{"title":"Five questions with Bowen Li","authors":"Michael Francisco","doi":"10.1038/s41587-026-03340-9","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s41587-026-03340-9","url":null,"abstract":"A true multidisciplinary scientist, Bowen Li finds that some of the most interesting questions are located precisely at the boundaries between fields.","PeriodicalId":19084,"journal":{"name":"Nature biotechnology","volume":"44 10","pages":"1741-1742"},"PeriodicalIF":44.5,"publicationDate":"2026-10-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149166918","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"People","authors":"","doi":"10.1038/s41587-026-03341-8","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s41587-026-03341-8","url":null,"abstract":"Recent moves of note in and around the biotech and pharma industries.","PeriodicalId":19084,"journal":{"name":"Nature biotechnology","volume":"44 10","pages":"1744-1744"},"PeriodicalIF":44.5,"publicationDate":"2026-10-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149177712","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Tracing the origins of CRISPR–Cas","authors":"Dario Ummarino","doi":"10.1038/s41587-026-03353-4","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s41587-026-03353-4","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":19084,"journal":{"name":"Nature biotechnology","volume":"44 10","pages":"1617-1617"},"PeriodicalIF":44.5,"publicationDate":"2026-10-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149170513","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Regeneron approval brings relief for ‘second skeleton’ bone disorder","authors":"Laura DeFrancesco","doi":"10.1038/s41587-026-03346-3","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s41587-026-03346-3","url":null,"abstract":"The newly approved antibody stops abnormal bone growth in patients with the devastating disease fibrodysplasia ossificans.","PeriodicalId":19084,"journal":{"name":"Nature biotechnology","volume":"44 10","pages":"1592-1593"},"PeriodicalIF":44.5,"publicationDate":"2026-10-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149167072","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Julie Trolle, Sofia Sessa, Aleksandra Wudzinska, Mark Grivainis, Katerina Rincones, Tori Rodrick, Drew R. Jones, David Fenyö, Sudarshan Pinglay, Jef D. Boeke
{"title":"Highly multiplexed mammalian metabolic engineering with a shotgun approach","authors":"Julie Trolle, Sofia Sessa, Aleksandra Wudzinska, Mark Grivainis, Katerina Rincones, Tori Rodrick, Drew R. Jones, David Fenyö, Sudarshan Pinglay, Jef D. Boeke","doi":"10.1038/s41587-026-03318-7","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1038/s41587-026-03318-7","url":null,"abstract":"Mammalian metabolic engineering advances basic biology, bioproduction and cell therapy. However, as pathway complexity increases, so does the size of the combinatorial design space and required DNA constructs, rendering unbiased screens intractable. Here, we developed shotgun genetic engineering (SGE), which exploits the ease of delivering many barcoded small constructs—rather than a single large one—into mammalian cells. Each cell serves as an independent experiment, carrying a synthetic pathway that explores gene content, stoichiometry and organellar localization. Functional pathways are identified by sequencing barcodes from cells exhibiting the desired phenotype. Using SGE, we screened millions of pathway combinations to engineer essential amino acid biosynthesis, achieving near-wild-type growth without valine and enabling isoleucine-free growth in Chinese hamster ovary cells, as well as valine-free growth in Jurkat cells. Functional pathways favored mitochondrial localization and required the integration of tens of kilobases of synthetic DNA, beyond the scale of conventional screening. The resulting datasets support machine-learning-guided decoding and engineering of complex biosynthetic traits in mammalian systems.","PeriodicalId":19084,"journal":{"name":"Nature biotechnology","volume":"23 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":46.9,"publicationDate":"2026-10-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149087607","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}