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Queer Artist Launches DIY Gender Hormone Biohacking Project

motherboard.vice.com

In the US, as in much of the world, trans people are often unable to access the healthcare they need. For many people transitioning, finding a doctor willing or able to help, let alone a clinic that offers hormonal treatment, can be costly and difficult. Ryan Hammond, an artist and tactical…

Dec 2, 2015

Spark's model for Asian retirement community

dezeen.com

World Architecture Festival 2015: architecture firm Spark has unveiled its concept for "the next generation of retirement housing " – a community of homes and health facilities combined with a vertical urban farm (+ slideshow). Named Home Farm, the design aims to tackle the main issues affecting…

Dec 1, 2015

Using CRISPR/Cas9 to genetically modify crops - On Biology

blogs.biomedcentral.com

How is CRISPR/Cas9 used to genetically modify plants? Cristobal Uauy, Wendy Harwood and Lars Østergaard Dr Cristobal Uauy is a Project Leader at the Crop Genetics Department, John Innes Centre, Norwich, where he is working on wheat genetics and genomics. His lab uses molecular genetic approaches to…

Dec 1, 2015

BIT Magazine : Concepts in Synthetic Biology: The ReGen Center

bitmagth.com

August 13, 2014 - Imagine a doctor's office where almost any illness could be diagnosed and treated in a single day. That is one of the possibilities synthetic biology may make possible. To explore this possibility, let's consider the "ReGen Center." Perhaps a small practice, similar in size to a…

Dec 1, 2015

CRISPR: the good, the bad and the unknown : Nature News & Comment

nature.com

See all specials Special CRISPR Researchers the world over are fast adopting CRISPR-Cas9 to tinker with the genomes of humans, viruses, bacteria, animals and plants. Nature brings together research, reporting and expert opinion to keep you abreast of the frontiers of gene editing. Image credit: K.C.…

Dec 1, 2015

Human-genome editing summit to sample global attitudes

nature.com

Nature | News Sharing Academies in the US, China and the UK jointly organized the gathering. Article tools Rights & Permissions A large and international meeting on the ethics of human-genome editing is poised to begin — and researchers are curious about how perceived differences in attitudes will…

Dec 1, 2015

Alternative CRISPR system could improve genome editing

nature.com

Nature | News Sharing Translations عربي Smaller enzyme may make process simpler and more exact. Article tools PDF Rights & Permissions Justin Knight Photography Synthetic biologist Feng Zhang is convinced that genome editing can still be made more efficient. The CRISPR/Cas9 technique is…

Dec 1, 2015

Genome editing: 7 facts about a revolutionary technology

nature.com

The ethics of human-genome editing is in the spotlight again as a large international meeting on the topic is poised to kick off in Washington DC . Ahead of the summit, which is being jointly organized by the US National Academy of Sciences, the US National Academy of Medicine , the Chinese Academy…

Dec 1, 2015

Aeroponics is still a growing business. Look Ma, no soil!

foododdity.com

Look Ma, no soil! Aeroponics is a carefully cultivated system of growing plants in air, using only nutrient mist to farm crops horizontally or vertically. NASA has been working with plants in space since the 1960s, but they have really kicked it up a notch by working with Aeroponics Aeroponics…

Dec 1, 2015

Who Owns the Biggest Biotech Discovery of the Century?

technologyreview.com

Last month in Silicon Valley, biologists Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier showed up in black gowns to receive the $3 million Breakthrough Prize, a glitzy award put on by Internet billionaires including Mark Zuckerberg. They’d won for developing CRISPR-Cas9, a “powerful and general…

Dec 1, 2015

Identity Is an Inside Joke - Issue 30: Identity - Nautilus

nautil.us

I got one for you: It’s 1990, and there’s this group of 27 people who go to a six-week law enforcement leadership course in Ottawa. The first day, the newly elected class president announces that at the start of class each day, he wants someone to tell a joke. The president is from Newfoundland, and…

Dec 1, 2015

The Birth And Death Of Privacy: 3,000 Years of History Told Through 46 Images

medium.com

The Birth And Death Of Privacy: 3,000 Years of History Told Through 46 Images Jean-Leon Gerome, The Large Pool Of Bursa 2-Minute Summary Privacy, as we understand it, is only about 150 years old. Humans do have an instinctual desire for privacy. However, for 3,000 years, cultures have nearly always…

Dec 1, 2015

Can reverse genetics and synthetic biology bring us a new branch of life?

