April 18, 2023
(The New Yorker) – In recent years, the science of extending female reproductive longevity has seen a new flurry of interest, and biotech companies are attempting to begin clinical trials of a number of therapies, including new I.V.F. techniques and … Read More
April 17, 2023
(MIT Technology Review) – There are trillions of microbes living in and on our bodies—and we might be able to modify them to help us treat diseases. Scientists have altered the genomes of some of these bacteria that live on … Read More
April 6, 2023
(STAT News) – There are almost no such rules when it comes to publishing the fundamental blueprints needed to make or alter a virus with the tools of synthetic biology. There are already thousands of people who could use readily … Read More
December 21, 2022
(Undark) – Today there are dozens, perhaps hundreds, of companies selling genes, offering DNA at increasingly low prices. (If DNA resembles a long piece of text, rates today are often lower than 10 cents per letter; at this rate, the … Read More
November 7, 2022
(Wired) – Over the past hundred years, this protective strain—now known as E. coli Nissle—has been used as a probiotic to promote gut health and treat gastrointestinal conditions like inflammatory bowel disease. Now, scientists are genetically engineering E. coli Nissle … Read More
October 5, 2022
(STAT News) – Ever since the inception of gene synthesis, there have been concerns about possible misuse of synthetic genes. Pathogens — particularly small viruses — could be assembled from scratch in a lab, evading the regulatory regimes the U.S. … Read More
September 26, 2022
(Wired) – Not only do you need to find the right phages for a particular bacterial infection, then—they must also be lytic ones. But many phages in Hatfull and his team’s collection are temperate, including two of the three they … Read More
September 6, 2022
(New York Times) – To better understand how microbes affect our health, scientists have for the first time created a synthetic human microbiome, combining 119 species of bacteria naturally found in the human body. When the researchers gave the concoction … Read More
May 20, 2022
(Quanta Magazine) – Now, a group of biologists at the California Institute of Technology with backgrounds in physics have reported in Science that they have devised a simple network of genes that gives rise to surprisingly complex, lifelike behaviors. It … Read More
July 12, 2021
The Linacre Quarterly (vol. 87, no. 4, 2020) is available online by subscription only. Articles include: “Brain–Machine Interfaces as Commodities: Exchanging Mind for Matter” by Christopher M. Reilly “The Spiritual Works of Mercy as a Tool to Prevent Burnout in … Read More
