October 2022

Life and Earth Sciences

Five Gene Therapy Trials (The Medicine Issue): Index #73

ByadminOctober 31, 2022

iGEM judging is over, so it’s back to the grind. Particular congratulations to the high school team from Lambert, Georgia who walked away with a top prize. They blew me away with their breadth of knowledge and enthusiasm — bright futures ahead. A slew of Phase I trials were

Life and Earth Sciences

A New Family of CRISPR Proteins: Index #72

ByadminOctober 24, 2022

Newly unearthed CRISPR proteins, discovered in a little-known phylum of gram-negative bacteria called Armatimonadetes, have been dubbed Cas12l. The reason is simple: Scientists have already discovered Cas12a-k. But these new proteins are worth noting for a few reasons. Much

Life and Earth Sciences

Resurrecting Ancient Rubiscos: Index #71

ByadminOctober 17, 2022

Image courtesy of Luca Schulz. There’s a great paper about the evolutionary history of Rubisco out in Science this week. Ancient versions of the enzyme — which is about 2.4 billion years old and first arose in archaea — were ‘resurrected’ in the lab to study how it mutated

Life and Earth Sciences

DNA from Ancient Greek Soldiers: Index #70

ByadminOctober 11, 2022

The bookshelf behind my writing desk is overburdened with heavy tomes about classical Greece and Rome. It teeters with biographies of Caesar, Hannibal, Scipio Africanus, Cato, and Seneca. There are works by Pliny the Elder, Apuleius, Epicurus, and Gibbon. There are books

Life and Earth Sciences

Phage Therapy Saves Toddler’s Life: Index #69

ByadminOctober 3, 2022

This year marks the 100-year anniversary of phage therapies. How fitting, then, that a paper out this week tells the story of a toddler — a boy from Algeria — who suffered from a life-threatening, drug-resistant infection after receiving a liver transplant. In the days and