Biology

No, Bitches, It’s Not a Designer Baby

It’s inevitable: the media has not only confused human reproductive cloning with “designer babies,” but in fact they have confused a stem cell experiment with designer babies too. I love my sensationalist science as much as the next person, but the London Times has gone batshit with its reports that a GM human embryo could…

io9 Annalee Newitz

Curator Forced to Kill Out-of-Control Bio-Art Exhibit

Click to view The problem with bio-art is that it’s often made of living tissue — and sometimes living tissue gets out of control. That’s what happened late last week at a New York MoMA exhibit called “Design and the Elastic Mind,” where a tiny living jacket made out of stem cells had to be…

io9 Annalee Newitz

Hard Scifi Flick “Splice” Actually Based on Internet-Rumor Science

Turns out that the hard science underpinning Splice, a forthcoming flick about genetic engineering directed by Vincenzo “Cube” Natali, is actually not so hard. In a recent interview, the director claims his inspiration to do a genetic chimera movie was seeing a now-famous image of a mouse with a human ear grafted onto its back.…

Movies Annalee Newitz

Bio-Artist Will Not Go to Jail

Using bacteria and harmless biological materials to whip up bio-art projects in your living room is not against the law, a U.S. district court determined yesterday. The decision marked the end of a four-year ordeal for artist Steve Kurtz, who was arrested in 2004 when his wife died and police arrived to discover petri dishes…

io9 Annalee Newitz

Double Your Lifespan with a Drug that Mutates Your Ribosomes

It’s been known for a while that restricting your diet will increase your lifespan, but now researchers have shown one reason why: Eating less causes your ribosomes (your cells’ protein factories) to mutate. And it’s looking like mutated ribosomes (pictured here) could be one key to life extension. The good news is that you may…

io9 Annalee Newitz

Where Is My Medical Tricorder?

Reader Juan asks: If not the medical tricorder from Star Trek, when could we possibly see diagnostic equipment capable of scanning for infections, viruses or impending heart attacks, attached to wrist watches or other portable devices? Nothing against the phaser, but for many of us the most coveted piece of away team equipment is the…

io9 Terry Johnson

Vat-Grown Meat About to Hit Your Local Market

In five years, you’ll be eating a hamburger that no animal died for. Instead, that burger will have been grown from a tiny sample of cells in a plant-and-mushroom bath. The cow who donated the cells will be frolicking in a meadow somewhere, having long forgotten the annoying poke from a tissue engineer with a…

io9 Annalee Newitz

Splicers Goes Back to the Old Human-Animal Intermingling Formula

All those headlines about geneticists creating “chimeras” in the lab — mingling human and animal DNA for experiments — have finally spawned a new flick. But Splicers, coming out next year with stars Adrian Brody and Sarah Polley as beleaguered DNA mixers, isn’t exactly the cool movie one might have hoped for. Basically Brody and…

Movies Annalee Newitz

Forget the Jetpack – Where Are My Replacement Organs?

Welcome to Ask a Biogeek, a column about cutting-edge biology by UC Berkeley researcher Terry Johnson. Knowing which organs you can live without is all well and good, but wouldn’t you rather have replacement organs? Tissue engineers already have some pretty good ones if you happen to lose your skin or severely damage your bones.…

io9 Terry Johnson

When (Microscopic) Blood Vessels Explode

The Wellcome Trust, a medical research charity, has just announced the winners of its 2008 imaging contest. Above is my favorite, a picture of a microscopic blood vessel that has ruptured. You can see single red blood cells slowly leaking out. This was taken by Anne Weston, with a scanning electron micrograph. She says the…

io9 Annalee Newitz

Top Medical Discovery of 2007 Explained via Cartoon

For a long time, it seemed as if a medical discovery that Science called “one of the greatest of 2007” might never get covered by the mainstream media because it was just too complicated. But then an enterprising journalist and artist with the Philadelphia Inquirer boldly went where no reporters dared go. Writer Tom Avril…

io9 Annalee Newitz

Provigil is the Cocaine of the Twenty-First Century

Provigil (AKA modafinil) has been called a wonder drug: it can keep you awake and alert for hours without side-effects, and it’s even recommended as “the professor’s little helper” by neuroscience researchers writing in the prestigious journal Nature. Provigil, approved by the US food and drug administration for the treatment of narcolepsy, is often prescribed…

io9 Annalee Newitz

A New Street Drug That Boosts Your Brain’s Ability to Get High

It turns out the gateway drug for amphetamine addiction is a substance provided by your own brain. The culprit protein is called DAT, so named because it is a dopamine transporter — and dopamine is the feel-good, get-motivated neurotransmitter that keeps you happy, hungry, and full of energy. Just as some people are born with…

