Today, we are launching Issue 5 of Asimov Press with a piece by Eric Gilliam on Edwin Cohn, a woefully underrated, translational scientist whose lab became an R&D giant during World War II. Gilliam recounts Cohn's story and the blood fractionation breakthroughs that came from his laboratory. He also argues for the utility of pilot-scale facilities at academic universities and explains how they could accelerate scientific progress.

Over the next two months, a new essay will appear weekly to fill out the issue. Here is a look at what to expect.

• Niko McCarty contributes a biography of Gregor Mendel, explaining why the Augustinian friar — often underappreciated as a one-dimensional figure who bred some plants and discovered the laws of inheritance — is a scientific genius who contributed seminal research on everything from fertilization to insect pests and beekeeping to meteorology. Niko spent months reading biographies and academic reviews to piece this story together.

• In his second science fiction contribution, Richard Ngo envisions how humans will augment their intelligence and ultimately choose to supersede their biological constraints in the pursuit of ever-greater self-knowledge.

• Ryan Duncombe and Jasmin Kaur explain what it will take to make an influenza “pan-vaccine” — one that confers lifelong immunity against any strain of flu: past, present, or future. Developing such a vaccine requires a formulation with broad protection and high potency, both of which are hard to achieve given the way viruses mutate and the quirks of the human immune system.

• Xander Balwit interrogates how connectome mapping could help scientists decode the inner workings of the human brain. Beyond regaling readers with a history of the field and the prescient anatomical drawings of Santiago Ramón y Cajal, she also explains how E11 Bio is inventing methods that will slash the costs required for brain mapping by an order-of-magnitude or more, thus opening up pathways toward more powerful neurotechnologies.

• Larissa Schiavo explores how our built environment shapes our understanding of clean air’s crucial role in human health. A self-described “old building nerd,” she expounds on the good, the bad, and the ugly of indoor ventilation — spanning the history of everything from flues and humble windows to cutting-edge HVAC systems and Far-UVC.
  
  
• Kamal Nahas writes on the origins of lenacapavir, a near-100-percent effective HIV preventive. He unpacks the science of antiretrovirals — how they’re made, how they work — and sheds light on big pharma’s pricing and manufacturing practices.

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Updates

• Pre-orders are live for our second anthology, the first commercially available book to be written and sold in DNA. We are printing 2,000 physical copies and have made 1,000 DNA capsules in total. We owe a tremendous amount of gratitude to CATALOG, Imagene, and Plasmidsaurus for bringing this project to life. A portion of our revenue from this print run will be donated to Hive, a farmed animal advocacy non-profit exploring ways to improve animal welfare using AI.
  
  
• Speaking of animal welfare, editor-in-chief Xander Balwit will be attending the AI for Animals annual conference in Berkeley in early March. If you are interested in attending, tickets are still available. A webinar about using AI and other advanced technologies for animal welfare will precede this on February 10th. Xander will be speaking about her Asimov Press article, “Raising Welfare for Lab Rodents.”

• And even more animal-related events in San Francisco! The first is a talk by Jacob Schwartz-Lucas, director of the Animal Pain Research Institute, on January 14th. He will talk about how genetic research into affective states like pain, anxiety, and depression across species. The talk will be followed by a more substantive workshop at Stanford on January 17th, focusing on therapeutics that target the neurological and genetic mechanisms underlying these challenges in humans and other species. Join us!

• We are commissioning! In just a few days, we’ll unveil another batch of “Pieces We Want to Publish.” If you’d like to write for us, watch for that and let us know if any of them spark your interest. If you prefer to follow your own inspiration, we’re hungry for deeply mechanistic and vivid tales of biological progress and metascience. Pitch us ideas on overlooked scientific breakthroughs or figures, unlikely tales of technological development, rigorous analyses, or impassioned op-eds.

Elsewhere on the Internet

• Xander & Niko co-wrote an article on the history of using animals as chemical factories — to make everything from purple dyes to antivenoms — for Issue 17 of Works in Progress magazine. We’re honored to see it as the cover story!
• Issue 08 of Asterisk magazine has been excellent. Check it out!
• Saloni Dattani highlighted five medical breakthroughs that happened in 2024, several of which were entirely new to us. For example, did you know there’s a new monoclonal antibody called Omalizumab that “helps people tolerate various food allergens, including peanuts and milk”?
• “On Fables and Nuanced Charts,” written by Spencer Greenberg and Amber Dawn Ace for Asimov Press, was featured in one of The Browser’s “Best of 2024” lists, alongside work from Michael Lewis and Quanta Magazine. Nice!‍
• Owl Posting launched a biotech-focused podcast, and we love it. More science podcasts in 2025?

Artwork by Iris Fung.