In our new paper, now published in nature, we report on the discovery and implementation of a chemical reservoir computer based on the prebiotic formose reaction. Congrats to Mathieu, Thijs, Quentin Duez , Will and Wilhelm!🥳 Read the paper 👇 nature.com/articles/s4158…

nature.com/articles/s4155…

Beyond Euclid: An Illustrated Guide to Modern Machine Learning with Geometric, Topological, and Algebraic Structures New review out with Nina Miolane, co-led by myself, Johan Mathe & Mathilde Papillon Check out our visual taxonomies of non-Euclidean structure in data & ML models

For the first time, our Curiosity Rover rover has found crystals of pure sulfur on the Red Planet—after rolling over a rock and cracking it open: go.nasa.gov/4bLGG1v

It took more than a DECADE... but finally it’s published!!! It started as a CRAZY idea but after tons of hard work we built it: We hijacked the endogenous secretion systems of Toxoplasma gondii, a brain parasite, to deliver active proteins to neurons 👇 nature.com/articles/s4156…

Happy to highlight the work of Judit Sastre and Advait Thatte from the Mesoscopic Physics of Life (MPol) - Weber Group! We found spontaneous oscillations in synthetic cells. When continuously supplied with chemical fuel, the number of organelles and their location start oscillating. biorxiv.org/content/10.110…

What is the origin of genetic information? How did the first codes evolve? What are the limits imposed by mutation to genome complexity? Check this great 1981 paper in Scientific American by Manfred Eigen Universität Wien & Santa Fe Institute Peter Schuster & cols. Josep Sardanyés jstor.org/stable/pdf/249…

arXiv -> alphaXiv Students at Stanford have built alphaXiv, an open discussion forum for arXiv papers. alphaXiv You can post questions and comments directly on top of any arXiv paper by changing arXiv to alphaXiv in any URL!

30 Essays to Make You Love Biology Day 1. "I should have loved biology" by James Somers. "It was only in college, when I read Douglas Hofstadter’s Gödel, Escher, Bach, that I came to understand cells as recursively self-modifying programs."

Did not know of this paper! 200+ theories. 😵‍💫 Paper by Robert Kuhn. Illustration by Alex Gomez-Marin Àlex Gómez-Marín doi.org/10.1016/j.pbio…

This week’s riots aren’t happening in a vacuum. We’re living and breathing on platforms that billionaires have optimised for outrage. This is the world that social media made. My piece for The Observer with contributions from the great Maria Ressa + more theguardian.com/media/article/…

So proud of Silke Asche; the work you did for OoLEN will always be remembered - initiative, kindness, respect, attention to detail. The founding team is now fully replaced, what a milestone! The future is bright and in the hands of those who will live it.

🔔#OriginOfLife digest — Aug 12 20 new papers, 2 by OoLEN members — fine-tuning — liquid water on Mars — stellar flares — aerobic metabolism — heritability (Sokolskyi) — phosphate availability (Matreux, Schmid) — Cambrian Explosion buttondown.com/ooldigest/arch…

What are the physical limits of computation? What is the energy cost of a bit? Can we design a molecular Turing machine running inside cells? Here's a great Scientific American paper by Charles Dennett and Rolf Landauer: physics.bu.edu/~pankajm/PY541…

30 Essays to Make You Love Biology Day 30. "The Mechanistic Conception of Life," by Jacques Loeb This is the article that got me hooked on biology a decade ago. "We must either succeed in producing living matter artificially, or we must find the reasons why this is impossible."

🔔#OriginOfLife digest — Sep 2 11 new papers, 1 by OoLEN members — hot spring geochemistry — autocatalytic networks (Dr. 𝗝𝗼𝗮𝗻𝗮 𝗖. 𝗫𝗮𝘃𝗶𝗲𝗿) — stability distillation hypothesis — assembly theory — Super-Earths — Enceladus — dynamic artificial cells buttondown.com/ooldigest/arch…

Not DNA Not RNA Not even epigenetic marks Inherited amyloid proteins nature.com/articles/s4155…

So excited to finally share this! Most of the merit goes to my amazing team and friends/colleagues who helped me get to this point! Now ready for new (well funded!) adventures Cambridge Biochemistry and Corpus Christi 🤩

Very happy to celebrate this week that my 3rd PI grant to study the catalytic isomerization of galactose into low-calorie tagatose has been funded by Dept. of Agriculture! 🥳 Years of formose reaction work is paying off 😆 Huge thanks to the generous Jikai Zhao for his support UTRGV Division of Research