Biological Technology

Farmers and scientists are collaborating in Pittsburg, Kansas, to reinvigorate the local economy through biorubber production.

Biochemist Katalin Karikó won the Nobel Prize for research that laid the groundwork for effective COVID-19 vaccines. She talks about how hard work and focus—rather than innate talent—led to her scientific success, and about the joy of solving interesting puzzles.

Fusion energy faces many hurdles. The history of the biotech industry offers lessons for how to build public trust and create a robust investment ecosystem to help fusion achieve its potential.

We have only begun to understand RNA and its implications for medicine, biology, agriculture, and beyond. Lydia Contreras explains a plan to sequence RNA and unlock its potential.

Amanda Arnold, vice president of governmental affairs and policy at Valneva, a private vaccine development company, talks about the role industry plays in the science policy enterprise and what she has learned about the US innovation ecosystem from working across sectors.

The Great Lakes region can build on biotechnology educational models found elsewhere, but it will require interventions that are finely calibrated for local communities and resources.

In her novel The Last Animal, Ramona Ausubel takes readers on an action-packed, globetrotting quest to resurrect a woolly mammoth.

For decades, DARPA has used the Heilmeier Catechism—a series of eight questions including “Who cares?”—to steer investment decisions. But when ARPA-H, the new health-focused innovation agency, launched recently, it added two new questions that take equity and security concerns into account. Issues editor-in-chief Lisa Margonelli considers what these additions might mean for the future of innovation.

As the life sciences in China have rapidly advanced over the past two decades, the country’s scientific community has become more adept at shaping policy for responsible research.

A new documentary chronicles how a DC power couple brought political urgency to fighting a fatal neurodegenerative disease.

An expansion of today’s static definition of biosafety to include research for mitigating risk will advance both science and public safety.

A bioeconomy that delivers environmental, economic, and social benefits requires a twenty-first-century regulatory framework.