Science and SF tidbits: middle-aged apes, fantastic cells, and SF genetics

Some recent reading about fictional biology:
• JIM: More Compelling Than GATTACA | DNA Science Blog »

If you are looking for a science fiction film with a scientifically plausible depiction of human genetic enhancement and cloning, you might want to check out JIM. Science writer/geneticist Ricki Lewis reviews the film and says:

"Although Jim, released in late 2010, shares with GATTACA the premise of widespread genetic enhancement, it’s much more subtle and nuanced. The film struck me with its stunning possibility, and the intentional gaps in the glimpse of future history still have me thinking a week later."

And watch a commercial for "Lorigen Engineering", which offers Better Kids, By Design®'

• Author Spotlight: Tom Crosshill 

Tom Crosshill's recent short story "A Well-Adjusted Man" takes a chilling look at the potential repercussions of erasing traumatic memories might have. In his interview with Lightspeed Magazine, talks about the psychology PTSD, the biochemistry of traumatic memories, and his inspiration for the story.

And some fantastic factual biology:

• Great apes go through mid-life crisis » Nature News

Psychologist Alexander Weiss and his colleagues wanted to find out if the human "midlife crisis" that hits somewhere between our mid-30s and 50s could have a biological basis. They decided to survey zookeepers about of the mood of the chimpanzees and orangutans in their charge. They found that our great ape cousins seem to have lower sense of well-being during their late 20s to mid-30s - the equivalent to human middle age.

It would have been nice if the study had included some quantifiable data, such as the level of stress hormones or other physiological measures. It's hard to know how much bias might be introduced by asking zookeepers to try to put themselves in the minds of their charges. But still, an interesting study.

Image: Orangutan Portrait by Chester Zoo on Flickr shared under a CC BY-ND 2.0 license.

• Introduction to Cells (Vimeo)

A dramatic video showing the beauty of cells. The video was created by science teacher Frank Gregorio who makes "introduction" science videos for middle and high school teachers to use in the classroom. I wonder how well it works to capture the imagination of fidgety teenagers?

• Paralyzed dogs walk again (video)

Jasper the dachshund regained some use of his formerly paralyzed hind legs after his spinal cord was injected with cells grown from the lining of his nose. Robin Franklin and his colleagues at the University of Cambridge, used nose cells (or more precisely olfactory ensheathing cells) because, unlike most nerve cells, the nasal nerve fibers continue to grow into adulthood. The injected cells grew new nerve connections restoring function to the dog's damaged spine.

While the treatment appears to have a lot of potential it will take a lot more research before it will be tested on humans. More about the study at the University of Cambridge.

• Chemical biology: DNA's new alphabet

Chemist Eric Kool is reengineering DNA with nucleotide bases not found in nature. He's one of a number of chemists and chemical biologists who are creating new types of DNA and RNA molecules that they hope can be used for studying the function of nucleic acids and that may have new biochemical properties. But Kool explains those aren't the only reasons:

".... researchers are still driven by what Kool calls the “science-fiction appeal” of designing or even improving on living systems. Earth's early life forms may have settled on their genetic alphabet simply because they were constrained by the chemicals available. [snip]
So if nucleic acids arose independently on another planet, would they have the same bases? Benner thinks not, unless the organisms were subjected to the same constraints. Some universal rules might apply, however."

And short of discovering extraterrestrial life, it's only by synthesizing and testing new molecules to see if they might be functional in living systems.

Free Friday Flick: Rendezvous with Rama short "trailer"

This week's recommended free movie is a short film inspired by Arthur C. Clarke's novel Rendezvous with Rama. The movie was a student project by Aaron M. Ross, who is now lighting director at Blue Sky Studios. He has gone on to work on visual effects on a number of animated movies, including Horton Hears a Who! and the Ice Age sequels.

Rendezvous with Rama - NYU 2001 from Aaron Ross on Vimeo.

The short "trailer" for a Rendezvous with Rama movie is a mix of live action and computer graphics. In the video showing how the film was created, you can see how Ross used actors attached to cables acting in front of a green screen to simulate the low gravity environment aboard Rama.

The short only covers the first part of the story, where a team of astronauts and scientists is sent to explore a mysterious massive cylindrical object travellng through our solar system.

This will have to satisfy fans until the long-discussed Morgan Freeman feature-length film of Rendezvous with Rama is actually made. Freeman has stated as recently as last February that he still intends for that to happen.

I would love to see a well-done movie version of the story. I think that special effect technology could actually capture the vast interior living space inside the cylinder, the circular sea, and the variety of "biots" that live and work there. But in Hollywood, it seems there's no guarantee a movie will be made until it's finished and scheduled for release - and maybe not even then.

In the mean time you could read the original novel, published in 1972 and winner of both the Hugo and Nebula awards. It does a great job evoking of the sense of wonder in exploring a truly unknown territory, even under dangerous conditoins.

Watch the Rendezvous with Rama short on Vimeo or YouTube.

Image: Artist's depiction of the interior of Rama at Wikimedia Commons. Original uploader was Monomorphic at en.wikipedia Released into the public domain by the artist.

Science & SF Tidbits: Presidential DNA Biohacking, Alien Jellies, Non-fruity Dragons

Recent links of interest:

• The Lovely Lobed Comb Jelly (YouTube)
This video from the Monterey Bay Aquarium is an artful display of beautiful and eerily alien-looking bioluminescent comb jellies.

