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| | | Leading Edge brings you the latest news from the world of science. Geoff Watts celebrates discoveries as soon as they're being talked about - on the internet, in coffee rooms and bars; often before they're published in journals. And he gets to grips with not just the science, but with the controversies and conversation that surround it.
radioscience@bbc.co.uk | | | | | LISTEN AGAIN Ìý30 min | | | |
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"If what interests you are new and exciting ideas, it's science you should be turning to. And whether it's the Human Genome Project or the origins of the Universe, Leading Edge is the place to hear about them."
Geoff Watts |
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Re-engineering Living Cells
Leading Edge investigatesÌýliving cells that could be re-programmed to become minute biological robots. One day they could build more or less anything you want them to - from a whole human organ to a space station on Mars. Or even, says the scientist responsible, a chair made of bone.
Geoff Watts visits Ron Weiss at Princeton University in the United States, a pioneer of this new area of science. Weiss believes that bacteria can be made to do as they are told. He’s not a biologist trying to understand how life works in all its complexity. He is an electrical engineer, someone who builds machines that work as he wants them to, when he wants them to.
Weiss’ idea is that living cells can be made to function as computers, even robots, fully programmable and able to respond to cues from each other, their environment and human operators. He is trying to do this by inserting genetic versions of a computer’s digital switches or logic gates. Just as natural cells, already programmed by their own genes, build a bacterium's cell wall, a snail's shell or a person's brain, so an engineered cell might carry out equally intricate jobs at a human's command.
One day, he believes these living cells could be programmed to do useful things for us, such as detecting environmental contaminants by altering living cells to ‘switch on’ and fluoresce in the presence of certain concentrations of hazardous chemicals. They could also build artificial structures – houses, bridges and even a space station on Mars. Building bacteria could be programmed to secrete the right building material in the right place at the right time, in the same way that the cells of a developing embryo build a skeleton. You would feed them with the raw materials and they would build the structure for you all in one go, in a full range of scales – from the walls of the building down to the smallest details.
Virtual Car
Researchers in Scotland have come up with a new technology which could change the way car designers work and customers buy vehicles in the future. By donning a small pair of glasses which project an image of a life-sized car in 3D, and wearing a pair of touch sensitive gloves to manipulate it, the viewer will be able to view a car as a projection in front of them. They can walk around it, change its colour and design, bend and stretch it and even peer inside it.
Throttling Computer Viruses
British scientists have come up with an ingenious way of stopping computer viruses in their tracks. The headache for engineers is that viruses tend to run riot before the experts have had a chance to mount a suitable defence. But new research suggests that it’s possible to restrict the virus’ flow, giving engineers time to get to the scene and solve the crime before the virus wrecks havoc.
Antibodies for Melanoma Detection and Therapy
Malignant melanoma poses an increasing challenge to modern day medicine. If it’s picked up early it can be surgically removed and successfully treated. But for many people, symptoms only appear when the cancer is more advanced, by which time it is notoriously difficult to treat. Antibody fragments to detect and destroy the microscopic spread of melanoma are being developed, which may provide better means of diagnosing and treating this cancer early, before it becomes life-threatening. | | |
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