https://nikomc.com Writing on biology. en-us Tue, 12 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000 nsmccarty3@gmail.com (Niko McCarty) nsmccarty3@gmail.com (Niko McCarty) https://nikomc.com/essays/underrated-ideas-01.html https://nikomc.com/essays/underrated-ideas-01.html Three half-baked ideas in biotechnology: hyperspectral biology, engineering beauty, and mapping the air and oceans. essay Tue, 12 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://nikomc.com/essays/pcr-near-optimal.html https://nikomc.com/essays/pcr-near-optimal.html Photonic PCR can run 40 cycles in six minutes. But there are several reasons why it's unlikely to catch on — and why PCR is already surprisingly close to optimal. essay Wed, 22 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://nikomc.com/essays/cloning-design.html https://nikomc.com/essays/cloning-design.html Why do cloning tools still suck? This problem seems like a low-hanging fruit for AI to solve. I gave microgrants to two people working on it. shortform Wed, 15 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://nikomc.com/essays/sea-grapes.html https://nikomc.com/essays/sea-grapes.html Valonia ventricosa, or bubble algae, is the largest single-celled organism on Earth. I gave a $1,000 microgrant to a team working on using it as a living bioreactor. shortform Mon, 13 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://nikomc.com/essays/failed-fast.html https://nikomc.com/essays/failed-fast.html I claimed nobody had tried to evolve Vibrio natriegens to grow faster. I was wrong, and it warrants a correction. shortform Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://nikomc.com/essays/optogenetics-serendipity.html https://nikomc.com/essays/optogenetics-serendipity.html Important inventions in molecular biology are often framed as happening by serendipity. The more you read about these histories, the more you see that great inventors engineered their own luck. essay Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://nikomc.com/essays/mother-machine.html https://nikomc.com/essays/mother-machine.html A tiny microfluidic device lets you watch a single cell divide hundreds of times — and yet almost nobody uses it. Here's why that should change. essay Tue, 31 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://nikomc.com/essays/bounty-results.html https://nikomc.com/essays/bounty-results.html The Fast Biology Bounties went surprisingly well. My goal was to spend $10,000, but so many good submissions came in that I ended up giving away $15,000 instead. essay Tue, 24 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://nikomc.com/essays/growth-rate.html https://nikomc.com/essays/growth-rate.html A single equation explains why Vibrio natriegens divides every 9.8 minutes — and points toward how to make cells grow faster. essay Sun, 15 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://nikomc.com/essays/elife-fallout.html https://nikomc.com/essays/elife-fallout.html When a prestigious journal scrapped accept-reject decisions on submitted papers, some scientists rebelled, and the editor-in-chief was fired. essay Thu, 05 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://nikomc.com/essays/bounties.html https://nikomc.com/essays/bounties.html TL;DR: $10,000 in prizes for ideas on how to speed up wet-lab experiments. Prizes will be given for ideas that are highly original and technically tractable. A essay Mon, 02 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://nikomc.com/essays/2024-lessons.html https://nikomc.com/essays/2024-lessons.html Asimov Press, the publishing company that I run with Xander Balwit, has only been around for about a year. I really love the job because it lets me work with al essay Mon, 23 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://nikomc.com/essays/30-great-essays.html https://nikomc.com/essays/30-great-essays.html The world needs more essays about biology. So last month, I tweeted a link to one of my favorite essays (#1 below) and promised that I would continue to share a shortform Mon, 23 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://nikomc.com/essays/a-christmas-story.html https://nikomc.com/essays/a-christmas-story.html I. shortform Mon, 23 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://nikomc.com/essays/anfinsen.html https://nikomc.com/essays/anfinsen.html Christian Anfinsen shared the 1972 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for showing that a protein's structure is encoded by its amino acid sequence — a breakthrough that predated the genetic code. essay Mon, 23 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://nikomc.com/essays/art-of-emails.html https://nikomc.com/essays/art-of-emails.html Emails are underrated. Many people view them as purely functional — as just another part of the job. But they can be much more than that. Emails are a useful wa shortform Mon, 23 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://nikomc.com/essays/bionumbers.html https://nikomc.com/essays/bionumbers.html Arithmetic is a superpower. Or, as Dynomight has written, a “world-modeling technology.” It is one of the first things we learn in school, and yet few seem essay Mon, 23 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://nikomc.com/essays/brick-technology.html https://nikomc.com/essays/brick-technology.html A YouTube channel about LEGO machines got me thinking about fast iterations and biology. shortform Mon, 23 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://nikomc.com/essays/bridge-editors.html https://nikomc.com/essays/bridge-editors.html Arc Institute researchers recently published a