DTN 115: Self-reproducing synthetic cells

PLUS: Starship's 9th test flight, robots investigate knife crimes, NuScale secures approval for second small reactor design, using gene edited pigs to solve the organ transplant shortage, and more.

May 30, 2025

“On the support side, this is a great time for industrial biomanufacturing. We make about 15 billion bushels of corn in the United States on a yearly basis, which is so much corn that if we were to force farmers to only sell it for food, the price of corn and the price of a lot of associated products might actually go negative. It’s crazy how efficient we are, so we should look at biomanufacturing as a conduit with which to establish our dominance in the global scale by doubling down on our existing advantages.”

“Researchers at Harvard University have created polymer-based, cell-like structures capable of self-reproducing—one of the most fundamental characteristics of life. The system does not use any of the carbon-based molecules that life on Earth relies on. The researchers say their work hints at ways that life, though not life as we know it, might exist (Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 2025, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2412514122).”

This image of a prominence above the solar surface is a snapshot of a 4-minute time-lapse movie that reveals its rapid, fine, and turbulent restructuring with unprecedented detail. The sun's fluffy-looking surface is covered by "spicules," short-lived plasma jets, whose creation is still subject of scientific debate. The streaks on the right of this image are coronal rain falling down onto the sun's surface.

The sun's corona—the outermost layer of its atmosphere, visible only during a total solar eclipse—has long intrigued scientists due to its extreme temperatures, violent eruptions, and large prominences. However, turbulence in Earth's atmosphere has caused image blur and hindered observations of the corona. A recent development by scientists from the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) National Solar Observatory (NSO), and New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT), is changing that by using adaptive optics to remove the blur. (via Phys.org)

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