2024
- December: Disha’s review “Nucleic Acid Conjugates: Unlocking Therapeutic Potential” has been published in ACS Bio & Med Chem Au!
- December: Welcome to Jonah, who joins us from the MRes in Synthetic Biology
- December: Disha’s work “Going nuclear: Improved antisense oligonucleotide activity through conjugation with a nuclear importer” is now preprinted on ChemRxiv (version 2 uploaded)
- October: Also, welcome to our new Master’s students Zhenyi, Mahima, and Duncan 🙂
- October: Welcome to our new PhD students Kia Rinne, Hannah Simmons Hovorka, and Bingkun Li!
- September: Mike was awarded the 2024 International Chemical Biology Society Young Chemical Biologist Award!
- August: Congratulations to Ina for winning a UCL Early Career Researcher Forum Community Award!
- August: Ellen’s work on ‘Magnetic Activation of Spherical Nucleic Acids for the Remote Control of Synthetic Cells‘ is now preprinted on BioRxiv
- July: Mike gave a webinar on the group’s synthetic cell work as part of the Biochemical Society’s Biochemistry Focus series, have a watch 🙂
- July: ChemComm has given Mike a ‘Highly Commended Nomination’, as part of the 2024 ChemComm Emerging Investigator Lectureship!
- June: Mike has been promoted to Associate Professor, as of October 2024!
- April: Welcome to our new MSc students, Sara Najimi, Erik Chen, and Anson Chow!
- March: Mike attended the kick-off meeting for the SigSynCell MSCActions Doctoral Network in Bordeaux, next step recruiting 12 new Synthetic Cell PhD students!
- January: We’re excited to have MSci students Daniel Minamiguchi and Hayden Cheung start in the lab!
2023
- December: Mike presented the groups’ work at a Nucleic Acids Symposium at Imperial College London
- November: Mike presented online at the 3rd International Conference on Nanomaterials in Biology, held in India
- November: Khoa’s paper “Sequence-independent, site-specific incorporation of chemical modifications to generate light-activated plasmids” has been published in Chemical Science!
- November: Mike presented the groups’ synthetic cell work at SynBioUK 2023, in Bristol
- September: We welcome a whole new cohort of PhD (Charlotte, Alex, and Chelsea) and Master’s (Hayato, Hayden, Erik, Sara, and Ting Fund) students to the group!
- September: Mike was invited onto a C&EN and ACS webinar to discuss who might win the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2023…
- September: Congratulations to Romain for winning a UCL MAPS Undergraduate Innovation and Enterprise Prize for his research project in the group!
- August: Congratulations to Razia for passing her DPhil viva!!!
- July: Jeff and Denis’ paper on “Engineering cellular communication between light-activated synthetic cells and bacteria” has now been published in Nature Chemical Biology!
- June: Congratulations to Denis for passing his DPhil viva!!! – three in one month was a lot…
- June: Congratulations to Khoa for passing his DPhil viva!!!
- June: SynCellEU has written a profile of Mike and the group’s research 🙂
- June: Congratulations to Jack for passing his DPhil viva!!!
- May: Khoa’s preprint “Sequence-independent, site-specific incorporation of chemical modifications to generate light-activated plasmids” is now available on bioRxiv!
- April: We’ve published another paper in JACS on “Orthogonal Light-Activated DNA for Patterned Biocomputing within Synthetic Cells“, led by Denis!!!
- April: Jack and Denis’ paper on “Precise, Orthogonal Remote-Control of Cell-Free Systems Using Photocaged Nucleic Acids” has now been published in JACS!!!
- April: Another paper from Denis on “Handcuffed antisense oligonucleotides for light-controlled cell-free expression“, published in Chemical Communications!
- April: Denis’ paper “Accessible light-controlled knockdown of cell-free protein synthesis using phosphorothioate-caged antisense oligonucleotides” has been published in Communications Chemistry!
- April: Great to have Giacomo stay with us for a postdoctoral position!
- February: Welcome to Charlie Newell, a PhD rotation student from the LIDo DTP!
- January: Here’s a new preprint from Jack and Denis on “Precise, orthogonal remote-control of cell-free systems using photocaged nucleic acids“, now on ChemRxiv
2022
- December: A new preprint from Denis on “Light-controlled cell-free protein synthesis using phosphorothioate-caged antisense oligonucleotides” is now on ChemRxiv
- October: The first Master’s students from UCL have now joined the group. Welcome to Romain, Yuting, and Jonathan!
- September: We’re super happy to welcome the first UCL PhD student to the group, Ina Bradic. Looking forward to seeing the amazing things you’ll do!
- September: A paper we collaborated on with the Di Michele group (Imperial), ‘Reaction–Diffusion Patterning of DNA-Based Artificial Cells’, has been published in JACS!
- September: Excited to welcome Sònia to the group as a postdoc
- July: Denis has preprinted his work on “Blue light-activatable DNA for remote control of cell-free logic gates and synthetic cells” on ChemRxiv!
