share our latest work in Science on metagenomic editing (MetaEdit) of the gut microbiome in vivo & directly modifying unculturable immune-modulatory SFB bug in the small intestine. 🦠🧬🛠️ www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

We are hiring PhD & Postdocs in this space so please reach out if interested. Also check out the Gordon Research Conference on Microbiome Editing in Jan 11-16, 2026. www.grc.org/microbiome-e...

Very excited to share our latest work in Science on metagenomic editing (MetaEdit) of the gut microbiome in vivo & directly modifying unculturable immune-modulatory SFB bug in the small intestine. 🦠🧬🛠️ www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Led by the stellar Diego Gelsinger @drgel.bsky.social working with many contributors through a wonderful long-term collab w/ Sam Sternberg & Ivo Ivanov labs! 🤝 @columbiauniversity.bsky.social @columbiasysbio.bsky.social

💡💥Here’s a modest proposal I’ve been pondering for a while on how to change the PEER REVIEW process and start more community-driven SCIENCE FUNDING. Lots of feedback/discussion welcomed! Other variants of the idea might exist already—not claiming originality. (a long 🧵) (1/9)

I recognize that this idea is still underdeveloped but wanted to start share it here. Would love to hear feedback and find people willing to help do something like this! Thanks for reading! (9/9)

💡💥Here’s a modest proposal I’ve been pondering for a while on how to change the PEER REVIEW process and start more community-driven SCIENCE FUNDING. Lots of feedback/discussion welcomed! Other variants of the idea might exist already—not claiming originality. (a long 🧵) (1/9)

Importantly you can DONATE these credits to other labs or entities. What if there’s a cool project from another lab that I want to support? I can donate my science credits to them so it can advance the science. You basically converted ↔️ PR time/effort into communal goods for sharing w/ others. (7/9)

💡💥Here’s a modest proposal I’ve been pondering for a while on how to change the PEER REVIEW process and start more community-driven SCIENCE FUNDING. Lots of feedback/discussion welcomed! Other variants of the idea might exist already—not claiming originality. (a long 🧵) (1/9)

The NEED: a fair, equitable, and transparent framework to compensate referee’s time and effort in peer review 👍. This could help make PR higher quality, attract better reviews and more motivated reviewers (maybe?) (5/9)

💡💥Here’s a modest proposal I’ve been pondering for a while on how to change the PEER REVIEW process and start more community-driven SCIENCE FUNDING. Lots of feedback/discussion welcomed! Other variants of the idea might exist already—not claiming originality. (a long 🧵) (1/9)

But most referees 🧑‍💻 agree to review a paper out of sense of duty, perceived obligation to the journal/editor, the topic area, the specific paper, or even the authors (or combo of the above). Some people do more PR than others. Most people I know don’t review 3x the # of papers they publish/yr. (3/9)

💡💥Here’s a modest proposal I’ve been pondering for a while on how to change the PEER REVIEW process and start more community-driven SCIENCE FUNDING. Lots of feedback/discussion welcomed! Other variants of the idea might exist already—not claiming originality. (a long 🧵) (1/9)

New paper from the lab out in Cell Systems. “Spatiotemporal dynamics during niche remodeling by super-colonizing microbiota in the mammalian gut” www.cell.com/cell-systems...

We found a super colonizing mouse microbiome that dominantly engrafts in other mice gut. Detailed characterizations revealed that spatially organized strains engraft together more successfully and non-spatially coupled strains are more easily displaced!