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Phage to the Rescue
A bacteriophage (virus that infects bacteria) may have cured a patient dying of multidrug-resistant bacteria. NPR The patient, Isabelle Carnell-Holdaway of Faversham, UK, had a lung transplant, as a...
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Carbon Comes Home
Any serious plan to solve the carbon problem, to stop global warming before the planet cooks, must include carbon capture. That’s because, even as we replace CO2-releasing energy technologies, it won’t...
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Spider-Toxin Franken-Fungus Fights Malaria
Where to begin, with this “Frankenstein of the week” story? The recluse spider, whose brew of toxins perhaps earns it an overly bad rep? True, humans occasionally pick up the Hybrid toxin, its name...
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Two Scientists
This summer has been tough for me, with the passing of two scientists I knew well. The first is my father, the physicist John Slonczewski, 1929-2019. As Wikipedia helpfully says, “Not to be confused...
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Deer Grow Antlers and Fight Cancer
Did you ever wonder how Rudolph grows new antlers so fast—and regenerates them? To say nothing of pronghorns, muntjacs, gazelles and buffaloes? The only completely regenerable organ found in mammals....
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CRISPR Plus Herpes Gene Fixes Muscle
Those virus genes are all up to tricks again—treating rare diseases.Muscular Dystrophy type 1A is a disease of wasting muscle, in early childhood. Skeletal muscle and nerves deteriorate for lack of a...
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Human Brain in a Mouse?
Would it be ethical to construct a mouse with a human brain? It sounds too impossible to worry about. Yet various kinds of “humanized mice” are not just possible, but routinely for sale at breeding...
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Mice move over: Human-chimp chimeras are exactly what the Elysians make in Daughter of Elysium. Of course, this story has all the elements of the “forbidden science” theme: It’s not done here (of...
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Bioprinted Heart
3D printing of living organs takes a step forward, with a new printing process reported in Science. The organs are printed out as a scaffold of collagen (cell matrix connective protein). The collagen...
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Space Travel: Humanize a Tardigrade
The humble Tardigrade makes the news so often for its amazing survival on the moon, or in space, or exposure to 5,000 Gy of gamma rays. Now scientists propose to give humans the tardigrade’s...
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