The New York-based biotech startup Ecovative wants to replace plastic with mycelium, the below-ground root-like structure of a mushroom, writes CNN Business.

pgmrdlm shared their report: The company says it has developed a way to grow mycelium into specific shapes and sizes. The method, according to Ecovative, involves taking organic plant waste and inoculating it with mycelium. After the mycelium grows through and around the agricultural materials, it binds them together, providing a natural alternative to packaging materials made out styrofoam.

It's a process that takes about a week with minimal water and electricity consumed to make the parts. At the end of the mycelium substance's useful life, you can break it up and you can put it in your own garden. "So it's a nutrient, not a pollutant," said Ecovative's CEO and co-founder Eben Bayer .

The company also believes mycelium could play a major role in construction, as mycelium building materials are both insulative and structural and can be used in the same ways as conventional building material, Bayer said. In fact, packaging materials may be just the start. The startup has its eyes on another audacious goal: building organs. "My dream is to one day grow a lung and seed it with lung cells and use the mycelium to create the capillary network and use the human cells to create the actual lung," said Bayer.
The company's vision "has helped Ecovative attract millions from investors like 3M Company, the conglomerate behind Post-it notes and Scotch tape, and even a $9.1 million contract with the U.S. Department of Defense," reports CNN, adding that CEO Bayer believes the use of mycelium "really has boundless possibilities."

Ecovative is now even developing plant-based meats, including Mycelium bacon.

In a pathogen-free facility in Grafton, Massachusetts, a small town about 40 miles west of Boston, genetically engineered miniature pigs are being bred to donate their skin to humans. From a report: Their skin, which looks remarkably similar to the human variety and is referred to as Xeno-Skin, will be transplanted by surgeons at Massachusetts General Hospital to a small group of burn victims in an attempt to speed up the healing process. It's the first experiment approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to use animal tissue in humans, a necessary step toward someday transferring entire organs grown in animals to people who need them -- a process known as xenotransplantation. The need for such organs is dire. Each day, 20 people die waiting for an organ transplant. More than 113,000 people in the United States are currently waiting for one, while only 36,528 transplants were performed in 2018, according to government data. Every year, the waiting list grows, greatly outpacing the number of available organs. For decades, researchers looked to animal donors as a way to ease this chronic shortage, but transplants from animals have often failed.

Xeno-Skin, developed by Boston-based biotech company XenoTherapeutics, shows promise. So far, one patient has received the genetically engineered pig skin graft, and five more burn victims are slated to receive it. The grafts are meant to be temporary and will be removed once the patients' own skin has grown back. Doctors involved in the trial say the donor tissue appears to be healing as well as a human skin graft, which was transplanted next to the pig skin for side-by-side comparison. The process also hasn't caused negative reactions like provoking an immune response or transmitting animal viruses, two major issues in xenotransplantation. "We're trying to replicate exactly the same mechanisms that are used in the standard of care, or the gold standard treatment, for severe and extensive burns," Paul Holzer, CEO of XenoTherapeutics, tells OneZero.

"Wednesday night was an exciting one for investors and employees at American Gene Technologies," reports a local Maryland news station. "After years in the making, they submitted a nearly 1,000-page document to FDA. And within its pages just may lie the cure for HIV/AIDS."

Founded in 2007, the privately-held company has less than 50 employees according to LinkedIn. Based in Maryland, the company's milestone was soon picked up by other local newscasts, including one attributed to WDVM/CNN.

Long-time Slashdot reader Aristos Mazer writes: This is not one of those on-going maintenance drugs. This, they claim in 1000+ pages of FDA filing, is an out-right cure. The drug, AGT 103T, delivers a virus that performs cell and gene therapy.

In AGT's words: "Gene therapy is a technique that allows doctors to treat a disorder by inserting genes into patients' cells to mitigate the underlying genetic drivers of disease. Human cells can be re-engineered to create highly-effective hunter/killers of invasive pathogens or cancer cells, or reprogramed to produce secretions that provide potent remedies to other disease conditions."

