A team of California researchers discovered that they could create blood cells by layering hemoglobin and other proteins on top of a microscopic, donut-shaped polymer mold. When the proteins had a stable structure, they removed the polymer mold and presto - they had a classic blood-cell shaped hollow vessel. The cells are also biodegradable, so you wouldn't have synth-cells roaming your body forever. Here are typical red blood cells, below.

One synth-cell could carry oxygen through the blood just like a typical red blood cell, its unique shape allowing it to squeeze through tiny capillaries. But it could also carry drugs like anti-coagulant heparin, releasing it gradually. This could prove a boon for doctors trying to administer drugs to highly-targeted areas fed by the circulatory system. And of course it could prove a perfect system for hiding data or other sensitive substances in your bloodstream. One injection of synth-cells and you're carrying secret plans around in your blood that can't be detected by anyone.

via PNAS

First of all, there haven't been very many biotech apocalypse flicks at all, even though genetic engineering and other genome/proteome-based weirdness are freaking everybody out in the pop science media. Possibly 28 Days Later is the iconic example of a biotech apocalypse, since it's a human-made virus that unleashes the zombie hoardes. But honestly, we can do better than plagues - we've all seen those before. Besides, the upcoming World War Z movie is probably going to hold the whole plague subgenre hostage to its awesomeness next year.

So what would have to happen to produce a really great biotech apocalypse that wasn't just a virus scare with zombies that made us all think disappointedly of I Am Legend?

First of all, the biotech armageddon would have to affect the entire biosphere, not just humans. When it comes to imagining this scenario I always think of Kathleen Ann Goonan's Jazz Quintet novels, which begin with Queen City Jazz. She creates a future where many people move into biotech cities whose entire infrastructure is mutable and organic - genetically-engineered bees keep the cities "growing" by fertilizing the buildings, which are actually giant wildflowers. The problem comes when the city itself is infested with a virus that causes its entire fabric to remake itself to resemble stories from files stored in the city's library. What if your city decided that it wanted to be a film noir Paris, and then reprogrammed every person and building to emulate that (fictional) place?

If you wanted to go even weirder, visit the scenarios that Rudy Rucker comes up with in Hylozoic, where every object on the planet becomes sentient. Suddenly you are having an emotional relationship with your telephone, which has a lot of opinions about how you've abused it in the past.

I'm not saying we need movie versions of these books, though that might be nice if done by the right people. What we need is for mainstream media to catch up to what is happening in literature and in the lab.

Though I wasn't entirely crazy about Minority Report, one thing that film got right was its emphasis on believable technology. The filmmakers went to MIT, checked out labs where futuristic computer interfaces and biotech are being invented, and incorporated them into the film. I'd love to see the movie that got made after some filmmakers spent some time hanging out at the Department of Energy's Genome Research Institute, or the Max Planck Institute in Europe - or, hell, how about just reading even one essay by Drew Endy? In fact, you don't have to read - you can just watch him talk about synthetic biology here:

If researchers can genetically-engineer bacteria whose behavior changes with a flash of light, or build poplars that contain termite genes so that they break down into ethanol more easily, imagine what kind of apocalypse we're facing. That's right - it's not necessarily an apocalypse at all. It's simply a world packed with flora and fauna we couldn't possibly recognize today. In her novels Oryx and Crake and Year of the Flood, Margaret Atwood imagines that this will result in creepy half-human pigs and sheep who sprout human hair that can be sold as wigs. There is something admittedly horrifying about the idea that humanity could reshape the biosphere in its greedy, simian image. What marks the biotech apocalypse is that it's a scenario where life as we know it doesn't end - it turns into new forms of life.

What I'm saying is that I want to see stories where synthetic biology generates cities and technologies like the ones Jeff VanderMeer imagined in his recent novel Finch, where spore people grow buildings and guns from mushrooms. And I want these tales to do what few apocalyptic tales have dared to do: Explore what it means when what has been destroyed isn't the world, but instead just one instance of the world.

