News

iGEM 2025 in Paris: Our Highlights From an Inspiring Grand Jamboree

This year, the iGEM Grand Jamboree returned to Paris, and so did we. From 28–31 October, the Paris Convention Centre became a global hub of synthetic biology, and we were thrilled to be right in the middle of it all. A Community That Thinks Beyond Boundaries Throughout the week, we had the chance to speak with teams from every corner of the world - discussing ideas, learning about emerging challenges, and exploring how AI and synthetic biology can unlock new possibilities.  Our Talk: “Smart Models Think Like Scientists” One of our key moments this year was our presentation on the Technology Stage, where our Scientific Officer, Wiktoria Palka, explored a big question: How do we build AI that truly advances discovery?In her talk, Wiktoria challenged the limits of black-box AI and highlighted the need for a more grounded approach to scientific modeling. With scarce, noisy, and heterogeneous datasets—especially in protein design—purely statistical models fall short. The future, as she explained, lies in hybrid modeling: Using machine learning to generate diverse hypotheses Constraining and testing them with physics-based models such as Molecular Dynamics Closing the loop with experiments to enable justifiable, reproducible decisions At xyna.bio, we’re already building toward this future through our hybrid GROMACS-based MD environment—and this is just the beginning. Our vision is a world where AI becomes a true research partner, enabling cyclic hypothesis generation and human-in-the-loop discovery. Celebrating Our 2025 Travel Grant Teams Another highlight was cheering on the six incredible teams we supported through the xyna.bio Travel Grant Program. Their performance at the Jamboree left us genuinely inspired. Across the six teams, they achieved: 🏅 2× Top 10 placements 🏅 6 medals 🏆 Safety & Security Award 🏆 Best Hardware Award 🏆 Best Fashion & Cosmetics Project …along with numerous nominations and recognitions. Paris treated us wonderfully once again. The conversations, presentations, and spontaneous idea-sharing sessions reminded us why the iGEM community is so special. Until next year—let’s keep building the future of bioscience together. 💚

First Publication – We are expanding into Nanobody Engineering

Our collaboration with Prof. Dr. Harald Kolmar's research group at Technische Universität Darmstadt together with Felix Geyer has resulted in a publication in Antibodies MDPI showing an innovative advancement in nanobody engineering, by combing ML-based tools and rational design principles: https://doi.org/10.3390/antib14030073 With our part: a free and public nanobody aggregation score pipeline avaliable on the xyna.bio platform. And we are just getting started. Together with TU Darmstadt, we are developing neurosymbolic models that combine domain specific expert knowledge, fine tuned ML-based tools (Boltz2, ProteinGPTs, diffusion models), symbolic AI, with biophysical-chemical-mathematical models in ensemble predictions orchestrated by agents, intelligently controling model combinations, parametrization and more. This milestone demonstrates how interdisciplinary research drives innovation. The future is created where AI, biotechnology, and interdisciplinary excellence converge - here at xyna.bio. A big thank you for this amazing work to Felix Geyer and the entire Kolmar Group, as well as to the whole xyna.bio Team, specifically Wiktoria Palka, Julian Borbeck, Annika Bamberger, Jan Luca Metzler, and the development team led by Sebastian B.! 

BFH iGEM Meetup 2025

We’re back at the BFH European Meet-Up 2025! Last year, our AI-powered workshop was one of the most popular — and this year, we’re coming back even stronger. What’s new?An interactive booth where you can explore modular pipeline design with XYNA.BIO, and a hands-on workshop for those ready to dive deep into desgining intuitive bioinformatics workflows. More on the workshop coming soon — stay tuned! A huge shoutout to the iGEM teams from iGEM Bielefeld-CeBiTec, iGEM GU Frankfurt, and iGEM Hamburg for making this gathering possible. Can’t wait to see you all in Frankfurt next week! Stay tuned for more updates, and we can't wait to connect with the brilliant minds of the iGEM community once again!

Mosbacher Kolloquium 2025

March 19. - 22.

We’re gearing up for the Mosbacher Kolloquium 2025! Check out the new xyna.bio version – marking a major step forward in AI-driven molecular design and modeling. The intersection of AI, bioinformatics, and molecular design has never been more exciting. Mosbach is bringing together some of the brightest minds in the field and we can’t wait to share it with the community. Look out for… Martin Steinegger (Seoul National University) - The mastermind behind MMseqs2, ColabFold, and Foldseek, making large-scale protein analysis lightning-fast. Alexander Rives (Evolutionary Scale AI) - Leading the charge with ESMFold & ESM Cambrian, reimagining AI-driven protein structure prediction. Andrea Volkamer (Helmholtz Institute) - Pioneering machine learning-driven drug discovery and virtual screening. …and many more! If you're passionate about computational biology, let’s connect!

iGEM MiniJamboree at the TU Eindhoven

October 7

On October 7th we presented xyna.bio at the iGEM MiniJamboree to talented young scientists from Benelux and Germany. For us, this is the dress rehearsal for the worldwide iGEM competition from October 23 to 26 in Paris.

