Breast milk breakthrough on the horizon? Growing mammary cells to create casein and lactose

The inconvenient truth about breastfeeding is that breasts are, invariably, attached to a person. A person who could get too ...
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Can we prevent a synthetic DNA catastrophe—accidental or intentional—through these proposed safeguards?

New approaches to DNA editing and synthesis have made it easier to manipulate biological agents and systems, increasing the risk ...

Synthetic booze: Lab-made wine, sake may be coming to a bar near you—and whiskey is already there

San Francisco startup Endless West unveiled two products Thursday, Feb. 20, the likes of which have never been sold before: ...

Fashion future? 5 surprising industries synthetic biology could take over

In this post, we highlight a few of the growing fields where burgeoning synthetic biologists can expect to find job ...

Artificial life forms—’with no mother or father’—could change the way we develop vaccines

Every living creature on Earth has parents, grandparents, great-grandparents and so on—representing an unbroken line of ancestry all the way ...
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Creating a synthetic version of the coronavirus fuels hopes of treatments — and conspiracy theories

Synthetic versions of the deadly virus could help test treatments. But what are the risks when viruses can be synthetized ...

‘Serious trouble’ for the natural world. Can synthetic biology protect it by redesigning insects and saving threatened species?

A paper in the journal PLOS Pathogens described how they synthetically engineered mosquitoes to stop the spread of dengue fever, a viral tropical disease ...

Boosting Australia’s fire recovery by ‘terraforming’ damaged lands with synthetic biology

Biotechnology can provide valuable tools for fire prevention and restoration ...

Re-engineering yeast to create biofuel appears possible, ‘but the effort involved is intimidating’

A little while ago, we covered the idea of using photovoltaic materials to drive enzymatic reactions in order to produce specific chemicals ...

‘Living, self-healing xenobots’ made from frog stem cells could lead to new drug delivery system

They’re perfect strangers: biological entities that, up until this point, had no business being together. And yet, [microbiologist Michael] Levin ...

Can synthetic biology help deliver an AI brain as smart as the real thing?

To create artificial general intelligence, we need to study the brain ...
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‘Almost no limit’: Synthetic biology has turned the stuff of science fiction into the stuff of science

Synthetic biology, or the application of engineering principles to the design of life, presents world-changing prospects. Could components of a ...

Fighting climate change by reprogramming yeast, bacteria to feast on carbon dioxide

An organism easily adapted to different environments and ready to consume any compound would be a valuable tool ...

Most food flavorings could be made with GMO microbes, sparing large amounts of farmland

In future, the majority of natural flavors could be produced from microscopic armies of microbes programmed to convert sugars into ...

CRISPR gene editing’s ‘prime’ upgrade could snip out 89% of genetic diseases

The new editing technique has the capability to introduce specified changes to the DNA: mutations, deletions, and insertions of new ...

3D-printed plastic bunny contains its own blueprint coded in synthetic DNA

The kumquat-sized bunny, cute as it may be, isn’t a toy or a good luck charm. But if you cut ...

Viewpoint: Synthetic biology, and the quest to engineer life, will define a generation

More than ever, the systemic and slowly unfolding problems in our world today will define my generation. From petroleum-based production ...
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Billion-year-old microbes could give us new food, fuel sources—if we can figure out how to use them

We can’t afford to let this potential biotech breakthrough go to waste ...

Virtual reality gets more realistic: Vibrating synthetic skin simulates touch

While they’re still struggling to gain commercial traction, the latest VR headsets are able to transport people to impressive virtual ...

Bioengineering’s ‘holy grail’: Scientists closer to creating printable skin to cover burns, other injuries

Creating a durable, natural-looking skin substitute to cover burn injuries or other wounds has been a bioengineer’s holy grail for decades ...

Artificial lungs grown in ‘hijacked’ mouse embryo could pave way for human transplants

Vaping aside, as dangerous air quality becomes increasingly prevalent in cities around the globe, the risk of serious lung disease ...

Infographic: Creating artificial human chromosomes

To convert a piece of cloned DNA into a centromere-containing human artificial chromosome (HAC), an array of repeated LacO sequences ...

‘Magnetic skin’ turns your body into a remote control, opening doors and controlling lights with a wave of the hand

A Saudi research team has developed a ‘magnetic skin’ that can open a door or control a switch remotely with ...

Sugar-free sweetener derived from GMO yeast could hit grocery stores in 2020

Cargill Inc. and the Dutch ingredients giant Royal DSM this week began churning out a new sugar substitute that mimics ...

How synthetic biology will allow us to redesign humans ‘from the ground up’

Just as physics and chemistry have given humans power over the world of the inanimate, biology is giving us the ...

4 keys to the future of synthetic genomics, including the ability to ‘construct entire chromosomes’

We are already living in a synthetic biology world. Within that huge world is an enormous variety of ideas and ...

These gene-edited pigs could eliminate shortage of human organ transplants

It’s what’s inside this animal that matters. Her body has been made a little less pig-like, with four genetic modifications ...

Podcast: Can we ‘outsmart’ cancer with synthetic biology? Dr. Tim Lu talks customized disease treatments

On this episode of Biotech Facts and Fallacies, Tim Lu talks to Cameron English about Senti's progress toward "outsmarting complex ...