One of the most basic truths we learn from evolutionary theory and geology is that the world we live in - the one whose climate and landmasses we fuss about endlessly - is in fact just one version of Earth. For a long period, Earth had a different set of gasses in its atmosphere, and all life lived in the seas. The composition of our biosphere and state of our climate has changed dramatically over the millennia. C'mon Hollywood - give us a story where the world doesn't suffer apocalyptic death, but instead a dramatic rebirth. One that begins in our nanoscopic genomes, not in mega-explosions.

Image via Yanko Design

To boost sales of a product called OP-1 Implant with a bone-setting filler called Calstrux. The mixture was not approved by the FDA, and in fact OP-1 was only supposed to be used on a rare bone disease, not on people who simply needed to have their bones knit together fast. Surgeons were urged by Stryker to shape the OP-1/Calstrux paste into a "tootsie roll" or "vienna sausage" shape and implant it. Unfortunately, the substance often broke down and drifted through patients' bodies. Bids of sprouting bone that looked like "oatmeal" or "white sesame seeds" would appear far from the site of injury where the substance had been implanted.

According to NPR:

When those wayward bits bit landed in places they shouldn't have, bone sprouted and, in some patients, had to be surgically removed. According to the papers, then-president of the company, Mark Philip, touted the combination at sales meetings as "perfect" even while knowing it wasn't FDA approved and that the company was receiving complaints about nasty side effects.

The indictment say the president and sales team continued to promote the illegal mixture for two more years, until Feb. 2008, without informing surgeons of the side effects to keep sales rolling.

Stryker and some of its partners have been indicted on several counts of wire fraud and conspiracy.

via NPR (thanks, Kle!)

Researchers believe that the estrogen levels in breast tissue are an early indicator of breast cancer risk. So they've devised a special chip, smaller than a credit card, to extract the estrogen from breast tissue so doctors can study it. Electricity coaxes liquid to move across the chip, based on the science of "digital microfluidics." As the liquid travels, it dissolves the dried tissue sample, then moves along to another reservoir containing a second liquid, and then on to a third reservoir where it circulates and removes contaminants and other biological components. What's left is a purer sample of estrogen, which can indicate your level of cancer risk.

Here's a handy diagram:

[via EurekAlert]

Scientists at Wake Forest University injected multi-walled carbon nanotubes into tumors and then heated them up using a laser, a technique researchers have been talking about for a few years now. But what's exciting is the results of the latest study, published in the Procedings Of The National Academy Of Sciences. The mice that received the highest level of treatment saw their tumors disappear completely in 80 percent of cases.

Says Nanowerk:

Using a mouse model, the researchers injected kidney tumors with different quantities of MWCNTs and exposed the area to a 3-watt laser for 30 seconds. They found that the mice that received no treatment for their tumors died about 30 days into the study. Mice that received the nanotubes alone or laser treatment alone survived for a similar length of time. However, in the mice that received the MWCNTs followed by a 30-second laser treatment, the higher the quantity of nanotubes injected, the longer the mice lived and the less tumor regrowth was seen. In fact, in the group that received the highest dose of MWCNTs, tumors completely disappeared in 80% of the mice. Many of those mice continued to live tumor free through the completion of the study, about 9 months later.

You could actually watch the tumors shrinking, say researchers. And the mice maintained their weight and appeared healthy and normal.

A separate bit of research is also encouraging. A new method of delivering diptheria toxin-encoding DNA into ovarian tumors is at least as effective as chemotherapy — with no harmful side effects. And it could be tested in humans as soon as 18 to 24 months from now. In a nutshell, researchers injected nanoparticles into the peritoneal cavity, where ovarian cancer first starts to spread. And the nanoparticles delivered diptheria toxin that was genetically engineered to attack only ovarian cells. The toxin destroyed cells' ability to manufacture proteins.

In the past, scientists have worked on using viruses to deliver toxin-encoding DNA to a tumor, but using biodegradable nanoparticles instead is safer. And the treatment could also work in brain, lung and liver cancers.
Image from Nanotechweb.

