Home » Archives for Current biological thinking

Remembering the sheep that changed the world

Posted by Biotechnology 28 Feb 2012

Source: Al Jazeera. On February 27, 1997, Nature, one of the world’s leading scientific journals, published an article with the title: “Viable Offspring Derived from Fetal and Adult Mammalian Cells”. It doesn’t sound that exciting, but Dolly, the cloned female lamb that was the star of the piece, amazed the world. Since the announcement of her birth, millions of words have been written about Dolly, and more broadly about cloning.

DNA: The next big hacking frontier

Posted by Biotechnology, Futurism 9 Dec 2011

Source: The Washington Post. Imagine computer-designed viruses that cure disease, new bacteria capable of synthesizing an unlimited fuel supply, new organisms that wipe out entire populations and bio-toxins that target world leaders. They sound like devices restricted to feature-film script writers, but it is possible to create all of these today, using the latest advances in synthetic biology.

In Search of Memory: The Emergence of a New Science of Mind

Posted by Books 3 Jun 2011

Exclusive excerpt from Nobel Laureate Eric Kandel’s book, “In Search of Memory: The Emergence of a New Science of Mind”. Kandel is one of the world’s most renowned neuroscientists. A deft mixture of memoir and history, modern biology and behaviour, “In Search of Memory” traces how a brilliant scientist’s intellectual journey intersected with one of the great scientific endeavours of the twentieth century: the search for the biological basis of memory.

Picking your brains: what’s going on inside your head?

Posted by Features 2 Oct 2011

Source: The Conversation. The past 30 years have seen the most remarkable advances in the study of the brain. And the past ten have seen more advances in our understanding than all the other years combined. These range from the most fundamental changes within cells right through to how the brain interconnects and functions. Enormous strides were made in brain research during [...]

Venter and the Vatican

Posted by Biotechnology 2 Oct 2011

Source: Forbes. Following up on my earlier post about the (urgent) need of religious leaders and theologians to study science. The Vatican’s ambivalence about the broad implications of recent discoveries in genomics can be illustrated by the work of J. Craig Venter. Back in March 1993, J. Craig Venter gave a presentation on a new approach to gene sequencing at a conference in Bilbao, Spain.

Biology Nobelist: Natural selection will destroy us

Posted by Features 30 Aug 2011

Source: New Scientist. The cost of our success is the exhaustion of natural resources, leading to energy crises, climate change, pollution and the destruction of our habitat. If you exhaust natural resources there will be nothing left for your children. If we continue in the same direction, humankind is headed for some frightful ordeals, if not extinction.

Genetics of Original Sin: The Impact of Natural Selection on the Future of Humanity

Posted by Books, Editor's Choice 30 Aug 2011

Excerpt from Nobel Laureate Christian de Duve and Neil Patterson’s book, “Genetics of Original Sin: The Impact of Natural Selection on the Future of Humanity”. Eminent biologist Christian de Duve considers how and why the success of the human species on Earth threatens the future of many living species, including humankind itself. To turn the situation around, we will have to find in the resources of our minds a wisdom that is not written in our genes.

Researchers on the verge of growing human hearts

Posted by Biotechnology, News, Top Stories 19 Aug 2011

Source: The Independent. As I type, 17 human hearts are currently forming and there is much anticipation as to whether they will beat. Being led by Dr Doris Taylor in collaboration with colleagues in Madrid at The Centre for Cardiovascular Repair – University of Minnesota. the work builds on previous successes with both rat and pig hearts using “whole organ decellularisation”.

The Beginner’s Guide to Winning the Nobel Prize

Posted by Books, Highlights 18 Aug 2011

Excerpt from Nobel Laureate Peter Doherty’s book, “The Beginner’s Guide to Winning the Nobel Prize”. Doherty reflects on his life in science, what it means to be a scientist, the difficulty of explaining science to politicians and the importance of everyone understanding how science works. He also considers some of the crucial scientific debates of our time, including the tensions between science and religion.

Humanity will thank heaven that this creator of synthetic life is playing God

Posted by Biotechnology 6 Jul 2010

Source: The Guardian, 21 May 2010. It is one of these events which – like the cloning of Dolly – change everything and nothing. As a proof of concept, the creation by Craig Venter et al of a bacterial cell controlled by a chemically synthesised genome is definitive. For the first time an organism exists [...]

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