Singularity Hub
Articles written for the GLP list the source as Genetic Literacy Project. All other articles were written for the sources noted with excerpts provided by the GLP.
Are undiscovered antibiotics ‘silently waiting’ in our own bodies? Researchers scour microbiome for helpful genes
[A] study led by Dr. Mohamed Donia from Princeton University pushed the dark microbiome world into the light by targeting the ...
AI has a problem with generalization. Human brains may offer a solution.
Unconstrained by evolution, AI has the potential to churn through vast amounts of data to surpass our puny, fatty central ...
Viewpoint: There’s reason for optimism about AI’s ability to diagnose illnesses—but there’s also a lot of hype
Medicine is one of the hottest fields when it comes to applying AI to real-world problems, in particular using deep learning systems to ...
Merging man and machine: Tiny DNA nanomachines control biology, fight cancer
Chemistry isn’t king when it comes to governing our bodies; physical forces are similarly powerful. The problem is how to ...
Robots gain ‘sense of tactile touch’ through light-based nervous system
This month, a team led by Dr. Rob Shepard at Cornell University [gave robots an artificial nervous system], with a seriously ...
Viewpoint: Before we ‘summon the demon’ of AI, we need a global consensus on ethics
The potential threats of AI are many, and most people agree that ethical AI that benefits humanity as a whole ...
Uncovering cancer’s history: CRISPR turns cells into ‘molecular recorders’ to track cell changes
Cancer’s impenetrable secrets partly rely on its mysterious molecular history. As cells turn to the dark side, a whirlwind of ...
AI has the power to advance healthcare. Here’s why it hasn’t yet ‘moved the needle’
The promise of AI to solve our health and wellness woes almost seems inevitable. From DeepMind’s algorithms that match or ...
‘Sputnik 2.0’: China wants to lead the world in CRISPR research
China is seeing an explosion in CRISPR-based animal studies and embracing the gene-editing technology with unrivaled zest and zeal—so much ...
Powerful CAR-T duo uses artificial ‘claws’ to grab and destroy HIV
Lengtigen, a biotech company based in Gaithersburg, MD, teamed up with researchers at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in ...
Are you ‘icked out’ by human-monkey chimeras? Here’s why scientists have taken this controversial step
[July 31], news broke that a prominent stem cell researcher is making human-monkey chimeras in a secretive lab in China ...
3 ways neuroscience and AI can work together to help us understand how we think
The meteoric success of deep learning showcases how insights from neuroscience—memory, learning, decision-making, vision—can be distilled into algorithms that bestow ...
New era in prosthetic limbs promises to restore sense of touch by melding ‘biology with machine’
Building smart mind-controlled robotic limbs isn’t enough; the next frontier is restoring sensation in offline body parts. To truly meld ...
‘From quackery to established science’: Here’s what’s going on with promising anti-aging research
It’s hard to pinpoint the exact moment anti-aging research morphed from quackery to an established science. Some say it’s 1939, ...
3 advantage of editing RNA with CRISPR, including this: It’s easier to erase mistakes
Rather than targeting DNA, a team at MIT repurposed CRISPR to edit single letters in RNA, the messengers that carry ...
Putting CAR-T cancer therapy ‘on a leash’ could halt deadly runaway immune reactions
Unlike traditional chemicals, CAR-T cells are living drugs that further proliferate inside the body. While great for replenishing their cancer-killing ...
‘Tremendous ethical challenge’: What if lab-grown brains are capable of developing consciousness?
At what point does electro-chemical activity in dissected brain-like tissue become conscious? Yes, I’m talking about the classic sci-fi “brain ...
Cloned mini-brains could boost research into autism, other disorders
An army of free-floating minibrain clones are heading your way! No, that’s not the premise of a classic sci-fi brain-in-jars ...
Like it or not, the ‘Pandora’s box’ of gene-edited babies has been opened
Denis Rebrikov is the head of a genome-editing laboratory at the Kulakov National Medical Research Center for Obstetrics, Russia’s largest ...
Milk without cows? Biotech startup recreates dairy proteins in the lab
Lab-grown meat is getting a lot of attention along with plant-based meat substitutes. Technology is driving the industry toward providing ...
Lab-grown patch could be the solution for repairing damaged heart tissue
Restoring damaged heart tissue has proved difficult if not impossible, but a research team from Imperial College London has a ...
Million dollar question: Is the microbiome the key to diagnosing, fighting chronic disease?
What if the solution to our health problems is already inside our bodies? The human body is replete with billions ...
Redefining artificial intelligence: It could work more like a ‘search engine’ than a human brain
With respect to AI, [engineer Eric] Drexler believes our view of an artificial intelligence as a single “agent” that acts ...
Why the US military and Elon Musk have jumped on the ‘cyborg hypetrain’
When Elon Musk and DARPA both hop aboard the cyborg hypetrain, you know brain-machine interfaces (BMIs) are about to achieve ...
Brain simulations could reveal how ‘self’ emerges from ‘seemingly random chattering among millions of neurons’
“Do we have a chance of ever understanding brain function without brain simulations?” So asked the Human Brain Project (HBP), the brainchild ...
‘Safe Genes’ and the search for a CRISPR undo button
Just half a decade after CRISPR’s discovery, DARPA initiated the Safe Genes program: a collaboration between seven of the world’s leading gene ...
Using AI to understand biological vision is another step toward engineering artificial brains
[Recently,] two studies independently tapped into the power of [artificial neural networks] to solve a 70-year-old neuroscience mystery: how does ...
3D printed organs: We’re closer to solving the problem of how to supply them with blood
We’re tantalizingly close to growing organs in the lab, but the biggest remaining challenge has been creating the fine networks ...
