Lead author and newly graduated SynBERC PhD student Reshma Shetty has achieved "highly-accessed" status in the Journal of Biological Engineering for her April 14 paper, "Engineering BioBrick vectors from Biobrick parts". In the paper, Shetty describes applying the advantages of BioBrick standard biological parts to make many new and standardized plasmid-based vectors. Plasmids are small circular segments of DNA found naturally in microbes. Plasmids can replicate on their own but are usually interdependent with the full DNA stored in the microbe's chromosomes. Researchers often insert modified plasmids (called vectors) into a microbe to make many copies of a gene or the protein it encodes. Shetty's paper describes how the synthetic biology community can make new BioBrick vectors from existing and newly designed BioBrick parts. Shetty states, "We hope that the community will use the new vectors and vector parts, available freely via the Registry of Standard Biological Parts, and contribute their experiences back to the Registry to further improve BioBrick vectors." The Journal of Biological Engineering is a new research journal that supports the synthetic biology community and highlights much of the foundational work in this emerging field. Shetty's is the first article published in JBE that has achieved the designation of "highly accessed" from the open access publisher, BioMedCentral.