Lifeboat Foundation

For 200 years, our knowledge of reproduction has been clear: sperm + egg = baby. But scientists say they may have found a way to create babies with two biological dads. Should we celebrate?

Which came first: the chicken or the egg? It is a question pondered since the time of Ancient Greece, when Aristotle decided that the answer must be both.

Now, scientists say it could be possible to remove the egg from the equation all together. Dr Tony Perry and his team announced this week that they have successfully bred mice without using a normal egg cell. Instead, they used sperm to fertilise a kind of non-viable embryo called a parthenogenote, which multiplies more like a normal cell. Then they ‘tricked’ it into developing into an embryo using special chemicals, planted it into a surrogate, and a new mouse was born. It survived, and has even gone on to have offspring of its own.

Continue reading “Scientists hail new era of ‘motherless babies’” »

Scientists at IBM have claimed a computational breakthrough after imitating large populations of neurons for the first time.

Neurons are electrically excitable cells that process and transmit information in our brains through electrical and chemical signals. These signals are passed over synapses, specialised connections with other cells.

Continue reading “IBM is one step closer to mimicking the human brain” »

An annual competition has been launched to assist companies aiming to solve world issues with synthetic biology.

Bio-start offers the winner a combination of £100k cash as well as laboratory space, professional services and a 10 week accelerator programme with mentorship valued at approximately £100k.

Dr Stephen Chambers, CEO of SynbiCITE, one of the companies involved in the founding of the competition said: “This is a first in the UK for synthetic biology and our aim is to help as many companies and entrepreneurs as we can. Once applications have been assessed up to twenty-five businesses will go through our ten-week boot-camp and mentoring programme. Up to ten will go through to the final awards evening where they’ll have a chance to pitch their ideas to an expert panel in front of an audience of investors and industry leaders.”

Continue reading “Synthetic biology competition launched” »

Connecting the dots between transhumanism, veganism, and caring for animals. My new story for Vice Motherboard:

The answer is bewildering—and it probably won’t be satisfying to plant-loving people. Nonetheless, it will inevitably eliminate most human-caused animal deaths. The answer is transhumanism—the movement that aims to replace human biology with synthetic and machine parts.

You see, the most important goal of transhumanism is to try to overcome death with science and technology. Most cellular degeneration—otherwise known as aging and sickness—comes from the failing of cells. That failure is at least partially caused by the daily act of eating and drinking—of putting foreign objects into our bodies which cells have to consume or discard to try to create energy. Paraxdocially, it’s stressful and hard work for cells to endlessly do this just to live. A simple way to eliminate this Sisyphean task—all the steaks, chocolate donuts, bacon breakfasts, and even my favorite, scotch—is to get rid of human reliance on food and drink entirely.

Continue reading “The Next Step for Veganism Is Ditching Our Bodies and Digitizing Our Minds” »

Dr Michael Adeogun and Dr Max Ryadnov from the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) have written an expert view for Bio-Based World News on the importance of measurement science in synthetic biology, highlighting the vital work that NPL has already undertaken in this field.

Synthetic biology is a growing field which seeks to develop solutions to major global challenges, such as the generation of sustainable and affordable materials and chemicals, and the use of bio-engineered organisms as products. The UK aims to achieve a £10bn market in synthetic biology by 2030.

Since the publication of the government-commissioned Synthetic Biology Roadmap in 2012, the UK has become the second largest investor in synthetic biology, having developed a national network of research centres, doctoral training programmes and knowledge facilities to drive growth in the commercial sector.

Continue reading “Researchers address the importance of measurement in synthetic biology” »

China’s 2nd spacelab launches next week. Now, I wonder how QSS will be leveraged given the note on new communication capabilities as well as other types of experiments that can be conducted.

Chinese space agency is all set to launch its second spacelab Tiangong-2 next week. Long March 2F rocket will lift up the spacelab and both the entities have been transported to the launch pad located at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center, yesterday. Tiangong-2 will test life support systems and refueling technology for its 60 ton modular space station.

Tiangong-2 will be placed in an orbit of 393 kilometers above the Earth and it will help in studying fundamental physics, biology, fluid mechanics in microgravity, space science and will monitor Earth from space. In addition, it has the capability to measure the topography of the oceans with very high precision which will enable scientists to study Earth’s gravity field.

Continue reading “Tiangong-2: Second space lab” »

No surprise at all. My 13 year old nephew wants to be the next Steve Jobs. Along with learning Quantum & Biology, I will need to suggest that he should focus on China as a possible future.

China’s provincial city of Hangzhou is buzzing with tech activity, with officials aiming to open thousands of tech enterprises by the end of the decade. As Tara Joseph reports, the city is brimming with tech office parks and tech products, though truly innovative concepts are still missing.

They’re calling it Asia’s Silicon Valley In the city of Hangzhou about 100 miles south of Shanghai… you can order your dinner on your phone without a waitress… Or pay for a haircut with a quick swipe. …everyday signs of the start-ups that officials hope can one day drive the economy. (SOUNDBITE) (English) TARA JOSEPH, REUTERS CORRESPONDENT, SAYING: “Here its easy to run into people talking about building a new app — or planning a new tech venture — and every where you go in this city there are new office parks sprouting called tech zones and massive office blocks going up. The scale is absolutely mind boggling.” Hangzhou’s officials have a plan to open a thousand high tech enterprises… employing three HUNDRED thousand people by the end of the decade. It started here with tech giant Alibaba — now a multi-billion dollar company listed in New York led by rock star CEO Jack Ma. In its wake, a new wave of entrepreneurs have emerged — like Li Hongwei.

Continue reading “China’s plan to step up to Silicon Valley” »

IBM wants to give people night vision capabilities, and they are doing it using Google Glass. This patent “tricks” the eyes with red light in order to increase visibility when in a low light environment.

Upon entering a dark room, human eyes obviously take time to adjust in order to see clearly. That’s because there are two types of photoreceptors in our eyes — the rods and the cones. Rods are responsible for letting humans see in the dark; however, it takes around 30 minutes for our rods to fully adjust to the darkness.

Night vision is a very complicated biological process, but it seems that we may be able to tweak and enhance it, and we can do so without using genetic manipulation or any other equally invasive and transformative method. In fact, all we may need is glasses.

Continue reading “IBM Patents Technology That Can Add Night Vision To Your Glasses” »

Synthetic biology is essentially an application of engineering principles to the fundamental molecular components of biology. Key to the process is the ability to design genetic circuits that reprogram organisms to do things like produce biofuels or excrete the precursors for pharmaceuticals, though whether this is commercially viable is another question.

MIT’s Jim Collins, one of the founders of synthetic biology, recently explained it to me as putting the engineering into genetic engineering.

“Genetic engineering is introducing a gene from species A to species B,” he said. “That’s the equivalent of replacing a red light bulb with a green light bulb. Synthetic biology is focused on designing the underlying circuitry expressing that red or green light bulb.”

Continue reading “Is Evolution Over? Synthetic Biology Anticipates Nature’s Next Steps” »