Image: "Frolicking" comb jellies at the Monterey Bay Aquarium by Steve Jurvetson (jurvetson) on Flickr, shared under a CC-BY-2.0 (Creative Commons Attribution) license.

• Hacking the President’s DNA (The Atlantic)

"So, in November of 2016, when a first-time visitor with the handle Cap’n Capsid posted a challenge on the viral-design site 99Virions, no alarms sounded; his was just one of the 100 or so design requests submitted that day"

This article in The Atlantic begins with a detailed scenario describing the rise of amateur biohacking that spins out of control into outright terrorism. With today's technology that is pretty much just science fiction. But the potential current threat that that the relatively straightforward molecular manipulation of viruses and bacteria and the ease of genome sequencing represents is taken very seriously by the government.

There are claims that the DNA of the President of the United States is carefully being protected, while DNA from other world leaders is being collected. And reports of the creation of synthetic organisms has added to the fear that genetically manipulated bugs could cause unstoppable pandemics. With the spread of "biohacking" culture, there is fear that even amateurs could become bioterrorists. While all of that sounds alarmist, the article does take a more realistic look at what bioscience is capable of today.

• ‘The Hobbit’: Peter Jackson’s unexpected journey to three films (Hero Complex at the LA Times)
Peter Jackson was interviewed about his upcoming film version of Tolkien's The Hobbit. When asked about the design of Smaug the dragon, he explained why he wanted a traditional look:

"The trouble with redesigning dragons is that if you really get fruity with it, it suddenly starts to look like some sort of monster from another planet — you very quickly can go into science-fiction territory,” Jackson said. “I don’t want to do that. I mean, people expect a dragon. ‘The Hobbit’ is one of the most famous dragon stories in the world, really. So I’m not trying to step away from the dragon. I just want to present the most venal, scary, decrepit, nasty dragon that I possibly can.”

I'm looking forward to see what they come up with. The greatest adventure indeed!

Friday Free Flick: District 9: Violent Prawns

In 2009 director Neill Blomkamp's low budget science fiction movie District 9 was a surprise hit, and now you can watch the full film for free:

From Crackle: District 9

The story begins when a ship full of sickly aliens appears over Johannesburg, South Africa. The aliens end up living in a crowded slum neighborhood called "District 9". Thirty years later, the aliens - derogatorily called "prawns" - are to be evicted and moved to a more isolated internment camp, with the move managed by a private military company (you too can can train to join MultiNational United and arrest non-humans!). Unrest and violence ensues.

 The film's South African settings and depiction of the forcible re-settlement of the "prawns" into a segregated camp intentionally evokes on the historical enforced racial segregation of the apartheid era. But the racial issues are not just fictional; there has been significant criticism of the movie's depiction of Nigerian immigrants as gangsters and "savages".

So what about the biology? The aliens are called "prawns" because they have arthropod-like exoskeletons, just like Earthly insects and crustaceans like lobsters. The aliens are thought to look like the Parktown prawn, a South African cricket pest. And like ants or bees the "prawns" are mostly drone workers. The disease that affected the alien ship apparently killed off the higher castes, presumably including their queen.

When the bureaucrat overseeing the eviction and resettlement process is infected with alien goo and starts slowly transforming into an alien himself, he is forced to find help among the District 9 inhabitants. That forces him to become more sympathetic to their plight, so as he becomes less human himself he can better appreciate the "humanity" of the stranded alien population.


But truly the science depicted in the movie doesn't make a lot of sense. At it's heart District 9 is a violent action flick, with an unusual setting (at least for a Hollywood flick). If that's what you are mood for, check it out on either YouTube or Crackle.

If you would rather watch a high quality version, District 9 is also available for instant download at Amazon.com for a price, of course (affiliate link).

Image: Libanasidus vittatus or Parktown prawn. Image by Paul venter from Wikimedia Commons, shared under a Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike license.

Free Friday Flick: Things to Come - science conquers all

This week's recommended science fiction movie is the British 1936 spectacular Things to Come. The story is adapted from HG Wells' novel The Shape of Things to Come. 70-year-old Wells wrote the screenplay himself, incorporating some ideas from his non-fiction book The Work, Wealth and Happiness of Mankind, an overview of global economics and sociology.

The movie follows the residents of Everytown over the course of a century as the population is first decimated by biological weapons in a devastating decades-long global war and then rebuilt into a shining future city by technocrats. It depicts a triumph of science and engineering that that brings order and prosperity, and even opens mankind's way into space.


The movie was was produced by Alexander Korda and directed by William Cameron Menzes, and stars Raymond Massey, Ralph Richardson, and Margaretta Scott.

It apparently was not widely popular at the time it was released, perhaps because the public was all too aware that real war in Europe was looming on the horizon. The filmmakers were certainly aware of that possibility. Ralph Richardson's depiction of the thug-like Boss was based on the dictator Benito Mussolini, causing Things to Come to be banned in Italy.

While the acting is rather stiff at times, the film is worth watching if only for the still-stunning visual design. It's a science fiction classic.