If FDA approves, then AGT will have the green light to begin phase one clinical trials in January 2020.
"Our aim is to treat HIV disease with an innovative cell and gene therapy that reconstitutes immunity to HIV and will control virus growth in the absence of antiretroviral drugs," the company's chief science officer told CBS Baltimore.

"Darwin may have been wrong and 'protocells' forming near hydrothermal vents undersea may actually be responsible for the origin of life as we know it," writes Slashdot reader nickwinlund77.

From the article: An experiment replicating the hot, alkaline conditions found at the vents saw the successful creation of protocells -- regarded as a vital basic building block for life... For the new study, the research team tried creating protocells with a mixture of different fatty acids and fatty alcohols which had not previously been tested...

The research, published in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution, even suggests that heat and alkalinity might be not just useful but essential for spawning living things... At the vents, seawater comes into contact with minerals from the planet's crust, reacting to create a warm, alkaline environment containing hydrogen. This process creates the mineral-rich chimneys with alkaline and acidic fluids, providing a source of energy that facilitates chemical reactions between hydrogen and carbon dioxide to form increasingly complex organic compounds. Some of the world's oldest fossils, discovered by a UCL-led team, originated at such underwater vents....

The researchers also pointed out that deep-sea hydrothermal vents are not unique to Earth. The study's lead author, Nick Lane, professor of evolutionary biochemistry at UCL, said: "Space missions have found evidence that icy moons of Jupiter and Saturn might also have similarly alkaline hydrothermal vents in their seas. While we have never seen any evidence of life on those moons, if we want to find life on other planets or moons, studies like ours can help us decide where to look."

schwit1 tipped us off to an interesting new study. Newsweek reports: Babies of women who took acetaminophen -- a common painkiller marketed in the U.S. under the brand name Tylenol -- near the end of pregnancy had a higher likelihood of being diagnosed with autism spectrum disorders or with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), according to a study published in JAMA Psychiatry.

The study, conducted by researchers from the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health, cross referenced blood samples taken from the mother after the baby's birth and samples taken from the babies' umbilical cords, which were used to assess how much acetaminophen the mother had ingested. A mother-to-be who takes Tylenol during their pregnancy is liable to have some of the medication reach a developing fetus, as the drug has been demonstrated to cross the placenta, according to United Press International (UPI). The children involved in the study were reexamined when they were around 10 years old. Researchers found that those children whose umbilical cords had contained higher levels of acetaminophen were significantly more likely to have an autism spectrum disorder or ADHD than the children who did not appear to have been exposed to acetaminophen in utero.

According to UPI's analysis of the findings, "the odds of these developmental disorders were more than twice as high in children exposed to acetaminophen near the time of birth. The association was strongest between exposure to acetaminophen and ADHD in the child."

Remember last month when "an international collaboration of researchers" suggested there was no reason to reduce consumption of red meat? Here's a response from Frank Hu, chairman of the Nutrition Department at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health: The recent guidelines published in the Annals of Internal Medicine should not change existing recommendations on healthy and balanced eating patterns for the prevention of chronic diseases. Guidance to reduce red and processed meats is based on a large body of evidence indicating that higher consumption of red meat -- especially processed red meat -- is associated with higher risk of Type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, certain types of cancers, and premature death.

While this guidance is supported by both national and international organizations, including the American Heart Association, American Cancer Society, and the World Health Organization, consumers should know that the new guidelines were released by a self-selected panel of 14 members. Furthermore, when my colleagues and I closely reviewed the studies informing the panel's decision, we saw that their findings contradicted their guidance. In short, the three meta-analyses of observational studies actually confirmed existing evidence on the potential for health benefits when cutting back on red and processed meats. However, because they based their analysis on a measure of three servings of red meat per week, the effects of an individual reducing consumption appeared small. But if you consider that about a third of U.S. adults eat one serving or more of red meat each day, the potential health benefits of reducing consumption become much greater...

