Wyss InstituteBacteria – Wyss Institute

Bay Area Lyme Foundation supports Wyss Institute researchers’ quest to restore patients’ ability to fight back against Lyme Disease

Jessica Leff — Fri, 30 Oct 2026 12:43:48 +0000

By Benjamin Boettner (BOSTON) — A year of generous funding by the Bay Area Lyme Foundation enabled a Wyss Institute project that aims to identify novel therapeutic strategies for acute and chronic Lyme disease (Lyme) to proceed into new and potentially therapeutic territory. Girija Goyal, Ph.D., Director of Bioinspired Therapeutics at the Wyss Institute and her team were honored at the recent…

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Pulling carbon into seawater using engineered bacteria

Jessica Leff — Fri, 28 Aug 2026 09:00:14 +0000

By Benjamin Boettner (BOSTON) — Rock weathering, the breakdown and dissolving of rocks and minerals caused by their exposure to water, air, and biological life, is a major regulator of Earth’s atmospheric CO2 levels and climate. Throughout Earth’s history, rock weathering has been faster during warm periods with increased atmospheric CO2 levels. Dissolved minerals ultimately wash into the…

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Dispersible Gas Carriers: Enhancing Efficiency in Biomanufacturing

Jessica Leff — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 15:12:47 +0000

The bioeconomy is being held back not by biology, but by the physics of getting gas into water at scale to support bioproduction by microbial and mammalian cells. Oxygen (O₂) and other gases are poorly soluble in water, and dissolving them at scale requires mechanical sparging and mixing systems that cause foaming, shear stress, contamination, and uneven gas distribution throughout the reactor.

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Chemist’s fix for a stubborn biomanufacturing problem? Engineer the liquid, not the machine

Jessica Leff — Thu, 06 Aug 2026 18:57:11 +0000

By Yahya Chaudhry, Harvard Staff Writer (CAMBRIDGE, Mass.) – In the race to build a biomanufacturing economy, one of the most stubborn obstacles is surprisingly mundane: getting enough gas into a tank of liquid. From pharmaceuticals to alternative proteins, many technologies depend on microbes that need to breathe oxygen or consume other gases such as carbon dioxide and hydrogen.

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Materializing safe, on-demand living therapeutics

Jessica Leff — Thu, 14 May 2026 17:55:55 +0000

By Benjamin Boettner (BOSTON) — Patient recovery from many debilitating conditions and diseases could be sped up significantly and be more effective if drugs and therapeutic molecules were delivered right to where they are needed in the body, over the entire regenerative process, and in doses finely tuned to therapeutic needs. An intriguing way to achieve this is the use of implantable…

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Biomaterial vaccines to make implanted orthopedic devices safer

Jessica Leff — Mon, 03 Nov 2025 19:55:42 +0000

By Benjamin Boettner (BOSTON) — Patients with implanted medical devices like orthopedic joint replacements, pacemakers, and artificial heart valves run a small but significant risk that these devices get infected with bacterial pathogens. This starts them on a burdensome path requiring “redo” (revision) surgeries, prolonged antibiotic treatments, or in severe cases amputation.

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Researchers call for global discussion about possible risks from “mirror bacteria”

Jessica Leff — Wed, 18 Dec 2024 14:27:15 +0000

A group of researchers including Wyss Core Faculty member George Church, Ph.D. has published new findings in Science on potential risks from the development of mirror bacteria — synthetic organisms in which all molecules have reversed chirality (i.e. are ‘mirrored’). Scientists had begun early work toward creating mirror bacteria, and while the capability is at least a decade away…

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Starting a fluorescent biosensor revolution

Mariel Schoen — Thu, 05 Sep 2024 09:00:00 +0000

By Benjamin Boettner (BOSTON) — Biosensors – devices that use biological molecules to detect the presence of a target substance – have enormous potential for detecting disease biomarkers, molecules-in-action in diverse biological processes, or toxins and other harmful substances in the environment. One of the more common types, fluorescent biosensors, consists of a target-binding biomolecule…

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Justin Scott on Engineering Proteins for Real-World Impact

Jessica Leff — Wed, 26 Jun 2024 15:05:06 +0000

The Humans of the Wyss (HOW) series features members of the Wyss community discussing their work, the influences that shape them as professionals, and their collaborations at the Wyss Institute and beyond. Years ago, Justin Scott was working in finance when a conversation with a friend who cared deeply about their science-related job prompted him to make a change. Chasing that same job…

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Circe Bioscience licenses technology to decarbonize industry with microbes developed at Wyss Institute at Harvard University

Jessica Leff — Wed, 15 May 2024 10:55:37 +0000

By Lindsay Brownell (BOSTON) — The Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University announced today that Circe, a startup developed at the Institute and spun out of Harvard, has signed a worldwide, exclusive licensing agreement coordinated by Harvard’s Office of Technology Development (OTD) to commercialize a novel bioproduction technology that could significantly…

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