Ward Cunningham – What If Bacteria Designed Computers?

There is a pattern of successful technological innovations I can summarize the following way: there is a nerd engineer who actually invents something and builds the first functional prototype, and there is a geeky enough yo who recognizes the value of the prototype and makes the bigger money/fame/other beneficiaries out of it by turning it…

Low budget, high tech: Microfluidics device out of a $50 plotter!

Building and using low budget but high tech devices at home is a main motivation behind hacking. A Harvard Chemistry Research Group now created a microchannel producing device using a Hewlett Packard 7550A Graphics Plotter (see some eBay prices) to perform a diagnostic protein assay with it amongst others. /See my SciFoo microfluidics coverage./ According…

Blow your Brain Explorer out with the Human Allen Brain Atlas!

At the SciFoo Camp last year at the Googleplex I suggested a little unconference session (ok, there were some slides ready on my MacBook) and one participant was Chinh Dang (another was this inventor) Technology Director of the Allen Institute for Brain Science who made a little intro to the work of the Institute to…

Life extension people are happy: keep living, please!

I found this picture of Aubrey de Grey with his book Ending Aging on his head at the BIL conference in Quinn Norton‘s Flickr Stream. Quinn Norton is a bodyhacker technophiliac journalist photographer. Robust, healthy lifespan extension can easily be interpreted as an extreme body-, life- and biohack so no wonder that more and more…

What is Genentech CEO Art Levinson doing for biotech as a Google board member?

The title question is my million (not billion yet) dollar question for this year. Arthur Levinson is a board member of Google (Apple too) and in his leftover time he is the CEO of the most successful biotech company so far, that’s Genentech. I would be curious to hear about his biotech-related activity as a…

Biotech firm funded by Life Extension Foundation to push regmed therapies

Press release: “We at Life Extension Foundation are pleased to help finance BioTime‘s entry into the field of regenerative medicine. We believe that one of the most important applications of embryonic stem cell technology is the slowing and reversing of aging and age-related disease.

Biotech DIY for aging/life extension research: the double future?

“The best way to predict the future is to invent it.” – said Alan Kay, computer legend in 1971. Recently I had a comment dialogue with Chris on whether state-supported research or industrial business enterprises can (or should) lead to big progress in robust and healthy life extension technologies. Besides the government and corporation coin…

PITTCON, 2008: bioDIY questions, RFVials, and Science’s new web hirings

As a local New Orleans face (my colleagues just call me Mitoman in the lab) I had the chance to just simply walk into the grandiose PITTCON exhibiton at the Ernest N Morial Convention Center‎ and I liked it. In addition to getting answers to some strictly lab related questions concerning filters and fuges (nevermind),…

The conditions of a mass biotech DIY movement

The idea of doing biological experiments with current biotechnological methods and conducting research projects at home is quite new. There are already many names in use referring to the same concept: bioDIY, home biology, biotech DIY, garage biology. We have a detailed case example which can be considered as the first registered, high profile biotech…

How much data is produced by a life scientist/day?

The current operational idea behind Google’s Palimpsest Project is to ship 3TB (terrabyte= 1.0995 x 1012 bytes) drive array (Linux RAID-5) for scientists, who upload their data and FedEx the hard drives back to Google. Google then make those data publicly available and manageable. This file transfer method was heavily criticized by Dai Davies in…

The second goal of 23andMe: using customer’s real health data later

Esther Dyson‘s honest post on getting the genotype-health risk correlation statistics right on The Spittoon blog: What You Can Do for 23andMe (and Future Generations) To learn more, researchers need to collect thousands of genetic profiles – and the health data connected with each of them – to find correlations between the two. That leads…

Let’s compile a Biotech for IT folks book and publish it!

IT people are the dominant high tech tribe today and especially on the web. But biotechnology (BT) is the next infotech so no wonder that the IT crowd is growingly curious about everything biotagged on the one hand, while they are usually not too savvy in DNA-RNA-protein-organelle-cell-tissue-organ-organism related matters on the other hand. Check for…

Understanding Aging Conference in L.A.: de Grey, Conboy, Wagers and many others…

Looks like the scientist coalition behind healthy life extension is widening. In line with that the question Why was life extension ruled out of the 14 Grand Engineering Challenges? is fading away. Here is an Aubrey de Grey message from my mailbox: All details, including forms for abstract submission and online registration, are at the…

The human mitochondrial consensus genome sequence by Robert Carter

For historical reasons the standard human mitochondrial sequence, the Revised Cambridge Reference Sequence (rCRS) is a reconstruction of a single European individual’s mtDNA and contains several rare alleles. That’s why many times a usual mtDNA sequence alignment must appeal to phylogenetic historical reconstructions. The rCRS nevertheless provides a uniform nucleotide numbering scheme (0-16569). On the…

Healthy life extension is not 1 out of the 14 Grand Engineering Challenges…

…that can be realistically met, most of them early in this century according to the Committee on Grand Challenges for Engineering with members such as Larry Page, Dean Kamen, Craig Venter, Robert Langer and …lifestyle life extensionist, nanovisionary Ray Kurzweil. There is a challenge though called Engineer better medicines and the essay behind looks as…

Genome Technology launches MethodShare beta!

