Science and biotech

Drug companies have long used plants to produce pharmaceuticals--and tobacco plants, perhaps ironically, have been explored for their potential role in fighting such things as cancer, cavities, scorpion venom, and more.

The latest big news, announced at a press conference in London this morning, is that U.K. regulators have, for the first time, approved a human clinical trial of a monoclonal antibody produced using genetically modified tobacco plants.

Monoclonal antibodies are made from identical immune cells that have been cloned from a unique parent cell to fulfill a specific role. The roots of this idea, which date back more … Read more

What if, instead of waiting a few weeks for your dentist to produce a cast for dental implants or replacement crowns, your jaw was scanned and, during that same dentist's visit, you were able to pull a perfect polymer shape out of a 3D printer and be on your merry way?

Mechanical engineers in Iran report in the International Journal of Rapid Manufacturing that printing our own teeth may not be so far off into the future.

While the process could be prohibitively expensive for years to come, it turns out that 3D printing, coupled with the comparatively affordable cone-beam computed tomography (CBCT), may ultimately revolutionize prosthetic dentistry.

The tech, called rapid prototyping, uses a 3D image to control a laser that cures powdered or liquid polymer into highly complex shapes. In fact, Hossein Kheirollahi of the Imam Hossein University and Farid Abbaszadeh of the Islamic Azad University say this technology can produce just about any solid, porous, or complicated shape.

While the Iranian team has been able to demonstrate the use of rapid prototyping in developing dental objects quickly, we're likely at least a few years out from actual commercial development.

Below, watch tool replication via 3D printing:… Read more

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.-- Earlier this week, I spent the day at Google's first-ever Science Fair, and I'll admit it was a little hard not to be intimidated.

After all, I was surrounded by high schoolers who are inventing new types of sailboats, preventing trains from ever derailing again, or who seem on the verge of curing cancer.

The event could well be one of the globe's biggest science competitions, with more than 10,000 13- to 18-year-olds from around the world entering a total of 7,500 projects in the hopes of walking away with the … Read more

Cats like iPads and laser pointers and can carry around their own tracking sensors. Dogs dig treadmills and have translator devices that turn woofs into words. Now fish are getting in on the gadget action, too.

Fish aren't yet ordering iPhones or hooking up HD television sets underwater, but a recent paper published in Coral Reefs, the journal of the International Society for Reef Studies, dove into some interesting behavior from an enterprising black spot tuskfish.

A diver at the Great Barrier Reef off the coast of Australia observed a tuskfish breaking open cockleshells on an anvil to get at the tasty tidbits inside. A series of images show the clever critter in action. … Read more

MIT researchers have shown how solar panels can be printed on paper and other cheap materials, opening a range of possibilities including homes with solar-panel window shades or wallpaper.

Last year, CNET's Martin LaMonica reported on how MIT had developed the world's first solar panel printed on paper. A recent MIT study in the journal Advanced Materials by Karen Gleason and colleagues details the innovation.

The paper photovoltaic arrays are created through an oxidative chemical vapor deposition process at temperatures less than 120 degrees Celsius.

Ordinary uncoated paper, cloth, or plastic can be used. The researchers printed solar cells on a layer of PET plastic, folded it 1,000 times, and found it would still work.

Multiple layers and a paper mask are used to print the cells in a vacuum chamber. MIT says the procedure is nearly as cheap and easy as inkjet printing. … Read more

Being able to regenerate injured heart cells would give physicians the tools to repair and replace damaged tissue and ultimately save lives. So while researchers have spent more than a decade trying to reprogram cell types in general, changing them into heart cells has been a sort of holy grail.

Now, a team at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania has done just that--and is the first to directly convert a non-heart cell type into a heart cell via RNA transfer. In fact, the researchers reprogrammed both an astrocyte (a star-shaped brain cell) and a fibroblast (a skin cell) into heart cells.

"What's new about this approach for heart-cell generation is that we directly converted one cell type to another using RNA without an intermediate step," says James Eberwine, a pharmacology professor at Penn, in a news release.

Because a cell's signature is characterized by messenger RNAs (mRNAs), which act as a sort of blueprint for making a protein, the researchers introduced an excess amount of heart cell mRNAs into the host cells and let the new, abundant population essentially take over the smaller, indigenous one. This new population then directed DNA in the host nucleus to actually change the cell's RNA populations to the new heart cell ("tCardiomyocyte").

Ultimately, the heart-cell mRNAs are translated into heart-cell proteins, which influence gene expression in the host so that heart-cell genes are turned on and heart-cell-enriched proteins are made. The chain of events may be lengthy, but the process is direct.

The team's approach, called Transcriptome Induced Phenotype Remodeling, has been fine-tuned in Eberwine's lab in recent years.

While it may be a way off, the team says that reprogramming a patient's cells to be heart cells would enable personalized screening for efficacy of drug treatments and new drugs. It reports its findings online this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.… Read more

You wouldn't know it by looking at it, but the naked mole-rat has a few things to teach the animal world. It has fascinated researchers since it was discovered a few years ago that the rodents can live for 30 years, compared to the mouse's average life span of four.

So after launching an online database that details the lives and histories of more than 4,000 animal species, a consortium of researchers from around the world set out to sequence the genome of the naked mole-rate--which is native to the deserts of East Africa.

With the help … Read more

The maker culture can seem exclusive sometimes, but TechShop is helping to bring the underground community to the mainstream, offering classes and monthly memberships to the general public.

In late June, a fourth TechShop location opened in San Jose, Calif., but it's still building up its own storied history. To see what a TechShop is like after it builds its network of makers, CNET toured the 15,000 square-foot San Francisco location, which opened its doors earlier this year.

During our visit, people where taking prototyping into their own hands. An eclectic bunch of members--including policemen, entrepreneurs, and fashionistas--all … Read more

I'm watching my hometown of Los Alamos, N.M., grapple with yet another massive wildfire, and even though I'm 5,000 miles away, the Internet has given me front-row seats.

It's not pleasant to see--but it's better than the alternative.

I'm not a member of the ignorance-is-bliss camp, particularly when friends and my parents still live there. The Las Conchas wildfire blew up to a size larger than Washington D.C. when it started on Sunday, and on Tuesday morning it reached 60,740 acres; Los Alamos National Laboratory is closed to all but essential … Read more