Peptides! “Instead of trying to kill harmful bacteria, or transplant beneficial bacteria, this hypothesis imagines remodeling, or reconstructing, a dysfunctional microbiome into a healthy one by using highly targeted peptides that can affect a broad number of different bacteria in […]
Late last year a meta-analysis of studies related to red meat caught media attention. Mostly, the media message was: “turns out red meat isn’t actually bad for you.” That’s not exactly what the study says, though. Paul Kedrosky uses an […]
This article from Nature is interesting background about the toolset that helps synthetic biologists assemble DNA. | learn more
In the past they’ve taken cells out, edited them in a lab, then put them back. This time, researchers engineered a virus to make the edits directly inside the patient to fix blindness. “They hope to know within weeks whether […]
The question of what’s next after Lithium is a big one for the battery business. “Potassium metal batteries could offer a cheap, long-life alternative to lithium cells with similar energy density, but thus far they’ve been held back by dendrite […]
I find it interesting for two reasons. 1) The World Health Organization is getting involved to set standards for studies and promote good design like control groups and randomization. 2) Traditional Chinese medicine is being tested, which I appreciate because […]
Yet another way to harvest clean renewable energy from our environment. “Here we show that thin-film devices made from nanometre-scale protein wires harvested from the microbe Geobacter sulfurreducens can generate continuous electric power in the ambient environment.” | learn more
“One emerging treatment for diabetes involves converting stem cells into beta cells that secrete insulin. Now scientists have developed a more efficient method, and implanting these cells in diabetic mice functionally cured them of the disease.” | learn more
“The discovery of the CPR [Candidate Phyla Radiation] superphylum was (and remains) one of the most remarkable developments in our growing realization that the genetic diversity of the microbial world is unimaginably vast.” It’s thought to contain a quarter of […]
This is a must-read for anyone with an interest in science who doesn’t already know all the gory details of its troubles. “This week, here are three intertwined stories about positional scarcity from this strange world: 1. How an “indentured […]