Genome Technology, the heavy trafficked New York based biotech website (also a printed monthly magazine) just launched the beta version of MethodShare as “a place for people to discuss methods and tools, recommend methods papers to one another” according to Ciara Curtin, senior editor. The site will be coming out of beta soon. How the…

MitoWheel 1.0: the human mitochondrial genome just got visual!

Your 16569 basepair long human mitochondrial genome does a lot for you and tells a lot about you. It encodes protein subunits playing crucial role in the production and conversion of ATP, the body’s main chemical energy currency. On the other hand the actual sequence of one’s mitochondrial DNA in a particular tissue or cell…

Xoogler goes biotech

I found this quote in John Battelle’s blog from a recent CNET article on ex-Googlers by Stephanie Olsen, but I’d like to repeat it just with a different emphasis as I found all the other parts interesting for the biotech community except the one sentence bolded by Battelle. So I bolded those parts:

The Spittoon: the eminent corporate blog of 23andMe and Consumer Enabled Research

The personal genomics service 23andMe just launched publicly a corporate blog called The Spittoon that has been internally up for a few weeks. It is a new chapter in biotech corporate blogging. Just like the web page of 23andMe, The Spittoon’s WordPress blog platform, the concept and design is excellent: amongst others you can find…

9 year old stem cell trial pioneer dies in Batten disease

This is exactly the type of clinical trial news that should be taken extremely carefully with all due respect and grief. A girl enrolled in a stem-cell trial for a fatal disease has died. In January, the nine-year-old received a brain transplant of neural stem cells derived from fetal tissue. She was one of six…

Out of 8 embryo cells: if 1 turned to an ES cell, 7 could still become a child

At least I know how to start my stem cell comprehensive exam tomorrow (The trick is to use blastocyst medium supplemented with laminin and fibronectin): Human Embryonic Stem Cell Lines Generated without Embryo Destruction Young Chung, Irina Klimanskaya, Sandy Becker, Tong Li, Marc Maserati, Shi-Jiang Lu, Tamara Zdravkovic, Dusko Ilic, Olga Genbacev, Susan Fisher, Ana…

Startup recipe: collect hair at the barber, isolate keratin, regenerate nerves

Biotech entrepreneurs and wantrepreneurs, here is a tip for Ya to launch a regmed business (and don’t forget to market the product as recycled and green) : Winston-Salem Journal: Human hair could hold key to regeneration of nerve tissue, Wake Forest research shows The study, published in the current issue of Biomaterials, found that the…

CIRM and NIH stem cell grants to the biotech industry

Different attitudes, same endeavors. 1. The folks at the California Institute of Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) started to offer grants for biotech companies up to $55,000 out of the 3 billion ‘hope’ dollars. San Diego Union Tribune: Industry and academia team up: For the first time in its three-year existence, the state taxpayer-funded stem cell institute…

Partial immortalisation goes mainstream with an ‘s’ – thanks to the Economist!

The Economist print edition (Jan 3rd) has a summary article on the current healthy and scientific life extension scene starting with Aubrey De Grey’s engineering, umbrella SENS approach and talking about anti-oxidants, mitochondria, sirtuin activators and stem cell based regenerative medicine amongst others. To my positive surprise the unknown writer of the article (do you…

Nature Editor-in-Chief’s changed mind on enhancement drugs for healthy people

Philip Campbell, the open editor-in-chief of Nature was asked by John Brockman under the cover of the 2008 Edge Annual Question: WHAT HAVE YOU CHANGED YOUR MIND ABOUT? WHY? Campbell writes in his thoughtful answer: “I’ve changed my mind about the use of enhancement drugs by healthy people. A year ago, if asked, I’d have…

Biogeekipedia: collecting raw materials

Wired’s Geekipedia is marketed as “People, places, ideas and trends you need to know now“. As such you can find biology and biotech related terms in it (part of the current hip and tech-savvy culture) like ‘stem cells‘, ‘RNAi‘ or ‘brain implants‘, explained. But you won’t find the terms ‘Natureplex’, ‘executable cell biology’, ‘Open Notebook…

