Huge thanks to everyone in the Shipman lab — especially
Seth Shipman, Alex Gonzalez Delgado, Kate Crawford (now at Baker lab) — and Katie Pollard for helpful discussions.
We’re excited to keep exploring where this technology can go.
Detectrons are, to our knowledge, the first synthetic system that directly converts RNA signals into DNA records — linking transient RNA detection to stable sequence-encoded outputs.
We then used Detectrons to measure host susceptibility to phage infection.
Dual DNA barcoding lets us track phage + host identity simultaneously in one pooled experiment.
Sequencing revealed strain-specific susceptibility in a single experiment.
The optimized Detectron design dramatically improved signal strength and specificity, and generalized across multiple phage RNA targets.
We built a large synthetic library (~7,800 variants) and used machine learning to identify structural design rules that improve ON/OFF performance.
DNA outputs are stable, sequence-encoded, and easy to multiplex by sequencing — making them ideal for pooled assays and scalable screening.
Detectrons combine two programmable systems:
• toehold switches → RNA sensing
• retrons → DNA synthesis
RNA trigger → DNA barcode output.
Many RNA sensors report through proteins (fluorescence, enzymes, etc.).
That makes large-scale multiplexing and long-term recording difficult.
We asked: can RNA detection directly generate DNA instead?
Excited to share a preprint from my postdoc work in
Shipman’s lab!
We developed Detectrons — programmable biosensors that convert RNA signals into stable DNA barcodes inside living cells, enabling multiplexed RNA sensing. 🧵👇
biorxiv.org/content/10.6...