Science & SF Tidbits: intelligent dinosaurs, printed meat, extreme voting

Some recent links:

• Extreme Voting: How Astronauts Cast Ballots from Space »
If you are in the US, did you vote in yesterday's election? The American astronauts on the International Space Station did, submitting their absentee ballots electronically.

• Dinosauroids revisited, revisited | Tetrapod Zoology
If dinosaurs had evolved intelligence, rather than going extinct, what might they look like? Would they be like the Silurians on Doctor Who, essentially human shaped? or would they be clever as crows and appear more bird-like? It seems like most of the science fictional and speculative science depictions assume the former model: intelligent "dinosauroids" would look much like us humans, only scalier. Paleozoologist Darren Nash takes a look at the biological plausibility of the different models of intelligent dinos that have been proposed and takes a slightly different view. Read the article for more!

Image: Dinosauroid, Dinosaur Museum, Dorchester. Photograph by By Jim Linwood on Flickr. Shared under a CC by 2.0 license.

• Primeval: New World >> Create a Fan Video
Primeval: New World is a Canadian spin-off of the UK paleo-science fiction series Primeval. The basic premise is that there are "anomalies" that appear that are essentially doorways to other times. If an anomaly opens between the Cretaceous and our own time, a bunch of velociraptors might just end up running down the street. So every week a team of specialists needs to catch any creatures that have come through the portal and fix any damage done.

As you might expect, both series rely heavily on CGI dinosaurs and other beasts. Primeval: New World has an interesting offer - they provide special effects and animated dinosaurs, you create the video and upload it to YouTube and they may feature it on their site (like this video). If you want to create your own dino movie, there is more information here.

• First tasting of Printed Meat « NextNature.net »
University of Missouri biological physicist Gabor Forgacs uses 3-D bioprinting devices to "print" organs made of cells on extracellular matrix biogel scaffolds. But there may be other uses. As part of a TEDMed presentation, Forgac cooked and ate a printed piece of meat. Forgac's company, Modern Meadow, is working on developing lab-grown meat and leather products that could eventually be mass produced and sold.

What's not clear to me is whether this is really necessary. If industrial farming is the problem (and it is), why not use artificial leather and promote meatless meals, rather than growing likely expensive versions in the lab? I'm not sold.

SF and Science Tidbits: October 28, 2012: Biohackers and Mars Dreams

Interesting recent science:

• The Deferred Dreams of Mars | MIT Technology Review »

NASA originally suggested human exploration of Mars after landing on the moon, but funding cuts and technical problems have deferred that goal. Even now "basic problems"  like how to feed astronauts on a Mars mission - have yet to be solved. The current goal is a manned mission to Mars in the 2030s, but even that may be overly optimistic.  Brian Bergstein argues it's still a worthy goal:

"Exploring for its own sake, even when there is no immediate, obvious benefit, is something humans have always done."

I can't help but agree that's a worthy goal in and of itself.

• DIY scientists help professionals »

Amateur "biohackers" in London with home-brewed labs are starting to attract the attention of professionals.

• Complex Body Parts Could Soon Be Lab-Grown : Discovery News »

In the more dystopic science fiction futures, poor people end up selling their body parts so that the wealthy could replace damaged or failing organs. In more optimistically depicted futures, spare parts are grown in laboratories or made by replicators and everyone has access to excellent health care. 

Science has been progressing towards developing methods of growing body parts that could eventually make the organ trade obsolete. The article linked below covers some exciting recent progress in using stem cells to start the organ growing process.

But assuming they are eventually successful, I wonder if these brand new organs will be made available to everyone, or if they will only be an option for the rich and elite. 

Image: "Specimen" by spootonium on Flickr. Shared under an Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic Creative Commons License.

The Mad Science of Human-Animal Hybrids

I've got a post up on Everyday Biology that takes a look at the mad science of human-animal hybrids, in fiction and real life.

It's horrifying! (Or at least the pictures are)

Repo Men

For a price, any organ in your body can be replaced.
But it can also be repossessed.

That's the premise of Repo Men, a new movie staring Jude Law and Forest Whitaker.  Unlike the transplanted human organs in Repo! The Genetic Opera*,  the organs in Repo Men are state-of-the-art artificial replacements - and they are very very expensive.