The Regeneration Station – a biotech blog by Aastrom’s Jon Rowley

Jon Rowley is a senior manager at Aastrom Biosciences with a long experience in the not too old Regenerative Medicine field. I am pleased to introduce here his new blog The Regeneration Station as one of the first biotech – regmed blog written by an industrial expert who will share with us his insights on…

Web entrepreneurs and biotech: strangers from distant lands

Elrond: Strangers from distant lands, friends of old you have been summoned here to answer the threat of Mordor. Middle Earth stands upon the brink of destruction, none can escape it. You will unite or you will fall. Each race is bound to this fate, this one doom. Bring forth the ring, Frodo. [Frodo puts…

23andMe’s mission: connecting all people on the DNA level or social networking XY.0

In these days, tech companies with MISSIONS are flourishing. I guess you’ve already heard about the company, whose mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. The newly launched, Mountain View based 23andMe seems similar in the mission respect. 23andMe is the first (already successful) and web (or rather…

The new faces of Silicon Valley: biotech-savvy co-founders Avey-Wojcicki

After Jobs-Wozniak, Yang-Filo, Brin-Page, it’s time to memorize the names of the co-founders of 23andMe, the first personalized genome service, who are turning the tech establishment into a biotech mode. The new faces of Silicon Valley: the age of Blue Jeans/Black T-Shirt co-founder computer nerds is over, welcome to the era of stylish, well-dressed genetics-savvy…

Spit a big in a tube, search with Genome Explorer: the 23andMe way

Detailed article in the New York Times on the early experience of decoding the genetic code and interpreting the customers’ DNA via the service of 23andMe. The buzz name of the project: personalized genetics/genomics. Although other companies are mentioned briefly, the focus is clearly on 23andMe. The basics: get rid of a thousand bucks (sorry,…

Who is afraid of ribosomal RNA?

This is from an Affymetrix technical note on The Human Exon 1.0 ST Array: “On average, the 18S and 28S ribosomal RNAs account for approximately 90 percent of any eukaryotic total RNA sample whereas the messenger RNA population makes up less than 2 percent in a given sample.” (I just wanted you to know.)

Collect and FedEx menstrual stem cells with the C’elle kit: the next flow

It is a somewhat very positive idea that human tissues previously considered as waste products (after filling their essential role in the human body) like the placenta and the umbilical cord are radically reinterpreted as valuable sources of prospective therapies due to the current results of stem cell research and regenerative medicine. Exactly this reinterpretation…

Tim O’ Reilly at Nature: science meets bored tech-savvyness to find new things

As a biotech geek blogger and occasionally Make contributor, who stands at the intersection of science and technology with a (life) science bias, it is more and more exciting to see how the attractive brands of the 2 sides are building the bridge and creating a shared channel. So far, the biggest manifestation of this…

The official method, the DIY solution and the science hack

Original title, let’s call it subtitle: Can we isolate human cell clone derived colonies with an inoculation loop? The following post is dedicated for scientists who ever faced with a similar problem, that is running out of cloning disks and working late. In experimental science, when people are facing with a problem need to be…

Craig Venter and Tim O’Reilly chat: when 2 worlds meet

Biotech is the next infotech (or at least the 2 worlds need to be merged) and it is good to detect the signs of the growing biotech interest on part of the general tech crowd. At the Web 2.0 summit (organised by and for the Silicon Valley tech-media establishment) Tim O’ Reilly asked Craig Just…

Arduino Diecimila: my first microcontroller ever

The biggest impact of the Austin Maker Faire on me was that yesterday I bought an open source, CC licensed Arduino microcontroller and a breadboard for building prototype electronic circuits. I am a total rookie in home electronics but I thought it’s never too late to learn completely new things with the help of our…

The busy life of a stem cell (biotech) startup founder

If you ever thought of launching a biotech startup… the following blogterview is for you. Jim Hardy is a long time insighful commenter of Pimm and he shared with me his brand new experience as the founder of a biotech startup in the much hyped field of regenerative medicine. The transparency of the interview makes…

Lanza up, West down at Advanced Cell Technology

Robert Lanza is now the Chief Scientific Officer of Advanced Cell Technology, while Michael West is voluntarily stepping down as the company’s President and Chief Scientific Officer and jumps into the CEO seat of BioTime Inc.. Lanza and West are 2 legendary figures in the biotech industry, and here are 2 interesting things concerning them:…

Biopolis profile and cancer stem cells in current Cell Stem Cell

It is now the 3rd issue of Cell Stem Cell, which is the official journal of the International Society for Stem Cell Research (ISSCR). From the current issue: In human pancreatic cancer a distinct subpopulation of migrating CD133+ CXCR4+ cancer stem cells turned out to be essential for tumor metastasis different from the ones responsible…