Science of the Future

Organs on a chip? Device tracks Parkinson’s disease by modeling how the gut microbiome interacts with the brain, liver, and colon
[B]acteria living in our gut can influence some neurological diseases. To help researchers better understand how this gut-brain axis communicates, ...

Here is COVID good news: It’s jumpstarted biomedical innovation
As we look back at the past few months, I see three lessons that health care researchers can take from ...

20 year anniversary of the mapping of the human genome: What does the future hold?
The coalescence of bioinformatics and computational biology around algorithms has... given rise to new institutional forms and new markets for ...

RNA hacking: How the miraculous tools of the genetics revolution will transform healthcare and the world
[mRNA COVID] vaccines, in essence, transform our bodies into personalized manufacturing plants producing an otherwise foreign object to trigger our ...

Cancer detection in minutes? New device measures biomarker exosomes on a chip
Leyla Esfandiari Ph.D., is an assistant professor [at the University of Cincinnati’s] College of Engineering and Applied Science. She has ...

Could ‘living DNA hard drives’ solve the coming data storage crisis?
Scientists working with CRISPR technology have made advancements in encoding data inside the DNA of bacteria, essentially creating “living hard ...

Bill Gates under fire for urging wealthy countries to give up beef and switch to synthetic meat
The Microsoft founder-turned-global health philanthropist [Bill Gates] discusses ways to tackle climate change in his new book, “How to Avoid ...

How COVID is revolutionizing vaccine development and production
According to Charles Christy, head of commercial solutions, Ibex Dedicate, Lonza, the response to the COVID-19 pandemic has been driving ...

Wearable sweat sensor reliably monitors illegal drug use, combatting athletic doping
Traditional drug detection process requires a complex method of extracting suspected drug components from biologic specimens including hair, blood, and ...

Drug development revolution: Messenger RNA has taken the lead in the COVID response – and that’s only the beginning
Unlike traditional vaccines, which use live viruses, dead ones, or bits of the shells that viruses come cloaked in to ...

Feeding astronauts on the Moon and Mars means sustaining plants and animals in space. Can science make it happen?
Given that missions to the Moon, Mars, and beyond will not be able to rely on regular resupply missions, these ...

Viewpoint: Wishful worries? Fears about the transhumanist, human-enhancement movement are overblown
[A] problem arises when pundits concerned about possible social and ethical downsides of a technology exaggerate its technical feasibility. This ...

Believing that aliens have visited our solar system is not just for kooks
The prolific Harvard University astrophysicist [Avi Loeb] has produced pioneering and provocative research on black holes, gamma-ray bursts, the early ...

Reversing aging: We can turn back cognitive decline in mice. Will the same techniques work on humans?
The ageing global population is the greatest challenge faced by 21st-century healthcare systems. Even COVID-19 is, in a sense, a ...

Here’s how biotechnology is offering new hope for personalized cancer treatments
Cancer occurs when mutations, or accidental changes, take place in the DNA of specific cells or tissue within the body ...

Viewpoint: FDA took 24 years to approve fast-growing GM salmon. Let’s hope lab-made meat, dairy hit the market sooner
[Numerous] startups are pursuing the production of cultured meats including Israel-based Future Meat Technologies and Dutch companies Meatable and Mosa ...

AI writing test accurately predicts Alzhiemer’s years before symptoms appear
People with a wide variety of neurological illnesses have distinctive language patterns that, investigators suspect, may serve as early warning ...

Beer that combats cancer? Czech scientists have developed gene edited therapeutic hops but EU biotech restrictions block rollout
Czech researchers from the Biological Center of the Czech Academy of Sciences in České Budějovice are modifying select genes in ...

Viewpoint: In the ‘brave new world’ of AI transhumanism, not everyone will benefit
The transhumanist agenda is a runaway freight train, barely mentioned in the mainstream media, but threatening to run over us ...

US consumers still prefer beef to plant-based meat on nutrition and taste, survey shows
[A] 79-page report - commissioned by the Cattlemen’s Beef Promotion and Research Board and written by Glynn Tonsor and Ted ...

‘Hybrid humanity’: How biotech, robotics and artificial intelligence are changing the ethics of what it means to be ‘human’
New applications of biotech, robotics and artificial intelligence (AI) mean that our hybrid humanity is about to expand exponentially in ...

Milk without cows: Thanks to fermentation, future dairy products might originate in a lab
The industrial dairy industry is one of the biggest emitters of greenhouse gases (GHGs) in the world. In a study ...

Artificial intelligence and urine: New precision tools to diagnose cancer
Prostate cancer is one of the most common cancers among men. Patients are determined to have prostate cancer primarily based ...

Impossible Foods cuts prices 20% in bid to make plant-based meat ‘mainstream’
Impossible Foods, the California-based producer of plant-based meat that counts Hong Kong tycoon Li Ka-shing as an investor, has announced ...

Are we headed toward developing a super-intelligent AI…that could spin out of control?
The idea of artificial intelligence overthrowing humankind has been talked about for many decades, and scientists have just delivered their ...

‘Hello World!’ Bacterial DNA combines CRISPR and electricity to store data. Here’s what that means
A study published on January 11 in the journal Nature Chemical Biology details how the researchers led by Columbia University ...

Delay aging and extend our lifespans? Gene therapy might be able to do that
How many aging-promoting genes are there in the human genome? What are the molecular mechanisms by which these genes regulate ...

Synthetic biology is creating a more sustainable world—advancing precision medicine, curbing pollution, conserving energy and securing data
Synthetic biology has become a powerful tool to advance science, making processes more efficient, enabling completely new approaches to biology, ...