Author Archives: jblucks

Congratulations to one of the first postdocs of the Lucks Lab, Dr. James Chappell, on starting his lab at Rice University! James joins the BioSciences department at Rice as an assistant professor, where he’ll be focused on creating RNA regulators of gene expression, exploring the portability of these regulators in bacteria domain, performing signal processing withContinue reading “Congratulations to James Chappell! Now a Professor at Rice University!”

The group’s paper on Cotranscriptional folding of a riboswitch at nucleotide resolution has been recommended by F1000Prime! F1000, or Faculty of 1000, is a post-publication peer review service which utilizes recommendations from thousands of experts to recommend the most important papers in the field. Our work on Cotrans SHAPE-Seq was recommended by F1000 Faculty Member and structural biologistContinue reading “Our Cotranscriptional SHAPE-Seq paper is recommended by F1000Prime”

Luyi Cheng, a PhD student in the IBIS graduate program at Northwestern, has joined the Lucks Lab for her PhD research! Luyi completed her B.S. in Biochemistry at the University of Washington and did undergraduate research in structural biology. She brings her expertise and passion for structural biology to the “RNA world” and will help advanceContinue reading “Luyi Cheng joins the Lucks Lab!”

Phillip Clauer, who just wrapped up his sophomore year in the Biochemistry and Molecular Biology program at Penn State, has joined our lab for summer research! For the past 2 years Phillip has been working on genetic circuits in the Salis Lab at Penn State, and he’s hoping to expand his syn bio skillset working inContinue reading “Phillip Clauer joins the lab for summer research.”

The latest publication from the Voigt lab, published today in Nature Chemical Biology, describes the use of an elaborate optogenetic circuit in E. coli to create spatially and temporally resolved pattens of gene expression that respond to light. In this particular instance, expression of red, green or blue fluorescence proteins is triggered by exposure to red, green or blueContinue reading “Julius is quoted in The Scientist magazine”

Congratulations to Julius Lucks for being named a Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar! This prestigious award of the Camille and Henry Dreyfus foundation is given annually to young faculty who have an outstanding body of scholarship and a commitment to education in the fields of chemistry, chemical engineering and related sciences. Click here to learn more aboutContinue reading “Julius receives Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar award!”

Several Northwestern University Center for Synthetic Biology faculty, staff and students are featured in a Northwestern University video “At Northwestern, We March for Science Everyday.” Click the link to see our own, Julius Lucks, voicing his support for public funding of scientific research!  

A new nucleic acid detection method promises attomolar detection of viral nucleic acids using the CRISPR-Cas13a/C2c2 system. The work, published last week in Science, hit the web during the same week as attorneys for UC Berkeley announced that they will appeal the USPTO’s decision that Berkeley’s CRISPR patents do not overlap with those claimed by the Broad Institute.Continue reading “Julius is quoted in the Wall Street Journal!”

Eric and Kyle’s paper “Distributed biotin-streptavidin transcription roadblocks for mapping cotranscriptional RNA folding” is now online at Nucleic Acids Research! This work makes cotranscriptional SHAPE-Seq even easier and more accessible by developing a “one-pot” synthesis for roadblocking DNA templates and uncovers important details about how collision with different transcription roadblocks can affect the experiment. This workContinue reading “Eric & Kyle’s paper on biotin-streptavidin roadblocks for Cotranscriptional SHAPE-Seq is now online at NAR!”

Alex’s paper “Achieving large dynamic range control of gene expression with a compact RNA transcription-translation regulator” is online in Nucleic Acids Research. In this work we report a breakthrough in RNA engineering that allowed us to create some of the largest dynamic range RNA regulators we currently know of that can be used to solveContinue reading “Our paper on dual transcriptional-translational riboregulator control has been published!”