The Archive · Count: 159

Articles

Stories about scientific progress.

Updates · September 8, 2026

Asimov Press is Back

Asimov Press returns with a renewed focus on original reporting, investigations, and thesis-driven philanthropy.

Words by Niko McCarty

Essays · April 7, 2026

A Brief History of Bioinformatics Software

How computer scientists on the fringes of biology made sense of sequencing data.

Words by Ella Watkins-Dulaney

Long Reads · April 7, 2026

A Brief History of Lab Notebooks

How experimental recordings have changed, from the Renaissance through today.

Words by Ulkar Aghayeva

Long Reads · April 6, 2026

Metaphors for Biology: Evolution

A series of quantitative metaphors on the speeds of representative events in evolutionary biology. The end of our three-part series.

Words by Samuel Clamons

Long Reads · April 1, 2026

How to Build a Strep A Vaccine

After decades of scientific and regulatory delays, several Strep A vaccine candidates are entering clinical trials. Without further funding for phase 3 studies, however, many will be hamstrung.

Words by Eva Amsen

Updates · March 25, 2026

That's All, for Now

We're pausing Asimov Press.

Words by Niko McCarty

Long Reads · March 23, 2026

Designing AI for Disruptive Science

Why scaling AI won’t automatically lead to paradigm shifts.

Words by Alvin Djajadikerta

Essays · March 18, 2026

Why Lab Coats are White

How a blood-stained surgeon's frock evolved into a pristine symbol of modern science.

Words by Donna Vatnick

Long Reads · March 13, 2026

How Φ80 Infiltrates Research Labs

While some bacteriophages play vital roles in laboratory research, others are bent on sabotage.

Words by Antoine Vigouroux

Essays · March 11, 2026

How to Design Antibodies

A step-by-step guide to making de novo binders, by Brian Naughton.

Words by Brian Naughton

Long Reads · March 9, 2026

Why Are Viral Capsids Icosahedral?

Viral capsid structure is a geometric packing problem under genetic constraints.

Words by Ulkar Aghayeva

Long Reads · March 7, 2026

Dead Reckoning

Bioarchaeologists recently identified a murdered medieval royal. Now, they are trying to shed light on other ancient deaths.

Words by David Brzostowicki

Long Reads · March 4, 2026

Working in Glass

How a twisted triangle of glass tubing helped democratize chemistry and build the modern laboratory.

Words by Spencer Wright

Essays · March 2, 2026

AI Won't Automatically Accelerate Clinical Trials

A critique of a snippet from Dario Amodei and Dwarkesh Patel’s recent interview.

Words by Ruxandra Teslo

Long Reads · March 2, 2026

A Visual Guide to DNA Sequencing

How to “read” nucleic acids, from Sanger to nanopores.

Words by Evan DeTurk

Essays · March 2, 2026

The Legibility Problem

What happens in a world where AIs make scientific discoveries that humans cannot understand?

Words by Matthew Carter

Long Reads · February 22, 2026

The Origins of Agar

First introduced into laboratories in 1881, agar remains indispensable as a culture medium.

Words by Corrado Nai

Fiction · February 19, 2026

Baseline Drift

A eulogy to the reference human. Words by Eliomer H. Kaas.

Words by Eliomer H. Kaas

Long Reads · February 16, 2026

Scent, In Silico

Once a primal instinct, olfaction is now being mapped, measured, and modeled by machines.

Words by Taylor Rayne

Essays · February 12, 2026

Making the Vortex Mixer

The forgotten story of an invention found in every biology lab.

Words by Ella Watkins-Dulaney

Essays · February 12, 2026

A Brief History of Xenopus

From early experiments on fertility and embryonic development to becoming the first cloned eukaryote from an adult cell, Xenopus frogs have had an outsized influence on the life sciences.

Words by Matt Lubin

Long Reads · February 1, 2026

What It's Like To Be A Worm

Finding evidence of “sentience” is fraught, whether in a comatose patient, an animal, or a neural net.

Words by Ralph Stefan Weir

Essays · January 29, 2026

Metaphors for Biology: Time

A series of quantitative metaphors on the speeds of common events in molecular biology.

Words by Samuel Clamons

Long Reads · January 26, 2026

Building Brains on a Computer

A roadmap for brain emulation models at the human scale. Words by Max Schons.

