Wired
Squids’ ability to edit their own RNA could lead to human disease treatments
For nearly every animal on Earth, any changes made to the DNA are transmitted from the cell nucleus by messenger ...
How GMO, gene-edited crops can help feed billions of people without fueling climate change
We face a formidable challenge in the years ahead. We need to reduce [carbon] emissions and also sustain a growing ...
Infographic: Fighting the coronavirus pandemic with collaborative science and data sharing
On February 27, a teenager in the Seattle area was diagnosed with Covid-19. Shortly after, researchers at the Seattle Flu Study shared genomic data ...
CRISPR-based ‘PAC-MAN approach’ could be answer to COVID-19 and other viral menaces
Tim Abbott, a PhD candidate at Stanford University’s bioengineering department, checked the results of an experiment that he was running ...
Predicting the next coronavirus outbreak by mining genetic databases
Search “coronavirus” on GenBank, a public repository for genomes, and today you’ll find more than 35,000 sequences. Alpaca coronaviruses. Hedgehog coronaviruses ...
Alzheimer’s research is stuck on a ‘single, unproven hypothesis’. It’s time to explore new theories
Over the past decade we’ve seen failure after failure in clinical trials for neurodegenerative disease. Despite over 200 clinical trials, ...
We’ve mapped a fly brain down ‘to the very last neuron’. That’s a big deal for human brain research
[A]s director of Janelia Research Campus, part of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, [Gerry Rubin has] spent the last 12 ...
Terminally ill cancer patients donating their bodies for research on how tumors spread
It sounds macabre, but it’s important research. [Andrew] Rowan is one of a team of experts working on a new ...
3D-printed plastic bunny contains its own blueprint coded in synthetic DNA
The kumquat-sized bunny, cute as it may be, isn’t a toy or a good luck charm. But if you cut ...
How well-intentioned research into ‘gay genes’ spawned controversial DNA screening app
A giant collection of carefully cataloged genomes, called the UK Biobank, was about to become available to researchers. … To [researcher ...
Artificial Intelligence lab OpenAI wants to develop technology ‘to save the world’. Will it also assist the US military?
Microsoft’s recent victory in landing a $10 billion Pentagon cloud-computing contract called JEDI could make life more complicated for one of the ...
Extraterrestrial babies? Scientists want to know how microgravity would affect human reproduction
The plane’s rapid descent created a microgravity environment in the cockpit and for a few seconds, [pilot Daniel] González felt ...
We need pollinators to grow food in space, but bees may not survive harsh extraterrestrial environment, study shows
One of the world’s newest space analogs is inside a white ziggurat on top of a former nuclear bunker in ...
Controversy over gene-edited cow’s ‘surprise DNA’ could slow efforts to promote animal welfare
On the morning of August 7, Alison Van Eenennaam awoke to a tweet from a man she had never met ...
Brain scans, like DNA, can say a lot about who you are. That creates ethical, privacy concerns.
Many people are aware—and properly protective—of the vast stores of information contained in their DNA. When DNA samples were collected ...
This ‘psychedelic’ treatment can cure opioid addition. It also might kill you
With proper treatment, withdrawing from opioids won’t kill you, but it can make you want to die. … The desperation ...
Viewpoint: Processed food does not necessarily mean it’s unhealthy—the science behind an essential but misunderstood technology
You are you and I am me because of processed foods, because our ancestors learned how to cook meat and make bread and, perhaps ...
Using synthetic biology to design new kinds of life—and novel drugs to treat diseases
All living things on Earth are built from proteins created from the same 20 chemical units, called amino acids. Now, ...
Brazil plan to breed gene-edited dairy cattle on hold after bacterial DNA found in animal’s genome
Up until a few months ago, Brazil was all set to create the country’s first herd of genetically dehorned dairy ...
‘Humanity’s exploitation’ of land hastens climate change, United Nations’ IPCC says
[August 8] brings yet another devastating report from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, this time outlining how humanity’s ...
Calling for a halt to gene-edited babies, World Health Organization stops short of ‘all-out moratorium’
The world’s largest public health authority has weighed in with the most authoritative statement yet on the use of Crispr ...
Is ‘Big Ag’ getting into the cannabis business?
When Mowgli Holmes and his childhood friend Nishan Karassik founded Phylos Bioscience in 2014 they had one major goal: to ...
How man’s best friend is helping us battle cancer
[T]he Moonshot initiative is promoting new ways to study cancer, particularly in the promising area of immunotherapy. And it specifically ...
Lone Star tick is notorious for making people allergic to red meat. It may also carry deadly Bourbon virus.
Scientists know almost nothing about how Bourbon virus behaves or how it got here or where it will show up ...
UB-311: Could this vaccine protect against Alzheimer’s?
Most vaccines prepare our body’s immune system to fight off so-called exogenous disease, such as measles or flu, caused by ...
How the rush to decriminalize magic mushrooms could hurt psychedelic drug research
Welcome to a murky new front in the war to bring psychedelics out of the shadows and into both legal ...
Congress considers allowing gene patents to keep pace with Chinese innovations
In 2013, the Supreme Court unanimously struck down patents on two human genes—BRCA1 and BRCA2—associated with breast and ovarian cancers ...
Boutique startups give fertility treatments a ‘luxury’ makeover
[There’s a] growing world of boutique egg-freezing operations Instagrammable enough for their majority-millennial clientele. Take Trellis, a “women’s fertility studio,” ...
