Enjoyed the tweetorial? Want to hear more? Come hear @emmapeterman_ live at AIChE this coming Thursday. Details 👇 Thursday, November 6th, 2025 Session #654: Cellular, Protein, & RNA Systems Engineering 8:00 AM, Hynes Convention Center, 310

So you want to change transgene expression: just change your promoter, right? Changing the promoter increases RNA and thus protein levels. What more could be happening? [1/n] Well, promoters don’t just set RNA levels; they uniquely transform how RNAs are transmitted into protein levels. 🧵

Today at @CellSystemsCP we report in back-to-back papers (!) led by @nbwang22 on how cell state potentiates the influence of individual transcription factors to drive cell-fate programming & how we used these insights to scale up production of motor neurons from primary fibroblasts, allowing us to deliver these directly converted neurons into the brains of mice. Updated tweetorial coming soon (links below!)

Your promoter is doing both more and less than you might expect. @MITChemE

Stronger promoters not only transcribe more RNA but also show higher effective translation rates.

#FeaturedProtocol this week is for STRAIGHT-IN: a platform for rapidly generating panels of #geneticallymodified #humanpluripotentstemcell lines bit.ly/3yJXlVP @A_BlanchAsensio

Read about ComMAND below! Such a privilege to contribute to this excellent work lead by @kaseyslove

Learned so much putting this review together with @DeonPloessl and @GallowayLabMIT 🧬 Stay tuned to hear about how we are approaching these challenges in the lab!

Levels of gene expression matter! So how can you control a transgene precisely? Is there a tool that can ensure uniform control & the ability to adjust the setpoint of expression from a single promoter? Introducing DIAL! 🧵 (1/n) Link: doi.org/10.1101/2024.06.19.5…

Or stop by poster #28 to hear from Emma Peterman @emmapeterman_ on her work on "Simultaneous measurement of protein and mRNA levels in single cells for genetic element characterization" in mammalian cells #SEED2024 #synbio @MITChemE

on unimodal setpoints and how to get them from synthetic promoters... tweetorial coming soon... or see you next Thursday #SEED2024 in Atlanta... Stay tuned for more control systems coming soon...

Excited to say our lab's about to do some "understanding and engineering" with the support of the NSF CAREER Award! Really grateful for fantastic work by my students and support from my department @MITChemE Delighted for the research and outreach this will support. Excelsior!

1st preprint is finally out! When I started, as a 🤖 synbio person, there were so many Q's I had on how to build reprogramming vectors 🔧🧬. There's a lot more to do but we show how you encode reprogramming cocktail really matters in TF-specific ways! See tweetorial for more

How do individual transcription factors (TF) influence reprogramming? Isn’t it just the cells with the highest levels of TF expression that reprogram? So just blast them & it should work, right? 🤨Buckle up for our lab’s preprint & tour de force led by Nat Wang @nbwang22 ! (1/n)

If you’re at #ISSCR2023 , come see my poster #285 on Wed, 6pm! Excited to share my work on how we’ve systematically optimized direct iMN reprogramming to explore and improve controllability of reprogramming in both 🐭 mouse and 👤 human!

How does transcription of proximal genes influence the expression of their neighbors? How do we engineer compact circuit designs for specific profiles of expression that enable robust cellular engineering? Today @CellReports we provide some answers (1 /n) tinyurl.com/24vtfbyw

"are you ok?" - no I have to pipette 1008 uL

Excited to share our new @biorxivpreprint! Integrating DNA biophysics with classic #synbio to map how to improve transgenic systems by tailoring expression levels, variance, and transcriptional dynamics. TL;DR: Don’t build your systems to fail. Build beautiful dynamics! 🧵(1/n)