The story Synthetic life has gone mainstream. Since I wrote about Craig Venter’s work on creating synthetic cells this technology is now available to anyone with a lab so I guess it’s not surprising that companies are now making, and selling, ‘synthetic biology’ organisms.

The story I come across a lot of science news stories (as you can imagine) and  have noticed that journalists are attracted to certain topics – ones that they think have a certain ‘sexy’ appeal to their readers I imagine. Bionic body parts seems to be one of them – conjuring imagery of a future […]

The story Researchers in California have successfully converted mouse skin cells into brain cells, eliminating the need for stem cells. It is hoped that the same procedure could be carried out on human cells, bringing the possibility of stem cell therapy for conditions such as Alzheimer’s closer to reality. This is a great story to […]

…does whatever a spider-goat does. Can she swing from a web? No she can’t she’s a goat… …however, she can produce spider silk proteins in her milk.

A couple of links and short lesson ideas based on recent news stories to use in lessons on fertility treatments.

The story I received an interesting letter in the post last week inviting my two year old daughter to take part in an international research study. Feeling rather proud that scientists have realised her potential so early, I read on wondering what research they would exactly need her to carry out.

The story Hope has arrived in the UK – hope that is for the thousands of people who suffer from heart failure. You may have seen the British Heart Foundation’s new campaign on TV recently

The story It was announced on Tuesday that Boots will be selling home paternity testing kits in all of its stores.  These kits have been available over the counter at a few other chemists and online but this is the first time that they have been exposed to potentially millions of people.

The story BioBricks are DNA sequences which have defined functions and can easily be transferred into the genome of living cells such as E.Coli in order to produce genetically modified organisms.

The story The Nikon Small World competition first began in 1974 and the results from the latest batch of entries were announced this week.  This annual event seeks out the latest and greatest photomicrographs (photographs taken using a light microscope).