[N]utrition research is complex, and rarely do [its findings] reverse so abruptly. That's why it's so important to look beyond the headlines at the quality of the evidence behind the claims. Still, the publication of these new guidelines in such a prominent medical journal is unfortunate as it risks further harm to the credibility of nutrition science, eroding public trust in research as well as the recommendations they ultimately inform.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from MIT Technology Review: Anxious couples are approaching fertility doctors in the US with requests for a hotly debated new genetic test being called "23andMe, but on embryos." The baby-picking test is being offered by a New Jersey startup company, Genomic Prediction, whose plans we first reported on two years ago. The company says it can use DNA measurements to predict which embryos from an IVF procedure are least likely to end up with any of 11 different common diseases. In the next few weeks it's set to release case studies on its first clients.

Handed report cards on a batch of frozen embryos, parents can use the test results to try to choose the healthiest ones. The grades include risk estimates for diabetes, heart attacks, and five types of cancer. According to flyers distributed by the company, it will also warn clients about any embryo predicted to become a person who is among the shortest 2% of the population, or who is in the lowest 2% in intelligence. The test is straight out of the science fiction film Gattaca, a movie that's one of the inspirations of the startup's CEO, Laurent Tellier. The company's other cofounders are testing expert Nathan Treff and Stephen Hsu, a Michigan State University administrator and media pundit. So far, fertility centers have not leaped at the chance to offer the test, which is new and unproven. Instead, prospective parents are learning about the designer baby reports through word of mouth or news articles and taking the company's flyer to their doctors. "The test (called "LifeView") is carried out on a few cells plucked from a days-old IVF embryo," the report says. "Then Genomic Prediction measures its DNA at several hundred thousand genetic positions, from which it says it can create a statistical estimate, called a 'polygenic score,' of the chance of disease later in life."

Criticism of the company from some genetics researchers has been intense. "It is irresponsible to suggest that the science is at the point where we could reliably predict which embryo to select to minimize the risk of disease. The science simply isn't there yet," says Graham Coop, a geneticist at the University of California, Davis, and a frequent critic of the company on Twitter.

schwit1 shares a report from The New York Times: The N.I.H. and the F.B.I. have begun a vast effort to root out scientists who they say are stealing biomedical research for other countries from institutions across the United States. Almost all of the incidents they uncovered and that are under investigation involve scientists of Chinese descent, including naturalized American citizens, allegedly stealing for China. Seventy-one institutions, including many of the most prestigious medical schools in the United States, are now investigating 180 individual cases involving potential theft of intellectual property. The cases began after the N.I.H., prompted by information provided by the F.B.I., sent 18,000 letters last year urging administrators who oversee government grants to be vigilant. So far, the N.I.H. has referred 24 cases in which there may be evidence of criminal activity to the inspector general's office of the Department of Health and Human Services, which may turn over the cases for criminal prosecution.

The investigations have fanned fears that China is exploiting the relative openness of the American scientific system to engage in wholesale economic espionage. At the same time, the scale of the dragnet has sent a tremor through the ranks of biomedical researchers, some of whom say ethnic Chinese scientists are being unfairly targeted for scrutiny as Washington's geopolitical competition with Beijing intensifies. The alleged theft involves not military secrets, but scientific ideas, designs, devices, data and methods that may lead to profitable new treatments or diagnostic tools. Some researchers under investigation have obtained patents in China on work funded by the United States government and owned by American institutions, the N.I.H. said. Others are suspected of setting up labs in China that secretly duplicated American research, according to government officials and university administrators. [...] [R]oughly a dozen scientists are known to have resigned or been fired from universities and research centers across the United States so far. Some have declined to discuss the allegations against them; others have denied any wrongdoing. In several cases, scientists supported by the N.I.H. or other federal agencies are accused of accepting funding from the Chinese government in violation of N.I.H. rules. Some have said that they did not know the arrangements had to be disclosed or were forbidden.