- July: Jeff’s work on “Engineering cellular communication between light-activated synthetic cells and bacteria” is out as a preprint on BioRxiv!
- June: Mike has written the ‘DNA and RNA sequencing’ Chapter of the 4th Edition of Nucleic Acids in Chemistry and Biology that has now been released!
- June: Welcome to Modinat Tijani as an undergraduate summer student from the Black in Cancer Mentorship Programme
- June: Naoki has submitted his Part II thesis, well done! Good luck for the future
- April: Congratulations to Jeff for a successful DPhil viva!
- April: It’s great to welcome Ellen Parkes to the group as a PhD student from the Oxford Inorganic Chemistry for Future Manufacturing Centre for Doctoral Training!
- March: Assala and Mike collaborated with the Di Michele group (Imperial) to produce ‘Reaction-diffusion patterning of DNA-based artificial cells‘, which has been posted on bioRxiv
- March: Mike gave a talk about the group’s research as part of the SynBio Young Scientist Seminar series: Video
- March: Mike has started as a Lecturer in Organic Chemistry and Chemical Biology at the Department of Chemistry, University College London.
- January: We’re excited to welcome Disha Kashyap to our group from the Chemistry in Cells PhD programme!
- January: Jeff and Razia’s review titled ‘Controlling Synthetic Cell-Cell Communication’ has been published in Frontiers in Molecular Biosciences!
2021
September: Mike will be starting a Lecturership at UCL Chemistry in 2022!
September: Great to have Naoki Tada starting his Part II in the group!
September: Welcome to the second postdoc of our group, Dr Nicolas Busatto! We’re so excited to be working with you.
June: Well done to Idil for passing her DPhil viva! Woo!
June: Big congratulations to Rachel for submitting her Part II thesis, we’ll miss you!
May: Idil has posted a preprint of her DPhil work on BioRxiv, A lipid-based parallel processor for chemical signals!
March: Congratulations to Khoa, who has won an Oxford Chemistry Prize for Excellence in Organic Chemistry following his Transfer of Status to DPhil examination!
March: We have been awarded an EPSRC New Investigator Award to carry out some new research into DNA-polymer conjugates!
January: Welcome to our new rotation student Jose Cabezas-Caballero, from the Interdisciplinary Bioscience DTP.
2020
November: We’re excited to welcome Rachel Sage to the group for her Part II!
October: Mike was recently interviewed by Elsevier Connect, 5 years after receiving a Scopus Early Career Research Award.
October: Good luck to Alaa and Mia for their DPhil’s in the Fodor and Brennan groups, respectively.
July: Our review, Controlling gene expression with light: a multidisciplinary endeavour, is out in Biochemical Society Transactions!
March: Florence’s DPhil work, Multi-responsive hydrogel structures from patterned droplet networks, has finally been published in Nature Chemistry! There is also a behind the paper blog post and news & views article about the paper.
February: We welcome another DPhil rotation student, Mia Callens, undertaking a Synthesis for Biology and Medicine rotation project joint with the groups of Matthew Langton and Tom Brown.
January: Welcome to Alaa Baazaoui, who is undertaking her Interdisciplinary Bioscience DTP rotation project in the group.
January: Idil has written a behind the paper blog post about our Communications Chemistry paper.
2019
December: New Paper! Mike and Idil’s work “Controlled deprotection and release of a small molecule from a compartmented synthetic tissue module” has been published in Communications Chemistry!
December: Mike was awarded the Biochemical Society Early Career Research Award in Biotechnology at Synthetic Biology UK 2019.
October: Welcome to our first ever Part II in the group, Guige Ben Zhang.
October: Really excited that both Denis and Khoa are staying in the group to undertake their substantive DPhil projects.
July: We’re happy to welcome Khoa Chung to the group, who is doing a DPhil rotation project from the SynBio DTC.
June: Very excited to welcome our first Postdoc to the group, Dr Assala Al Samad.
May: Welcome to Denis Hartmann, undertaking a Synthesis for Biology and Medicine DPhil rotation project in the group.
May: Razia has won the People’s Choice Award in the Three Minute Thesis Competition
April: Merton College has elected Michael as a Supernumerary Fellow
February: Well done to Razia for being selected as a Junior Dean at St John’s College
2018
December: Huge congratulations to Florence for passing her DPhil viva!
November: Well done to Idil for completing her transfer of status
October: We’re excited that, following his rotation, Jefferson has started his DPhil in the group
October: Congratulations to Florence for submitting her DPhil thesis!
October: Welcome to Giacomo Mazzotti, a new DPhil in our group
September: We had an excellent joint retreat with the Bayley Group in Lisbon, Portugal
August: Welcome to Jefferson Smith, undertaking his second DPhil rotation project from the SynBio DTC in our group
August: Welcome to our new DPhil student Razia Chowdhry, from the Bioscience DTP
Booth Research Group 