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Researchers have achieved a new kind of chimeric first, producing sheep-human hybrid embryos that could one day represent the future of organ donation – by using body parts grown inside unnatural, engineered animals.

With that end goal in mind, scientists have created the first interspecies sheep-human chimera, introducing human stem cells into sheep embryos, resulting in a hybrid creature that’s more than 99 percent sheep – but also a tiny, little bit like you and me.

Admittedly, the human portion of the embryos created in the experiment – before they were destroyed after 28 days – is exceedingly small, but the fact it exists at all is what generates considerable controversy in this field of research.

Continue reading “Scientists Just Made Sheep-Human Hybrids. Here’s What You Need to Know” »

Why redesigning the humble yeast could kick off the next industrial revolution.

Entrepreneur Juan Enriquez describes a future in which we will be able to hack evolution and even alter our memories thanks to DNA manipulation.

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The world is getting flooded with tiny (creepy) robots that can crawl all over the place, including your clothes. The latest one, created by scientists at Harvard University, uses artificial scaly skins to move forward — kind of like a snake.

The soft robot is just a silicone rubber tube. But what’s special about it is its skin — a thin, stretchable plastic sheet that’s been cut with a laser. The cuts, in the shape of triangles or circles, resemble the scales on the skin of snakes. When air is pumped into the tube, the robot expands and contracts, allowing the scales to pop up, anchor against the surface, and pull the robot forward. In a study published today in Science Robotics, scientists showed that the artificial snakeskins work against rough surfaces like asphalt and concrete. In the future, these robots could be scaled down and used to deliver drugs inside arteries, or in disaster situations where bots need to crawl inside narrow spaces.

CRISPR In China: Cancer Treatment With Gene Editing Underway : Shots — Health News More than a third of patients with cancer of the esophagus responded to experimental treatment in China with the gene-editing technique CRISPR. Several CRISPR studies are underway there.

While the Winter Olympics are going on, here’s.

A story of mine on the dream of a future Transhumanist Olympics: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/zoltan-istvan/is-it-time-for-…77194.html #transhumanism

Oracle Team USA made a historic comeback to beat Emirates Team New Zealand in the American’s Cup in San Francisco last month. I have closely followed the sport of sail racing for over 30 years, and what astonishes me is how much faster and better the boats are today than they were three decades ago. Sailing speeds and performances have doubled in some cases.

Continue reading “Is It Time for a Transhumanist Olympics?” »

Scientists from the University of Washington and Microsoft are improving their system for preserving digital data in strands of synthetic DNA — and they’re giving you the chance to participate.

The UW-Microsoft team laid out the method in a research paper published this week in Nature Biotechnology.

Continue reading “DNA data storage system is on the rise — find out how to store yours” »

Australian researchers from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Nanoscale BioPhotonics (CNBP) have developed a 3D printable ‘clip-on’ that can turn any smartphone into a fully functional microscope.

Reported in the research journal Scientific Reports, the smartphone microscope is powerful enough to visualise specimens as small as 1/200th of a millimetre, including microscopic organisms, animal and plant cells, blood cells, cell nuclei and more.

The clip-on technology is unique in that it requires no external power or light source to work yet offers high-powered microscopic performance in a robust and mobile handheld package.