Jake Wintermute 🧬/acc

Synthetic Biologist - Foundry Theorist - American Wetware - stay humble biodesigners

[Jake Wintermute 🧬/acc @SynBio1]

Stop glamorizing the hustle and start glamorizing the mussel

[Jake Wintermute 🧬/acc @SynBio1]

@DNAutics @ATinyGreenCell Not with that attitude

[Jake Wintermute 🧬/acc @SynBio1]

Chloroplast genomes are the natural next step for generative DNA design

- 200kb is challenging yet possible for DNA assembly
- Less of a PR headache than bacteriophage
- Path to high-impact improvements in photosynthesis

https://t.co/M3RBsy3sjw

[Jake Wintermute 🧬/acc @SynBio1]

@DNAutics Because AI

[Jake Wintermute 🧬/acc @SynBio1]

@cyber_plantae fucking yumm

[Jake Wintermute 🧬/acc @SynBio1]

Sci-fi shows cool futures and shitty futures. Cool spaceships or killer robots. Beautiful thriving worlds or dystopian hellscapes.

But sci-fi food is almost always weird and bad. Nutrient paste. Corpse-starch. Insect patties. I want more optimistic sci-fi foods!

[Jake Wintermute 🧬/acc @SynBio1]

@thisischristina

[Jake Wintermute 🧬/acc @SynBio1]

@eade_bengard Nooooo I love him

[Jake Wintermute 🧬/acc @SynBio1]

@LabListon @CEOCorbus @grok What is the total size of the US market for prescription drugs? What is $14B expressed as a percentage of this market?

[Jake Wintermute 🧬/acc @SynBio1]

@LabListon @CEOCorbus "Drugs are profitable beyond the US"

The US is about 25% of the world economy but 70% of the profits for branded drugs

If drug profit margins in the US fell to match drug profit margins in Europe, the biotech industry would be uninvestible.

https://t.co/CpsXaGklZC

[Jake Wintermute 🧬/acc @SynBio1]

It seems like everyone agrees that new kinds of measurements and automating existing measurements both have value

The disagreement seems to be about the perception that new measurement techniques have been unfairly neglected, that they "deserve more attention"

From where I sit, new measurement techniques get plenty of attention

Sydney Brenner said "Progress in science depends on new techniques, new discoveries and new ideas, probably in that order." This quote has been cited for my entire scientific career

Everywhere I go, the development of new techniques is deeply valued and rewarded. I just haven't noticed that new they are neglected in favor of automation-only approaches

I'd be open to changing my mind on this if I saw some kind of data suggesting that fewer new measurement techniques were being published lately. I just doubt that is the case.

[Jake Wintermute 🧬/acc @SynBio1]

@BWalkerTTAGGG All that tech and what is the most iconic Star Trek food? Gagh, the Klingon bowl of live worms

[Jake Wintermute 🧬/acc @SynBio1]

@hsalis Relatable

[Jake Wintermute 🧬/acc @SynBio1]

@baym GOOD.

[Jake Wintermute 🧬/acc @SynBio1]

Biosecurity people I'm counting on you to keep this from happening again

[Jake Wintermute 🧬/acc @SynBio1]

@_inc0_ Fuck it I'm in

[Jake Wintermute 🧬/acc @SynBio1]

@parambulat0r Forever in our hearts

[Jake Wintermute 🧬/acc @SynBio1]

@sysbarred “Just eat less junk food” - advice that failed to stop the rising obesity rate for decades

[Jake Wintermute 🧬/acc @SynBio1]

Screen addiction is the new obesity. When a dopamine hit becomes too easy to obtain, it overwhelms our natural capacity to self-regulate

Like obesity, the puritanical American instinct is to fight this with discipline and shame. And like obesity, this approach will fail and keep failing

We need a pharmaceutical intervention. Only Ozempic for social media can save us

[Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias]

Americans have a "revealed preference" for doing less of basically everything except going online and I have serious doubts that this is making us happier.

https://t.co/Ba1wjJAqqe

[Jake Wintermute 🧬/acc @SynBio1]

@ajayinvictus “What are we going to make for dinner?”

[Kevin Weil 🇺🇸 @kevinweil]

On #2: Andy Grove once said “abandoning today's 'commodity' manufacturing can lock you out of tomorrow's emerging industry” and nowhere is this more true than in pharma and life sciences.

Over the last 20 years we have shifted much of the drug discovery process to large Chinese contract research organizations (CROs) like Wuxi—a company which was added to the DoW’s list of “Chinese military companies” in June.

We’ve seen this multiple times now. When the work moves overseas, the expertise and infrastructure follow. We're at risk of losing the ability to turn our ideas into medicines. That’s an unacceptable dependency for something so central to our health and our future.