Kai Chen

Our review of “engineering new catalytic activities in #enzymes” is online at @NatureCatalysis, highlighting the work from @HysterLab, @JCLewisLab, @WardGroupBS, @Turner_Biocat, @RoelfesGroup, @FasanLab, Müller, Hauer, us @francesarnold lab and more. nature.com/articles/s4192…

I discuss the urgent crisis from the loss of federal support of science in the US and recent clinical gene editing breakthroughs with @WalterIsaacson & @amanpour on @AmanpourCoPBS, airing on @PBS tonight at 11 pm ET, and on @cnni earlier today. Pls share! youtube.com/watch?v=8YhJM6…

My ACS Priestley Medal address can be found here. Many stories not told in science talks... fhalab.caltech.edu/wp-content/upl…

Meet @francesarnold, 2025 Priestley Medalist, at #ACSSpring2025. Stop by the ACS Booth Theater in the Expo Hall to hear about her contributions to #chemistry and pick up a signed copy of her C&EN feature issue. RSVP: connect.discoveracs.org/cen-priestley-…

We are excited to report the discovery of TIGRs, a widely-occurring RNA-guided system found in bacteria and their viruses. TIGRs consist of a peculiar repeat region which is transcribed into RNA and processed into multiple guide RNAs to direct TIGR-associated proteins to their…

Announcing Evo 2: The largest publicly available, AI model for biology to date, capable of understanding and designing genetic code across all three domains of life. arcinstitute.org/manuscripts/Ev…

Single-molecule live-cell RNA imaging with CRISPR–Csm go.nature.com/3EJPKsM

🚀 DeepSeek-R1 is here! ⚡ Performance on par with OpenAI-o1 📖 Fully open-source model & technical report 🏆 MIT licensed: Distill & commercialize freely! 🌐 Website & API are live now! Try DeepThink at chat.deepseek.com today! 🐋 1/n

On 30 December chemistry laureate Fraser Stoddart sadly passed away at the age of 82. Stoddart's groundbreaking work in the field of supramolecular chemistry and nanotechnology has left an indelible mark on the scientific community and a forever lasting gift to society and…

Congratulations to Broad core institute member @zhangf on receiving the National Medal of Technology and Innovation, the nation’s most prestigious honor for American innovators! broad.io/WHScience

With profound sadness, we announce the passing of Sir Fraser Stoddart, Nobel Laureate and cherished member of @NorthwesternU. His groundbreaking contributions transformed the field of #chemistry and inspired countless scientists worldwide. ➡️ bit.ly/stoddart-in-me…

Lung and liver editing by lipid nanoparticle delivery of a stable CRISPR–Cas9 ribonucleoprotein go.nature.com/408uNAq

Thrilled to share our latest work on lipid nanoparticle (LNP) delivery of a stable CRISPR-Cas9 ribonucleoprotein (RNP) for in vivo genome editing, now published @NatureBiotech! 🧬 nature.com/articles/s4158… In this paper, we first engineered robust, efficient, and stable…

We’re presenting AlphaProteo: an AI system for designing novel proteins that bind more successfully to target molecules. 🧬 It could help scientists better understand how biological systems function, save time in research, advance drug design and more. 🧵 dpmd.ai/3XuMqbX

My favourite discovery ever has just come online. Can I please tell you about some seriously wacky molecular biology? The story starts with a reverse transcriptase that SOMEHOW defends bacteria from viruses. (👇 I recommend sound ON for the video 🎹) 1/

Now this is wild: An #enzyme can use NO (and other nitrogen cycle intermediates) for C-H amination! #directedevolution. Lovely mechanistic work by @Anuvab_tweet led to this discovery.

How I Met Your Mother/Father: The Synaptic Partner Matching Tale Thanks to incredible colleagues @LuoLabStanford and collaborators ⁦⁦@JiefuBiol⁩ ⁦@aliceyting⁩ ⁦@BroadProteomics⁩ ! cell.com/cell/fulltext/…

What an honor to be chosen for the Priestley Medal. #Enzymes are the best chemists, of course, but the Priestley medalists are no slouches...and include many of my colleagues @CaltechCCE. Thank you!

Congratulations to Professor Frances Arnold (@francesarnold) on receiving the 2025 Priestley Medal! 🎉 The ACS is honoring Arnold, "for her pioneering contributions to the development of directed evolution as a method for chemical and biological design." cce.caltech.edu/news-and-event…

What if we could universally recombine, insert, delete, or invert any two pieces of DNA? In back-to-back @Nature papers, we report the discovery of bridge RNAs and 3 atomic structures of the first natural RNA-guided recombinase - a new mechanism for programmable genome design

Our paper on the biochemical understanding of an engineered Cas9 (by directed evolution) is officially out @CellCellPress. “Rapid DNA unwinding accelerates genome editing by engineered CRISPR-Cas9” cell.com/cell/fulltext/… Following our previous study on the development of an…