Publications Below are publications from Microbe Hackers students, Research Educator, or PI from 2015-current. Affiliation of UT Austin authors are indicated using the formatting key below. For any undergraduates looking at this page, you’ll see that several publications feature undergraduates as first authors. This includes undergraduates in iGEM (non-italics) or in Microbe Hackers (italics). Formatting Key: * (no italics) = iGEM undergraduate (never in Microbe Hackers) * (with italics) = Microbe Hackers undergraduate (may have also been in iGEM) ^ = equally contributing or co-corresponding authors ~ = consortia of authors from multiple institutions contributed data, including us _ = Microbe Hackers Research Educator (RE), Dr. Mishler (2015-current), or PI, Dr. Barrick (2015-2025). Work in prep: Evolutionary Failure Mode Calculator 2.0 (submitting soon with lots of undergrad authors). Submitted work: Neil Y. Tian*, Riya Reddy*, Connie Y. Zhang*, Dennis M. Mishler. (submitted, April 2025). Caffeinated Coli: Inspiring the Next Generation of Scientists through Synthetic Biology. Published work: Deanna Buckley, Gwendolyn Stovall, Bailey Williams, Josh Beckham, Dennis Mishler, Mary Ramsey, Stuart Reichler, Andrea Hutson. (2025). The high school research initiative prepares and supports Texas science teachers doing research in their classrooms. American Journal of STEM Education 16, 95-108. https://doi.org/10.32674/ajggb348 Jeffrey Chuong*, Keaton Brown*, Isaac Gifford, Dennis M. Mishler, Jeffrey E. Barrick. (2025). Engineered Acinetobacter baylyi ADP1-ISx cells are sensitive DNA biosensors for antibiotic resistance genes and a fungal pathogen of bats. ACS Synthetic biology 14, 2488-2493. https://doi.org/10.1021/acssynbio.5c00360 Before 2025… Iain George, Paul Ross, Yixian Yang, Martin Holub, Nina Rajpurohit, Ibrahim Aldulijan, Jacob Beal, Alejandro Vignoni, Dennis Mishler. (2024). An integrated engineering worldview of synthetic biology education through the lens of webinar based pedagogy. Frontiers in Bioengineering and Biotechnology, 12. https://doi.org/10.3389/fbioe.2024.1431374 Noor Radde*^, Genevieve A .Mortensen*^, Diya Bhat*, Shireen Shah*, Joseph J. Clements*, Sean P. Leonard, Matthew J. McGuffie, Dennis M. Mishler, Jeffrey E. Barrick. (2024). Measuring the burden of hundreds of BioBricks defines an evolutionary limit on constructability in synthetic biology. Nature Communications 15, 6242. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-024-50639-9 Alejandro E. Gutierrez*, Prachi Shah*, Abigail E. Rex*, Tien C. Nguyen*, Saamiha P. Kenkare*, Jeffrey E. Barrick^, Dennis M. Mishler^. (2019). Bioassay for Determining the Concentrations of Caffeine and Individual Methylxanthines in Complex Samples. Appl Environ Microbiol. 85:e01965-19. https://doi.org/10.1128/AEM.01965-19 Peng Geng, Sean P. Leonard, Dennis M. Mishler, Jeffrey E. Barrick. (2019). Synthetic genome defenses against selfish DNA elements stabilize engineered bacteria against evolutionary failure. ACS Synthetic Biology 8(3), 521-531. https://doi.org/10.1021/acssynbio.8b00426 Jenna C. McGuffey*, Dacia Leon, Erum Z. Dhanji*, Dennis M. Mishler, Jeffrey E. Barrick. (2018). Bacterial Production of Gellan Gum as a Do-It-Yourself Alternative to Agar. J Microbiol Biol Educ. 19:10.1128/jmbe.v19i2.1530. https://doi.org/10.1128/jmbe.v19i2.1530 Jacob Beal, Traci Haddock-Angelli, Geoff Baldwin, Markus Gershater, Ari Dwijayanti, Marko Storch, Kim de Mora, Meagan Lizarazo, Randy Rettberg, with the iGEM Interlab Study Contributors~. (2018). Quantification of bacterial fluorescence using independent calibrants. PLoS ONE 13(6): e0199432. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0199432 Jordan W. Monk*, Sean P. Leonard, Colin W. Brown, Michael J. Hammerling, Catherine Mortensen*, Alejandro E. Gutierrez*, Nathan Y. Shin*, Ella Watkins*, Dennis M. Mishler^, Jeffrey E. Barrick^. (2017). Rapid and Inexpensive Evaluation of Nonstandard Amino Acid Incorporation in Escherichia coli. ACS Synthetic Biology. 6(1);45-54. https://doi.org/10.1021/acssynbio.6b00192 Jacob Beal, Traci Haddock-Angelli, Markus Gershater, Kim de Mora, Meagan Lizarazo, Jim Hollenhorst, Randy Rettberg, iGEM Interlab Study Contributors~. (2016). Reproducibility of Fluorescent Expression from Engineered Biological Constructs in E. coli. PLoS ONE 11(3): e0150182. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0150182 Amin Espah Borujeni, Dennis M. Mishler, Jingzhi Wang, Walker Huso, Howard M. Salis. (2016). Automated physics-based design of synthetic riboswitches from diverse RNA aptamers. Nucleic Acids Research. 44(1):1-13. https://doi.org/10.1093/nar/gkv1289 Benjamin R. Jack, Sean P. Leonard, Dennis M. Mishler, Brian A. Renda, Dacia Leon, Gabriel A. Suárez, Jeffrey E. Barrick. (2015). Predicting the genetic stability of engineered DNA sequences with the EFM calculator. ACS Synthetic Biology. 4(8):939-943.https://doi.org/10.1021/acssynbio.5b00068