Harvard University researchers have found a way to simulate real meat by growing cow and rabbit muscle cells on a scaffold made out of gelatin. Engadget reports: In the body, cells don't just sit there in a pile. They get physical support from water, collagen proteins and nutrients, which help the cells grown and align. "To grow muscle tissues that resembled meat, we needed to find a 'scaffold' material that was edible and allowed muscle cells to attach and grow in 3D," said first study author and Harvard SEAS research associate Luke MacQueen. To create such a scaffold, the team elected to use gelatin, which is made from the collagen extracted from the skin, bones and connective tissue of domesticated animals. It's not only edible, but closely mimics the way collagen adds a succulent texture to meat when it's cooked.

The researchers dissolved gelatin powder into water and spun it into cotton candy-like fibers, then bonded those into a lattice material using enzymes. When rabbit and cow cells were placed on it, they latched on and formed about a square inch of muscle. Cooking and handling tests showed that the texture and springiness of the lab meat was somewhere between a hamburger and a beef tenderloin. The results are promising, but as with lab-grown burgers, you're not likely to see alt-steaks on your plate anytime soon. Scientists and bio-engineers still need to figure out how to grow them at scale in bioreactor facilities to keep up with the expected demand.

dryriver writes: A study in the British Medical Journal that looked at 24 of the 100s of Medical apps available on Google Play found that 79% pass all sorts of user info -- including sensitive medical info like what your reported symptoms are and what medications you are taking in some cases -- on to third and fourth parties. A German-made and apparently very popular medical app named Ada was found to share user data with trackers like Facebook, Adjust and Amplitude for example. [Click here for the article in German.] The New York Times also warned recently about apps that want to retrieve/store your medical records.

From the conclusion of the study: "19/24 (79%) of sampled apps shared user data. 55 unique entities, owned by 46 parent companies, received or processed app user data, including developers and parent companies (first parties) and service providers (third parties). 18 (33%) provided infrastructure related services such as cloud services. 37 (67%) provided services related to the collection and analysis of user data, including analytics or advertising, suggesting heightened privacy risks. Network analysis revealed that first and third parties received a median of 3 (interquartile range 1-6, range 1-24) unique transmissions of user data. Third parties advertised the ability to share user data with 216 "fourth parties"; within this network (n=237), entities had access to a median of 3 (interquartile range 1-11, range 1-140) unique transmissions of user data. Several companies occupied central positions within the network with the ability to aggregate and re-identify user data."

Thanks to Future Meat Technologies, lab-grown meat could be hitting store shelves by 2022. The company "has raised $14 million in new financing to build its first pilot manufacturing facilities to bring the cost of production of a cell-made steak down to $10 per pound -- or $4 if the meat is combined with plant-based meat substitutes," reports TechCrunch. From the report: The $10 price tag is a whole lot lower than the $50 target that experts from the Good Food Institute were talking about back in April of this year -- and represents a significant cost reduction that makes lab-grown meat a potentially commercially viable option much sooner than anyone expected. "With this investment, we're thrilled to bring cultured meat from the lab to the factory floor and begin working with our industrial partners to bring our product to market," said Rom Kshuk, the chief executive officer of Future Meat Technologies, in a statement. "We're not only developing a global network of investors and advisors with expertise across the meat and ingredient supply chains, but also providing the company with sufficient runway to achieve commercially viable production costs within the next two years."

