Seven Wonders of Biology

A researcher writes about her seven year quest to make transgenic ants that express GCaMP, a calcium sensor, in their sensory neurons, thus enabling one to record neural activity as these insects sense pheromones.

Taiichi Ohno, a Japanese engineer who helped to create the Toyota Production System, once described a five-step system to identify the root cause of a problem. That same system should be applied to scientific problems.

The intentional infection of human beings with pathogens under study has been going on for centuries, but the number of challenge trials almost doubled from the 2000s to the 2010s. What accounts for their popularity?

The innovation and litigation behind biology’s most ubiquitous tool.

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