My short story has been published by White Cat Publications! It features the idea of deliberately kicking off life on other planets by seeding them with engineered microorganisms, potentially leading to new civilizations in the distant future! #sciencefiction

By Logan Thrasher Collins.

“Wait up Jimmy!” Katrina called after her brother as he clambered up the snowy hill towards the launch facility. He turned back to her, cheeks pink and eyes bright. It was a cold clear night. Snowflakes drifted on the breeze, glowing against the light from the facility’s bulbs.

“Sorry Kat. Just excited.” Jimmy held up the capsule containing the bacteria that he and Katrina had engineered using old lab equipment in their parents’ garage after school. They had not yet started high school, so they had taught themselves the rudiments of the biological sciences through books and the internet. After finding the old rocket in the facility and hatching their plan, they had spent many late nights deciphering passages from journal articles and laboratory protocols. At last, they were ready to send their engineered bacteria into outer space.

I loved reading about Barrett’s rigorous empirical research on insect sentience, its ethical implications, and how to mitigate insect suffering within industries that make heavy use of these remarkable invertebrates!

(https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/meghan-barrett-insec…sentience/)

This is a group of animals I think people are particularly unfamiliar with. They are especially poorly covered in our science curriculum; they are especially poorly understood, because people don’t spend as much time learning about them at museums; and they’re just harder to spend time with in a lot of ways, I think, for people.

Two remarkable innovations coming together to tackle prion disease: AAVs that leverage human receptors to cross the blood-brain-barrier + a way of epigenetically silencing the gene encoding prions. I recall reading those cited papers and both are amazing!

BOSTON and NEW YORK, Feb. 28, 2025 /PRNewswire/ — Apertura Gene Therapy, a biotechnology company focused on innovative gene therapy solutions, supports the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, and the Whitehead Institute in advancing a gene therapy approach for the treatment of prion disease. The project is led by the Vallabh-Minikel lab at the Broad Institute which is focused on finding a cure for prion disease, and their approach leverages two cutting-edge technologies developed at the Institutes of both the Broad and Whitehead: the CHARM platform designed in Dr. Jonathan Weismann’s lab, and TfR1 capsid, an engineered AAV designed in the lab of Dr. Ben Deverman, Director of Vector Engineering at the Broad Institute and scientific founder of Apertura.

Prion disease is a rare, fatal, neurodegenerative disorder caused by misfolded proteins. The new gene therapy aims to address the root cause by using CHARM (Coupled Histone tail for Autoinhibition Release of Methyltransferase) to target and silence the gene that codes for the disease-causing protein¹. This payload will be combined with Apertura’s TfR1 capsid, an adeno-associated virus (AAV) capsid engineered to efficiently cross the blood-brain barrier by binding to the human TfR1 receptor, which facilitates iron transport into brain cells². Together, these technologies represent a transformative approach to tackling CNS diseases.

“We are thrilled to see the progress being made in the development of this innovative therapy for prion disease,” said Dr. Sonia Vallabh, co-leader of the group at the Broad working on preventative therapies for prion disease. “The collaborative efforts between Apertura, the Broad Institute and the Whitehead mark a significant milestone toward addressing unmet needs in neurodegenerative disorders.”

Super cool paper where Jeppesen et al. discover and characterize a new type of large extracellular vesicle (EV) that they call blebbisomes! These blebbisomes have active mitochondria as well as other organelles (except nucleus), secrete and take up smaller EVs, and can reach sizes of up to 20 micrometers! #cellbiology #molecularbiology #biochemistry

Cells release a variety of 30-to 10,000-nm lipid-bilayer-enclosed extracellular vesicles (EVs) to facilitate cell-to-cell and cell-to-environment communication by packaging signalling molecules to avoid degradation^1,2,3,4,5 and escape immune surveillance^6,7,8,9. EVs may interact with target cells through contact between molecules on the EV surface with receptors on the cell surface to relay signals. In addition, modulation of recipient cell behavior may follow uptake of EVs cargo, including bioactive proteins, lipids and nucleic acids. EVs have emerged as important actors and agents of intercellular communication in normal cell biology and pathological conditions^2,4,6.

Here, we identify blebbisomes, an exceptionally large functional EVs, that are actively released by human and mouse cells, remain motile independently of cells and have the capacity to both take up EVs and secrete exosomes and microvesicles. Blebbisomes are the largest type of EV described so far with an average diameter of 10 µm but can be as large as 20 µm, with an area commonly larger than 50 µm². After being released from motile cells, blebbisomes display marked contractility-dependent ‘blebbing’ behaviour. Both normal and cancer cells release blebbisomes that contain active, healthy, mitochondria further distinguishing them from other large EVs (lEVs) such as exophers^10,11 and migrasomes¹² that function in the removal of damaged mitochondria from cells under stress conditions. In addition, blebbisomes contain many other cellular organelles including endoplasmic reticulum (ER), Golgi apparatus, ribosomes, lysosomes, endosomes, multivesicular endosomes (MVEs) and autophagosomes/amphisomes, as well as cytoskeletal elements; however, they lack a definable nucleus.

An interesting glimpse into the adventurous world of neutrino research in Antarctica!

At McMurdo, Karle must wait for the weather to permit the final leg of the trip. “It is not uncommon to spend several days in McMurdo,” he says. (Karle’s record is 10.) When it’s time, he takes a 3.5-hour flight on a ski-equipped LC-130 aircraft to reach the South Pole. Anyone or anything else that goes to the South Pole must take a similarly tedious route.

There’s a reason scientists have endured the challenges of the climate, the commute and the cost for over half a century—since members of the US Navy completed the original Amundsen–Scott South Pole Station in 1957. Despite all the trouble it takes to get there, the South Pole is an unparalleled environment for scientific research, from climate science and glaciology to particle physics and astrophysics.

This sentiment was echoed by the Particle Physics Project Prioritization Panel in its 2023 report, a decadal plan for the future of particle physics research in the United States. Under its recommendation to “Construct a portfolio of major projects that collectively study nearly all fundamental constituents of our universe and their interactions,” the report prioritized support for five specific projects—two of which are located at the South Pole: cosmic microwave background experiment CMB-S4, the top priority, and neutrino experiment IceCube-Gen2, recommended fifth. Because of the high scientific priority of these projects, the report also urged maintenance of the South Pole site.

Placazoa like seem simple at first — a crawling sheet of cells. Yet on closer examination, they show remarkable complexity and startling capabilities!

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trichoplax)

adhaerens is one of the four named species in the phylum Placozoa. The others are Hoilungia hongkongensis, Polyplacotoma mediterranea and Cladtertia collaboinventa. Placozoa is a basal group of multicellular animals, possible relatives of Cnidaria. ^{[ 2 ]} are very flat organisms commonly less than 4 mm in diameter, ^{[ 3 ]} lacking any organs or internal structures. They have two cellular layers: the top epitheloid layer is made of ciliated “cover cells” flattened toward the outside of the organism, and the bottom layer is made up of cylinder cells that possess cilia used in locomotion, and gland cells that lack cilia. ^{[ 4 ]} Between these layers is the fibre syncytium, a liquid-filled cavity strutted open by star-like fibres.

Trichoplax feed by absorbing food particles—mainly microbes —with their underside. They generally reproduce asexually, by dividing or budding, but can also reproduce sexually. Though has a small genome in comparison to other animals, nearly 87% of its 11,514 predicted protein-coding genes are identifiably similar to known genes in other animals.