Well's original novel is also worth reading. As a future history it includes a fair amount of 1930s racism and sexism, and the envisioned world state where individualism has been "overcome" seems nightmarish. But I do find it interesting that Wells imagined a future where crude biological engineering eventually becomes common-place. As he describes it:

In 2047 Homer Lee Pabst published his remarkable researches on the effect upon chromosomes of certain gases derived from the old Sterilizing Inhalation made from Permanent Death Gas. These gases are known now as Pabst's Kinetogens, and there is a whole series of them. Their general effect is to produce mutations of various types. They bring about, abundantly and controllably, a variability in life which has hitherto been caused only with comparative rarity by cosmic radiations. By 2050 the biological world was confronted by a score of absolutely new species of plants and--queer first-fruits in the animal world--by two new and very destructive species of rodent. The artificial evolution of new creatures had come within the range of human possibility.

Not only are new species created in this future society, but extinct species are restored. 

In this instance, Wells thought too small. The revolution in genetic engineering arrived 75 years before he predicted, and techniques we use today allow genes to be modified both specifically and subtilely, as compared to the crude introduction of mutations using radiation and mutagenic chemicals that was still fairly new science in the 1930s. 

Perhaps Wells was familiar with the work of Herman Muller (published in 1927), demonstrating X-rays could be used to introduce mutations in fruit flies. But his description of "Pabst's Kinetogens" sounds more like the research of Charlotte Auerbach, who discovered the mutagenic properties of mustard gas. Her work was not published until the 1940s, so perhaps Wells was prescient about the direction of biological research, even if he was a century off in his prediction.

You can watch Things to Come for free on YouTube.

You can also purchase a copy of the colorized version of Things to Come or a copy of the original novel The Shape of Things to Come at Amazon.com (affiliate link).

Free Friday Flick: Clonely

This week's free movie - Clonely - is a short film written, shot, edited and scored in a mere 48 hours as part of the  2008 Chicago 48 Hour Film Project.

It's the story of a lonely widower who has his dead wife cloned, but who finds she really isn't the same woman he married, even though their daughter (his daughter?) seems happy to simply have her mom back.

Clonely (Science Fiction) from Jerry Vasilatos on Vimeo.

Created by Jerry Vasilatos and Nitestar Productions, the movie won an award for "Best Use of Line of Dialogue" ("What's the password?").  The other required elements for the film were a Character "Walter or Wilma Western, Repair Person" and a prop "urn or container with a deceased's ashes".

 I'm not sure if I'd consider the story to have a happy ending or not.

It reminds me a bit of the stories you read about wealthy folks who spend huge sums of money to have their dead dog or cat cloned. The replica is never going to be the same as the original. I can't imagine that a human clone would not be able to fill the hollow place left when a loved one leaves us, although I can understand how tempting it might be if that option were available.

Ultimately, isn't better to move forward with your life than to try to replicate the past?

Free Friday Flick: Close Encounters of the Third Kind

This week's recommended free movie shouldn't really need an introduction. The 1977 Steven Spielberg movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind is a classic story of contact with aliens who have been abducting humans for purposes unknown.
 

From Crackle: Close Encounters of the Third Kind

The classification system for encounters with unidentified flying objects (UFOs) was devised by astronomer and US Air Force consulting UFO analyst J. Allen Hynek. Later he founded the Center for UFO Studies.

Hynek divided UFO sightings into two categories: relatively distant sightings, like lights in the night sky or flying discs in the distance, and relatively close sightings. Close sightings could be of three different kinds:

• A close encounter of the first kind is the simple observation of a UFO nearby
• A close encounter of the second kind is the observation of the interaction of a UFO with the environment, such as burn marks on the ground or physical effects on animals
• A close encounter of the third kind is observation of occupants of the UFO

In the movie, Richard Dreyfuss plays a regular-seeming guy who stumbles into what will be the first official meeting between humans and extraterrestrials. I think that's what makes the movie so compelling; since the characters don't really know what is going on, we viewers are taken on the journey of discovery with them.

Of course the movie also has strange encounters with flying objects, escapes from government agents and the best alien music scene ever to keep it entertaining. And, unlike so many movie aliens, when we humans finally meet them, they don't blow up our buildings or steal our natural resources, although they do kidnap folks for unknown purposes.  Perhaps aliens really can come in peace.

Hynek consulted on the movie, and even makes a cameo appearance during the close encounter scene, giving it a bit of scientific (or at least scientific-seeming) authenticity.

Maybe my perception is skewed because I was only ten in 1977, but I think that was one of the best years ever for science fiction flicks, what with both Close Encounters and Star Wars (Episode IV) in theaters.   I think both movies have stood the test of time, but it's the first deep notes booming out from the alien ship in Close Encounters that gives me shivers..

Watch Close Encounters of the Third Kind for free at Crackle.com.

Upper Image: Ovni.png from Wikimedia Commons by user Crobard (public domain)
Lower Image: Purchase the Close Encounters of the Third Kind Special Edition at Amazon.com (affiliate link)

Free Friday Flick: Denmark: Throwing off the Balance of Nature

This week's free flick is the 2010 short film "Denmark", a joint project of Daniel Fickle of Two Penguins Productions and the Portland Cello Project.  The film has won a number of awards on the film festival circuit.


The film uses a lovely combination of puppetry and rich cello music to tell the touching story of Pily, a resourceful crustacean who crafts a space ship to escape pollution poisoning his home in the Willamette River outside Portland, Oregon.

