Base Pair Bulletin

Highlights from Twist Bioscience in May 2025! We've rounded up the top news that happened this month from landmark preprints and cancer research to plant genomics and even fashion. Read on for all the details and please subscribe and share with your network.

Notable Preprints

• Escherichia coli with a 57-codon genetic code

We are thrilled to see Twist DNA selected to support this landmark preprint: “Escherichia coli with a 57-codon genetic code” which was done by stitching 10kb of Twist genes together!

• Lessons From the Adaptyv EGFR Binder Competition

Adaptyv Bio’s Protein Design Competition illustrates the potential of crowdsourcing to drive creativity and innovation in protein design. Contestants used ML and computational methods to submit 1857 total designs, 600 which were then experimentally tested by Adaptyv, validating a total of 60 novel binders! Twist is proud to have supported some of the DNA costs for the competition!

• Machining antibodies at IPI

The Institute for Protein Innovation and Harvard Medical School report a novel framework for making synthetic recombinant antibodies that can generate data specifically optimized for ML integration. Twist is proud to have contributed a combinatorial gene synthesis method to create billions of differing CDR3s.

• Experimental Evaluation of AI-Driven Protein Design Risks

Work by our own James Diggans , Eric Horvitz , Geoffrey Taghon, and team from National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), Microsoft, and Twist Bioscience demonstrates a testing, evaluation, validation, and verification (TEVV) framework for AI-assisted protein design (AIPD), using safe proteins as SOC proxies.

Podcast: We've Been Misclassifying Childhood AML for Years

Childhood AML has been misclassified for years —until now. Dr. Jeffery Klco's team at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital uncovered 12 new pediatric subtypes using a 357-gene panel from Twist. 🎧 Listen to Dr. Klco discuss his work with Theral Timpson on Mendelspod:

Webinar on Demand

Watch Caroline Callot and william marande's presentation showcasing cutting-edge strategies for efficiently capturing large regions of interest in complex plant genomes.

Free DNA for iGEM teams

iGEM teams, we’re excited to offer you 20kb of FREE Twist DNA, available as either Gene Fragments or Express Clonal Genes! Your DNA arrives ready to use, cloned into a Twist stock vector or iGEM vector. Claim your free DNA here!

Science but make it couture

May wouldn't be complete without our annual Met Gala post. For your viewing pleasure: The Met Gala as things seen in science 2025...

• May 5th: Twist Bioscience Spins Out DNA Data Storage as Independent Company

• May 8th: Twist Bioscience and Ginkgo Bioworks Revise Collaboration

• May 22: Twist Bioscience and Element Biosciences Expand Collaboration to Transform Next Generation Sequencing Workflows with Co-Developed End-to-End Solutions

APAC:

Antibody Therapeutic Conference 2025 in Taiwan, 26-27 May

KSGD Conference at the Eliena Hotel in Seoul Korea, 12-13 June

Antibody Summit 2025 in China, 23-24 June.

The Chinese Biopharmaceutical Association (CBA) 30th Annual Conference in China, 25-26 June.

AMER:

SEASR, June 18-20, Tampa, FL

SEED, June 23-26, Houston, TX

Festival of Genomics, June 24-25, Boston, MA

EMEA:

ESHG, 24-27 of June. Milan, Italy 

Beatson International Conference 2025. 27-28 May, UK

Sanofi Global Analytical Symposium 2025. 4-5 June. Paris, France

IGC Edinburgh lunch and learn June 2025. 4 June, Edinburgh, UK

Pasteur - SALON DU LABORATOIRE 9 June, Paris, France

The 18th edition of the International PhD Student Cancer Conference (IPSCC). 11 June, UK

ACGS Summer Scientific Meeting 2025. 12 June

Exeter - UK Human Functional Genomics Initiative 2025, 16 June UK 

AI x BIO 23-25 June, UK

AIS 2025. 25-26 June, Tours, France

Microbial Engineering Symposium Cambridge, 27 June, UK

BioTrans 2025, 29 June - 3 July Switzerland

Ice Cream UK, 25 June. Oxford, UK

Ice Cream roadshow - Oxford - 1 July, London, UK