Unlike its other competitors, Future Meat Technologies doesn't have any interest in selling its products directly to consumers. Rather, the company wants to be the supplier of the hardware and cell lines that anyone would need to become a manufacturer of lab-grown meat. The secret to Future Meat's success is its use of undifferentiated fibroblast cells that can be triggered with small molecules to turn into either fat cells or muscle cells. Once the fat and muscle starts growing, they're placed in a culture with a specific resin that removes waste materials that have been an impediment to growth at large scales, according to chief science officer and founder Yaakov Nahmias. While Future Meat doesn't rely on fetal bovine serum to grow its meat products, it does use small molecules derived from CHO cells (Chinese hamster ovaries), which are used in new medical research and drug manufacturing. "Nahmias says using a refrigerator-sized bioreactor, a manufacturer could get about half a ton of meat and fat in about 14 days," adds TechCrunch. "In about one month, growers can make an amount of meat equivalent of two cows' worth of meat (a cow takes about 12 to 18 months to raise for slaughter)."

The Israeli food technology startup Aleph Farms has successfully cultured meat in space for the first time. The Guardian reports: Aleph Farms grew the meat on the International Space Station, 248 miles (399 km) away from any natural resources. Bovine cells were harvested on Earth and taken to space, where they were grown into small-scale muscle tissue using a 3D bioprinter. The method relies on mimicking a natural process of muscle-tissue regeneration occurring inside a cow's body. The experiment took place on September 26 on the Russian segment of the space station, and involved the assembly of small-scale muscle tissue in a 3D bioprinter under controlled microgravity conditions. In future the technique could be used to provide meat for people living on the space station.

Long-time Slashdot reader sandbagger shared this news from the University of Illinois at Urbana, where researchers have made a surprising new discovery in a well-studied bioactive molecule: The molecule, which inserts itself into DNA to prevent replication, was once explored as a potential anti-cancer agent... "While examining these pharmaceutical molecules, we noticed that their molecular structures looked much like the organic semiconductors..." said chemical and biomolecular engineering professor Ying Diao.

These molecules, called DNA topoisomerase inhibitors, are flat and contain neatly stacked columns of electrically conductive molecular rings -- features that make a good semiconductor. Distinct from a typical semiconductor, these molecular columns are linked together by hydrogen bonds that can move charges from column to column, forming bridges that transform the entire molecular assembly into a semiconductor -- something rarely seen before this study, the researchers said. "These molecules can interact with biological material with high specificity, making them good candidates for use in biosensors," Diao said. "They are also easily printable but will require new solvents because they are chemically different than other organic semiconductors. The fabrication infrastructure is already in place...." Organic semiconductors are responsible for things like flexible electronics and transparent solar cells, but researchers are working to expand their use in biomedicine and devices that require interaction between electrically active molecules and biological molecules...

The team printed and tested the semiconductors and acknowledge that their efficiency and performance need improvement. Diao said the real excitement regarding this advance will come from the possibility of discovering similar molecules. "We envision partnering with researchers in machine learning who can train computers to spot the unique characteristics of these molecules," Diao said. "They can mine the vast pharmaceutical databases available today in search of molecules with similar, or maybe even better semiconducting properties."

An anonymous reader quotes Nature: The race to engineer the next-generation banana is on. The Colombian government confirmed last month that a banana-killing fungus has invaded the Americas -- the source of much of the world's banana supply. The invasion has given new urgency to efforts to create fruit that can withstand the scourge.

Scientists are using a mix of approaches to save the banana. A team in Australia has inserted a gene from wild bananas into the top commercial variety -- known as the Cavendish -- and are currently testing these modified bananas in field trials. Researchers are also turning to the powerful, precise gene-editing tool CRISPR to boost the Cavendish's resilience against the fungus, known as Fusarium wilt tropical race 4 (TR4). Breeding TR4 resistance into the Cavendish using conventional methods isn't possible because the variety is sterile and propagated by cloning. So the only way to save the Cavendish may be to tweak its genome, says Randy Ploetz, a plant pathologist at the University of Florida in Homestead. The variety accounts for 99% of global banana shipments...