In an interview about the project (and in a comment on the video page) director Fickle talks about being inspired by the recording of "Denmark" to develop the film's story. The song was composed by cellist Gideon Freudmann, who wrote it to honor his wife after she died of cancer. Fickle expands the themes of sorrow and loss to changes in the environment.  As he explains it:

Since I used a more environmental vehicle to express the story, the ending could also be interoperated to be about displacement of species. Because of human pollution, it's causing various species to attempt to move to a better place. Sometimes it works, but usually it throws off the balance of nature.

And while that message is indeed specifically relevant to the long-polluted Willamette River, I think it can be interpreted more broadly, especially in light of ongoing climate change that threatens to displace species around the globe. Pretty heavy for a story featuring a puppet, right?

But it's not all serious. You can find out what happened to Pily after the movie in this interview where he talks about his upcoming projects:

Catching Up With Pily from Two Penguins on Vimeo.

Watch "Denmark" at Vimeo or YouTube.

Free Friday Flick: Donovan's Brain, Curt Siodmak, and the science of memory

This week's recommended free online movie is the 1953 science fiction horror film Donovan's Brain, starring Nancy Davis (later Nancy Reagan) and Lew Ayres, and directed by Felix Feist.

The basic plot: a multi-millionaire's airplane crashes in the desert, a scientist keeps his brain alive in a tank, and there are unintended consequences (of course)!

The movie is based on Curt Siodmak's best-selling 1942 novel by the same name. While Siodmak is probably best known as a Hollywood screenwriter for horror movies like The Wolf Man, he also wrote a number of science fiction novels. And he wasn't just interested in cheap thrills. In a 1997 interview, Siodmak talks about how took pains to assure scientific accuracy in his novels.

I have a trick with writing sci-fi [. . .] . In all these books there is a tremendous amount of research involved. I pick up the telephone and call the most important scientist I can think of in that field in America. So far they have all worked with me because they all are frustrated writers anyhow. If someone is writing [a book] for them, then they can correct it, which makes them feel they wrote it. I siphon off years of knowledge and research from those people for a small fee, or for a percentage of the book, whatever the case. But at the end, I have a story that is scientifically right. 

Apparently not one to mince words, Siodmak doesn't paint a pretty picture of scientists as wanna-be writers. I suppose it's a small consolation that he compensated them for their time and expertise.

In the novel version of Donovan's Brain, the brain is kept alive in a mixture of "blood serum" and human brain "tissue ash". That does appear to be based on the latest science in organ culture at the time the novel was written.

In the 1930s aviator Charles Lindbergh worked with biologist Alexis Carrel to develop devices to keep organs alive in culture. At the time, blood serum was one of the standard components of organ culture medium. Their work was widely known even outside scientific circles, and even making the cover of Time Magazine in 1935.

Around the same time, Dr. Fenton B. Turck published a book discussing his experiments indicating that tissue ash - tissues baked in an oven, then dissolved in saline solution - was usually toxic when injected into animals, but could stimulate cellular growth in vitro in low doses. He termed the active component "cytost", which appeared to be a species specific. So extracts made from dog tissues would be active more active when injected into dogs, than it would in pigs or monkeys. Taking that to it's logical conclusion, presumably such extracts from human brains would only work to stimulate the growth of other human brains. Unfortunately Turck's results were not reproducible, but that doesn't stop it from being a decent science fictional premise. (Turck also speculated about the possible toxic nature of mummy dust in Egyptian tombs, which is another great science fiction-horror premise.)

I couldn't find any indication that Siodmak had talked to scientists about how to grow a brain in a tank, but it seems that he could have derived inspiration just from the science news in the popular press.

Hauser's Memory, Siodmak's 1968 sequel to Donovan's Brain, likely was inspired by the James McConnell's research into memory transfer in cannibalistic planarians, which seemed at the time to be mediated by RNA. In developing the background for the novel, Siodmak also studied people with memory loss. As he described it:

 In researching that book, I worked at this hospital where they had 2,500 retarded children, insane and old people, too. I remember two old guys asking me, "Tell me, sir, are we going to lunch or coming from lunch?" They didn't know which. But they remembered what they had done when they were eight years old. So we might have a greater amount of RNA—ribonucleic acid—when we are young. As we get older, that substance dries up. That's why we can't learn new languages so easily when we get older, but kids pick it up right away. The growing process of the brain is based on RNA, which is why we learn so fast as kids. Even memory—and also what is right, what is wrong—is information you pick up easily as a child.

So what about the movie version?

There were three mid-20th century movies based on Donovan's Brain. Apparently Siodmak didn't care much for any of them.  He claims he didn't even bother to watch the 1953 Feist-directed version, because in it "God destroys Donovan's brain with a thunderbolt." So be warned that the movie has less scientific plausibility than the novel. Still, it's a decent B-movie for this holiday weekend.

Check it out:

• Watch Donovan's Brain at Hulu.com. Note: this movie may only be available in the US.
• Listen to a 1944 reading of Donovan's Brain, plus a parody by Orson Welles, on the old time radio show "Suspense".

