Synthetic Genetic Polymers Capable of Heredity and Evolution is the title of a journal article appearing in the April 2012 issue of Science. The researchers reported the findings of a project in which they created synthetic DNA, called XNA. The X stands for “Xeno,” a term meaning “alien.”The XNA created exhibits all the characteristics of
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Re-engineering the planet may be tougher than re-engineering humanity argues S. Matthew Liao, of New York University, in an article, Human Engineering and Climate Change published in Ethics, Policy & Environment. With the impact of greenhouse gases and rising atmospheric temperatures, and with the growth in human population expected to exceed 9 billion by mid-century,
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New 3D technology allows for precision printing on a nanoscale. In a process called two-photon lithography, tiny structures on a nanometer scale can be printed. Using a liquid resin hardened by a laser beam, the printer can create structures as little as a hundred nanometers in width. The big breakthrough by the materials science team
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The expression “in a heartbeat” may not have the same meaning in the future if technology under development has a say. Conventional thinking on replacing the heart with a device that works the same way as the heart is being turned on its head by devices that don’t beat at all. These new artificial hearts
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In this last series of blogs we look at curing what ails humanity using 21st century technology. We’ll tackle this in several articles. Many of our 21st century technology solutions may prove effective in treating a range of disease types. What diseases are on our immediate radar? HIV and AIDS Mosquito-spread Diseases – Malaria, Dengue
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In our last blog we introduced telomeres, the genetic information that slowly vanishes from chromosomes each time cells divide. Researchers who study aging see a correlation between those vanishing telomeres and growing older. But I am getting ahead of myself. Before we can talk about the mechanism of stopping aging we really need to understand
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“Hello Dolly,” not the musical but the sheep. Seen below, Dolly was the first adult mammal cloning success using sheep. Her journey from the petri dish to birth began as a cell taken from a mammary gland of a 6-year old female donor. The technique included putting the cell into a suspended state to extract
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Animals come in many shapes and forms. Insects and other arthropods share a common physical attribute. They wear their skeletons on the outside. We call them invertebrates. Humans and other mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians and fish, called vertebrates, have an internal or endoskeleton. In this blog we explore the fusing of internal skeleton-based biology with
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Biomechanics is the biological equivalent of a human-computer duopoly. A duopoly is normally a marketing term describing a situation in which there are only two sellers. So I’m taking poetic license in using the term and doing so to describe what is both a convergence of humanity and machines as well as symbiosis. In the
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Humanity is closer today to immortality than it has ever been. We have surpassed Darwinian survival of the fittest to reach a new stage in evolution, creating humans reshaped by advances in biology combined with technology. In the 21st century one of our human challenges will be – do we really want to go there?
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