[Nanowerk and Nanowerk]

Dando writes, in part:

At the 4th European Symposium on Non-Lethal Weapons in 2007, researchers from the Institute of Experimental Medicine and Charles University in Prague described the effects on macaque monkeys of combinations of drugs that produce a rapid loss of aggressive behaviour. They argued that the drugs could be "used to pacify aggressive people during ... terrorist attacks". The same researchers have also investigated methods of aerosol delivery to human volunteers.

Those who support the development of incapacitating agents often argue that using them in conflict situations stops people being killed. Historical evidence suggests otherwise. At the Nord-Ost siege, for instance, terrorists exposed to the fentanyl mixture were shot dead rather than arrested. Likewise, in Vietnam, the US military used vast quantities of CS gas - a 'non-lethal' riot-control agent - to increase the effectiveness of conventional weapons by flushing the Viet Cong out of their hiding places.
Blind to misuse

The lack of engagement with this issue among life scientists in general is alarming. Some companies are already marketing oxytocin on the back of studies showing that a nasal squirt of the hormone increases trust in humans. Even though the effectiveness of commercial sprays is doubtful, such research opens up the possibility of a drug that could be used to manipulate people's emotions in a military context. Discussions with more than 2,000 practising life scientists in 13 countries over the past few years have taught me that few have considered such possible uses of their work.

It's worth reading Dando's entire editorial - it's full of interesting facts about the use of biological weapons, as well as details about biologists who are currently complicit in weaponizing their neuroscience discoveries. It's one thing to consciously choose to create biological weapons, but Dando points out that one of the worst problems is scientists who never contemplate the military implications of their work. That's why his discussion above about oxytocin is so disturbing - these researchers never think about how their discoveries, in the wrong hands, might be used for torture, interrogation, or worse.

Biologists Napping While Work Militarized via Nature

Image by J. Field

The batteries are designed for use in pacemakers and other implantable medical devices. A small colony of yeast lives inside each battery, and this living core of the fuel cell can draw energy from glucose (sugar) in blood flowing around it. According to New Scientist:

The yeast-based fuel cell produces around 40 nanowatts of power, compared to the microwatt a typical wristwatch battery might produce, Chaio says. That might be enough power for some devices if it were coupled with a capacitor to allow energy to be stored. The yeast could also be genetically engineered to boost its power output.

Now that we can have bio-batteries implanted in our bodies, we're well on the road to becoming cyborgs. We can become biological organisms implanted with technology that is in turn implanted with biological organisms.

via New Scientist

Burton notes that, while there are certain taboos against the commodification of the human body, there are places in the world that permit the sale of organs, spawning a transplant tourism industry. And some people already treat their bodies as farms, growing out and lopping off their hair for sale. But if nanotechnology gives us the ability to grow body parts and pharmaceuticals directly on our skin, more humans would be able, and perhaps encouraged, to participate in that commodification:

Do we really have a choice in our future?

How will future technologies indirectly influence the evolution of the body in certain social-economic extremes?

What circumstances would it take to reconsider your body as a source of income?

A subset of pictures, entitled “Stem,” was inspired at recent advances in harvesting stem cell from adipose fat, supposing that it could be an early form of body farming. It also calls to mind a more fantastical scenario from recent science fiction:

[Michael Burton via Next Nature]

In the USDA experiment, cows equipped with special ear receivers (like iPods for cows) receive signals from a remote controlling station. By giving them irritating stimuli, such as unpleasant sounds, they can direct the cows to move in a certain direction. They can even play them traditional "gathering songs" used by cowboys to group the herd. Based on invisible fence technology used by ranchers, the devices were upgraded by MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory to include GPS and a full suite of animal diagnostics. That could make it very easy to track and return a lost pet, and it could be a huge boon to biologists who track and study wildlife. Image by: Flikr.