Words by Max Schons

Long Reads · January 19, 2026

Mystery of the Head Activator

A biological puzzle that made one researcher and ruined another might never be solved. Words by Brady Huggett.

Words by Brady Huggett

Essays · January 15, 2026

Solving the Electroporation Bottleneck

Cultivarium, a focused research organization, has built a custom electroporator to engineer non-model organisms at scale.

Words by Niko McCarty

Long Reads · January 12, 2026

Inventing the Methods Section

What the evolution of scientific methods says about their future.

Words by Andrew Hunt

Essays · January 8, 2026

Why Do Research Institutes Often Look the Same?

Despite attempts at variation, many new research organizations are canalized into just a handful of forms.

Words by Samuel Arbesman

Updates · January 5, 2026

Editor's Note: Issue 09

A look inside Issue 09.

Words by Editors

Long Reads · January 5, 2026

How Nature Became a 'Prestige' Journal

Since launching in 1869, Nature has evolved from a periodical offering commentary on pigeons to the prestige journal in science. But how did Nature build its reputation, and can it last?

Words by Robert Reason

Data · December 29, 2025

China's Clinical Trial Boom

In 2017, there were just over 600 clinical trials initiated in China. By 2023, that number was nearly 2,000. How can American companies kick off a similar boom?

Words by Hiya Jain

Essays · December 29, 2025

Clinic-in-the-Loop

Clinical trials are engines for scientific discovery. Better drugs require not just more trials, but also improved data collection, to create therapeutic feedback loops.

Words by Ruxandra Teslo

Long Reads · December 1, 2025

Why the FDA Is Slow to Remove Drugs

On the 90-year saga of oral phenylephrine.

Words by Michael DePeau-Wilson

Essays · November 27, 2025

A Most Important Mustard

On the origins of Arabidopsis thaliana, the premier model for plant biology.

Words by Xander Balwit

Long Reads · November 24, 2025

The Penicillin Myth

Competing theories seek to explain inconsistencies surrounding Alexander Fleming's famed discovery.

Words by Kevin Blake

Fiction · November 17, 2025

How to See the Dead

A retinal implant designer must decide if translating mourning into light is progress or a refusal to let go. Fiction by Spencer Nitkey.

Words by Spencer Nitkey

Essays · November 13, 2025

Animalcules and Their Motors

Advances in cryo-electron microscopy are revealing the molecular intricacies of cell movement.

Words by Niko McCarty

Long Reads · November 10, 2025

What Makes an Experiment Beautiful?

A beautiful experiment is not just a reflection of human ingenuity but also efficient science.

Words by Ulkar Aghayeva

Essays · November 6, 2025

Limit Thinking

To make things better, first prove how good they can possibly be.

Words by David Jordan

Data · November 3, 2025

Metaphors for Biology: Sizes

A series of quantitative metaphors on the sizes and shapes of biomolecules and organisms.

Words by Samuel Clamons

Essays · October 29, 2025

An Antivenom Cocktail, Made by a Llama

A new broad-coverage antivenom, made by mixing eight different nanobodies, protects mice against snakebites from 17 of 18 deadly species in Africa.

Words by Xander Balwit

Long Reads · October 26, 2025

Making the Electron Microscope

In a little over a century, the electron microscope evolved from a tool barely capable of resolving virus particles into one able to capture atomic detail.

Words by Smrithi Sunil

Long Reads · October 23, 2025

Why Nigeria Accepted GMOs

Genetically modified crops are finding a foothold in the Global South, producing some unlikely leaders in agritech.

Words by Alex Wakeman

Essays · October 23, 2025

The Price of E. coli

Bioengineers commonly view microbes as reprogrammable “cellular factories” for manufacturing high-value molecules. But what are we throwing away?

Words by Samuel Clamons

Essays · October 15, 2025

Atomic-Scale Protein Filters

How aquaporin and potassium channels filter hundreds of millions of water molecules or ions each second, by positioning the correct amino acid in the perfect place.

Words by Niko McCarty

Long Reads · October 13, 2025

A Liver on Ice

How a liver goes from a brain-dead donor to a living recipient. Words by Donna Vatnick.

Words by Donna Vatnick

Illustration for Making the Modern Laboratory.

Updates · October 8, 2025

Our Next Book: Making the Modern Laboratory

Asimov Press's next book explores the history behind the tools and methods of modern biology — and how you can help write it.