[T]he fungus is a tough opponent. It can't be killed with fungicides, and it can linger in soil for up to 30 years. That has helped TR4 slowly spread around the world, probably by hitching rides on contaminated equipment or in soil. The strain began destroying banana crops in the 1990s in Asia before invading Australia and countries in the Middle East and Africa. Now TR4 is in the Americas, and researchers say that the Cavendish could become virtually extinct in the next several decades unless they can modify it to resist the fungus.

"An electric patch makes hairless mice grow fur and may reverse balding in men when fitted inside a specially designed baseball cap," reports New Scientist: At the moment, men who don't want to go bald can treat hair loss using minoxidil lotion, finasteride pills or hair transplant surgery. But minoxidil doesn't work for everyone, finasteride can reduce sex drive and fertility, and surgery is painful and expensive. Stimulating the scalp with electric pulses has also been shown to restore hair growth. However, it isn't a very practical treatment because it involves being hooked up to a machine or battery pack for several hours a day.

To overcome this hurdle, Xudong Wang at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and his colleagues have developed a wireless patch that sticks to the scalp and generates electric pulses by harnessing energy from random body movements. The 1-millimetre-thick plastic patch contains layers of differently-charged materials that produce electricity when they come into contact and separate again -- a phenomenon known as the triboelectric effect. When the flexible patch was attached to the backs of rats, their movements caused it to bend and stretch, activating the triboelectric effect. The resulting electric pulses stimulated faster hair re-growth in shaved rats compared with minoxidil lotion and inert saline solution...

Wang also tested the patch on his father, who has been going bald for the past few years. "It helped him to grow a lot of new hairs after one month," Wang says. His team has now designed a baseball cap that encases the whole scalp in the triboelectric materials to stimulate hair growth, and is seeking approval to test it in men in a clinical trial... However, the hat will only work in men who are currently losing their hair or have recently become bald, because the skin loses its ability to generate new hair follicles after many years of baldness, Wang says.

An anonymous reader quotes Engadget: Bioprinting holds great potential for repairing injuries, testing drugs or replacing whole organs, but it's currently limited in complexity, viability and speed -- you can't just create tissue on a whim. Soon, though, it might be a matter of crafting whatever you need when you need it. Scientists at EPFL and University Medical Center Utrecht have developed an optical system that can bioprint complex, highly viable living tissue in "just a few seconds." It would represent a breakthrough compared to the clunky, layer-based processes of today.

The approach, volumetric bioprinting, forms tissue by projecting a laser down a spinning tube containing hydrogel full of stem cells. You can shape the resulting tissue simply by focusing the laser's energy on specific locations to solidify them, creating a useful 3D shape within seconds. After that, it's a matter of introducing endothelial cells to add vessels to the tissue.

The resulting tissues are currently just a few inches across. That's still enough to be "clinically useful," EPFL said, and has already been used to print heart-like valves, a complex femur part and a meniscus. It can create interlocking structures, too.

A Tesla driver figured out a way to implant the RFID tag from her Model 3's keycard into her forearm. Now, all she needs to do to unlock and turn on her car is to hold her forearm near the console -- no physical key fob or smartphone required. The Verge reports: Amie DD is a software engineer and self-described "maker of things." In a video, she explained that she had implanted an RFID tag in her arm years ago, which she had used to open her home's front door and to send a smartphone's browser to her personal website. When she preordered her Model 3, she realized that she could probably do something similar with the keycard. She didn't have any luck transferring the software to her existing chip, so she decided to extract the card's chip and implant that into her arm. To do that, she dissolved the card using acetone, and had it encased in a biopolymer. From there, she went to a body-modification studio to have the chip (about the size of a Lego mini-figure) implanted into her forearm. In another video (warning, there's some blood), she shows off the implantation. She also documented her process on Hackaday. She told The Verge that the chip does work, but the range from her arm to the console "isn't the greatest." It's only about an inch, but she's hoping that it'll improve as the swelling of her arm goes down.

