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Babies with Three Parents Possible within Three Years
Researchers have secured £6m in funding to develop the groundbreaking treatment which could prevent genetic conditions affecting the heart, muscle or brain being passed on to children and future generations.
But the method is controversial because it involves transferring the parents’ DNA into a donor egg, meaning the resulting child would inherit a tiny fraction of their genetic coding from a third party.
While regulations currently forbid scientists from implanting such eggs into patients, the Wellcome Trust and Newcastle University has announced a £5.8m package for further lab-based research aimed at assessing the safety of the technique.
This lamp supposedly “mimics and reproduces the cosmic light that fills the Universe.” How?
They claim the the lights twinkle in various colors and sequences that visualize how stars’ light has changed over billions of years. This works via an algorithm that expresses the 14-billion-year history of the cosmos in a 14-second loop.
Woah.
via Fast Co Design
Science Meets Video Games, Everyone Wins
Chalk up another victory for crowdsourced, video game biomolecule design. Remember FoldIt? Last year, players of this online game succeeded in unlocking a key protein structure that could help fight HIV. And now they’ve gone one step farther by designing an enzyme with increased activity over its ancestor.
FoldIt works by allowing players to fold ribbony biomolecules into various 3D structures, getting points for finding stable and novel shapes and forms. It boasts 240,000 registered players, with over 2,000 active last week.
Not only is this a victory for crowdsourced science, but also a victory for playing video games at work.
Here’s a video with more Foldy goodness:
(via Nature News)