splice-bio.com

Over the last decade or so, the explosion in outputs of DNA sequencing, bioinformatics and modern molecular genetics opens the possibility of completely redesigning new crops from scratch. Plant breeding using classical, top-down or forward genetic approaches has served us well in the millennia…

Dec 1, 2015

Building better crops from the bottom up | Global Food Security blog

foodsecurity.ac.uk

Synthetic biology can help us to secure a sustainable food supply. Huw Jones of Rothamsted Research explains all. In the same way that Alec Issigonis first conceptualised, drew and then built the iconic Mini, I predict it will not be long before crop plants are designed and built, bottom up, using…

Dec 1, 2015

Reputation Effects in Public and Private Interactions

journals.plos.org

Abstract We study the evolution of cooperation in a model of indirect reciprocity where people interact in public and private situations. Public interactions have a high chance to be observed by others and always affect reputation. Private interactions have a lower chance to be observed and only…

Dec 1, 2015

Slaves to Nitrogen | PLOS Synthetic Biology Community

blogs.plos.org

by Ron Shigeta The world demand for protein is growing fantastically even as inventory is running low. The solution is a new green revolution to bring nitrogen into food faster to avoid catastrophic famine. A story published last month in the NYTimes about forced labor on fishing boats in Asia opens…

Dec 1, 2015

Cheap DNA Sequencing Is Here. Writing DNA Is Next

wired.com

At Twist Bioscience’s office in San Francisco, CEO Emily Leproust pulled out of her tote bag two things she carries around everywhere: a standard 96-well plastic plate ubiquitous in biology labs and her company’s invention, a silicon wafer studded with a similar number of nanowells. Twist’s pitch is…

Dec 1, 2015

Driving metabolic pathways on with sunlight | PLOS Synthetic Biology Community

blogs.plos.org

By Konstantinos Vavitsas © 2014 Lassen et al. Anchoring a Plant Cytochrome P450 via PsaM to the Thylakoids in Synechococcus sp. PCC 7002: Evidence for Light-Driven Biosynthesis. PLoS ONE 9(7): e102184. Under Creative Commons Attribution License. Most life forms are directly or indirectly dependent…

Dec 1, 2015

Team wants to sell lab grown meat in five years - BBC News

bbc.com

The Dutch team who have grown the world's first burger in a lab say they hope to have a product on sale in five years. Researchers are to set up a company to look at making the burger tastier and cheaper. The team had a prototype cooked and eaten in London two years ago that cost £215,000 to make.…

Dec 1, 2015

Price of Lab-Grown Burger Falls from $325K to $11.36 | Big Think

bigthink.com

Lab-grown meat could be on your plate within the next five years. For the past few years, the barrier to getting test-tube meat into the hands of consumers has been the cost of production . In 2013, it was around $325,000 to make this stuff in a lab, but the process has been refined, and the cost…

Dec 1, 2015

Plant-based hamburger leaves 'blood' on the plate | Marketplace.org

marketplace.org

By Queena Kim October 15, 2014 | 2:49 PM Embed Code This burger is not made from beef, but rather plants, as Impossible Foods works to use specific proteins and nutrients from greens, salads and grains to make meats and cheeses. - You know how techies are all into disrupting businesses? Well, right…

Nov 30, 2015

How Biotech Can Help Feed the Planet - Techonomy

techonomy.com

(Image via Shutterstock) It’s going to be a big global challenge to feed our growing population without destroying the environment. The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that worldwide food supply must increase by 70 percent by 2050. We don’t just need calories; we need nutritious…

Nov 30, 2015

The future of food: from jellyfish salad to lab-grown meat

theguardian.com

Jellyfish and chips, created by Stefan Gates.Photograph: Rob White for the Observer I n the first section of our future of food feature, we look at some of the adjusted, alternative, and entirely new foods which could become the mainstays of tomorrow’s mealtimes. JELLYFISH With numbers booming in UK…

Nov 30, 2015

Food Production in a Technology-driven Economy - Techonomy

techonomy.com

The Open Agriculture initiative at MIT Media Lab recently put food computers like this one in several Boston-area classrooms so students can experiment with “climate recipes” for growing plants. Today’s world has been revolutionized by technologies that are increasingly connected, networked, and…

Nov 30, 2015

Will Programming Plants Feed the World? - Techonomy

techonomy.com

A state-of-the-art indoor farm in Japan that grows salad greens at high speed but high quality, in huge quantities. (photo courtesy Philips) ( This article appears in print and online PDF in Techonomy Magazine’s year-end 2015 edition .) In a little noticed analysis published in 2014, data giant…

Nov 30, 2015