Words by Editors

Long Reads · October 6, 2025

A Shift from Animal Testing

There has been a push toward animal-free alternatives in scientific research. But the success of such alternatives hinges upon whether and where they can outperform standard animal models.

Words by Celia Ford

Essays · October 1, 2025

Seeing Microbes from the Sky

Biotechnology needs more and better transducers. Scientists can now spot engineered microbes from up to 90 meters away using hyperspectral cameras mounted to drones.

Words by Niko McCarty

Long Reads · September 29, 2025

The World's Most Common Surgery

In 4,000 years, cataract surgery went from a crude procedure involving thorn instruments to a 20-minute operation with a 95 percent clinical success rate. The next step is broadening access.

Words by Dr. Sangeetha Aravinda

Updates · September 29, 2025

Editor's Note

A look inside Issue 08.

Words by Editors

Essays · September 17, 2025

AI-Designed Phages

A new paper shows that a generative AI model can design viable bacteriophages.

Words by Niko McCarty

Long Reads · August 25, 2025

What We Find in the Sewers

Our ancestors once spread their excess effluent on their fields; now we mine it for vital molecules.

Words by Calum Drysdale

Long Reads · August 21, 2025

Pausing Insect Activity

Seasonal dormancy features in the life cycle of many insects. We can harness it for biological control, insect farming, and disease vector management at scale.

Words by Ulkar Aghayeva

Essays · August 18, 2025

The Weight of a Cell

A single yeast cell weighs about one million times less than a grain of sand. But how do we know this?

Words by Niko McCarty

Long Reads · August 14, 2025

Leeches and the Legitimizing of Folk-Medicine

While we've derived useful molecules from the leech, live leech therapy has been largely marginalized in the West. It is time we reevaluate why.

Words by Khushi Mittal & Xander Balwit

Long Reads · August 11, 2025

Meet the Flower Designer Who Built a Laboratory In His Home

Sebastian Cocioba, a vocal advocate for amateur science, built a home laboratory from spare parts and second-hand machines purchased on eBay.

Words by Asimov Press

Essays · August 11, 2025

The Flower Designer

A plant biologist's quest to design and create 1,000 unique flowers, mostly in his spare time.

Words by Niko McCarty

Data · August 7, 2025

The Sunlight Budget of Earth

Sunlight represents a seemingly endless source of largely untapped energy. Just how endless is it? An order-of-magnitude accounting of Earth's sunlight budget.

Words by Sam Clamons

Long Reads · August 4, 2025

How to Scale Proteomics

A look inside Parallel Squared Technology Institute, a focused research organization trying to make analyzing a proteome as easy as DNA sequencing.

Words by Niko McCarty

Essays · July 30, 2025

Spinning Bacteria

By spinning bacteria in circles, scientists figured out how phage viruses time their escape from an infected cell.

Words by Kamal Nahas

Long Reads · July 28, 2025

A Visual Guide to Gene Delivery

There are at least 10,000 known monogenic diseases. When attempting to cure them, how do clinicians decide which gene-therapy delivery method is best?

Words by Eryney Marrogi

Essays · July 23, 2025

Cable Bacteria are Living Batteries

How a discovery in a Danish lake changed our understanding of biological communities and energy.

Words by Niko McCarty

Long Reads · July 21, 2025

Culture Shift

We tend to think of fermented foods as something humans invented and then chose to eat. But the evidence shows the opposite: fermented foods shaped human biology.

Words by Rachel Dutton

Long Reads · July 21, 2025

What Makes a Mature Science

Mechanism alone cannot make a science credible. It must describe its subject matter in terms of entities, properties, and rules.

Words by Slime Mold Time Mold

Essays · July 17, 2025

The First Weight Loss Drugs

Long before Ozempic and Mounjaro, there were mitochondrial uncouplers. While deadly if not used with care, it might be time for them to make a comeback.

Words by Alex Telford

Long Reads · July 14, 2025

The Uncertain Origins of Aspirin

The history of humanity's pharmacopeia is often muddied by folklore. What can the origins of aspirin teach us about separating fact from fiction?

Words by Sean Harrison

Updates · June 24, 2025

A Night of Food Futurism

A science fiction story brought to life through a pro-GMO dinner.

