Articles by Chris Tachibana

Seattle-based science writers and playwrights collaborated to produce theatrical works in a week.

Is the public dissection of zoo animals a boon to research and education, a PR nightmare, or both?

A normally land-based microbiologist sets sail to find the building blocks of novel antibiotics in marine bacteria.

Systems biologist Lone Gram describes her approach to combing the oceans for novel compounds that may be useful in the fight against pathogens.

By Chris Tachibana PET Guerrilla Former guerrilla leader Henry Engler (left) talks to Uruguayan President José Mujica at the launch of CUDIM in Montevideo last year. IVAN FRANCO / epa / Corbis In August 1972, Uruguayan medical student Henry Engler’s education was interrupted. He was shot in the shoulder, arrested for being a Tupamaro antigovernment urban guerrilla, and imprisoned for 13 years—11 in solitary confinement. Engler says he joined

By Chris Tachibana 72-Hour Ribs Photo by Ryan Matthew Smith from Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking Raw beef short ribs go into a clear bag and the air is sucked out, encasing them in sealed plastic. The bag is immersed in a 54°C water bath; three days later the meat is deboned, blowtorched, and smoked. This is scientist/chef Chris Young’s idea of barbeque. The recipe is just one of many that celebrate the scientific side of fine cuisine i

By Chris Tachibana Congo calling Jackson scans a forest swamp on a recent expedition in the Republic of Congo. Courtesy of Kate Jackson This past spring, Kate Jackson gave a biology final in Walla Walla, Washington, and the next day, after strapping on her leg braces, she flew to the Republic of Congo. Jackson, a herpetologist, writer, and faculty member at Whitman College who studies the reptiles of Central Africa, was gearing up for her fifth expeditio

Danish rock musician Johan Olsen is just as excited about protein crystals as he is about his band's new album

By Chris Tachibana Dr. Chocolate Gilbert W. Arias / Seattle PI “Here, put on this hair net,” says Andy McShea. He walks through the showroom of the Theo Chocolate factory, past heaps of chunky samples on gleaming slate. McShea is the Chief Operating Officer of the 4-year-old company, which he describes as the fastest-growing organic, fair-trade chocolate producer in the country. He’s known as Doc Choc, because he came to Theo Chocolate

With help from Danish animal behaviorists, a septet of porkers went from performing on the main stage to being the main course

By Chris Tachibana Startup on the cheap A faded red Volkswagen dune buggy sails into the parking lot of a forgettable brown cinderblock building in Seattle with Johnny Stine at the wheel. Stine’s transportation and vision for his biotechnology lab are straight out of the 1970s, when Genentech started in a warehouse, and Bill Gates and Paul Allen created Microsoft on a shoestring. Now, Stine is trying to do the same with North Coast Biologics. Mos