Austin Morgan

Pitch video is out if you wanted to see it! Ignore my nervous breath in the beginning 😅

@biobox_chris @davidkmyang This was basically the only question on every single exam we took in my undergrad genetics class. Very scary 😂 Only addition was later in the class we were also asked “what is a genome?” haha

What is a gene? Then you sit and you wait. In uncomfortable silence. It’s not about right or wrong, you need to know how they think. How deep the rabbit hole of knowledge goes. It’s easy these days to pretend you know bio. The true test of understanding comes from ideas churning in the brain for decades. Lot of scientific visitors these days building in the space pretending to be scientists…

What's the equivalent of the coding test for hiring in biology? Talking through previous research seems common but could result in false negatives among folks without meaningful past experience but nonetheless great

@jrkelly open.spotify.com/episode/21v84A… In case you haven’t seen, around 1 hour and 30 minutes in, Elon discussing how competing against China in manufacturing without some innovation in AI and robotics is a fools errand. Echoed a lot of the same points I’ve heard you discuss!

@joyjiao12 @tejalpatwardhan @reshmapshetty @bacchuswng Congrats to the team on a great collaboration and keep up the good work! Excited to follow along! As an everyday user of Chat for help with research, the success doesn’t surprise me at all!

it's been so much fun working with @tejalpatwardhan @reshmapshetty and @bacchuswng. when we started this project last year, i was skeptical that gpt-5 could design a single reaction, and now it's not even our best model by a long shot. excited for the future of biology and AI!

RT @Ginkgo: Yesterday, we announced that our autonomous lab, connected with @OpenAI's GPT-5, beat the state-of-the-art in Cell-Free Protein…

@jrkelly @naval Hell of an announcement sir! Keep up the great work 🚀

@naval x.com/openai/status/…

Vibe coding is here. Vibe research is next.

@twmays1974 @BrettKrieger12 @reshmapshetty We’ve been waiting on this thesis to play out for awhile 😂. Better late than never!

@BrettKrieger12 @reshmapshetty

BREAKING: $DNA Ginkgo Bioworks' autonomous lab x OpenAI collab just achieved a 40% reaction cost improvement in cell-free protein synthesis Are we FINALLY seeing a convergence between LLMs + autonomy + science? This may open up one the largest TAMs ever seen The study combined OpenAI GPT-5 with Gingko's cloud lab, autonomous carts and software to design, execute, and analyze real-world experiments (and refine its approach) In six rounds of experiments over the course of six months, it was able to design lower cost cell-free protein synthesis reaction compositions than had been shown in the scientific literature previously. "At OpenAI, this was the first time we were able to interface a frontier model with an autonomous lab to carry out experimentation at a very large scale." Holy shit @jrkelly x.com/Ginkgo/status/…

@NikoMcCarty @jrkelly @MarkBlenner this is interesting

30 Underrated Ideas in Biotech (#6) Engineered organisms are everywhere, but they are usually "contained." Engineered cells make many of our medicines, for example, but they are isolated to bioreactors. Some of the more "sci-fi" visions of biotechnology -- like cleaning up an oil spill that spans many square miles of ocean, or using microbes at scale to degrade plastics -- require that we first release engineered organisms *without* containment. Of course, there are strict regulations preventing this. Getting approval to release a microbe into the wild, without containment, is extremely difficult. The regulatory pathway for genetically-engineered microbes is divided across the EPA, USDA, and FDA. Each agency has jurisdiction depending on the intended use. Biopesticides fall to the EPA, while other agricultural products go to the USDA, and ingestible microbes fall under the province of the FDA. Anything that DOES NOT easily fit into these categories, such as environmental biosensors or microbes engineered to clean up oil spills in the ocean, is instead lumped under the EPA’s Toxic Substances Control Act, or TSCA. Regardless of your stance on engineered microbes, TSCA is not a good regulation. It regulates genetically engineered microbes based on the METHOD by which they were engineered, rather than the product itself. Any microbe containing DNA from another genus — say, moving a gene from Escherichia coli into Pseudomonas putida — is flagged by TSCA and unlikely to get approval, even if researchers can prove that the product is safe. So whereas engineered crops can get approval if researchers provide compelling data from field trials and safety tests, there is no such option for the organisms that get lumped into TSCA. More than 200 TSCA submissions were filed between 1987 and 2018; none of those submissions have led to a commercialized product. Therefore, most companies that want to release a genetically-engineered microbe find ways to skirt around it. Pivot Bio, for example, sells genetically-engineered microbes that colonize plant roots and convert atmospheric nitrogen (N₂) into ammonia (NH₃), a chemical form that plants can use. This reduces the amount of fertilizer needed for a field (a good thing!) thus decreasing the leaching of fertilizer byproducts into water. Pivot Bio sidestepped some regulatory hurdles by avoiding the transfer of genes from one species to another; they simply remodeled their organism’s existing genome. The company still has to get USDA approval to ship its product across state lines, but that is a simpler regulatory hurdle to get over. If we want to see more "sci-fi" biotech in the world, we should rewrite TSCA and build a clear path for companies to file for approval based on actual field trials & safety testing.

@jrkelly @Ginkgo Really exciting announcements! Keep up the great work!

@Ginkgo Behind the scenes footage of the system after the Energy Secretary’s visit - with a cameo from one of @ginkgo’s automation engineers, Rashard 😃

Proud to announce that @Ginkgo was awarded a $47M contract to kick off President Trump's new Genesis Mission and build the world's largest autonomous lab at Pacific Northwest National Lab! I was honored to join @SecretaryWright as he commissioned the first phase of the lab yesterday at PNNL 🇺🇸🤖 Autonomous labs allow scientists to order experiments just by asking for them and are a key component for AI models to accelerate science at the scale outlined in the Genesis Project by @mkratsios47, @dariogila, @sriramk. More below, including some behind the scenes footage 😀

@RmadridElRey I should say, leaning away from the ball allows you to maximize contact with the laces while ALSO keeping your heel down, which can help maximize power and help get under the ball to generate lift if desired

@RmadridElRey The actual reason to fall or lean far away from the ball at the moment of contact is it allows you to turn the laces of your kicking foot to be fully aligned with the ball. Watch TAA strike a long ball and freeze video at moment of impact. It also looks like he’s falling

Except he is not actually off-balance. It’s a shooting technique where he directs all the force from his upper body to his lower body in a sort of “falling over” posture. Hope this helps😘

@RmadridElRey Also, the wider the arc of your leg swinging is, the more torque and whip you’ll get in the strike, resulting in more power. His movement for these shots can probably increase the amount of whip and power generated. Impressive to be so consistent with it though. Tough to balance

@jrkelly Pucks on net!

you may not want to accept the truth

@kunjapur @geochurch @WilfredChen1 Congrats!

Thank you to the colleagues who created an environment for success, the mentors who shared their wisdom and inspired me (Kris Prather, @geochurch, @WilfredChen1 ), & the amazing students I've had the honor of working with over the last 6.5Y #tenure

In a medical milestone, a customized base editor was developed, characterized in human and mouse cells, tested in mice, studied for safety in non-human primates, cleared by @US_FDA for clinical trial use, manufactured as a complex with an LNP, and dosed into a baby with a severe,

@NotGrantJenkins Hell yeah man have fun!

@FCBarcelona Shaking, crying, puking

How’s everyone feeling?

Alright, who’s willing to put in the leg work of turning this into a script for Christopher Nolan’s next big Sci-fi movie?

Ignore the vibe shift at your own peril

@NotGrantJenkins Incredible look brother