The Dish — Cultivarium's 24/7 AI-hosted science radio. An ode to the petri dish (and to dishing the latest): technology for biology, non-model organisms, molecular tools, and the occasional tardigrade. Paper-driven, hosted by a small cast of AI personalities.
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A one-minute welcome to The Dish — Cultivarium's 24/7 AI science radio. Follow to catch what the lab can't stop talking about.
What's happening in Biology right now. Hosted by Sofia & Daniel.
Geometric deep learning fingerprints score every non-TM surface patch of 2,886 human surface proteins, yielding 4,500 targetable sites and pre-docked binder seeds Hosted by Theo & Dr. Mara.
Tracing the roots of Getting DNA Into the Unengineerable across 6 papers. Hosted by Sofia & Daniel.
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 produce. Success could mean faster, cheaper, more innovative solutions for medicine, agriculture, materials science, environmental remediation and other industries. Hosted by Theo & Dr. Mara.
A yeast tRNA-Lys D-arm RNA hairpin carries a 49 bp DNA duplex into the human mitochondrial matrix, where native MMEJ machinery writes designed multi-nucleotide changes into mtDNA. Hosted by Theo & Dr. Mara.
What's happening in AI right now. Hosted by Sofia & Daniel.
Tracing the roots of The Cell Within the Cell across 6 papers. Hosted by Theo & Dr. Mara.
When a cell gets ready to divide, it shuts down its gene-reading machinery almost entirely. For decades, the mechanism behind that shutdown was only partially understood. A new study co-led by Alarcón and Lilian Kabeche, associate professor of molecular biophysics and biochemistry at Yale School of Medicine, identifies a missing piece: an enzyme best known for tagging RNA molecules that turns out to be wired into the cell division machinery itself. The findings, recently published in Molecular Cell, may point toward new cancer therapies. Hosted by Sofia & Daniel.
The Guo lab presents transferable, modular genetic toolsets — constitutive promoter panel, inducible expression system, and CRISPR-Cas deletions — that function across phylogenetically diverse gut Clostridia, and demonstrates in living mice that TMA and DCA production can be reversibly switched on and off, converting a causal question ("which bacterial gene drives this metabolite?") into a tunable in vivo dial. Hosted by Theo & Dr. Mara.
Tracing the roots of The Bacterial Immune Arms Race across 6 papers. Hosted by Theo & Dr. Mara.
Can DNA traces in just two liters (0.5 gallons) of water reveal how a river's biodiversity changes over the course of a year? A study by the University of Duisburg-Essen using the River Lippe as an example shows how biodiversity in freshwater ecosystems can be monitored comprehensively, efficiently and at comparatively low cost. The results have now been published in the journal Ecological Indicators. Hosted by Sofia & Daniel.
What's happening in Biology right now. Hosted by Theo & Dr. Mara.
Tracing the roots of Creatures Worth Meeting across 6 papers. Hosted by Sofia & Daniel.
Scientists at the Department of Energy (DOE)'s Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) have shown that more than 93% of possible E. coli CRISPR-Cas9 guide RNAs—molecules that direct the gene-editing CRISPR tool to the right spot in DNA—work as intended, a far higher percentage than researchers expected. They also discovered why a small number of guides fail and developed a simple way to repair them. The work is published in the journal Nucleic Acids Research. Hosted by Theo & Dr. Mara.
Nature, Published online: 26 August 2026; doi:10.1038/s41586-026-10949-yA robotic, cell–free platform rapidly prototypes redesigned genetic codes, enabling the translation of proteins with reassigned codons and non-standard amino acids without altering living genomes. Hosted by Sofia & Daniel.
What's happening in AI right now. Hosted by Theo & Dr. Mara.
Tracing the roots of Writing Genomes From Scratch across 6 papers. Hosted by Sofia & Daniel.
Eukaryote hypermutating its own genome (integrated viruses within it), comparing to DGRs instead of APOBEC and ADAR. Hosted by Theo & Dr. Mara.
Weill Cornell Medicine investigators have developed a set of molecular tools to regulate the activity of specific genes in one of the most common classes of intestinal bacteria. The ability to genetically manipulate these microbes could lead to a better understanding of the role they play in human physiology and disease. Hosted by Sofia & Daniel.
What's happening in Biology right now. Hosted by Sofia & Daniel.
LNPDB standardizes 19,528 LNP formulations plus CHARMM force fields, letting MD-derived critical packing parameter predict delivery better than the deep learning model Hosted by Theo & Dr. Mara.
Tracing the roots of AI at the Lab Bench across 6 papers. Hosted by Sofia & Daniel.
Opportunities to directly observe how life colonizes newly formed land and how ecosystems subsequently develop are exceedingly rare. In a study published in the Journal of Plant Research, researchers at University of Tsukuba used genetic analyses to investigate the origin of Eleusine indica, a grass species found on Nishinoshima, an active volcanic island in the northwestern Pacific south of mainland Japan. Having newly emerged, the island offers a unique natural laboratory for understanding the earliest stages of biological colonization and ecosystem development. Hosted by Theo & Dr. Mara.
Su9-targeted AsCas12a, matrix-verified by protease protection, plus two lipofected 40-44 nt crRNAs excises defined 2.3 kb and 7 kb mtDNA deletions confirmed by NGS. Hosted by Theo & Dr. Mara.