 Further reading for the technically inclined:

• Backstory 2: Interviews with Screenwriters of the 1940s and 1950s, ed. Patrick McGilligan (1997) 
• Turck FB "The Action of the Living Cell: Experimental Researches in Biology" (1933) 
•  Lindbergh CA "An apparatus for the culture of whole organs" J Exp Med 62(3): 409-431 (1935) (Note that the text abstract is for the wrong article. Click on the Full Text link for the correct abstract) 
•  Carrel A "The culture of whole organs" J Exp Med 65(4): 515-526 (1937)

Image: The quintessential brain in a jar, by Flickr user Kaushik Narasimhan, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic

Friday Free Flick: Moon

Imagine you are are managing a mining facility on the far side of the Moon, working all alone.  You have no direct contact with your family and friends back on Earth, and you are counting the days until your three year contract is finished and you can return home. And then it happens: you are in a life-threatening accident, and you realize that your situation is not at all as it seems.

That's the premise of the critically acclaimed and Hugo award winning 2009 movie Moon, which stars Sam Rockwell as the moon base worker Sam.

You can watch Moon for free via Crackle on YouTube if you are willing to sit through a few ads.



Note that the video is rated "R", and so you'll need to sign in to your YouTube account to "prove" you are at least 18 years old.

[the rest of post has spoilers]

In the movie, Sam wakes up in the base's infirmary with no memory of the accident, and makes a startling discovery: he's not the Sam that was in the accident, but a replacement clone. The old Sam and the new Sam work together to figure out what's really going on before a "rescue" squad from the mining company arrives.

While the movie's director Duncan Jones has apparently thought a lot about how a Helium-3 mining facility on the Moon would operate, cloning is pretty much just a plot device. As Jones put it:

Cloning seemed to fit  well into the embryonic story I was playing with of a man stuck in a moon base. I got excited thinking:
“If you met you in person, would you like yourself?” I think it’s the most brutal, honest and human question there is…and that makes it perfect for sci-fi.” 

And the movie raises what I think is an important philosophical question: if human cloning were cheap and easy, to what extent would cost-cutting businesses use clones if they were interchangeable and disposable parts of a machine? And how would people respond if that user were discovered?

Moon does not address the issue quite as as deeply or movingly as Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go, but it still provides ample food for thought.

I think Rockwell did an excellent job playing two different versions of himself: one whose physical and mental health is breaking down, and a younger, healthier version who has not yet experienced the years of managing the base alone. It's thoughtful science fiction, rather than an action-packed blockbuster. I recommend it.

(If you prefer an ad-free version, you can watch for $0.99 through Amazon Instant)

Friday Flick: They're Made out of Meat

I'm meat, you're meat, all of us humans are sentient meat, as two aliens are surprised to discover in this short film:


"They're Made Out of Meat" is an adaptation of Terry Bisson's 1991 Nebula-award nominated short story of the same name.  Directed by Balcony TV founder Stephen O'Regan and starring actor and director Tom Noonan and comedian Ben Bailey, the movie was the winner of the 2006 Science Fiction Short Film Festival in Seattle.

I think the movie captures what's great about humanity: we may be merely carbon-based life forms, but we play music, laugh, play games, flirt and kiss.  And we make machines that reach out to the rest of the universe, looking for other intelligent life to talk to. I just hope that if there is intelligent life out there, we're not dismissed on the basis of our meatiness.

 You can also read "They're Made out of Meat" for free on Terry Bisson's web site. Check it out!

Cinema and Synthetic Biology: The Bio:Fiction Film Festival

The first Bio:Fiction film festival took place in May 2011 in Vienna, and since then has been touring the world. The festival was a celebration of synthetic biology, and includes short films, an art exhibition and science lectures and panels.

The film festival was part of the Cinema and Synthetic Biology (CISYNBIO) project.  The CISYNBIO advisory board is an international team of scientists, artists and scholars interested in the intersection of bioscience and the arts.

While the festival is more focused on science than sci-fi, many of the short-listed films have a definite science fictional feel to them. Some of the entries I found particularly  interesting:

• Aphasia Mechanica by Danny Warner shows what the X-ray view of a mechanically enhanced human might look like.  It's mesmerizing. 

• All American Hero (now retitled Need a Hero) is a first-person "documentary" about an ordinary man turned into a superhero  (warning: possibly disturbing images) by artist and filmmaker Charlotte Jarvis.
• Bruce is a slightly disturbing animation about the possible future of game play, by Tom Judd of the Royal College of Art in the UK.
• Winged One by biologist, animator and composer Anna Lindemann starts with a lecture about the molecular mechanisms that guide the development of fly wings. That turns into an animated fantasy with lace proteins and yarn DNA.
• Compound 74 by Christina Agapakis and Patrick Boyle is a fictional documentary set in a future where   recreational drugs can be created easily and cheaply in a petri dish.

You can watch all the 2011 short-listed videos and see the lectures and panel discussion on Bio:Fiction's Vimeo channel.

Also check out the CISYNBIO resources page to learn more about synthetic biology.

Putting More Science into UK Fiction and Movies

A group of UK SF writers, including Alastair Reynolds, Ken MacLeod, Geoff Ryman, Justina Robson, Simon Ings and Paul McAuley, are calling for a UK equivalent to the US Science & Entertainment Exchange, which connects scientists with the entertainment industry.

In their letter published in the Manchester Review they suggest that scientific credibility in entertainment is important to both scientists and the public:

In Britain, though, scientists, and people in arts, TV, movie and literary worlds do not work together as they should. This is a major problem: we all desperately need to understand each other’s constraints to create works that are entertaining, enlightening, and scientifically authentic. But worryingly, Britain is falling behind the United States, where organisations such as The National Academy of Sciences’ Science and Entertainment Exchange are forging these new and productive relationships between scientists and the entertainment industry.

