BioE PhD student @stanford in the Hie Lab // ML for SynBio
Joined April 2020
- Tweets 32
- Following 325
- Followers 802
- Likes 156
9 Photos and videos
Pinned Tweet
19 Nov 2025
What if we could autocomplete DNA based on function?
Today in @Nature, we share semantic design—a strategy for function-guided design with genomic language models that leverages genomic context to create de novo genes with desired functions.🧵
nature.com/articles/s41586-0…
16
155
601
75,370
Evo 2 is out! Huge congrats to @garykbrixi and the rest of the team, was a blast working on some of the design tasks! The future of genome language models looks bright!
Mar 4
Evo 2 is out in Nature today, showing that genome language models can predict and design across the full complexity of life, from phages to eukaryotes.
A few surprises from the project, including how ignoring trillions of nucleotides was key to getting a good model. 🧵
2
3
34
3,109
Nature research paper: Semantic design of functional de novo genes from a genomic language model
go.nature.com/485SnAh
2
14
47
14,300
Aditi Merchant retweeted
21 Nov 2025
Generative AI meets the genome arstechnica.com/science/2025…
4
7
6,070
Aditi Merchant retweeted
19 Nov 2025
Semantic design, our method leveraging contextual relationships between genes for function-guided biological sequence design, is now out in @Nature!
This work was led fearlessly by @aditimerch, who inspires all of us in the lab every day. She carried out this immense project with mind-blowing speed, while graciously supporting numerous other projects and being a genuinely brilliant and kind presence.
Please read more about the work in her thread below!👇
19 Nov 2025
What if we could autocomplete DNA based on function?
Today in @Nature, we share semantic design—a strategy for function-guided design with genomic language models that leverages genomic context to create de novo genes with desired functions.🧵
nature.com/articles/s41586-0…
8
38
6,230
Aditi Merchant retweeted
19 Nov 2025
Published today in @Nature, @aditimerch & researchers from the @BrianHie lab report that the large-scale genomic model, Evo, is capable of using surrounding genomic context to produce novel, functional genes, enabling an emergent approach they've termed 'semantic design'.
4
27
93
10,065
Today in @Nature, in work led by @aditimerch, we report the ability to prompt Evo to generate functional de novo genes.
You shall know a gene by the company it keeps! 1/n
6
100
536
130,625
Aditi Merchant retweeted
19 Nov 2025
Check out this amazing work by the incredible @aditimerch and team!! Prompting DNA language models a la guilt-by-association lets you design things that function with low seq id
19 Nov 2025
What if we could autocomplete DNA based on function?
Today in @Nature, we share semantic design—a strategy for function-guided design with genomic language models that leverages genomic context to create de novo genes with desired functions.🧵
nature.com/articles/s41586-0…
2
13
1,681
Aditi Merchant retweeted
19 Nov 2025
Context can steer Evo to generate multi-gene interactions (toxins and anti-toxins, anti-CRISPRs) that function in the lab.
Many of the functional sequences have very low sequence similarity to any natural gene. Read the thread and paper
Congratulations @aditimerch!
19 Nov 2025
What if we could autocomplete DNA based on function?
Today in @Nature, we share semantic design—a strategy for function-guided design with genomic language models that leverages genomic context to create de novo genes with desired functions.🧵
nature.com/articles/s41586-0…
11
83
16,169
19 Nov 2025
What if we could autocomplete DNA based on function?
Today in @Nature, we share semantic design—a strategy for function-guided design with genomic language models that leverages genomic context to create de novo genes with desired functions.🧵
nature.com/articles/s41586-0…
16
155
601
75,370
19 Nov 2025
Together, this work suggests that genomic sequence models can meaningfully generalize beyond characterized natural evolution. Looking forward, we hope that semantic design can serve as a starting point for function-guided design and optimization of genes across biology.
2
1
17
1,527
19 Nov 2025
This was all possible because of the support of my incredible PI @BrianHie and my amazing labmates @samuelhking and @exnx. I’m forever grateful to be surrounded by people who inspire me to be a better scientist.
To learn more, check out the paper: nature.com/articles/s41586-0…
1
2
23
1,470
24 Sep 2025
De novo antibody design with experimental success rates that require testing only tens of candidates! Such an inspiring success from the incredibly hardworking Germinal team— huge congrats!
24 Sep 2025
The ability to design antibodies against any protein of interest has major implications for medicine, biotech, and basic science.
Today, we introduce Germinal, a pipeline for epitope-targeted de novo antibody design achieving 4–22% success rates with efficient experimental validation.
1
2
50
5,484