preprint showing that their gene-editing technology, called Bridge recombinases, work in human cells. M essay Mon, 23 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://nikomc.com/essays/c57bl6-j.html https://nikomc.com/essays/c57bl6-j.html The first mouse emulation appeared in 2032; a rodent’s entire anatomy, and all of its cells—including the brain—perfectly recapitulated using computer hardware. essay Mon, 23 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://nikomc.com/essays/cell-burden.html https://nikomc.com/essays/cell-burden.html Biochemistry textbooks often depict cells as spacious places, where molecules float in secluded harmony. But cells are dense and crowded; a bit like molecu essay Mon, 23 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://nikomc.com/essays/central-dogma.html https://nikomc.com/essays/central-dogma.html In the days before DNA sequencing, high-powered microscopes, and molecular biology textbooks, decoding the finer workings of a living cell often required arduou essay Mon, 23 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://nikomc.com/essays/enzymes-from-random-molecules.html https://nikomc.com/essays/enzymes-from-random-molecules.html A new paper in Nature shows that enzymes can be made by mixing just four molecules together, none of which are amino acids. essay Mon, 23 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://nikomc.com/essays/how-to-find-writing-ideas.html https://nikomc.com/essays/how-to-find-writing-ideas.html Many writers have published advice about how to write better, myself included. But I recently went looking for advice about how to find writing ideas, shortform Mon, 23 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://nikomc.com/essays/hydrogen-atom.html https://nikomc.com/essays/hydrogen-atom.html The hydrogen atom revolutionized physics. essay Mon, 23 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://nikomc.com/essays/microbial-lenses.html https://nikomc.com/essays/microbial-lenses.html There’s a new paper out in PNAS that hints at some intriguing synthetic biology applications. Researchers at the University of Rochester introduced a shortform Mon, 23 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://nikomc.com/essays/most-abundant-protein.html https://nikomc.com/essays/most-abundant-protein.html One reason David Goodsell’s paintings attract biologists, I think, is because they are unapologetically realistic. His paintings depict seas of macromolecules s shortform Mon, 23 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://nikomc.com/essays/moving-to-the-bay.html https://nikomc.com/essays/moving-to-the-bay.html I moved to the Bay Area to join Astera Institute as an independent fellow. shortform Mon, 23 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://nikomc.com/essays/openai-wet-lab.html https://nikomc.com/essays/openai-wet-lab.html OpenAI used GPT-5 to optimize Gibson Assembly. Here's what they actually did — and where I'd push back. essay Mon, 23 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://nikomc.com/essays/single-molecule.html https://nikomc.com/essays/single-molecule.html Many decades before the discovery of x-rays and the invention of powerful microscopes, Lord Rayleigh calculated the size of a single molecule. And he did it, re shortform Mon, 23 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://nikomc.com/essays/tardigrades.html https://nikomc.com/essays/tardigrades.html A few months ago, I saw some claims online that tardigrades—also called water bears—can survive for up to 30 years without food or water. shortform Mon, 23 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://nikomc.com/essays/think-of-the-eggs.html https://nikomc.com/essays/think-of-the-eggs.html When people think of “biotech” — myself included — they tend to picture GLP-1s and gene therapies. But biotech is much broader than just medicine; it’s also pus shortform Mon, 23 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://nikomc.com/essays/underrated-science-books.html https://nikomc.com/essays/underrated-science-books.html It’s generally a bad idea to write a book. essay Mon, 23 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://nikomc.com/essays/we-need-biotech-data.html https://nikomc.com/essays/we-need-biotech-data.html In 2011, while working in Brazil, Max Roser began formulating the idea for Our World in Data. He initially planned to publish “data and research on global essay Mon, 23 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://nikomc.com/essays/why-engineer-biology.html https://nikomc.com/essays/why-engineer-biology.html This essay originally appeared on the Asimov blog. essay Mon, 23 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://nikomc.com/essays/why-i-write.html https://nikomc.com/essays/why-i-write.html In the summer of 1946, shortly after the close of World War II, George Orwell published a short essay entitled “Why I Write.” He had already released Comin essay Mon, 23 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://nikomc.com/essays/why-vibrio-never-caught-on.html https://nikomc.com/essays/why-vibrio-never-caught-on.html A microbe that divides every 10 minutes never displaced E. coli. Here's why — and why that might change. essay Mon, 23 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://nikomc.com/essays/writing-moats.html https://nikomc.com/essays/writing-moats.html Good writers should not fear AI. Many types of writing that people enjoy reading cannot easily be replicated by machines. Also, writing is a good way to think a shortform Mon, 23 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000