The authors are participating in the "Putting Science in Fiction" symposium at the University of Manchester this week.  The scientists participating in the conference include biologist Matthew Cobb, astrophysicist Tim O'Brien, and paleontologist Phil Manning. They are joined by David A. Kirby, author of Lab Coats in Hollywood (sample chapters), and Kirsten Shepherd-Barr, author of Science on Stage (sample chapter).

As Ryman told The Guardian, part of the problem is poor communication between scientists and science fiction writers:

"I work with a lot of scientists and one of the frustrating things they find is that all this fascinating stuff is being done which doesn't find its way into science fiction. They say look at the science fact pages – they're so much more imaginative than science fiction," said Ryman, winner for his novels of a British Science Fiction Association award, a World Fantasy award and an Arthur C Clarke award, and a creative writing lecturer at the University of Manchester. "It's my experience that scientists can find it difficult to understand the needs of scriptwriters or storytellers. [. . .]"

On this side of the Atlantic, the Science and Entertainment Exchange is a program of the US National Academy of Sciences. It will be interesting to see whether the UK group is successful in organizing a similar program with ties to the Royal Society or another scientific organization that can help with promotion within the scientific community.

And I wonder how interested the entertainment industry is in getting suggestions from scientists about "fascinating stuff" - from the interviews I've read on the Science and Entertainment Exchange site, it seems more common that scientists are asked to help with the implementation of scientific ideas that are already part of an existing screenplay. It seems to me that the more unusual scientific discoveries are more likely to appear in written science fiction than on TV or in the movies.  But maybe that's a misperception influenced by my entertainment choices.

In any case,  I strongly believe that popular culture influences the public perception of both science and scientists.  Any improvement in the interaction between scientists, writers, and members of the entertainment industry is good thing.

Eron Sheean's Errors of the Human Body: A New Genetic Thriller

In 2007 Australian filmwriter and director Eron Sheean became an artist-in-residence at the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics (MPI-CBG) in Dresden, Germany.  

In his more than two years at the Institute, Sheean got a first hand look at real-life science.  As he explains, the experience changed his outlook on genetics:

Like most of those unfamiliar with the mechanisms of science and scientists, I had a lot of naive assumptions about the reality of research and an overly active imagination as influenced by the mass media, with its undertones of modern Frankenstein and Promethean stories. Obviously, all technology can be exploited for both negative and positive purposes, and genetic research more than most evokes wondrous fear. I was struck by the knee-jerk reaction of artists to this form of research; artists who are supposed to enquire beyond the potential horror or destruction of our exploration into new frontiers, but to also celebrate the possible beauty and humanity.

Scientists at the Max Planck Institute study the development of the nervous system and heart, the genetics behind cancer, and flatworm regeneration, which I imagine provide plenty of science fodder for an active imagination.

Sheean's experience inspired his creation of a new film Errors of the Human Body. It's the story of a scientist (played by Geoffry Burton) whose son is born with severe and rare genetic disease.  That drives his research into a "human regeneration gene"  with the goal to "ensure a future line of people free from disease and deformity."

He talks a bit about his inspiration:


Set in Dresden, and filmed in part at MPI-CBG in early 2011, it looks like the bits of the film showing science taking place will be more realistic than depicted in most psychological thrillers.  There are more images from the film on the official web site.

The first teaser-trailer has been posted at Twitch Film:

The release date has not yet been announced. If you are interested in contributing to the movie making process, donations are being accepted through Interactor.

I look forward to seeing the finished film!

(via io9)

Alien: The Easter Edition

The crew of the USS Chocstromo discovers a suspicious (and delicious) giant egg. If you've seen Ridley Scott's 1979 classic Alien, you have an idea of how it all turns out. The movie features John Seaward (of the Inbetweeners). Also be sure to check out filmmaker Will Tribble's blog for a look at how the sets and various alien incarnations were created.

What do "humans" look like?

Last year, Racebending took a look at Hollywood's tendency to use white actors to depict "human appearing" aliens. While that's not true in every movie - for example Mos Def played Ford Prefect in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - non-white aliens are the exception, rather than the rule. As the article concludes:

The overall fact remains that a balanced representation is hard to spot in “human alien” films, because when aliens are written to look like us, it’s the kind of “us” that racially dominates Hollywood and controls its creative processes. Despite the use of sci-fi premises that supposedly spur the imagination to the furthest reaches of space, the narrow focus of “white by default” is still pervasive enough to ground out-of-this-world concepts with business-as-usual biases.

But it's not just aliens who are "whitewashed". When science fiction stories are turned into movies, even characters originally depicted as non-white get portrayed by white actors. Some of the more egregious examples are the SciFi Channel's adaptation of Usula LeGuin's Earthsea novels and the live action movie version of Avatar: The Last Airbender.

So why does it matter? I think the representation of what is to be considered "normal" in popular entertainment can influence what we consider to be the norm in real life.

I think the recent tempest about the casting of the Hunger Games movie helps show why it's important to include human characters of different races. In the Hunger Games novels, the characters Rue and Thresh are described as having "dark brown skin and eyes". Given that description, it's not at all surprising that black actors (Amandla Stenberg and Dayo Okeniyi) were cast in the movie versoin those roles.

