Wyss InstituteSynthetic Biology – Wyss Institute

Bioengineering a world beyond plastics

Jessica Leff — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 15:00:06 +0000

By Seth Kroll (BOSTON) — In fewer than 200 years, plastic has become so deeply embedded in everyday life that it is impossible to envision society without it. Inexpensive, adaptable, and durable, plastics are indispensable from food packaging and textiles to medical and electronic devices. But this durability and ubiquity have made plastic dependency a growing global challenge…

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Growing liver tissue on demand directly in the body

Jessica Leff — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 17:55:10 +0000

By Benjamin Boettner (BOSTON) — In patients developing end-stage liver disease, the damage has become too severe for the liver’s normally extraordinary regenerative capacity to repair or compensate for it. Once this “point of no return” has been reached, the only option is an organ transplant. However, getting a liver transplant is extremely difficult due to high demand and limited supply…

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Synthetic biology makes fateful decisions

Jessica Leff — Tue, 31 Mar 2026 13:30:09 +0000

By Jia LIU, Chinese Academy of Sciences Edited by Karen Pepper (BEIJING) – Cellular differentiation and a division of labor are essential to living systems as distinct cell types performing specialized functions arise in defined proportions and spatial arrangements. A central challenge in synthetic biology has therefore been how to program cells to autonomously diversify into multiple…

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Katharina Meyer on improving our understanding and treatment of bipolar disorder

Jessica Leff — Mon, 30 Mar 2026 15:10:58 +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. Katharina Meyer is exceptionally welcoming in both her personal and professional life. At home, this takes the form of studying and improving hosting skills by experimenting with cooking and…

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James Collins: Doing Good Science with an Underdog Spirit – The Pulse Podcast

Jessica Leff — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 17:11:57 +0000

James J. Collins is a founding Core Faculty member at the Wyss Institute and the Termeer Professor of Medical Engineering & Science and Professor of Biological Engineering at MIT. Jim serves as a director at the MIT Jameel Clinic, a member of the Harvard-MIT Health Sciences & Technology Faculty, and a member of the Broad Institute. Jim is also an elected member of all three national academies.

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Nucleic Acid Delivery Consortium

Mariel Schoen — Fri, 13 Mar 2026 15:13:09 +0000

Nucleic acid therapies are emerging as a revolutionary class of medicines. Using engineered DNA or RNA molecules, they treat diseases at their genetic source, thus offering potential cures for a large variety of disorders, ranging from genetic disorders to cancers and infectious diseases. Different technologies, including mRNA, short interfering RNAs (siRNA), antisense oligonucleotides (ASOs)…

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Tooling up to diagnose ocean health

Jessica Leff — Thu, 05 Feb 2026 14:55:24 +0000

By Benjamin Boettner (BOSTON) — Oceanic ecosystems are increasingly threatened by global warming, which causes coral bleaching, species migration, and, through the loss of habitats and biodiversity, food web disruptions on major scales. Also, pollutants such as plastics and other marine debris, wastewater, and chemical runoffs, including oil spills, cause major ecosystem disruptions.

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Wyss Institute-led collaboration awarded by ARPA-H PRINT program to engineer off-the-shelf, universal, transplant-ready graft for liver failure

Jessica Leff — Fri, 16 Jan 2026 14:55:47 +0000

By Benjamin Boettner (BOSTON) — The majority of human illnesses are caused by damage to a single organ, like the liver, whose failure accounts for 2M deaths worldwide every year. Orthotopic transplants are the only curative therapy available, but the severe shortage of donor organs, which are reserved for the most severe cases, leaves millions of patients without an accessible solution.

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Wyss Institute appoints three new Associate Faculty members: Ahmad Khalil, Jarad Mason, and Ting Wu

Jessica Leff — Mon, 08 Dec 2025 14:50:20 +0000

By Jessica Leff The Wyss Institute is proud to welcome three new Associate Faculty members: Ahmad (Mo) Khalil, Ph.D., Jarad Mason, Ph.D., and Chao-ting (Ting) Wu, Ph.D. Each has a history of collaborating with the Institute’s researchers. Their diverse expertise and fresh perspectives will further strengthen the Wyss’ innovative and collaborative ecosystem and enable pioneering advances in…

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eGenesis: from new genome engineering techniques to solving the organ donor shortage

Jessica Leff — Thu, 20 Nov 2025 17:50:29 +0000

Part of the Wyss Institute’s series on the positive, life-altering impact of federal research funding By Jessica Leff Nearly 90,000 people in the United States are waiting for a kidney transplant, and 11 people die every day while waiting for a kidney. Government funding for synthetic biology and gene therapy enabled the development of genome engineering technology that is used by a Wyss…

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