With deep learning methods revolutionizing life sciences, researchers bet on de novo proteins and cell mapping models to deliver customized precision medicines.

Genetic engineering pioneer Kevin Esvelt’s work highlights biotechnology’s immense potential for good—but also for catastrophe.

With the help of directed evolution, scientists inch closer to developing viral vectors that can cross the human blood-brain barrier to deliver gene therapy.

The pandemic spurred innovation in a variety of ways, from CRISPR-based diagnostics to cell biology benchwork at home.

A single antibody may soon provide a one-size-fits-all antiviral for multiple strains of influenza. Researchers in the online version of Nature Structural and Molecular Biology have identified a human antibody that disarms the flu virus by jamming the machinery it uses to fuse with host cells. Hemagglutinin and antibody in complex Image: William Hwang Genes that code the influenza surface protein hemagglutinin are constantly reshuffled and tweaked, helping the virus hide from the immune syst

Twice yearly, World Health Organization health officials meet to strategize against influenza, a malady that kills at least 250,000 people each year. In a chess match of sorts, they work to predict their opponent's next move, in this case by modifying vaccines to compensate for changes in the critical viral antigen hemagglutinin, which triggers the host's long-term immune memory. It takes several months to manufacture and distribute flu vaccines in sufficient quantities to inoculate vulnerabl

Stem cells in culture; engineered cancer biomarkers; small molecule improves stem cell homing; reproducible bacterial evolution; how human adaptive immunity develops

This month marks the 100-year anniversary of BCG, still the only approved vaccine against the lethal pathogen. But there are new vaccines for this wily foe on the horizon.

One warning came in black-and-white in 1993: A U.S. Congressional Office of Technology Assessment report projected that releasing 100 kilograms of aerosolized anthrax spores upwind of the U.S. capital could kill between 130,000 and 3 million people-a lethality at least matching that of a hydrogen bomb. Last year, a U.S. Justice Department exercise revealed that discharging pneumonic plague in Denver could create 3,700 or more cases, with an estimated 950 or more deaths within a week.1 Then, acco

The creation of H5N1 bird flu strains that are transmissible between mammals has thrown the scientific community into a heated debate about whether such research should be allowed and how it should be regulated.