Biohub

Illustration showing how T cells, when activated, turn on a red fluorescent protein and migrate through the bloodstream to three organs - lungs, lymph node, spleen – taking on different roles in different tissues.

New in Nature Immunology: @rohamparsa.bsky.social & @danmucida.bsky.social / @rockefeller.edu reveal that where a T cell gets activated shapes what it becomes, foundational to our mission of programming immunity for early disease detection.

Read more ▶️
biohub.org/blog/track-t...

A new tool from Rockefeller's @danmucida.bsky.social and @czbiohub.bsky.social allows scientists to closely follow newly activated T cells as they travel and change during an infection—it may inform future therapies for infection, cancer, and autoimmunity.

🔗: https://bit.ly/3NjZEWD

🩷💚💙💜 We stand in solidarity with the rare disease community worldwide.

On #RareDiseaseDay, we light up our offices to honor patients, families, clinicians, and researchers advancing understanding and care.

5 people posted on stage with a slide behind them that reads "AI Applications in Biology Symposium"

Speaker standing on stage next to a podium

That's a wrap on our AI Applications in Biology Symposium. Grateful to our keynotes, Nikos Hatzakis, @martinsteinegger.bsky.social, Xinyi Zhang, and all presenters for an inspiring day of explorations at the crossroads of machine learning and biological discovery.

Finding New Ways to Kill Bacteria: New Insights into the Transporter MurJ Biochemists at Caltech have identified how viruses have converged on a novel method for killing bacteria, offering a possible target for new antibiotic drug design

Clemons notes that “we should follow evolution’s lead and develop therapeutics that target MurJ. This demonstrates the power of basic biology to help us solve problems in medicine.”

Read more from @caltech.edu ⤵️

All 3 phages produce small proteins that jam up MurJ, which is essential for building the cell wall. No wall, no survival. Using cryo-EM, Bil Clemons, Biohub Scientist in Residence, and his team at @Caltech captured atomic-level images of these interactions.

🧵Antibiotic resistance is a public health crisis. But viruses called phages have been solving this problem for millennia. New research in @nature.com reveals how 3 different phages attack the same weak spot—a protein called MurJt—potentially leading to a new class of antibiotics.

Our 2nd monthly issue, "Biology's New Era," is live now on www.bigthink.com.

In this issue, we explore the bleeding edge of biotech, as well as the scientists, writers, and philosophers whose efforts helped get us here.

We still don’t understand human cell behavior. That’s about to change. By treating the human body as an information system, scientists are using AI to simulate cells, visualize hidden biology, and detect disease at its earliest — and most preventable — stages.

The human body is an information system — and AI is helping us decode it to cure or prevent disease.

In @bigthink.com, our scientists and researchers explain how #AI is helping us simulate human cells, visualize hidden biology, and detect disease before symptoms appear. bit.ly/46fBq6f

New research led by Andrea Califano, Dr, unveils a framework to decode hundreds of thousands of previously “uninterpretable” cancer mutations— helping clinicians prioritize more effective treatments and avoid unnecessary ones. @biohub.org
🔗 www.cancer.columbia.edu/news/turning...

And also celebrating Adam de la Zerda from the Biohub Investigator Program on the #TIME100 Health List, who has pioneered work in molecular imaging technologies.

Read more ➡️ bit.ly/4awNyRP

🎉 Biohub Investigator @pascalge.bsky.social has been named to the 2026 #TIME100 List of the World’s Most Influential Leaders in Health for his groundbreaking epidemiological studies showing how a shingles vaccine lowers risks of developing dementia.

Check it out ➡️ bit.ly/4rN5Gh7

BioTech Nation ... with Dr. Moira Gunn | AI-Powered Biology? Dr. Shana Kelley, President of Bioengineering & Head of Biohub, Chicago This week on BioTech Nation, what is AI-Powered Biology? Dr. Shana Kelley, President of Bioengineering and Head of Biohub, Chicago for the Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative, discusses how AI can be used t...

AI-powered biology is changing how research happens.

On BioTech Nation, Dr. Shana Kelley, our President of Bioengineering & Head of Biohub Chicago, shares how #AI can accelerate discovery and open new paths for understanding biology and disease.

