Life Science

Have you wondered why it’s taking so long to figure out bad, complex diseases like cancer? Well one reason is that basic biological processes–gene regulation in this case–are not as simple as we figured. Ever since they finished sequencing the human genome a few years ago and we learned that we have maybe 25,000 genes instead of the 100,000 we ...

A fellow named Aubrey David Nicholas Jasper de Grey at Cambridge University is working on it. (He looks a little like Rasputin, but that’s beside the point.)  What’s interesting is that he calls his project "engineered negligible senescence." Instead of talking about "immortality"–a loaded, controversial idea–de Grey is focusing on engineering a  reduction in the processes that cause senescence–i.e., aging–at ...

Ah, the classic "private property" vs. "share it" debate thrives in biology. Companies and patents hold intellectual "property" privately but there is a movement to put science information in "the commons."  From Wired: To push research forward, scientists need to draw from the best data and innovations in their field. Much of the work, however, is patented, leaving many academic ...

Okay, if pure speculation is too flaky for you, here’s an opportunity to read some hard-core cancer research articles in Nature. These are real journal articles with the constrained, incremental  factoids of science that pile up into a heap of real facts over time. The reason I post them is that they’re accessible free!  Usually you need a costly subscription ...