Pioneer Labs

In partnership with @pioneerlabs.bsky.social, we’re proposing Tesseract: a large-scale, open microbial phenomics dataset to functionally annotate microbial genomes at scale. 🧬🤖
✅5M diverse genes x 50 host strains × 100 conditions
🔗 Read the proposal:https://zenodo.org/records/17990299

Laying the groundwork for data-driven evolution Gathering quantitative genotype --> fitness data at scale: Part 1

pioneerlabs.substack.com/p/laying-the...

With bioinformatics, we’re now measuring the fitnesses of millions of DNA fragments! This gets us data on whole genomes and is the first step toward big data for modeling genotype -> phenotype with AI/ML for microbial evolution. Link in comments.

🧬 + 🔢 = 📈 -> 🤖?

"Let's go do that" A conversation with Astera resident Erika Alden DeBenedictis

Was so fun to talk with @asterainstitute.bsky.social resident and @pioneerlabs.bsky.social founder @erika-alden.bsky.social! Read our convo if you want to be inspired about the future of life, bioengineering, and engineered life on Mars

asterainstitute.substack.com/p/lets-go-do...

🏆 A Biologist’s Guide to Mars Dirt Just add water

Check out 🏆A Biologist’s Guide to Mars Dirt, where we present a receipt for soluble Mars Regolith Media (sMRM) that best simulates what you’d get if you added water to Mars dirt.

Will anything grow in this media? Stay tuned!

💧+ 🪨 → 🌱 ?

open.substack.com/pub/pioneerl...

There's even more in the pipeline. Expect another post soon that describes how we plan to chemically simulate Mars!

The first turn of our engineering crank 🛠🧂 Beyond deletions: additive strain engineering and adaptation

In our most recent post we describe fragmenting a halophilic genome 🔪, building functional libraries 🪡 and selecting them 🤼 to find genes that measurably 📏 improved salt tolerance🛠🧂! Lab notebook links once more included if you want to dive into the details! open.substack.com/pub/pioneerl...

We can reliably measure salt tolerance 📏🧂 We have achieved Traction!

Our second post outlined our first measurement, where we link lab notebooks showing how we reliably quantify salt tolerance 📏🧂 . We also talk about several things that didn't work! pioneerlabs.substack.com/p/we-can-rel...

How to make a microbe for Mars, one step at a time Our engineering roadmap 🚀🦠

Our first post outlined our roadmap, complete with benchmarks, measurements and engineering cranks! pioneerlabs.substack.com/p/how-to-mak...

Want to follow along as we engineer microbes for circular biomanufacturing in space? We're launching open science updates through our substack! ⬇️