Words by Xander Balwit

Fiction · June 23, 2025

Farma: Speculative Gastronomy

Despite years on the defensive, GMOs and other food technology can improve human and planetary health. A new restaurant is embracing this potential.

Words by Xander Balwit

Long Reads · June 12, 2025

Inside ARIA, the UK's Bet to Build Scientific Revolutions

An interview with Ilan Gur, CEO of ARIA, about the organization's efforts to build scientific waves.

Words by Eric Gilliam

Long Reads · June 9, 2025

Life as Slime

Prominent scientists continue to claim life is “just” slime on a spinning rock. However, in an age when the rarity and fragility of biological life are increasingly evident, it’s time to retire the metaphor.

Words by Thomas Moynihan

Long Reads · June 5, 2025

A Visual Guide to Genome Editors

A selected encyclopedia of major gene-editing systems, together with illustrated diagrams.

Words by Evan DeTurk

Fiction · June 2, 2025

The Eternal Life and Art of Maxwell Ardeen

Bioart emerges where biological science, technology, and aesthetics collide. For one terminally ill artist, it offered a chance at immortality.

Words by Spencer Nitkey

Long Reads · May 29, 2025

Toxic Proteins for Drug Discovery

Toxic amino acids, peptides, and proteins — which first evolved as molecular weapons deployed by species in conflict — can also serve as blueprints for pharmaceutical innovation.

Words by Noah Whiteman

Essays · May 22, 2025

Reservoirs of Resistance

By studying the millennia-old arms race between soil-dwelling microbes, scientists can pre-empt antibiotic resistance before it emerges in people.

Words by Kevin Blake

Long Reads · May 19, 2025

Keeping Ahead of Contagion

We have the technology to detect airborne pathogens in real time. Now we must use it.

Words by Deena Mousa

Essays · May 15, 2025

Model Organisms Are Not Static

A research study reveals that some vertebrate genomes mutate 40-times faster than others—and that model organisms quietly change over generations.

Words by Kamal Nahas

Essays · May 12, 2025

Seven Wonders of Biology

A decades-old essay offers newfound appreciation for progress.

Words by Niko McCarty

Data · May 8, 2025

How Much Information is in DNA?

Answering this question may seem straightforward, but actually requires an odyssey through information theory and molecular biology.

Words by Dynomight

Long Reads · May 5, 2025

Making the Centrifuge

The modern centrifuge was first designed for milkfat separation in the dairy industry. Today, it is ubiquitous in research laboratories. To whom do we owe its astonishing versatility?

Words by Roberta McLain

Long Reads · April 28, 2025

A Brief History of GFP

How a chance discovery in bioluminescent jellyfish led to one of the most transformative tools in modern biology.

Words by Smrithi Sunil

Fiction · April 21, 2025

Eulogy to the Obits

With a litany of gene therapies and longevity medicine staving off biological death, those paid to write about it must reimagine their craft.

Words by Xander Balwit

Essays · April 17, 2025

Can Plants Really “See”?

Some researchers claim that a Chilean vine can mimic the leaves of a plastic houseplant thanks to a form of primitive vision. But extraordinary claims require equally extraordinary evidence.

Words by Martin Bourdev

Essays · April 14, 2025

The Magic of Fast Feedback Loops

Why biologists should operate with a sense of urgency.

Words by Stephen Malina

Data · April 10, 2025

Recipe for a Cell

While we know how to break organisms down to their constituent parts, even at the atomic level, building them from scratch remains difficult.

Words by Niko McCarty

Long Reads · April 8, 2025

On Prions and Protein Design

Prions are extremely resilient, infectious proteins. Studying their shape-shifting abilities could reveal lessons for how proteins fold at a molecular level, helping scientists design better ones.

Words by Eryney Marrogi & Theodore Sternlieb

Long Reads · April 3, 2025

The Origins of Adjuvants

More than a century after the invention of vaccines, a veterinarian stumbled across a technique to boost their efficacy in an unlikely way — by observing wounded horses.

Words by Kamal Nahas

Long Reads · March 30, 2025

The Nobel Duel

A cautionary tale about the competitive pressures of scientific research, and how they alter the course of history.

Words by Metacelsus

Data · March 26, 2025

What Limits a Cell's Size?

Two physical constraints help explain why cells are so tiny: surface area-to-volume ratios and diffusion. The first article in our new Data Series.