io9 Annalee Newitz

20 Things You Can Put on Your To-Do List Now to Change the World in 100 Years

To-do lists are a great way to plan your week, and it turns out they’re also not a bad tool for futurists either. We’ve put together 20 to-do list items that anyone can use to stop environmental disaster, speed the invention of artificial intelligence, jumpstart a moon colony, and help everyone become posthuman. Usually it…

io9 Annalee Newitz

This Time Next Year, You Could Be Posthuman

Pundits from Bill McKibben to Susan Greenfield have written scare manifestos about the horrors of a posthuman future where everybody has souped-up DNA and can change their sexes like changing clothes. But here at io9, we are all about the posthuman future: we want to download data directly into our brains, grow a new set…

io9 Annalee Newitz

This Lizard Drinks Through Its Foot, and Soon You Will Too

This mind-bendingly cute thorny devil lizard is one of the most sought-after creatures in the engineering world because it has a special talent: drinking through its foot. Using cracks in its scales, this little guy can wick water up through its foot into its body. Materials scientists hope that by studying how the lizard does…

io9 Annalee Newitz

Grow Stem Cells with Shrinky-Dinks and a Pipette

Shrinky Dinks, the plastic toy that shrinks when you expose it to oven heat, has become the preferred material for lab equipment at Michelle Khine’s University of California Merced biology lab. Taking the spirit of DiY life sciences into the realm of the pragmatic, Khine previously used Shrinky Dinks to make microfluidic devices. Now she’s…

io9 Annalee Newitz

In the Vampire Mad Scientist Lab

Blade II has got to be one of the best movies ever, not the least because director Guillermo “Hellboy” Del Toro goes where no genre bender ever has before. He manges to combine the biotech science fiction flick with the gothic vampire flick. I don’t think you realize quite how awesome that really is. There…

Movies Annalee Newitz

Feeling Scared? Just Clone Yourself and Become Smaller

It’s a popular defensive strategy at the bottom of the ocean: If you’re scared, just clone yourself. The process will make you smaller and harder to find, as well as doubling the chance that your genes will survive. Sand dollar larvae are rampant self-cloners, but they only do it when they sense danger. That means…

io9 Annalee Newitz

Your Heart Monitor Has Been Hacked

A study released today shows that heart monitors installed in over 100,000 patients are vulnerable to a remote software hack that could allow attackers to suck your social security number right out of your body. Apparently these devices send your medical data to a computer where your doctor can monitor your health, but the data…

io9 Annalee Newitz

No, Bitches, It’s Not a Designer Baby

Curator Forced to Kill Out-of-Control Bio-Art Exhibit

Hard Scifi Flick “Splice” Actually Based on Internet-Rumor Science

Bio-Artist Will Not Go to Jail

Double Your Lifespan with a Drug that Mutates Your Ribosomes

Where Is My Medical Tricorder?

Vat-Grown Meat About to Hit Your Local Market

Splicers Goes Back to the Old Human-Animal Intermingling Formula

Forget the Jetpack – Where Are My Replacement Organs?

When (Microscopic) Blood Vessels Explode

Top Medical Discovery of 2007 Explained via Cartoon

Provigil is the Cocaine of the Twenty-First Century

A New Street Drug That Boosts Your Brain’s Ability to Get High

20 Things You Can Put on Your To-Do List Now to Change the World in 100 Years

This Time Next Year, You Could Be Posthuman

This Lizard Drinks Through Its Foot, and Soon You Will Too

Grow Stem Cells with Shrinky-Dinks and a Pipette

In the Vampire Mad Scientist Lab

Feeling Scared? Just Clone Yourself and Become Smaller

Your Heart Monitor Has Been Hacked

Do ‘Disclosure Day’ Prep With a Spielberg Sci-Fi Marathon

How to Watch the F1 Japanese GP 2026 on a Free Channel

Ranking 2016’s Superhero Debuts, 10 Years Later

Fourth Most Populous Country in the World Bans Most Social Media for Kids

How to watch UFC Fight Night Adesanya vs Pyfer live this Saturday

‘Steel Ball Run’ Will Return This Year…Eventually

‘The Mummy 4’ Is Getting the Family Back Together

JD Vance Says UFOs Are Actually Demons

Sonos Play Review: Call It a Comeback

Sonos Era 100 SL Review: The Cheapest Way Into Wired Sonos Sound

Asus ROG’s Massive Swift OLED Gaming Monitor Epitomizes Excess in the Best Way

The Ikea Varmblixt Smart Lamp Fills a Donut Hole in My Life

Nothing Headphone A vs. Headphone 1: Which Pair of ANC Wireless Headphones Wins?

Asus ROG’s Cetra Open Wireless Gaming Earbuds Might Be Better Than Wearing a Headset

Nintendo’s Talking Flower Is Annoying as Hell. I Love It

Level Lock Pro Review: As Good as a Secret Smart Lock Gets

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