You can take a peek at The Union's organ replacement catalog, where an artificial eye runs $345,000 and a shiny new Jarvik heart will set you back $975,000. They offer financing at a near usurious APR of 25%-30% - and get behind on your payments and you can expect a visit from the repo men.

*Financing Terms and Conditions: Action will be taken after the sixth day of the fourth month of non-payment. Repo Men will retrieve the property at your own expense."

Ouch!

When repo man Remy (Law) is injured on the job and fitted with a brand new heart - apparently not covered by his worker's comp -  he ends up on the run from his former repo partner Jake (Whitaker).  The story is based on the novel Repossession Mambo by Eric Garcia, which was just listed as a finalist for the 2010 Phillip K. Dick Award.

It's not clear if the movie will have much science mixed in with the action. There is the nod to the real-life artificial Jarvik heart, but that may be simply product placement.

While the premise of a law enforcer ending up on the run from his colleagues is a pretty common plot - science fiction movies Logan's Run and Minority Report immediately spring to mind - and even repossession of transplanted organs isn't a novel idea either - see Repo! The Genetic Opera - I have high hopes that Repo Men will put it's own twist on it. There is the slightly humorous take on consumer culture which has the replacement organs for sale on the Home Shopping Channel, for one. And then there is Jude Law, who is, well, Jude Law (and Whitaker isn't bad either). 

Watch the official trailer.


There is a bloodier restricted trailer on the official site. It didn't seem that bad to me, perhaps because I've been watching too many bloody hospital and forensics dramas. 

Repo Men opens April 2 in the United States.

Repossession Mambo is available for purchase from Amazon.com (affiliate link)

* The other difference between the movies is that Paris Hilton doesn't sing in this one.

(Poster is one of several posted on Bloody Disgusting.)

Printing New Organs

Anthony Atala shares footage of research from the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine, which is developing methods of growing organs in vitro in this TedMed talk:




The lab uses modified ink jet printer technology to build new organs.  You can watch a video of the printer printing skin (wmv), which is research sponsored by the U.S. Army to help wounded soldiers. Similar printers are being developed by the US biotech firm Organovo and in Japan.

This technology sounds like it would be more efficient that having to wait for organs to grow from scratch, and doesn't have the ethical concerns associated with organs transplanted from other people or animals.  Now the question is how long it will take for the organ printer to be perfected - and whether it will be made readily available for treatment of non-military personnel.

Related Biology in Science Fiction posts:

• Artificial Skin for Terminators (and People) 
• Would You Eat Vat Meat?
• Organ-supplying clones - an idea that just won't die 
• Caught in the Organ Draft
  

Tags:organ printing, biotechnology

Biology in Science Fiction Roundup: May 16 Edition

Some miscellaneous biology-related science fiction links from around the web:

On SF

Charlie Jane Anders @ io9: Is "Sense of Wonder" Just a Code for Returning to Childhood? (my answer: no way!)

Nancy Kress: SF is Dead - Again

Ben Bova: Science is so important to us, yet so unappreciated

Written Word

Wired Science lists science fiction novels that feature memory alteration

SF Signal interviews CJ Cherryh about her new novel Regenesis.

Jo Walton @ Tor.com reviews Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go

From A Sci-Fi Standpoint reviews James E. Gunn's 1962 novel, The Immortals.

Actually the Immortals appear very little in the book, primarily at the beginning, and play a relatively small role. As you read on, you find that the book is really all about issues relating to medicine and its role in society, and especially about its differential availability to those at various economic levels. Indeed, the hunt for the Immortals is really a metaphor of sorts for the privileged status of the ultra-rich who have access to the best, most cutting-edge medical care.

In a BBC interview, author Peter F. Hamilton (Night's Dawn) talked a bit about genetic engineering:

PFH: The genetic technology that hopefully will cure Spina Bifida one day could also be used to create viruses that could just wipe us out completely.

But does that mean you should stop researching genetics? We laugh, we hold politicians and the political process in contempt, but the societal structure of international law and order does actually hold that off.