Words by Niko McCarty

Long Reads · March 23, 2025

A Brief History of the Miracle Bacterium

Serratia marcescens, a pathogen with an uncanny resemblance to blood, has had an outsized influence on modern science.

Words by Corrado Nai

Essays · March 19, 2025

Meet the Humans Building AI Scientists

A look inside FutureHouse, a nonprofit research institute in San Francisco.

Words by Bryan Duoto

Long Reads · March 16, 2025

Healing My Family's Future

How genetics and IVF empowered a family to leave cancer behind.

Words by Jennifer Lai Remmel

Long Reads · February 23, 2025

Making a “Miracle” HIV Medicine

Lenacapavir — a long-acting, injectable drug — may be our strongest tool yet to curb HIV, provided it reaches those who need it most.

Words by Kamal Nahas

Essays · February 19, 2025

Evo 2 Can Design Entire Genomes

A new AI model for biology, released by Arc Institute and NVIDIA, can predict which mutations within a gene are likely to be harmful and even design small, eukaryotic genomes.

Words by Eryney Marrogi and Niko McCarty

Data · February 16, 2025

The Making of a Gene Circuit

An interactive visualization of the repressilator, a genetic circuit that gave rise to synthetic biology.

Words by Nehal Udyavar & Niko McCarty

Essays · February 13, 2025

AI-Designed Enzymes

Researchers at the Institute for Protein Design have made a computationally-designed, multi-step enzyme.

Words by Abhishaike Mahajan & Eryney Marrogi

Long Reads · February 9, 2025

Barcoding Brains

Connectomics — mapping every physical connection between neurons — is expensive and inefficient. E11 Bio is designing a tool to expedite progress.

Words by Xander Balwit

Essays · February 5, 2025

A Search for Sick Animals

A 2020 study suggests that monkeys can develop Parkinson’s, just like humans. Why haven't the findings been duplicated, and what will it take to find more “natural” animal models?

Words by Trevor Klee

Long Reads · February 2, 2025

The Battle For Better Air

A brief history of how our built environments were shaped by everything from flues and humble windows to cutting-edge HVAC systems.

Words by Larissa Schiavo

Updates · January 28, 2025

A Writing Fellowship on Scientific Progress

Works in Progress and Asimov Press are launching a paid six-month fellowship.

Words by Asimov Press

Long Reads · January 26, 2025

The Quest for Universal Flu Vaccines

Modern flu vaccines have an average efficacy of just 40 percent, and they must be revamped each year. How can we make vaccines that are “universal” — both broadly-protective and highly potent?

Words by Ryan Duncombe & Jasmin Kaur

Fiction · January 19, 2025

The Gentle Romance

What the journey from AI assistant to full-virtuality can teach us about the nature of love.

Words by Richard Ngo

Long Reads · January 12, 2025

Gregor Mendel's Vanishing Act

After his death in 1884, thousands of Gregor Mendel's letters and notes — filled with scientific data and figures — were destroyed. What did the friar discover, and what have we forgotten?

Words by Niko McCarty

Updates · January 9, 2025

Stories We'd Like to Publish

A public list of biotechnology essay ideas that Asimov Press would like to publish. Ideas up for grabs, for new and experienced writers alike.

Words by Asimov Press

Updates · January 9, 2025

Stories We'd Like to Publish (Part II)

A sizeable list, covering everything from "The $100 Electron Microscope" to "A Brief History of NSAIDs." Come write with us!

Words by Editors

Long Reads · January 5, 2025

Edwin Cohn and the Harvard Blood Factory

How a chemistry "purist" built one of World War II's greatest applied R&D laboratories.

Words by Eric Gilliam

Updates · January 5, 2025

Editor's Note

Launching the fifth Issue of our award-winning, digital magazine.

Words by Editors

Long Reads · December 12, 2024

The Dangers of Mirrored Life

Creating mirrored organisms using synthetic biology could seriously harm extant life, a 300-page report claims. While the risks from mirrored life are uncertain, it is best not to find out.

Words by Niko McCarty & Fin Moorhouse

Essays · December 8, 2024

Inside Job: Secret Histories in the National Museum

Discovering a secret bioweapons program in the Smithsonian archives.

Words by Rich Pell

Essays · December 1, 2024

Francis Crick Was Misunderstood

The Central Dogma is not a "dogma," and it has never been broken.

