New Essay: How to Build a Strep A Vaccine Strep A is "one of the most important, neglected, and tractable pathogens to work on," says @JacobTref. Its disease burden rivals HIV/AIDS, yet annual funding is just $14M (vs. $1.5B for HIV). How can we finally make a vaccine?

A Brief History of Lab Notebooks Early lab notebooks were little more than pocket diaries, where "thinkers" collected quotes from classical Latin authors. Newton's first notebook was adapted from his stepfather's commonplace book (filled with "excerpted scriptural commentary")..

New essay: A Brief History of Bioinformatics Software Although the word "bioinformatics" wasn't coined until 1970, the first computer program to analyze protein sequences, named COMPROTEIN, was published in 1962. From our forthcoming book, "Making the Modern Laboratory."

Metaphors for Biology: Evolution It’s difficult to think about evolution. "Years” seems like an inaccurate unit for expressing evolutionary rates because evolution considers changes between one generation and the next. And yet, every organism has a unique generation time. 1/4

We're pausing @AsimovPress for awhile. Thanks to everyone who has taken this journey with us so far. We will plan to see you again in a few months :) Read: www.asimov.press/p/pause

A few years ago, designing an antibody on the computer was extremely difficult. Today, there are several open-source tools which allow anyone to design antibodies from home. Our latest article, by Brian Naughton, is a step-by-step guide to antibody design: press.asimov.com/articles/an...

How to Design Antibodies

A step-by-step guide to making de novo binders.

press.asimov.com

A Visual Guide to DNA Sequencing. Learn how different DNA sequencing technologies work, from Sanger sequencing to Illumina to nanopores. (Complete with illustrations!) Written by Evan DeTurk. Illustrated by Ella Watkins-Dulaney.

The Institute for Human Reference was founded in 2053. Their goal? To "define the reference human." The task, of course, proved impossible. For decades, humans had quietly been altered in hundreds of ways. Averages were no longer clinically useful. [New Fiction] BASELINE DRIFT

How did @Nature become "prestigious" to scientists? In our opening article of Issue 09, writer Robert Reason traces the journal's history. By understanding how Nature’s prestige was constructed, we can also clarify which elements are deserved and which are entrenched.

Phenylephrine, marketed as a nasal decongestant, was first sold in the U.S. in 1938. In 2007, a formal petition was filed to have it removed based on evidence showing it did not work. The FDA (finally) pulled it until 2024. This is the 90-year saga of an ineffective drug.

Arabidopsis thaliana, plant biology's ubiquitous model organism, came from the Harz Mountains of northern Germany. It was discovered in 1542 by Johannes Thal and, over the next 500 years, spread through labs around the world. @AlexandraBalwit tells the story in a new essay.🔻

Out today: A broad-coverage antivenom, made by mixing eight different antibodies from a llama and alpaca, protects mice against snakebites from 17 of 18 deadly species in Africa. The antivenom outperformed a WHO-approved remedy that is already on the market. Read: www.asimov.press/p/broad-ant...

Electron microscopes are one of the great feats of human engineering. These towering metal tubes, filled with detectors and electromagnetic coils, are used to image the smallest of molecules. Our latest essay by Smrithi Sunil is a deep dive into the making of these machines.

Scientists often engineer microbes, like E. coli, to make drugs and other molecules. But what if, instead, we could isolate ALL the components of a cell into little vials and sell them? How much would, say, 1 liter of cells be worth? The answer, it turns out, is about $600,000.

We previously published an interactive about the repressilator, a type of gene circuit. You can drag sliders to learn how promoters, decay rates, and other parameters affect its behavior. We'd like to publish more digital interactives like this. So what should we make next?

We're planning to scale up next year, with lots more articles and multimedia formats (and books). We'd love to hear from you before then. What articles do you like, what do you not like, and how can we do better? 1-minute survey: forms.gle/FSePEaW1rxD...

Asimov Press 2025 Survey

Your feedback will significantly shape our coverage!

docs.google.com

We're planning to scale up next year, with lots more articles and multimedia formats (and books). We'd love to hear from you before then. What articles do you like, what do you not like, and how can we do better? 1-minute survey: forms.gle/FSePEaW1rxD...

Asimov Press 2025 Survey

Your feedback will significantly shape our coverage!

docs.google.com

Writer Donna Vatnick spent dozens of hours observing a liver transplant. She watched as surgeons extracted an organ from a dead donor, placed it on ice, flew it to another hospital, and transplanted it into the recipient. The full story, told in intricate detail, is out now:

Our next book: "Making the Modern Laboratory" An illustrated, coffee table-sized volume, it covers the origins of the machines, organisms and tools used in modern biology research. More importantly, it's a call to imagine the FUTURE of the laboratory. Come help us write it!

The F.D.A. wants to make animal studies “the exception rather than the norm for pre-clinical safety/toxicity testing” over the next 3-5 years. But just how likely is this to happen? Our latest essay, a Deep Dive into non-animal methods by Celia Ford, answers your questions.

Today we are launching Issue 08 of the magazine. Our first piece is THE WORLD'S MOST COMMON SURGERY. It explains how cataract surgery went from a crude procedure involving thorn instruments to a 20-minute operation with a 95 percent clinical success rate.

Our GMO restaurant pop-up, FARMA, was just featured in The Economist. www.economist.com/science-and...

Some fun numbers about the "speeds" of cells: 1. Sugar molecules move at ~250 mph in a cell, about 2x the speed of a Cessna 172 plane. 2. Every protein is hit by ten trillion water molecules each second. 3. ATP synthase (which makes ATP) spins around 8,040 times per minute.

We recently interviewed Ilan Gur, the CEO of the UK's Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA). Eric Gilliam asked Gur about how ARIA is different from DARPA or a venture capital firm, and how big of an impact is big enough. Interesting throughout.

There are ~10 quintillion insects alive right now, collectively weighing one billion metric tons. Each year, a large portion of them enter a dormant state, similar to hibernation, called diapause. We can control diapause — for agriculture or disease control — using chemicals.

Many people dismiss leech therapy as unscientific; a relic of outdated ways. But there is evidence that leeches can treat a wide range of conditions. Their saliva is filled with molecules that decrease inflammation, for example. It's time we recognize the efficacy of leeches.

We got ~200 more Asimov Press books shipped in, and we're selling them at 50% off. Books are $10 a copy. Book + DNA capsule is $30. Free shipping on all orders. If you would like a copy, now is a good time to buy and support our work! Links: press.asimov.com/books

We recently published a huge poster showing the different vectors used to make gene therapies, such as AAV, adenovirus, lentivirus, and more. The full article is here: press.asimov.com/articles/ge...

Some fun facts about Gregor Mendel: 1. He smoked 20 cigars a day. 2. He bred more than 10,000 plants to make his genetics discoveries. 3. In his obituary, he was mostly remembered as a great beekeeper. 4. Most of his papers were burned after his death.

A VISUAL GUIDE TO GENE DELIVERY There are at least 10,000 known monogenic diseases. Many scientists are trying to build gene therapies to cure some of them. Learn about tradeoffs between the various delivery options—from AAV to LNPs to Herpes Virus—in our latest article.