A Futuristic Linkage of Animals and Electronics. [U.S. Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service]

Sometimes here at io9, we have to stretch a little to fit cool sci-fi buzzwords like "cyborg" or "post-apocalypse" into our science headlines. But sometimes the scientists do it for us. A team of scientists recently grafted vascular smooth muscle cells and epithelial umbilical cells onto a scaffold of poly-urethane, forming flexible artificial veins and arteries. They referred to this as "cyborg engineering." Once they started pumping blood through them, they found the cyborg veins worked better under vascular pressure. They hope to use them in coronary bypass surgeries, in which a vein from another part of the body is used to shunt a vein around a blockage.

Artificial veins are just a first step toward engineering artifical organs. Not only would this give us a near limitless supply of replacement organs (no more dramatic "tricking hospital administrators into allowing a patient onto the donor waiting list" scenes on House), but we could design the organs to be more healthy and perfect than real ones. You could celebrate your 50th birthday with a batch of fresh, young organs. Your cyborg grandpa might live to be 200. Image by: Science Daily.

'Cyborg Engineering' Enables Coronary Bypass Grafting Using Artificial Veins And Arteries. [Science Daily]

Here's the quickie backstory, in case you need it: Blade is a half-vamp, half-human who can walk in daylight. He hunts baddies, mostly vampires, with the help of his crusty old white dude pal. In Blade II, the former baddie vamps enlist his aid to fight a race of supervamps called Reapers who have mega-mouths. (It's a Del Toro movie — of course the monsters are utterly cool.) In this scene, we learn that the Reapers are actually a genetic engineering project. Reminds me of Octavia Butler's awesome book Fledgling, which is also about vampires who dabble in genetic engineering.

If we had the time, we might torture you again with another caption contest... but more than one a week might be a bit too taxing on the funnybone. So, if you want to win, please just let us know in the comments below. Please note that you need to live in or extremely close to New York City to take advantage of these, so enter only if you really plan on using these tickets.

We'll be providing a list of the winners to the organizers of the event, and they'll have your name on a list and you'll be good to go. Please note that we'll select the first five comments from folks in the NYC area who want to see the movie. For the rest of you, set your Netflix for Tuesday, March 11th, and enjoy.

Belcher told a rapt audience at the AAAS conference over the weekend about how she could create a liquid full of these altered viruses, dip a thin sheet of plastic into it, add a few more ingredients, and wind up with a translucent, ultra-thin battery. After working on this project for just over a year, her team got the battery to power an LED, and now they're scaling up to something that could power your next laptop or cell phone.

"Let's see what we can get biology to do for us," she said. "It's just a matter of giving biology new opportunities, new materials to work with." One audience member asked if Belcher is concerned about the viruses mutating and perhaps replicating on their own. Not possible, responded Belcher. The only mutations she's seen so far have been viruses reverting back to their old state (ie, making regular virus shells instead of battery components), and viruses making depolarized battery components.

So we won't be seeing a plague that turns your lithium ion batteries into piles of virus any time soon.

Biomolecular Materials Group [Angela Belcher's Lab]

This is a gold face mask. It really has no purpose other than costing $105 and looking like something you'd get done on Raisa the pleasure planet from Star Trek. AP Photo/Chiang Ying-ying.

With this small, wearable device (see photo and diagram), people who suffer from kidney problems might never have to get dialysis again. The machine would do the dialysis for them. Kidneys purify our blood, among other things, and so this device would do that job, sucking your blood out, passing it through a purifying filter, and then pumping it back into your body after removing toxic waste and passing that out to an external bag. The device from Xcorporeal is a bit bulky and awkward, but patients say it beats getting hooked up to a dialysis machine for 12 hours a week. Photo via Lancet.

Artificial heart valve and Wearable Artificial Kidney [MedGadget]

This freaky Victorian-Era pseudo-medical device is called a Lebenswecker (or "life awakener"): Of this hammer full of tiny needles, Phisick Medical Antiquities says:

The theory was that rubbing the skin with toxic oils and piercing it with the Lebenswecker would produce a counter irritation which would divert the bodies attention away from illness and infection and a host of other complaints and so doing restore health.

Pfizer Gives Last Rites to Exubera [via WSJ]