But it turns out a number of fans of the Hunger Games novels imagined the characters Rue and Thresh as white, despite their description. And those fans aren't just disappointed. They have been vocal on Twitter that depicting the characters as having dark skin made them less sympathetic and even ruined the movie for them.

And going beyond the explicit racism of many those tweets, some fans who had no problem with the casting in the movie originally imagined the characters as white, presumably because they unconsciously assume that the default human is white. That assumption is reinforced by the majority of movies and television shows.

To my mind, it only makes sense to imagine a future North America where the inhabitants have a range of skin colors and racial and ethnic backgrounds, simply because that is the case in present-day North America. Unless there is some action to eliminate or segregate humans by the color of their skin (such as the way black people were rounded up and resettled in the Handmaid's Tale), it makes no sense to depict an all white future.

And now that we have a black President, will Hollywood step up and show aliens looking who look like our leader when they say "take me to your leader!"?

(link to the Racebending post via My Sci Fi Online ; link to Hunger Games Tweets via Jezebel)

B Movie Night: Embryo and the science of artificial wombs

The movie you are about to see is not all science fiction. It is based upon medical technology which currently exists for fetal growth outside the womb. 

It could be a possibility tomorrow ... or today.

~ Charles R. Brinkman III, MD

Thus begins the 1976 science fiction horror movie Embryo. Sounds sciency!

The movie is an update of the Frankenstein story, where a scientist (played by Rock Hudson) develops a process where an embryo can be grown from fetus to beautiful adult woman (played by Barbara Carrera) in just over a month. Supporting roles are played by Dianne Ladd, Roddy McDowell and Dr. Joyce Brothers.

I don't think it's to much of a spoiler to mention that eventually everything goes horribly wrong.

But what about the promised science? The quoted Charles R. Brinkman III, MD turns out to have been an actual authority on pregnancy, rather than a mere figment of the filmmakers' imagination.  At the time the movie was released, he was a Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology at UCLA (and is now an Emeritus Professor), with an extensive list of scientific publications.  But despite his expertise, he seems to have exaggerated the state of medical technology.

Here we are, 35 years after Embryo was released and artificial wombs are still more science fiction than science fact.  There has been progress: Nick Otway and his team of fisheries biologists in Australia recently developed an artificial uterus for growing grey nurse shark embryos.

But despite continuing research, growing even small mammals like rats and mice outside the womb has not yet been fully successful. Even if artificial wombs for non-human mammals are developed, ethical and political concerns make it unlikely the research will be extended to human embryos. That's not to say it won't eventually be possible to grow a human baby in vitro, but it isn't going to happen any time soon.

And, of course, there isn't any sort of scientific basis for the movie's acceleration of development and aging to allow human embryos to reach adulthood in a month.   That is likely to remain science fiction.

So not too surprisingly, Embryo doesn't have a solid scientific basis. But it does have Rock Hudson and a pretty girl monster. That's not too bad for a cheesy B movie.

You can watch Embryo for free at the Internet Archive (also embedded below). Note that the uploaded film was "sourced from a 30 year old Betamax tape", so the picture quality isn't very good.



Or for a version with better quality visuals, you can watch Embryo through Amazon Instant Video or add it to your Netflix queue.

Understanding Science in Science Fictional Times

I just finished reading Rebecca Skloot's excellent book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. Lacks was a poor black tobacco farmer who was diagnosed with cervical cancer at the age of 30. Cells taken from her tumor were out to be the first human cells that could grow in the laboratory.

Those "immortal" cells - coded named HeLa - would play an a crucial role in testing the first effective polio vaccine developed by Jonas Salk in the mid-1950s. Since then, HeLa cells have been used in thousands of studies, and added to our understanding of how both normal and cancel cells function.

Skloot goes beyond discussing the science and bioethics surrounding the development of cell culture technology and human experimentation to provide a portrait of Henrietta as a person. And a big part of her story involves Skloot's decade-long interactions with Henrietta's family and friends, and in particular with Henrietta's daughter Deborah Lacks Pullum.

Deborah was a baby when Henrietta died from complications of cervical cancer in 1951. She never knew her mother, but really wanted to learn more. And even though she had little formal schooling, she wanted to know what was happening with her mother's cells. As Skloot described it in an interview:

She had always wanted to know who her mother was but no one ever talked about Henrietta. So when Deborah found out that this part of her mother was still alive she became desperate to understand what that meant: Did it hurt her mother when scientists injected her cells with viruses and toxins? Had scientists cloned her mother? And could those cells help scientists tell her about her mother, like what her favorite color was and if she liked to dance.

Deborah began to teach herself about the basics of how cells work, and read everything she could about HeLa cells. But even when you have a solid background in biology, it can be hard to sort out what's solid science and what's speculation when scientific research is reported by the mainstream media. Even relatively mild headlines like "Cancer cells from long-dead woman invade other cultures" or "Human and plant cells combined" sound pretty sensational.

