Jonathan Bester

Founder @ Peptobiotics. Likes biology, business, China, and gmos 🦎 + 🧬💉 = 🐉🔥

[OpenProtein.AI @openprotein]

New blog post! PoET, our generative protein language model, is also super powerful for fine-tuning. PoET outperforms previous methods for supervised variant effect prediction even with 15x less data. https://t.co/ty16NWd5if

[Jonathan Bester @GeneRipper]

@ATinyGreenCell @NikoMcCarty yes, agreed talent comes from everywhere ofc - i get by fine w just a BSci from an unheard of uni. i didnt mean elite in the american sense of uni rankings. just wondering what labs have you come across doing the most difficult and interesting work, ie “elite” plant biotech?

[Jonathan Bester @GeneRipper]

@NikoMcCarty if we want to recruit elite plant biotechnologists, what companies, universities and other institutions are training the advanced guard? @NikoMcCarty @ATinyGreenCell

[Niko McCarty. @NikoMcCarty]

If you want to work in biotech, but don't know what to work on: You should work on plants.

Why? A few reasons: Plants account for 80% of all biomass on Earth, there's a low ratio of researchers relative to possible impacts & more.

In this thread, I'll try to convince you. 🧵

[Jonathan Bester @GeneRipper]

genome vs genome comparing all the cDNAs in a needle alignment kind of tool would be useful for making dramatic claims that humans are x% related to dolphins, honey badgers, avocados, etc. and could be quite an interesting way to re-organise phylogenetic trees. has anyone built this?

[Jonathan Bester @GeneRipper]

@pitdesi where is good in Philippines for a sense of adventure?

[Jonathan Bester @GeneRipper]

@sethbannon @O_Borkowski @ProfTomEllis @solugen do you need to purify the enzymes before binding them or can use crude extract @solugen @TungstenSeanide? id think that they are secreted from the host rather than needing to lyse @O_Borkowski, so id guess no cell extract as such but would love to know more

[Patrick Hsu @pdhsu]

CRISPR creates DNA nicks/breaks and requires complex DNA repair pathways in the cell to make a genome edit (like an insertion or deletion) beyond a cut

Bridge recombination works in vitro, without relying on cellular DNA repair mechanisms. This could lead to safer genome edits

[Jonathan Bester @GeneRipper]

if anything diminishing returns of scale due to copy loss and dead spaces impose a ceiling on reactor size that industry has already reached. Adam Smith never read Rugbjerg et al https://t.co/VVHtiwOmJN

[Jonathan Bester @GeneRipper]

@MaxxChatsko if anything diminishing returns of scale due to copy loss and dead spaces impose a ceiling on reactor size that industry has already reached. Adam Smith never read Rugbjerg et al https://t.co/VVHtiwOmJN

[Jonathan Bester @GeneRipper]

@Brad_Setser how come 2017 was so much higher?

[Jonathan Bester @GeneRipper]

Anyone know a tool where you can input a Fasta and it will identify pairs of regions that have homology with one another? (and ideally rank the pairs by %homology)

[Jonathan Bester @GeneRipper]

@mackenziejem “including the Soviet Union engineering and accidentally releasing an enhanced smallpox from its biological weapons division” @mackenziejem what do you mean by they “engineered” it? could not find much information about this incident online

[Jonathan Bester @GeneRipper]

@ylecun The original article implies that in addition to spending more China has a better strategy because more of their spend is in applied research versus basic research. Do you agree @ylecun ?

[Jonathan Bester @GeneRipper]

@srikosuri @Ayjchan there’s a lot of people out there with political motive on both sides, perhaps more so amongst on lab leak proponents. imo the issue is not settled and there should be as broad and deep investigation as possible of both lab leak and natural origin hypotheses.

[Jonathan Bester @GeneRipper]

@srikosuri @Ayjchan thanks for providing a number i missed this previously. what evidence had accumulated of natural origin since then, other than the two wet market papers cited in the nyt article? do you not think its a fair ask that they subpeona all the communications with WIV?

[Jonathan Bester @GeneRipper]

@skylabnz @simonmaechling thats great, any idea if it is selling/performing well?

[Jonathan Bester @GeneRipper]

@skylabnz @simonmaechling @skylabnz confirmed its on the market or they just developed it? I work a bit with aquafeed mills in asia and never hear about it but maybe they are focusing on different regions

[Jonathan Bester @GeneRipper]

this reminded me of the omega-3 canola @NuseedAustralia came up with. There were/are similar products from other leading seed companies, this was big news like 5 years ago but as far as im aware we are all still using fish oil. Anyone know whay happened to the GM crops that were meant to replace fish oil? @kevinfolta

[Jonathan Bester @GeneRipper]

@simonmaechling @simonmaechling any idea which gm canola trait Australia is growing and exporting to EU?