Scientists have used genetically engineered bacteria to recreate a masterpiece at a microscopic scale. By engineering E. coli bacteria to respond to light, they’ve guided the bacteria like tiny drones toward patterns that depict Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa. It’s not artistic recognition they’re after. Rather, the researchers want to show that these engineered organisms may someday be used as “microbricks” and living propellors.
The pilot will help test effectiveness against superbugs.
The Center for Disease Control and Prevention is turning to some bleeding edge tech in its bid to stamp out drug-resistant ‘superbug’ bacteria. It’s buying a slew of HP bioprinters (the D300e you see above) as part of a pilot program that could speed up the testing of more effective antibiotics. The machines will give regional labs in New York, Minnesota, Tennessee and Wisconsin their first shot at printing drug samples used for developing and running antimicrobial susceptibility tests. Hospitals won’t have to wait for testing or else risk mistakes like overusing drugs.
The testing will start at CDC’s regional labs in the first quarter of HP’s fiscal 2019 (between November and January). Its initial focus is on widely resistant bacteria. And HP won’t be done once th e bioprinters are in the Center’s hands. HP will help the CDC study the success of the pilot, tweak it if needed, and explore the possibility of wider-scale printer uses if the test proves successful. This may become an instrumental part of fighting superbugs if all goes smoothly.
A pioneer of the Crispr gene-editing technology that’s taken Wall Street by storm says the field is probably five to 10 years away from having an approved therapy for patients.
Biochemist Jennifer Doudna, who runs the Doudna Lab at the University of California at Berkeley, says major questions remain about the safety and effectiveness of experimental therapies that aim to disrupt or repair defective genes. But she’s optimistic about their prospects.
World-famous Houston surgeon Bud Frazier spent decades developing a revolutionary device that could save millions of lives. In this exclusive excerpt from ‘Ticker: The Quest to Create an Artificial Heart,’ he attempts to implant it in a human for the first
The kids fell in love with him first. Back in the late eighties, Craig Lewis lived three houses down from Linda Sanders. He was a quiet, solitary beanpole of a man with a copper-colored golden retriever named Shogun. He looked to be in his late thirties, and Linda knew from neighborhood gossip that he had one marriage behind him, just like she did. Back then, Shogun seemed to be his constant companion. Craig had taught that dog to do just about anything; of course he could sit, stay, and fetch, but he also knew how to play hide-and-seek with even the canniest kid. That was why, as soon as Linda’s children saw Craig’s pickup pull into his driveway in the early evenings, they were out the door. Leslie was six and Eddie four, two blond-haired kids on the run, raising small clouds of dust as their feet slapped the parched summer grass. “Don’t wear out your welcome!” Linda warned to the sliding door they slammed behind them.
The 35 must-watch technologies represented on the Gartner Inc. Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies, 2018 revealed five distinct emerging technology trends that will blur the lines between humans and machines. Emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence (AI), play a critical role in enabling companies to be ubiquitous, always available, and connected to business ecosystems to survive in the near future.
“Business and technology leaders will continue to face rapidly accelerating technology innovation that will profoundly impact the way they engage with their workforce, collaborate with their partners, and create products and services for their customers,” said Mike J. Walker, research vice president at Gartner. “CIOs and technology leaders should always be scanning the market along with assessing and piloting emerging technologies to identify new business opportunities with high impact potential and strategic relevance for their business.”
Freezing can be a great way of preserving assorted foodstuffs or biological tissues and organs, but it’s not without its risks. The formation of sharp ice crystals can damage cell membranes, while the defrosting process comes with its own potential dangers.
Scientists from Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), the original and largest teaching hospital at Harvard Medical School, may have changed the game with a new piece of research, however. They have developed a method of maintaining water and water-based solutions in their liquid form for long periods of time, at temperatures far below the usual freezing point. The breakthrough could have major implications for long-term safe preservation of everything from blood cells and organs to the food we eat.
It might sound like the beginning of a nightmare, but researchers are developing a line of small, insect-inspired robots that could one day crawl into your body and help fix broken bits. They’re suspicious in their squishiness. Soft, flexible, and shaped like spiders. But their creators think future versions could be designed to perform tasks that are out of reach of humans.
In a paper published recently in the journal Advanced Materials, a team of roboticists from Harvard University’s Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), and Boston University report that they’ve created these multifunctional microbots thanks to a new fabrication process that lets them build millimeter-scale machines with micrometer-scale features. Similarly sized robots have been created before, but not ones as dynamic as this. To demonstrate their breakthrough, they created a transparent spider bot modeled off of the brilliant Australian peacock spider.
Sperm from the US and Denmark dominate the market because those countries currently have the most supply, experts say.
Ella Rasmussen’s doctors started to prod her about children when she turned 30. She was single, suffered from endometriosis, and contemplated a hysterectomy. After several years, the nudges took hold. Because she wasn’t a good candidate to freeze only her eggs, she was advised to undergo IVF and freeze fertilized embryos.
Last August, 50 employees at Three Square Market got RFID chips in their hands. Now 80 have them.
When Patrick McMullan wants a Diet Dr Pepper while he’s at work, he pays for it with a wave of his hand. McMullan has a microchip implanted between his thumb and forefinger, and the vending machine immediately deducts money from his account. At his office, he’s one of dozens of employees who have been doing likewise for a year now.
McMullan is the president of Three Square Market, a technology company that provides self-service mini-markets to hospitals, hotels, and company break rooms. Last August, he became one of roughly 50 employees at its headquarters in River Falls, Wisconsin, who volunteered to have a chip injected into their hand.
Using reverse spherification, a biotech researcher in Bengaluru is making edible water orbs.
Bengaluru-based biotechnology researcher Richard Gomes, who has created an “edible water orb” from natural materials, has a modest disclaimer: the technique used by his team is not unique or even particularly new; it’s used in many biotech labs to hold delicate cells together. “The orb provides a stable and sterile environment for cells to grow,” says Gomes, resident biologist at Workbench Projects, a co-working makerspace in Bengaluru. Gomes and his team wanted to take the idea forward and create an alternative to plastic water bottles, potentially replacing them with edible and biodegradable globules that can hold around 50ml of water. They are exploring options to make these orbs bigger, so that they can hold around 100ml, and manufacture them commercially and at scale.
Barbra Streisand is not alone. At a South Korean laboratory, a once-disgraced doctor is replicating hundreds of deceased pets for the rich and famous. It’s made for more than a few questions of bioethics.
The surgeon is a showman. Scrubbed in and surrounded by his surgical team, a lavalier mike clipped to his mask, he gestures broadly as he describes the C-section he is about to perform to a handful of rapt students watching from behind a plexiglass wall. Still narrating, he steps over to a steel operating table where the expectant mother is stretched out, fully anesthetized. All but her lower stomach is discreetly covered by a crisp green cloth. The surgeon makes a quick incision in her belly. His assistants tug gingerly on clamps that pull back the flaps of tissue on either side of the cut. The surgeon slips two gloved fingers inside the widening hole, then his entire hand. An EKG monitor shows the mother’s heart beating in steady pulses.
An analysis of transformed cocoons. Morphology of the WT-1, FibH+/-, FibH-/-, WT-2, MaSp1+/-, and MaSp1+/+ cocoons. Scale bar represents 1 cm. Credit: Jun Xu
A team of researchers affiliated with several institutions in China has succeeded in using a gene editing technique to get silkworms to produce spider silk. In their paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the group describes the technique they used and the quality of the silk produced.
