Generative AI for Gene Editing

Generative A.I. technology is generating blueprints for microscopic biological mechanisms that can edit your DNA, pointing to a future when scientists can battle illness and diseases with even greater precision and speed than they can today. The technology is based on the same methods that drive ChatGPT, and learns to generate language by analyzing Wikipedia articles, books and chat logs. It creates new gene editors after analyzing enormous amounts of biological data, including microscopic mechanisms that scientists already use to edit human DNA.

These gene editors are based on Nobel Prize-winning methods involving biological mechanisms called CRISPR. Technology based on CRISPR is already changing how scientists’ study and fight illness and disease, providing a way of altering genes that cause hereditary conditions, such as sickle cell anemia and blindness. The system has learned from nature to create them, but they are new. The hope is that the technology will eventually produce gene editors that are more nimble and more powerful than those that have been honed over billions of years of evolution.

More information:

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/22/technology/generative-ai-gene-editing-crispr.html

Powering Smart Textiles via Human Body

Researchers in China created fibre-based electronics that harness electromagnetic energy in the atmosphere, using the human body as part of the circuit. This makes a body-coupled fibre electronic technology that does not need electronic chips or batteries to work. When electromagnetic energy travels through the fibre, it is converted by fibres into other forms of energy, including visible light and radio waves. So, the fibre emits electric signals when touched by a human body. By controlling various aspects of the system, such as the area of fibre in contact with the body or the diameter of the fibres, these wireless signals can be programmed.

The team say the approach removes a key challenge faced when attempting to incorporate electronic systems into textiles: the need for rigid components. Among the prototypes developed by the team is a wearable fabric display coupled to a fabric keyboard – which the team say could be used by people who have a hearing impairment to help them communicate with others – and textile controllers for video games. They also created a wireless haptic carpet that glows underfoot which not only provides a form of emergency lighting at night but can also wirelessly transmit signals that can be used to control switches on appliances in the home, such as lights.

More information:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/apr/04/wearable-tech-how-the-human-body-can-help-power-the-future-of-smart-textiles

Drone Exploring Forest Canopy

Environmental monitoring in areas with dense vegetation is a major challenge for scientists, according to a press release issued by the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research (WSL) on Wednesday. Although it is possible to take samples from individual branches, it has not yet been possible to penetrate further into the canopy. According to the researchers, the greatest difficulty is that the branches are flexible and cause the drone to vibrate. The WSL researchers, with researchers from the federal technology institute ETH Zurich and the University of Pisa, found it in the body structure of cockroaches, which is streamlined and consists of low-friction material.

They applied this to the drone, which they presented in the journal Nature Communications. The researchers also equipped the drone with spatial intelligence throughout its body, as the WSL explained. The drone was given haptic feedback capability so it can react when it contacts its surroundings. In initial tests, the cockroach drone was a success. It was able to push away branches with and without leaves and move past them. With a non-streamlined body or a material which causes higher friction, however, the drone got stuck in the experiment. In the next step, the researchers want to improve their drone even further. For example, it should be able to react to several obstacles at the same time.

More information:

https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/science/swiss-develop-cockroach-drone-to-explore-forest-canopy/74951377