So it doesn't surprise me that while Deborah was struggling to understand all this unfamiliar information, she latched onto science fiction with related science. That all came bursting out during her first face-to-face meeting with Skloot:

"I saw [Jurassic Park] a bunch of times," she said. "They talking about the genes and taking them from cells to bring that dinosaur back to life and I'm like, Oh Lord, I got a paper on how they were doin that with my mother's cells too!" She held up another videocassette, this one a made-for-TV movie called The Clone. In it, an infertility doctor secretly harvest extra embryos from one of his patients and uses them to create a colony of clones of the woman's son, who died young in an accident.

"That doctor took cells from that woman and made them into little boys look just liker her child," Deborah told me. "That poor woman didn't even know about all the clones until she saw one walk out of a store. I don't know what I'd do if I saw one of my mother's clones walking around somewhere."

It's not that Deborah didn't know the movies were fiction, but that they seemed tell story similar to what she had been reading about her mother's cells. The science fiction seemed to help her imagine the foreign science.

I don't find that surprising.  An entertaining story can make science seem more "real" than a dry newspaper article or textbook filled with technical terminology.  What I know about neutron stars comes more from reading Niven's "Neutron Star" than from any technical reading.

It's sometimes said that we are living in "science fictional" times. Indeed we have the ability to manipulate the biology of  plants, animals, and even humans in ways that were solely the realm of speculative fiction when the structure of DNA was discovered nearly 60 years ago. But the underlying science is complex, and the often poor reporting of current research rarely makes it much easier to understand.

That's part of the reason why I find it so frustrating when science fiction movies and books get the basics wrong.  We still can't clone dinosaurs a la Jurassic Park, and of course a big part of science fiction is pure speculation as to how science and technology might develop. But even wildly speculative biology should start with ordinary cells, DNA, and proteins in the same way that entirely fictional spaceships should obey the laws of physics.

Science fiction - particularly in the movies - has the potential open the door to science to people with a wide range of educational backgrounds.  I wish Hollywood would put more effort into getting the basics right.

------

For more information about the writing of  The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, listen to the Radiolab interview with Rebecca Skloot that includes some of her recorded interviews with Henrietta's daughter Deborah.

You can read an excerpt from The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks at Oprah.com.

Image by Dr. Timothy Triche, National Cancer Institute. Scanning electron micrograph of cultured HeLa cells infected with Adenovirus.

Intelligent Apes with Digital Fur: Livestream with Weta about Rise of the Planet of the Apes

The New Zeland special effects company Weta Digital is going to be hosting a livestream chat about their work on the special effects for Rise of the Planet of the Apes on Wednesday, April 13th at 5:30PM ET (2:30PM PT).

You can watch it right here:

apeswillrise on livestream.com. Broadcast Live Free

Rise of the Planet of the Apes is the story of a present-day neurobiologist (played by James Franco) working on a cure for Alzheimers. The research involves testing on apes, and one of the subjects - Cesar -starts to display an unexpected level of intelligence, so the scientist helps him escape the lab. The rest, as they say, will be history.

Apparently no apes were used in the production of the movie. It also doesn't follow the lead of previous Planet of the Apes movies that used human actors in heavy makeup and furry suits. Instead Cesar and the movie's other non-human apes will be totally computer animated.

Weta Digital  provided award-winning digital effects for Lord of the Rings (including Gollum), Avatar, King Kong, District 9, and a number of other science fiction and fantasy movies.  They teamed up with Columbia University's Computer Graphics Group to help develop realistically moving computer-generated fur.

Here's a teaser animation of Cesar:



Looks promisingly real.

The movie is currently scheduled for release in August. It will be interesting to see if the movie turns out to be more than just cool visual effects.

Update 4/13 AM: the link for the livestream has been updated.

Joseph Kulper: Brain viruses and strange equations to save the human race

Today I received a mysterious message:

My name is Joseph Kulper, I work as a geneticist at Celtran
Corporation, one of the world's leaders in bioengineering, and I'm
sending this message to you because I have discovered something very
important, something that has the potential to change everything we
know about human life. I'm not asking for anything from you, I don't
want you to reply or click anywhere, alI I'm asking of you is that you
watch the video I have posted on youtube. Search under my name 'joseph
kulper' and you will find it. It's for you that I'm posting this
video, for all of us, so please take just a moment to watch it.

It wasn't sent to me personally and has the appearance of hapless self-promotion or odd spam.

But I was curious, and I turned up "Kulper's" video, where he invites the viewer to "become part of something greater than yourself. You see the destructive effects of climate change are inevitable, and some sort of drastic action is required to save the human race. So what has Kulper done? Created the Elysium virus, designed to "speed up evolution" so that only the smartest will survive. Watch:


So what is this? This looks like a teaser promotional video, likely for Neill Blomkamp's new movie-in-progress, Elysium.

There are a bunch of images that flash for a fraction of a second during the video which presumably have clues in them. In particular, there are a series of equations at about 4:27. I don't recognize the equations, and they could just be a red herring. Take a look - any guesses?

I couldn't find out much about the movie itself, other than Sharlto Copley - who starred in Blomkamp's District 9 - is part of the cast, and that Matt Damon may join up as well.

Despite the buzz, there hasn't been much information regarding what the plot will actually be about. Another teaser video released in November shows mutant livestock:


So the movie involves global catastrophes and genetic engineering and a selective virus passed from mind to mind; it's apparently set in a dystopian near-future in which biotechnology has run amok.  So maybe it's an action-packed version of Oryx and Crake?

It could be interesting. I just hope there aren't any zombies.