🎧 Listen here: bit.ly/401UIZf

Modern imaging + AI are changing how biologists study living systems. What’s driving the shift? Better imaging hardware, mature computational infrastructure, and tighter collaboration between experimentalists and AI modelers. https://bit.ly/4r778L0

Scalable and multiplexed recorders of gene regulation dynamics across weeks - Nature Nature - Scalable and multiplexed recorders of gene regulation dynamics across weeks

In @natureportfolio.nature.com: CytoTape is a protein-based recording system that lets cells store long-term gene activity histories in situ. It enables multiplexed, single-cell measurements over days to weeks without continuous live imaging 👏 @changyanglinghu.bsky.social & @denisejcai.bsky.social

📡🧵 Excited to release an updated version of our preprint: Zebrahub-Multiome: Uncovering Gene Regulatory Network Dynamics During Zebrafish Embryogenesis
🧪🧬🖥️🐠

doi.org/10.1101/2024...
A tour-de-force by @yangjoonkim with an unexpected discovery!

Andrea Califano: How AI could reprogram the immune system Six strategies for using AI and single-cell data to predict immune behavior and potentially rewire immune responses.

The convergence of machine learning, synthetic biology, and immunology is changing what’s possible for human health. https://bit.ly/49KEfgE

Biohub, Arc Institute, Tahoe partner on largest perturbation dataset Generation of 120M+ cells and 225,000 perturbation interactions will accelerate virtual cell model development.

We’re partnering with @tahoetherapeutics.bsky.social and
@arcinstitute.org to generate the largest perturbation dataset for virtual cell models. Announced at #JPM2026, the 120M+ cell dataset will be open source to accelerate development of biological foundation models. bit.ly/4pBkZbd

Shana Kelley: 5 new ways to measure inflammation We will be able to intervene in inflammation before it progresses.

We’re building tools to watch immune cells in real-time and stop inflammatory disease before it starts. https://bit.ly/45Ft2g0

What if we could hear disease? | Dr. Hossein Zargartalebi | TEDxChicago YouTube video by TEDx Talks

Hossein Zargartalebi’s TEDx talk explores a real-time molecular #Biosensor that detects protein biomarkers inside the body. This platform could shift medicine from reactive treatment of disease to proactive diagnosis or prevention. https://bit.ly/3LjHNyc

Alex Walsh is recognized for her development of label-free optical imaging technologies that enable the non-invasive metabolic monitoring of single cells.

spie.org/news/alex-wa...

Hui Cao’s work in mesoscopic physics and complex media has advanced our understanding of light-matter interactions, specifically through her development of unconventional lasers and multimodal fibers.

spie.org/news/hui-cao...

Kimani Toussaint is recognized for his commitment to diversifying STEM and his leadership in creating research opportunities for underrepresented students in optics and photonics.

spie.org/news/kimani-...

Maryellen Giger's work in AI-driven image analysis has advanced computer-aided diagnosis and its clinical translation. This honor also recognizes her mentorship of the next generation of medical-imaging scientists.

spie.org/news/maryell...

We're honored to see familiar faces among the winners of the 2026 #SPIE Society Awards 🧵

Congratulations to all of the recipients for your achievements across light-based sciences and technologies.

You're so welcome!

How close are we to programmable human cells?
A new @cellpress.bsky.social perspective from Martha Gillette and Yogesh Goyal explores how synthetic biology & AI are enabling precise control over cell behavior, opening new paths for drug development and personalized therapies. https://bit.ly/48Mx1JO

Genome-scale perturb-seq in primary human CD4+ T cells maps context-specific regulators of T cell programs and human immune traits Gene regulatory networks encode the fundamental logic of cellular functions, but systematic network mapping remains challenging, especially in cell states relevant to human biology and disease. Here, ...

Together with @ronghuizhu.bsky.social, we are thrilled to present our new perturb-seq study of 22M primary CD4+ T cells, across donors and timepoints – the result of a decade-long collaboration between the Marson @marsonlab.bsky.social and Pritchard @jkpritch.bsky.social labs 🧵 tinyurl.com/gwt2025

WaveOrder is a powerful new #microscopy tool from Biohub that helps researchers reconstruct messy microscope data into clean, quantitative maps. It’s grounded in physics & it’s already changing how we see biology.

📚 Preprint https://bit.ly/4jgDJLB
🔬WaveOrder: https://czi.co/4pMwGgb

🧪 That's a wrap on #CellBio2025! We had a blast in Philly connecting with the cell biology and imaging communities, and sharing our open-access tools!