iGEM Grand Jamboree Paris 2024

October 23 – 26

We are eagerly awaiting the worldwide IGEM competition from October 23 to 26 in Paris. We will have a stand there and will present xyna.bio in the conference program to around 4,000 talented young scientists from the field of synthetic biology. There are 400 participating teams from 60 countries. We offer participants the opportunity to take part in our xyna beta test so that we can incorporate their feedback into the further development of xyna.bio

xyna.bio at the Sigtran 2024, Weimar

November 4 – 7

After the young scientists in Paris, we will conclude our events in 2024 by presenting xyna.bio at the scientific conference Sigtrans for Signal Transduction in Weimar. This will be Workshop B “Hot Topics in Signal Transduction” (Monday, 4.11.24, 19:30 - 21:00) where we will give the following talk: Computational pipelines based on Artificial Intelligence – a versatile low-threshold tool for biomedicine J. Borbeck1, K. Friedrich2, B. Reifenhäuser2 University of Tübingen, Interfaculty Institute of Microbiology and Infection Medicine, Tübingen, Germany GIP AG Gesellschaft für Industriephysik, Mainz, Germany Bioinformatics and, more recently, Artificial Intelligence (AI) have immensely advanced biomedical research and development. While analysis of sequence information is widely used for quite some time now, the prediction of protein structures using AlphaFold and similar software lately came as a revolutionary novelty. Hence, analyses and simulations in the “DryLab” in today’s time can very efficiently complement “WetLab” work. However, fully exploiting the potential of underlying tools often still requires IT and programming skills. The Xyna.bio platform provides a low-threshold access for all biomedical scientists to the assembly and employment of AI-driven tool chains. This approach can largely facilitate the pursuit of most diverse projects without the need for particular IT expertise, conveniently connecting the researcher to the rapidly expanding universe of AI in biomedicine. We will demonstrate the potential of Xyna.bio on the following examples generation of biological sensors and closedloop-hyperautomated computer aided drug design.

First xyna.bio Hackathon

Last Friday, xyna.bio hosted a highly successful hackathon, bringing together motivated students and industry experts to work on cutting-edge biotech solutions using our first beta version. We are thrilled to share the highlights and achievements from this inspiring event. Participants tackled ambitious projects, including optimizing a protein involved in plastic degradation and designing a synthetic serotonin-like molecule for Alzheimer's disease treatment. With our initial pipeline, teams were able to design workflows from scratch and present initial results within just a few hours, showcasing the powerful capabilities of xyna.bio. One of the standout achievements was the integration of a ChatGPT node by the students, demonstrating the innovative potential of combining AI with biotech. We are excited to announce that we will be pursuing the addition of this ChatGPT node into the first official version of xyna.bio, set to launch later this year. Stay tuned for more updates on this exciting development!

xyna.bio @BFH iGEM Meetup Bielefeld

We had the incredible opportunity to participate in the BFH European iGEM Meetup and lead a workshop on leveraging AI in bioscientific research, showcasing our solution xyna.bio. We were overrun by motivation and eagerness, with our workshop being among the most signed up for among the 150 participants! Our mission to empower bioscientists with xyna.bio struck a nerve with everyone around, showcasing the need for an innovative way to integrate wet and dry lab processes and automate complex bioinformatical analysis for the scientists that need it. Read the full story here: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/xollx-futurelab_we-had-the-incredible-opportunity-to-participate-activity-7203402023600275457-Rz5P?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop

Great success on jumpstarting with the first Future on Site event – Next GenAI goes Bio!

Our new series Future on Site jumpstarted with an inspiring mixture of young scientists coming together to create future synthetic biology solutions. The eagerness to develop new algorithmic tools and solve modern problems of our local iGEM Teams is fascinating, gaining them each a XOLLX iGEM Grant prize to develop their projects. A highlight was the firsthand insight, invaluable for the development of our Saturn project derived xyna.bio. The idea of an AI-aided bioinformatical analysis hyperautomation platform was greeted by all with enthusiastic discussions and ideas. The shared vision among all at the Future on Site: Next GenAI goes Bio once again showed the great innovative potential that we are eager to harness in these interdisciplinary events. Thank you again to everyone from the iGEM Tübingen, iGEM Aachen, iGEM Frankfurt and CompuGene Student Lab for the amazing first Future On Site Event. We will persist in gathering innovative minds to further work on creating our future.

Future On Site: Next GenAI goes Bio

Future On Site: Next GenAI goes Bio We're thrilled to unveil our vision for xyna.bio - a pioneering GenAI-aided, graph-based platform tailored for bioinformatic analytics. Our platform design is set to empower scientists to streamline their analyses and pipelines without the need for coding expertise or the hassle of deployment all powered by our innovative xyna.ai Saturn program. Join us on the 12. April at the GIP headquarters in Mainz where we'll demonstrate xyna.bio in action, discuss the future of bioinformatical hyperautomation and share visions with local iGEM Teams, students and professionals. For updates and registration: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/xollx-futurelab/