Wyss InstituteBiochemistry – Wyss Institute

Building big with DNA gets a software upgrade

Jessica Leff — Wed, 16 Sep 2026 13:55:09 +0000

By Benjamin Boettner (BOSTON) — 44 years ago, Nadrian Seeman published his groundbreaking ideas on using DNA as a structural material, expanding DNA’s significance way beyond that as a carrier of genetic information. Since then, the steadily growing field of DNA nanotechnology has seen numerous innovations. One of them was the DNA origami technique, which enables researchers to fold a single…

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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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Researchers clear major obstacle in genetic engineering of proteins

Jessica Leff — Wed, 26 Aug 2026 15:13:59 +0000

By STEPHANIE DUTCHEN / Harvard Medical School Communications (BOSTON) — Scientists have been hard at work for more than 20 years to instruct biological systems, such as E. coli cells, to produce proteins they don’t naturally do. Success could mean faster, cheaper, innovative solutions for medicine, agriculture, materials science, environmental remediation, and other industries.

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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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Highly Cited Researchers 2025 honors nine Wyss members

Jessica Leff — Mon, 17 Nov 2025 18:50:51 +0000

By Alexandra Jirstrand (BOSTON) – Clarivate Analytics announced its Highly Cited Researchers 2025 list, which honors the top 1% of researchers around the world whose papers have been cited the most over the last decade. Clarivate uses both quantitative and qualitative analyses to identify individuals who have demonstrated significant and broad influence in their chosen field(s) of research.

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Elizabeth Hann on Using Microbes to Save the Earth

Jessica Leff — Tue, 29 Apr 2025 13:15:49 +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. Imagine grabbing a power bar that contains proteins produced by cyanobacteria or a device that allows you to produce all of your own food with just electricity. This future…

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Collaborative asthma project between Brigham and Women’s Hospital and the Wyss Institute advances with new grant support

Jessica Leff — Mon, 16 Dec 2024 15:55:41 +0000

By Benjamin Boettner (BOSTON) – Asthma affects more than 260M people worldwide and nearly 28M people in the U.S. alone, where, on average, 10 people die from attacks of the chronic disease each day. Many of these deaths could be prevented if patients had timely access to the appropriate therapy following an accurate diagnosis. Driven by an acute sense of urgency to close this diagnostic gap…

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“Suspended animation” drug could aid organ transplantation and survival from traumatic injury

Jessica Leff — Tue, 24 Sep 2024 14:50:33 +0000

(CAMBRIDGE, UK) – Researchers have shown that a non-addictive pain relief drug could be used to preserve cells and organs quickly and safely for transplantation, removing the need for static cold storage. The research, published today in eLife, was described by the editors as an important study providing solid evidence that the existing drug, SNC80, can rapidly and reversibly slow biochemical…

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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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