Words by Matthew Cobb

Long Reads · November 24, 2024

The Pursuit of Parenthood

The rise and regulation of reproductive technologies — a deeply researched history of IVF, from WWII-era experiments to cutting-edge uterine transplants.

Words by Willy Chertman

Essays · November 17, 2024

How to Measure Molecules

A 19th-century physicist, Lord Rayleigh, was the first to experimentally measure the size of individual molecules — using little more than oil, water, and a back-of-the-envelope calculation.

Words by Niko McCarty

Essays · November 6, 2024

Mitochondria Are Alive

The physical world is an intricate dance between matter, information, and energy. Recognizing that mitochondria are alive will open new horizons into how we learn about, and build with, biology.

Words by Liyam Chitayat

Long Reads · November 1, 2024

Levers for Biological Progress

Thoughts on Dario Amodei’s “Machines of Loving Grace.”

Words by Niko McCarty

Long Reads · October 27, 2024

The Long Road to End Tuberculosis

The vaccine and antibiotics available to treat tuberculosis have curbed cases, but more innovations are needed to halt its spread and counteract drug resistance.

Words by Kamal Nahas

Long Reads · October 27, 2024

The Forgotten Pandemic

Humans have suffered from tuberculosis for thousands of years and, even today, the disease kills more than 1 million people each year. Yet diagnosing cases remains a challenge. Why?

Words by Kamal Nahas

Long Reads · October 14, 2024

A Defense of Peer Review

Why scientists should strengthen, rather than replace, the peer review system.

Words by Dan Elton

Long Reads · October 6, 2024

To Be Born in a Bag

Despite recent progress, artificial wombs still face technical challenges. De-extinction efforts, of all things, are driving it forward. Just how much is anyone’s guess.

Words by Tom Ireland

Fiction · September 29, 2024

Models of Life

In the 2020s, nobody paid much attention to foundation models. But sixty years later, they were being used to design medicines, gene therapies and, eventually, new forms of life.

Words by Abhishaike Mahajan

Essays · September 25, 2024

How A Cell Anticipates the Seasons

Further evidence of biological intelligence. Cyanobacteria can sense shortening days and rewire their cell membranes to prepare for cold weather — all thanks to a molecular clock made from just three proteins.

Words by Niko McCarty

Long Reads · September 22, 2024

Making Eggs Without Ovaries

It may soon be possible to make human eggs from stem cells, thanks to advances in a technology called in vitro oogenesis.

Words by Metacelsus

Long Reads · September 8, 2024

On Fables and Nuanced Charts

While data visualizations appear to present information objectively, they are laden with assumptions. Some of those assumptions are held by the chart maker, and others are held by you.

Words by Spencer Greenberg & Amber Dawn Ace

Journalists gather outside No. 6 Satyam, an Aum Shinrikyo facility near the foot of Mt. Fuji that contained chemical and biological weapons, on 16 May 1995.

Long Reads · August 28, 2024

Is That DNA Dangerous?

Synthetic DNA poses biosecurity risks that curated databases and screening algorithms can minimize. Here's how they work now and how they could improve.

Words by Tessa Alexanian & Max Langenkamp

Long Reads · August 27, 2024

Defense-Forward Biosecurity

DNA sequencing is becoming better and cheaper. So are AI tools that can decode the results. It's time to build a genomic surveillance network that can detect emerging outbreaks at their source.

Words by Allison Berke

Long Reads · August 26, 2024

Day Zero Antivirals for Future Pandemics

Medicines modeled off the innate immune system have the best chance of protecting us during the next viral outbreak.

Words by Brian Wang

Essays · August 25, 2024

Measuring the Black Death

Reports suggest that between 40 and 60 percent of the population died during the bubonic plague that swept through Europe in the mid-1300s. What accounts for this wide range of estimates?

Words by Saloni Dattani

Long Reads · July 21, 2024

Raising Welfare for Lab Rodents

The science of animal welfare is exploding, offering new ways to improve conditions for millions of research animals a year.

Words by Xander Balwit

Long Reads · July 14, 2024

Where's the Synthetic Blood?

Synthetic blood cells could solve blood shortages, but only if technical challenges are surmounted and costs are slashed.

Words by Keith Neeves

Essays · July 10, 2024

Inside the Laboratory for Extraordinary Microbes

Cultivarium, a small nonprofit, is building tools to grow and engineer peculiar organisms—and then giving their discoveries away for free.

