Faced with an onslaught of new, drug-resistant superbugs, determined scientists are venturing into the depths of the Earth in search of rare and unusual bacteria that may form the basis of tomorrow’s antibiotics. …the true function of such metabolites in nature may be to act as a form of language between bacteria, enabling them to communicate […]
Programming cells with computer-like logic
Novel RNA nano-devices in living cells can sense and analyze multiple complex signals for future synthetic diagnostics and therapeutics The frontier of biology, DNA and computation is developing at an accelerating rate – the future of computation is deeply entangled with the mind-machine interface and even integration – the boundaries between technology biology are blurring. […]
50 Grand Challenges for the 21st Century
We asked experts from the world of science and technology to describe the societal challenges that they think matter in 2017 and beyond. Over the past month, Future Now has been covering the “grand challenges” we face as a society in a series of articles, videos and graphics. We polled a panel of people […]
Welcome to Pleistocene Park
In Arctic Siberia, Russian scientists are trying to stave off catastrophic climate change—by resurrecting an Ice Age biome complete with lab-grown woolly mammoths. A longish read there’s a 60 min audio version available and a 26 min video. Pleistocene Park is named for the geological epoch that ended only 12,000 years ago, having begun 2.6 […]
Researchers store computer operating system and short movie on DNA
Domesticating DNA has many affordances. “DNA won’t degrade over time like cassette tapes and CDs, and it won’t become obsolete—if it does, we have bigger problems,” Humanity may soon generate more data than hard drives or magnetic tape can handle, a problem that has scientists turning to nature’s age-old solution for information-storage—DNA. In a new […]