Sitting in his startup lab space on the outskirts of MIT’s campus, Alec Nielsen opens his laptop and types in instructions for a genetically modified yeast cell that will glow yellow. He tells the program what sugars he plans to feed the cell—arabinose and lacctose—and specifies that it should make a fluorescent protein normally found in jellyfish.

Earlier this year, artificial intelligence scientist Sebastian Thrun and colleagues at Stanford University demonstrated that a “deep learning” algorithm was capable of diagnosing potentially cancerous skin lesions as accurately as a board-certified dermatologist. The cancer finding, reported in Nature, was part of a stream of reports this year offering an early glimpse into what could be a new era of “diagnosis by software,” in which artificial intelligence aids doctors—or even competes with them.

Blood vessels don’t naturally pump blood, but imagine ones that could. A blood vessel that supplies the heart could be engineered to sense rising pressure from a blood clot in a clogged artery, and start pumping to disperse the clot. Or imagine a swimming, sperm-like robot powered by muscle cells that could swim in a patient’s bloodstream, seek out hidden tumors inside her body and deliver targeted doses of life-saving drugs.

Today’s blast helmets do not adequately protect soldiers from high-pressure shockwaves produced when roadside bombs and other improvised explosive devices (IEDs) explode, and this failure has contributed to an epidemic of brain damage in the military. Now, a team of engineers from North Dakota State University (NDSU) has used engineering modeling software to show how blasts injure the brain despite the helmets—and to provide crucial clues for a much-needed helmet redesign that could protect soldiers from lasting brain damage.

Last year Congress issued a moral call to action when it ordered the National Institutes of Health to reevaluate its ethical oversight of government-funded primate research. To that end, the NIH gathered prominent scientists and ethicists last September to discuss the future of primate-based research—and they agreed that data sharing is the way forward.

Synthetic biologists seek to make perfumes from extinct trees and flowers. The synthetic biology company Ginkgo Bioworks says it is developing a fragrance line that will contain smells from plants that have gone extinct in the last 200 years. Ginkgo plans to make the scents by grafting DNA from extinct plants into yeast grown in its “DNA brewery,” a large genetic engineering facility it operates in Boston.

The lysosome was once thought of as the trash can of the cell, a dead-end destination where cellular debris was sent for disposal. But a growing body of research shows that this enzyme-filled vesicle is more active than it originally appeared to be—with some scientists now calling it a control center for cellular metabolism, the set of chemical reactions within a cell that keep it alive and well.

So go the words of a well-known Canadian children’s song depicting belugas, one of only three whale species that live in the Arctic year-round. Their life amid the sea ice means the young whales do swim wild and free – from an early age, baby belugas must follow their mothers under the sea ice, where air holes are transient and scarce.

Food and Drug Administration released its decision Friday on banning 19 active ingredients in antibacterial soaps. The ruling, 40 years in the making, caps a decades-long debate over whether these germ-busting chemicals are safe and offer any advantage over ordinary soap. The ban includes the most widely used antiseptic in hand soaps, triclosan—after a large number of studies have fallen short of manufacturers’ claims about its health benefits.

The first signs of itchy eyes or a runny nose can send allergy sufferers running to the drugstore for over-the-counter relief. Yet these medicines only alleviate allergy symptoms and do nothing to address the root cause: our immune system' overreaction to harmless substances.

The brain presents a unique challenge for medical treatment: it is locked away behind an impenetrable layer of tightly packed cells. Although the blood-brain barrier prevents harmful chemicals and bacteria from reaching our control center, it also blocks roughly 95 percent of medicine delivered orally or intravenously.

You are up to 8% virus, at least as far as your genome is concerned. Up to 100,000 pieces of ancient viral DNA live among our genes, yet their function—if any—has long been unclear. A new study suggests that some of this foreign genetic material may boost our immune systems, even protecting us from other viruses.

One of the worst things that can happen to a pig farmer is a pen infected with porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome virus (PRRSV). It emerged in the 1980s, and the syndrome now afflicts these hoofed animals worldwide, causing illness, death and miscarriage. In fact, it has been designated the most economically significant disease for swine, costing livestock producers in North America $600 million annually from deaths and medical treatments.

Carnivorous plants like the Venus flytrap cope with poor soil by eating bugs. But the cost of insect hunting is high. Catching prey requires Dionaea muscipula to snap down quickly and then carry out the energy-intensive process of digestion. To balance the costs and benefits of eating meat, the plants have developed a counting system to identify real prey from false alarms, according to a new study.

When the first four-legged creatures emerged from the sea roughly 375 million years ago, the transition was anything but smooth. Not only did they have to adjust to the stress of gravity and the dry environment, but they also had to wait another 100 million years to evolve a fully functional ear.

In their quest to make ultrastrong yet ultrasmall fibers, the polymer industry may soon take a lesson from Uloborus spiders. Uloborids (pictured) are cribellate spiders, meaning that instead of spinning wet, sticky webs to catch their prey, they produce a fluffy, charged, wool-like silk. A paper published online today in Biology Letters details the process for the first time.