Over the years, scientists have inserted chloroplasts into mammalian cells & zebrafish—a step towards "photosynthetic animals." But @ClamonsSam ran the numbers. A mammal can't get all of its energy from photosynthesis, unless it is super tiny and lives in the Sahara! New Blog🔻

Inside the Laboratory for Extraordinary Microbes An estimated 0.001% of microbes have been discovered. And only a small percentage of those have ever been grown and studied in the lab. Imagine the molecular tools we might discover if scientists could work with a broader palette of lifeforms. I had a lot of fun visiting @CultivariumFRO and writing about their work. Here are my favorite excerpts: *** Humanity has discovered an estimated 0.001 percent of all microbes, and many of biology’s most useful tools have come from the “weird” ones. Consider that scientists found one of the first restriction enzymes, used to “cut” and “stitch” DNA molecules together, in a pathogenic bacterium hiding out in the respiratory tracts of children, called Haemophilus influenzae. Alexander Fleming, upon returning from holiday, discovered penicillin antibiotics after a little-known mold destroyed his Streptococcus colonies. And an enzyme isolated from a microbe growing in the boiling waters of a Yellowstone National Park geyser enabled modern polymerase chain reaction, or PCR. ... Cultivarium builds tools to grow, transform, and engineer “extraordinary” microbes: the salt lovers, heat tolerators, and geyser growers that have long been inaccessible to scientists. Studying such organisms might lead to better gene-editing tools or medicines. And regardless of whether Cultivarium’s engineering efforts succeed or fail, they give all their knowledge away for free, in the expectation that the next biological breakthrough will come from these overlooked microbes. ... The trial-and-error nature of microbial cultivation has not changed much in the last century-and-a-half. In 1860, Louis Pasteur brewed the first liquid artificial culturemedium. His initial concoction consisted of a “yeast soup,” made by crushing cells with a mortar and pestle and mixing them with ash, candy sugar, and ammonium salts. He aimed to assemble a broth with all the elements needed to support growth; ammonium salts for nitrogen, sugar for carbon, and ash for vitamins. Microbes added to this mixture sometimes grew, but more often didn’t. ... The Hubble Telescope and CERN both cost billions of dollars to build and required resources that far exceeded those available to an academic laboratory. Neither of these indispensable technologies turn the kind of profit that would attract venture capitalist funding, either. This is why scientific moonshots that could improve humanity, but which cost too much money to get up-and-running or are unlikely to return investments, often die at the idea stage. Focused research organizations (FROs)—Cultivarium included—are designed to fill that gap. FROs tackle technical objectives that require resources greater than most academic laboratories can muster. They are not (at least initially) for-profit. Instead, FROs operate over a five-year period, make as much progress as they can, and then give away their findings or inventions to spur wider progress in a scientific field. This scientific structure is growing in popularity as people recognize the chasm between academic laboratories on the one hand and venture-backed startups on the other. @Convergent_FROs, the non-profit organization that helped spin up Cultivarium and six other FROs, matches scientific proposals with potential funders who want to make them happen.

The first book from @AsimovPress is finally here! Printed on Cougar White Vellum paper (good) with smyth-sewn bindings. All profits are donated to Malaria Consortium, an organization that vaccinates children against malaria. Click here to purchase: buy.stripe.com/00g6pi4pYdjA2…