Words by Niko McCarty

Long Reads · June 30, 2024

The First Patented G.M.O.

The Supreme Court case that built the biotechnology industry.

Words by Rhea Purohit

Long Reads · June 23, 2024

Breaking the Speed Limit on Cell Division

The slow growth of model organisms delays biological research. Engineering cells to divide more quickly could speed it up.

Words by Kamal Nahas

Long Reads · June 16, 2024

The Promise of Gas Vesicles

Gas vesicles are protein shells that reflect soundwaves. They were first discovered in lake-dwelling microbes in Germany but now enable scientists to "hear" individual cells within the body.

Words by Niko McCarty

Essays · June 13, 2024

What Limits a Genome's Size?

A tiny fern has a genome 50 times larger than a human's. Energy and diffusion—not the nucleus volume—are the key bottlenecks to more expansive growth.

Words by Niko McCarty

Long Reads · June 9, 2024

Driving Toward Nanopores

A nanopore sequencer is a tiny device that can read DNA with high accuracy. Its invention, made possible by merging hardware with machine learning, holds lessons for other measurement tools.

Words by Stephen Malina

Updates · June 2, 2024

Editor's Note

Introducing Issue 03 of Asimov Press.

Words by Asimov Press

Long Reads · June 2, 2024

The Mouse as a Microscope

How the mouse found its way from Victorian novelty to a biomedical mainstay.

Words by Alex Telford

Updates · May 5, 2024

Lessons on Starting a Magazine

Announcing the first Asimov Press book — and what we've learned so far about starting a magazine and printing books.

Words by Editors

Long Reads · April 30, 2024

Before They Hatch

New technologies, such as in-ovo sexing, on-farm hatching, and in-ovo vaccination can make the poultry supply chain both better for animal welfare and more efficient.

Words by Robert Yaman

Long Reads · April 23, 2024

Why Nothing Can Grow on Mars*

Water is the most significant bottleneck in terraforming the Red Planet.

Words by Devon Stork

Fiction · April 16, 2024

Tinker

What happens when an AI designs the chips needed to make its successors?

Words by Richard Ngo

Long Reads · April 9, 2024

Discovering an Antimalarial Drug in Mao’s China

Chinese scientists discovered artemisinin in 1971 as part of a secret military project that merged Eastern and Western medicine.

Words by Wendi Yan

Long Reads · April 2, 2024

Synthetic Origins

Michael Elowitz on the early years of synthetic biology and the programmability of living cells.

Words by Michael Elowitz

Long Reads · March 24, 2024

Beyond Steel Tanks

GLP-1 drugs could one day outsell iPhones, but there is not enough biomanufacturing capacity to make them. For solutions, we should look away from the factory.

Words by Elliot Hershberg & Niko McCarty

Long Reads · March 19, 2024

Making Cells Young

In the laboratory, cellular reprogramming can reverse epigenetic damage and reset cells to a "young" state. Can we do the same for entire organisms?

Words by José Luis Ricón

A message sent to malaria researcher Saloni Dattani asking about vector-borne diseases.

Updates · March 7, 2024

Making of "The Vector Zoo"

The triumphs and travails of the writing process.

Words by Xander Balwit

Fiction · March 7, 2024

The Vector Zoo

A tour through the Vector Zoo, where a future city commemorates its victory over zoonotic disease — and the Great Separation that made it possible.

Words by Xander Balwit

Long Reads · February 27, 2024

Blocked Transmission

Fomites are inanimate objects that can transfer pathogens. New-age materials and sprays inhibit their spread.

Words by Tom Ough

Essays · February 20, 2024

Fast Biology

Living cells are frenzied, crowded places. Numbers help us make sense of it.

Words by Niko McCarty

Long Reads · February 5, 2024

Making the First Transgenic Ants

Engineered ants are helping to reveal the neuroscience of pheromone signaling.

Words by Taylor Hart

Long Reads · January 24, 2024

What Science Can Learn from Car Mechanics

An interrogative technique to identify the root of molecular problems.

Words by Trevor Klee

Long Reads · January 21, 2024

Deliberate Dysentery

Progress and pitfalls in human challenge trials — an interview with Jake Eberts of 1Day Sooner, who volunteered for both Zika and Shigella challenge studies.

Words by Asimov Press