A new study published in the American Heart Association journal Circulation: Cardiovascular Imaging found that blood pressure can be measured accurately by taking a quick video selfie. An anonymous reader quotes this announcement from the University of Toronto: Kang Lee, a professor of applied psychology and human development at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education and Canada Research Chair in developmental neuroscience, was the lead author of the study... Using a technology co-discovered by Lee and his postdoctoral researcher Paul Zheng called transdermal optical imaging, researchers measured the blood pressure of 1,328 Canadian and Chinese adults by capturing two-minute videos of their faces on an iPhone. Results were compared to standard devices used to measure blood pressure. The researchers found they were able to measure three types of blood pressure with 95 to 96 per cent accuracy.
Lee co-founded a company to turn their technology into a smartphone app (named Anura) that reports stress-level measurements and resting heart rate from a 30-second video of your face -- with plans to release a new version also returning blood pressure results sometime this fall in China.

The university also notes that the researchers now hope to extend their technology so it can measure blood-gluclose levels and cholesterol.

The Atlantic talked to Lora Hooper, chair of the immunology department at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, one of the researchers investigating gut microbes, inflammation, and what may be a very important connection.

They note that the rise of antibiotic usage among humans "coincides with the obesity epidemic." This could be a spurious correlation, of course -- lots of things have been on the rise since the '50s. But dismissing it entirely would require ignoring a growing body of evidence that our metabolic health is inseparable from the health of our gut microbes... While other researchers focused on the gut microbiome itself, [Hooper] took an interest in the immune system. Specifically, she wanted to know how an inflammatory response could influence these microscopic populations, and thus be related to weight gain.

Over the past decade or so, multiple studies have shown that obese adults mount less effective immune responses to vaccinations, and that both overweight and underweight people have elevated rates of infection. But these were long assumed to be effects of obesity, not causes.

"When I started my lab there wasn't much known about how the immune system perceives the gut microbes," Hooper says. "A lot of people thought the gut immune system might be sort of blind to them." To her, it was obvious that this couldn't be the case. The human gut is host to about 100 trillion bacteria. They serve vital metabolic functions, but can quickly kill a person if they get into the bloodstream. "So clearly the immune system has got to be involved in maintaining them," she says. It made sense to her that even subtle changes in the functioning of the immune system could influence microbial populations -- and, hence, weight gain and metabolism. This theory was borne out late last month in a paper in Science... [T]his experiment is a demonstration of principle: The immune system helps control the composition of the gut microbiome.
Slashdot reader Beeftopia submitted the story, noting that even the North American Meat Institute, the largest trade group representing meat processors, acknowledges that the use of some antibiotics "can destroy certain bacteria in the gut and help livestock and poultry convert feed to muscle more quickly causing more rapid growth." [PDF, page 4].

"Inflammation plays a critical role in determining how we digest food," writes the Atlantic, "and it's only now starting to reveal itself."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from NPR: For the first time, doctors in the U.S. have used the powerful gene-editing technique CRISPR to try to treat a patient with a genetic disorder. "It is just amazing how far things have come," says Victoria Gray, 34, of Forest, Miss. "It is wonderful," she told NPR in an exclusive interview after undergoing the landmark treatment for sickle cell disease. Gray is the first patient ever to be publicly identified as being involved in a study testing the use of CRISPR for a genetic disease. "I always had hoped that something will come along," she says from a hospital bed at the Sarah Cannon Research Institute in Nashville, Tenn., where she received an infusion of billions of genetically modified cells. "It's a good time to get healed." But it probably will take months, if not years, of careful monitoring of Gray and other patients before doctors know whether the treatment is safe and how well it might be helping patients. "For the study, doctors are using cells taken from patients' own bone marrow that have been genetically modified with CRISPR to make them produce a protein that is usually only made by fetuses and by babies for a short time following birth," the report adds. "The hope is this protein will compensate for the defective protein that causes sickle cell disease and will enable patients to live normally for the rest of their lives."