Xiaojing Gao

"Engineering multiple levels of specificity in an RNA viral vector": Jenny finally led our covid-interrupted revision to completion. Thanks to the delay, we managed to incorporate our more recent RNA sensors and protease circuits into the RNA viral vectors

1/ Excited to share our new paper in Science: “Toward life with a 19-amino acid alphabet through generative artificial intelligence design.” @ColumbiaSysBio @ColumbiaBME @Columbia science.org/doi/10.1126/sc… 🦠🧬🛠️🖥️💥

Excited to report the first de novo enzyme catalyzing two of the most energetically demanding reactions in biology—phosphomonoester and phosphodiester hydrolysis—with catalytic efficiencies comparable to natural enzymes! 🚀 desB was designed zero-shot with dEVA. No structure prediction, no pre-defined motif, no reaction-intermediates. 🧵 @StanfordBiosci @bioe_stanford @SLAClab @EPFL @hes_so @simonduerr

Could the folding of synthetic gene circuits in 3D shape how genes are expressed? Today @ScienceMagazine we report on the role of gene syntax in shaping feedback between transcriptional activity and genome folding for advanced circuit design🧵 (1/n)

So you want to engineer your hiPSCs, but targeting DNA payloads requires multiple slow, inefficient steps for each construct. What if we could accomplish multi-site integration seamlessly? Come hear about STRAIGHT-IN Dual now out at Nature Biomedical Engineering! 🧵 Link at end!

Don't feel bad about missing the mSBW abstract deadline. We have extended it! We also keep the registration fee affordable ($150 for students) so that mammalian synbio-curious trainees can check it out, especially if you are in the Atlanta area. Meeting link below:

@YanEVgene The use of tTA is certainly shared with CellReadr. To me the key innovation here is the introduction of a "coherent feedforward motif" using tools (e.g., NanoDeg) and designs previous developed by the Segatori lab to further enhance the dynamic range.

@SynBioGaoLab Isn't this method been reported in the cellradar paper? 🤔

A neat amplification system to improve the limited sensitivity/dynamic range of RADAR pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/ac…

We just updated our Germinal preprint for de novo antibody-like binder design! Featuring additional scFv designs, extensive experimental validation of epitope specificity and polyreactivity, and CryoEM structure courtesy of Jim Zhang and Bing Rao from Feng Liang's lab.

Abstract due in two days!

So excited that our work on Programmable Macromolecule Delivery via Engineered Trogocytosis is out in @NatureCellBio! Link: rdcu.be/fa90i @stanleyqilab @Stanford_ChEMH @bioe_stanford @StanfordBioX A 🧵on our story:

"Engineering multiple levels of specificity in an RNA viral vector": Jenny finally led our covid-interrupted revision to completion. Thanks to the delay, we managed to incorporate our more recent RNA sensors and protease circuits into the RNA viral vectors

Engineering the next frontier of mammalian systems. Accepting abstracts through April 15 - submit yours now: bit.ly/4jQmrFj #mSBW2026 #SyntheticBiology #MammalianSystems #CallForAbstracts

@StevenMBanik @noScandineHere Congrats, Steven, Robert, and team! We resonate very much with your philosophy and can't wait to see what ALTER can achieve! By the way, I'm sure @DrBinSquared and @AshAlizadeh are happy to see MARIA put to another exciting use.

Excited to share our latest preprint on work led by postdoc Robert Lusi (@noScandineHere)! Introducing ALTER (AGO-Led Targeted Editing of RNA) for non-downregulatory RNA manipulation by repurposing hAGO2, non-immunogenic and capitalizing on evolution. biorxiv.org/content/10.648…

@NornGroup @impetusgrants @Stanford Grateful for the support that makes it possible for us to launch some of the wilder ideas. Stay tuned for the urinary peptide piece :)

Tracking aging is hard because we don’t yet know what blood markers capture signals. This prevents us from measuring aging over time, or test ways to change it. Through @impetusgrants, we funded @SynBioGaoLab at @Stanford to change this. With his project on protein circuits to enable urinal monitoring of aging, his lab aims to engineer biomolecular circuits that detect internal aging hallmarks and convert them into reporter peptides that can be measured in a simple urine sample. The lab has been prolific, with three papers across Nature Chemical Biology @nchembio and Cell Systems @CellSystemsCP establishing the building blocks for this system: a synthetic receptor platform (LIDAR), a platform to control enzyme activity using human-derived proteins (hDIRECT), and a machine-learning workflow to predict whether the body accepts these synthetic tools (“computational deimmunization”). Congratulations to the Gao lab! More to come in 2026.

New preprint from the lab led by the amazing Jack Bryant! # tunable genetic medicines, # endogenous ADARs "Regulatable In Vivo Gene Expression via Adaptamers" biorxiv.org/content/10.648…

Important paper from Jason Chin's and Julian Sale's labs realizing key operations needed for building synthetic human genomes. My repeated reaction reading this paper was "um, I didn't know you could just do that." science.org/doi/abs/10.112…

If anyone wants to kill a few minutes during their (pre-)Thanksgiving travel: gaolab.blog/2025/11/12/ind…

Have you ever wondered what it would've been like to live in a different kind of society? After a record number of rejections, I'm self-archiving my first attempt at... flash fiction, featuring "Hemingway-esque economy" and "Ishiguro's measured revelation" (if you ask Claude).