Jessica Sacher, PhD
@JessicaSacher
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Scientist @Stanford | Cofounder @PhageDirectory | Host of Podovirus 🎙🇨🇦
San Francisco, CA
Joined April 2011
Closing the AI-to-lab loop is hard, especially if you want to test your WHOLE GENOME generator.. Viruses are the only genomes cheap enough to print en mass, but raise biosafety flags So @ArcInstitute chose phages! We went deep w/ @samuelhking & @driscoll_cl on how they did it:
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If you live in San Francisco and want to make sure we keep R&D and laboratories legal in the city and in the Mission (uh wish I was joking but this is serious) You need to email your supervisor today 👇
Some people asked me for text. You probably don’t want to use my text, because I am an unhinged person, but if you’re curious, here it is: “Supervisor Mandelman, I am a resident and homeowner in D8 (Noe Valley) and an investor in early stage deep tech here in San Francisco,
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Very concerning — SF residents, please don’t let local gov ban biotech startups
My cofounder (@BronteKolar) and I run a small science + AI + robotics lab right on the Mission / SOMA border. We’re technically just outside the area this affects (for now), but this is very worrying for us and a lot of our friends. These are people trying to build amazing
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Thank you for the highlight @NikoMcCarty - I am looking forward to chatting this week. Spoiler alert: I’ll be working to convince you this is a fundamental change in how we engage with and control biological systems, but really micro- and nanoscale systems! That’s what we do
There's a new DARPA program on "Generative Optogenetics." The goal is to write DNA or RNA directly in cells using flashes of light, rather than building it in tubes, transforming/growing cells, and so on. If it works, it could speed up molecular biology experiments. Cloning
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The models already know how to make folds; they do not yet know how folds fail. Larger models isn't the solution, but better physics-aware models which understands topology, energy landscapes etc. I believe Molecular Dynamics will supply some of these missing constraints, if
AI-designed proteins that survive 150 °C and nanonewton forces Proteins are usually fragile machines. Heat them, pull on them, or send them through a high-temperature sterilization step (like those used in hospitals), and most will unfold and aggregate, losing their function.
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NSF is launching one of the most ambitious experiments in federal science funding in 75 years. The program is called Tech Labs, and the goal is to invest ~$1 billion to seed new institutions of science and technology for the 21st century. Instead of funding projects, the NSF
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A cool project I worked on a few years ago with @erika_alden_d! A very ambitious idea too and, afak, the biggest challenges are the same as they were a few years ago: 1. Spectral crosstalk! Most optogenetic proteins are spectrally (and spectacularly) promiscuous. In an ideal
There's a new DARPA program on "Generative Optogenetics." The goal is to write DNA or RNA directly in cells using flashes of light, rather than building it in tubes, transforming/growing cells, and so on. If it works, it could speed up molecular biology experiments. Cloning
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We don't know what most microbial genes do. Can genomic language models help? there's only one way to find out! this is a 1 hour and 42 minute interview with an MIT professor (the famous @Micro_Yunha) chatting about these questions, her work in solving them at @tatta_bio, and
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During my PhD I was convinced for maybe ~2 days that I had discovered reverse genes, but it turned out to be just one completely screwed up genome assembly on NCBI.
This new preprint argues that protein translation is possible in the 3' to 5' direction. Exceptions in biology are always exciting! But let me explain why I think this is false. Protein translation happens when a strand of mRNA ratchets through a ribosome. The ribosome reads
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Here’s the interview with Dave Ricks — I know the tech ppl are listening/sharing it, but BIOLOGISTS/biotech ppl (especially if you’re a bit depressed about our industry), this is the single podcast I’d recommend right now: https://t.co/xwKSe9C0DZ
open.spotify.com
Cheeky Pint · Episode
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“Dave Ricks, CEO of Lilly, has taken the tech world by storm w/ his appearance on the Collison’s Cheeky Pint podcast, where he came off as personable, knowledgeable, & talked like a normal human person.” 💯agree—realized I’d NEVER heard a pharma exec talk like that. Inspiring!
my "how to get into BioML" post has been out long enough that multiple people at neurips told me that they read it, followed the advice, and now work in the industry! that's incredibly cool. naturally, my next question is, why aren't there more of you?? my answer is in the post
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my "how to get into BioML" post has been out long enough that multiple people at neurips told me that they read it, followed the advice, and now work in the industry! that's incredibly cool. naturally, my next question is, why aren't there more of you?? my answer is in the post
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If you've been interested in Focused Research Organizations (FROs), you'll want to see this from NSF: https://t.co/OKgXDUGEWn "$10 million to $50 million per team per year." "sustained, multi-year support to innovative and institutionally independent organizational structures
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Today, we're launching our first round of Edison Grants. These fast grants will provide 20,000 credits (100 Kosmos runs) and significant engineering support to researchers looking to use Kosmos and our other agents in their research. Key details: -PIs, staff scientists,
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AI won’t transform drug discovery until it escapes the screen. Meaningful progress will require models to be integrated into the physical execution of experiments. At @medra_ai, we’ve raised a $52M Series A to build the first Physical AI Scientist that enables lab-in-the-loop
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Excited to finally share about Astera Neuro, our new neuroscience research program @AsteraInstitute with the amazing @doristsao taking the leap to lead it. We’re seeking to understand how the brain constructs conscious experience and what those principles could teach us about
We’re launching Astera Neuro, a new neuroscience research effort led by @doristsao as Chief Scientist. Our aim is to unravel a profound scientific mystery: how the brain transforms sensory inputs into conscious experience. Advancing this work could illuminate the computational
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For those pushing science forward: today we’re launching the bioArena beta.
bioarena.xyz
The arena for AI-era scientists.
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Underrated Ideas in Biotech (#7) AlphaFold predicts a protein's structure solely by looking at its sequence. But structure does not always suggest function. The next frontier is to train a model that can predict any protein's FUNCTION solely from its sequence. This is
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Launching a public agent sandbox for spatial biology. Five demo flows tailored to specific kits/machines Try it now: https://t.co/6lCf97Q5xi This is a shippable intermediary towards reliable and widely deployed agentic systems used to make expensive scientific decisions.
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Very excited to see what Claude is doing for less well-resourced labs. Seems to be dramatically reducing barriers to entry for bioinformatics, everyone can do much more with less.
Has Claude sped up your biology research or enabled new capabilities for your lab? Is it underperforming on specific tasks? Do you have ideas to improve its usefulness in a specific domain of biology? Share feedback here:
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Has Claude sped up your biology research or enabled new capabilities for your lab? Is it underperforming on specific tasks? Do you have ideas to improve its usefulness in a specific domain of biology? Share feedback here:
docs.google.com
Submit feedback about using Claude for biology. I am interested to know how you are using Claude in your research or work, what is/is not working well, and if you have any ideas for improvement.
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