April 11, 2025
(Slate) – We shouldn’t be celebrating “de-extinction.” We should be focused on the species that are currently in danger. What we’re really looking at, it seems, are gray wolves modified to be dire wolves of George R.R. Martin’s books rather … Read More
February 5, 2025
(Quanta) – “It’s really hard for humans to understand biological sequence,” said the computer scientist Brian Hie, who heads the Laboratory of Evolutionary Design at Stanford University, based at the nonprofit Arc Institute. This was the impetus behind his new … Read More
September 10, 2024
(Knowable Magazine) – In promising experiments, phage therapy forces bacteria into a no-win dilemma that lowers their defenses against drugs they’d evolved to withstand In the decades that followed, d’Hérelle and others used this phage therapy to treat bubonic plague … Read More
August 26, 2024
(Axios) – Biosecurity experts are calling on governments to set new guardrails in an effort to limit the risks posed by advanced AI models being applied to biology. Why it matters: AI models trained on genetic sequences have double-edged potential … Read More
August 8, 2024
(New York Times) – After promising results in monkeys, scientists plan to test the new treatment in a few people with H.I.V. Scientists have developed a new weapon against H.I.V.: a molecular mimic that invades a cell and steals essential … Read More
May 21, 2024
(Nature) – The day when human sperm and eggs can be grown in the laboratory has inched a step closer, with the discovery of a way to recreate a crucial developmental step in a dish. The advance, described 20 May … Read More
May 14, 2024
(Wired) – When donated blood is in low supply, platelets are even scarcer. These cell fragments, which are essential for blood clotting, have a short shelf life. Whereas whole blood can be refrigerated for up to a month, platelets last … Read More
May 8, 2024
(Wired) – The White House has issued new rules aimed at companies that manufacture synthetic DNA after years of warnings that a pathogen made with mail-order genetic material could accidentally or intentionally spark the next pandemic. The rules, released on … Read More
May 7, 2024
(MIT Technology Review) – The experiment, at the University of Florida, is an attempt to create a large animal starting only from stem cells—no egg, no sperm, and no conception. A week earlier, “synthetic embryos,” artificial structures created in a … Read More
April 19, 2024
(PC Gamer) – When Borderlands Science was announced back in 2020 I thought it all sounded a little silly. Science? In my Borderlands? It struck me as a lot less likely than Dr. Mayim Bialik seemed to think. But it … Read More
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