July 16, 2020
(Technology Networks) Understanding protein–protein binding is critical for the development of antibody-based therapeutics. Typically, when treating diseases such as cancer, the aim is to bind to a single protein target. However, when it comes to infectious diseases, the therapeutic target can … Read More
July 16, 2020
(Irish Tech News) Trans-humanist theory is contextualised within the 2014 science-fiction thriller “Ex Machina” and also within formal animation, such as the 1999 animated classic “The Iron Giant”. Despite both films showing trans-humanist logic, there are clear distinctions in the way … Read More
May 20, 2020
(The New Yorker) – Yet, given the profound flaws of the American health-care system, there is something hopeful about Open Insulin’s approach. The group is considering teaming up with local hospitals and pharmacies, which would help integrate its methods with … Read More
April 8, 2020
(Scientific American) – In theory, this substance can hold a vast amount of information—up to one exabyte (one billion gigabytes) per cubic millimeter of DNA—for millennia. (The magnetic tape that serves as the foundation of most digital archives has a … Read More
March 16, 2020
(STAT News) – With Gates and NIH funding, the emerging field of synthetic biology is answering the SOS over Covid-19, aiming to engineer vaccines that overcome these obstacles. “It’s all of us against the bug,” said Neil King of the University … Read More
March 4, 2020
(Forbes) – By 2030, almost 400,000 Americans a year will die of diabetes – many of them unnecessarily. Synthetic biology companies are working hard to ensure that’s not the case. Here’s a look into the next generation of continuous glucose … Read More
February 24, 2020
(Nature) – Only a handful of genomes have been synthesized so far, mostly for bacteria. Synthetic biologist Jason Chin and his colleagues at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, UK, have rewritten the genome of Escherichia coli, and … Read More
December 13, 2019
Public Understand of Science (vol. 28, no. 3, 2019) is available online by subscription only. Articles include: “Content, Evaluations and Influences in Newspaper Coverage of Predictive Genetic Testing: A Comparative Media Content Analysis from the United Kingdom and Switzerland” by … Read More
November 7, 2019
(GEN) – We are already living in a synthetic biology world. Within that huge world is an enormous variety of ideas and approaches, like custom-made proteins, CAR-T medicines, genetically engineered crops, and more. One sector still in its infancy is … Read More
October 25, 2019
(Newsweek) – A devastating string of mass shootings has left the country reeling this year. But an even greater threat may be looming in the near future, one with the potential to cause far more widespread injury and loss of … Read More
October 18, 2019
(Science) – Engineering biology with recombinant DNA, broadly called synthetic biology, has progressed tremendously in the last decade, owing to continued industrialization of DNA synthesis, discovery and development of molecular tools and organisms, and increasingly sophisticated modeling and analytic tools. … Read More
September 24, 2019
(NPR) – Making genes from scratch used to be laborious and time consuming, but not anymore. That’s why federal officials are now considering new measures to prevent this rapidly advancing technology from being misused to create dangerous viruses or bioweapons. … Read More
September 16, 2019
(CNN) – Genes and genomes are based on code– just like the digital language of computers. But instead of zeros and ones, four DNA letters — A, C, T, G — encode all of life. (Life is messy, and there … Read More
July 10, 2019
(STAT News) – Scientists at the Centers from Disease Control and Prevention have created a synthetic version of the Ebola virus circulating in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, part of an effort to determine whether diagnostic tests and experimental … Read More
June 19, 2019
Science and Engineering Ethics (vol. 24, no. 6, 2018) is available online by subscription only. Articles include: “The Food Warden: An Exploration of Issues in Distributing Responsibilities for Safe-by-Design Synthetic Biology Applications” by Zoë Robaey, Shannon L. Spruit, and Ibo … Read More
May 16, 2019
(STAT News) – The bacteria happily eating and reproducing and respiring in little plastic dishes sprinkled with nutrient broth in Jason Chin’s lab outside London look ordinary enough, but they differ in a fundamental way from every other living thing … Read More
May 2, 2019
(GEN) – The rapidly developing field of synthetic biology—including the subfield of synthetic immunology—is putting a plethora of new tools into the hands of basic and translational scientists and enabling new technologies that are transforming molecular biology and medicine. Chimeric … Read More
April 18, 2019
(New Atlas) – The CRISPR gene-editing system is usually known for helping scientists treat genetic diseases, but the technology has a whole range of possible uses in synthetic biology too. Now researchers at ETH Zurich have used CRISPR to build … Read More
April 4, 2019
(The Economist) – TO UNDERSTAND BIOLOGY, synthetic or otherwise, you have to understand how proteins are made. Proteins, which carry out almost all the basic functions of life, from respiration to reproduction, are all made of 20 smaller molecules strung … Read More
April 4, 2019
(New Atlas) – Scientists at ETH Zurich have created the first fully computer-generated genome of a living organism. The brand new genome, named Caulobacter ethensis-2.0, was built by essentially cleaning up and simplifying the natural code of a bacterium called … Read More
March 11, 2019
(NPR) – The bacteria Reeder is helping test are part of a new field of medical research that has emerged from two realms of biomedical science. One is the study of the human microbiome, the microbes that inhabit our bodies. … Read More
March 6, 2019
(Chemical & Engineering News) – Molecular computer systems that rely on strands of DNA to process information can already solve math problems, play games like tic-tac-toe, and detect the biochemical signatures of disease. Now researchers have used artificial cells to … Read More
February 27, 2019
(The Atlantic) – Fermentation-powered brewing has been getting people drunk for thousands of years. Soon, it could be getting them high, too. In research announced on Wednesday by the University of California at Berkeley, a team of synthetic biologists has … Read More
February 26, 2019
(Nature) – For decades, biologists have built custom DNA sequences chemically, from phosphoramidite building blocks that replicate natural bases. But the method is impractical beyond 200 bases, and environmentally hazardous. New enzymatic strategies could circumvent those limitations.
January 31, 2019
(Nature) – Biologists the world over routinely pay companies to synthesize snippets of DNA for use in the laboratory or clinic. But intelligence experts and scientists alike have worried for years that bioterrorists could hijack such services to build dangerous … Read More
