Virgin Galactic seemed to be on the fast track to making space tourism a reality. Unfortunately, that was before the tragic 2014 loss of the SpaceShipTwo (VSS Enterprise) test vessel. The accident resulted in the death of one of the ship’s two crew and set back Virgin Galactic’s plans dramatically. …

Humans have gotten rather good at launching things into orbit, but we don’t always bother to bring them back down when we’re done with them. This has led to a problem with accumulating space junk, which can be serious hazards for future space missions. Japan has launched the Kounotori 6 …

There’s a common misconception that genes determine our physiologic destiny. And it’s well and good to go around exploding such untruths — except when they turn out to be true. For a minority of people, those with inherited Mendelian disorders like cystic fibrosis, genes do in fact seem to determine …

On April 25, 1953, Nature first published the research spearheaded by James Watson and Francis Crick on the molecular structure of DNA. 63 years later, DNA analysis and manipulation play major roles in nearly every aspect of our lives. From genetically-tailored weight loss to precision pest control to data-driven genealogy, …

Synaptic pruning is a little like sleep. We know both processes are important to healthy brain function, but we don’t know exactly how they happen, nor how to reliably treat problems in the system. Disruptions in the delicate process of synaptic pruning are associated with disorders like schizophrenia and autism, …

In biology, more than any other science, there is quite a lot of restraint. Whether it’s a banned, deadly super-virus or a taboo experiment with a human embryo, there are countless avenues of biology that can be pursued, but which shouldn’t be. Just where the line lies, separating the “weird-but-necessary” …

Gene therapy is part of an increasingly large collection of research fields: those with a huge, useless backlog of innovations. Gene therapy researchers have spent decades developing amazing, world-changing therapies with absolutely no ability to use those therapies outside of a test tube, or at best a cloned rodent. Now, …

This past week saw an intriguing confluence of multiple disciplines, in the form a new artificial stingray model its creators call a “living robot,” and an unconventional means of studying the human heart. Driven by rat cells and modeled after a fish, it might seem like (and be) an odd …

Glib catch phrases like “better off together” tend to ring hollow when politicians say them. But in at least one arena, we really are better off together, and that’s when it comes to crowdsourced genetics studies. In testimony to this, a new research effort carried out by the drug titan Pfizer …

Right now, the problems with DNA have nothing to do with DNA. The molecule itself, deoxyribonucleic acid, is extremely well characterized at this point. We can read it, write it, and manipulate it. We can edit it in living cells, and create alternate versions of it with special properties we …