Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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An international team of researchers has developed a technique that uses liquid metal to create an elastic material that is impervious to both gases and liquids. Applications for the material include use as packaging for high-value technologies that require protection from gases, such as flexible batteries.

“This is an important step because there has long been a trade-off between elasticity and being impervious to gases,” says Michael Dickey, co-corresponding author of a paper on the work and the Camille & Henry Dreyfus Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at North Carolina State University.

“Basically, things that were good at keeping gases out tended to be hard and stiff. And things that offered elasticity allowed gases to seep through. We’ve come up with something that offers the desired elasticity while keeping gases out.”

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A judge in Colombia caused a stir by announcing he had used the AI chatbot ChatGPT in preparing a ruling in a children’s medical rights case.

Judge Juan Manuel Padilla said he used the text-generating bot in a case involving a request to exonerate an from paying fees for medical appointments, therapy and transportation given his parents’ limited income.

Padilla told Blu Radio on Tuesday that ChatGPT and other such programs could be useful to “facilitate the drafting of texts” but “not with the aim of replacing” judges.

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My recently published perspective paper has been featured by GEN Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News!

#biotechnology #genetherapy #syntheticbiology

Synthetic biology has the potential to upend existing paradigms of adeno-associated virus (AAV) production, helping to reduce the high costs of gene therapy and thus make it more accessible, according to a recent paper.

AAVs are an important vector for gene therapy, but AAV manufacturing is complex and expensive. Furthermore, first author Logan Thrasher Collins, a PhD candidate at Washington University in Saint Louis, tells GEN. “Many current industry approaches to enhancing AAV yields involve incremental process optimization. Synthetic biology has the potential to offer more radical improvements, yet is relatively underappreciated in the context of AAV production.”

Large-scale production poses challenges not typically found during preclinical stages, such as batch-to-batch variations in plasmid yield and purity, and poor yields from producer cells, the research team notes. Likewise, downstream processing challenges also are present, such as AAV aggregation, chemical lysis, and filtration complications. The rational approach to AAV design offered by synthetic biology, however, enables scientists to programmably design systems that assemble complex macromolecular structures and to avoid—or at least minimize—many of those challenges.

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Expand (PITTSBURGH, Pa.) — One of the most consistent issues that disaster response teams face is blood shortages. These headaches, caused by short supply and perishability, make blood donations a constant push across the nation. CBS News reports that in Pennsylvania, scientists from the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and UPMC are making progress, and could see results within the decade.

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