Movies

What do you call a movie that is set in the very near future, explores biotechnology that is almost-but-not-quite-yet possible, but doesn't otherwise use any science fictional tropes? What if it's a bit too speculative to be considered true realism, but too realistic to quite be SF? I don't really have an answer (speculative bioethics?), but there are a couple of recent films that seem to fit the bill: My Sister's Keeper (watch the trailer at Genetics and Health) and The Baby Formula.

According to SciFi Wire, Warner plans to remake the BBC's Primeval as a big-screen movie.

Warner and Goldsman will transplant the action to the United States and ramp up the spectacle.

Because battling dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures clearly just isn't actiony enough. BBC-America will show season 3 of Primeval beginning tonight, and SciFi is currently airing season 1 on Friday nights.

Center for the Study of Science Fiction has video of Forrest J. Ackerman on Mad Scientists in the Movies

Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go is being made into a movie starring Keira Knightley, Carey Mulligan and Andrew Garfield. It is being filmed in the UK and there is no word on whether the spectacle is bing

At SciFi Scanner Christine Fall writes about Sleep Dealers and new technological advances that may help allow scientists to translate brain activity into images.

Miriam at The Oyster's Garter compares Vampire ecology in Twilight vs. Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

CHUD.com reviews The Gene Generation, recently released on DVD. Bottom line: be very glad you didn't pay to see this movie in the theater.

Live Science: Can You Have Bones Like Wolverine?

ComputerWorld asks "Do sci-fi films get advanced tech right?" including genetic engineering.

Television

Science Not Fiction has a series of posts reviewing the science of each Fringe episode.
Popular Mechanics also has a series of posts reviewing the science of Fringe.

Also at Popular Mechanics: Dollhouse's Memory Science Mixes Fact With Fiction
Annalee Newitz @ io9: Five Brain-Maanipulating Technologies That Prove Dollhouse Exists Right Now

If you are interested in the science of Eleventh Hour, check out the regular Eleventh Hour posts at Science Not Fiction and Genevieve Valentine's posts at Tor.com.
Also Åsa Karlström has an article about the depiction of biophysicist Dr. Jacob Hood at LabLit.com

Tags:science fiction, biology

No Really, Extrapolated Bioscience Can Be the Basis of Science Fiction

Jimmy's father worked for OrganInc Farms. He was a genographer, one of the best in the field. He'd done some of the key studies on mapping the proteonome when he was still a post-grad, and then he'd helped engineer the Methuselah Mouse as part of Operation Immortality. After that, at OrganInc Farms, he'd been one of the foremost architects of the pigoon project, along with a team of transplant experts and the microbiologists who were splicing against infections. Pigoon was only a nickname: the official name was sus multiorganifer. But pigoon was what everyone said.
[... snip ...]
The goal of the pigoon project was to grown an assortment of foolproof human-tissue organs in a transgenic knockout pig host - organs that would transplant smoothly and avoid rejection, but would also be able to fend off attacks by opportunistic microbes and viruses, of which there were more strains every year. A rapid-maturity gene was spliced in so the pigoon kidneys and livers and hearts would be ready sooner, and now they were perfecting a pigoon that could grow five or six kidneys at a time.

~ Oryx and Crake, Margaret Atwood (2003)

Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake is set in a fictional future where advanced genetic engineering and other biotechnology is in widely used. Atwood has talked about her longstanding interest in biology, which is based in part on conversations with the scientists in her family:

Several of my close relatives are scientists, and the main topic at the annual family Christmas dinner is likely to be intestinal parasites or sex hormones in mice, or, when that makes the non-scientists too queasy, the nature of the Universe. My recreational reading — books I read for fun, magazines I read in airplanes — is likely to be pop science of the Stephen Jay Gould or Scientific American type, partly so I'll be able to keep up with the family dialogue and maybe throw a curve or two. (‘Supercavitation?’) So I'd been clipping small items from the back pages of newspapers for years, and noting with alarm that trends derided ten years ago as paranoid fantasies had become possibilities, then actualities. The rules of biology are as inexorable as those of physics: run out of food and water and you die. No animal can exhaust its resource base and hope to survive. Human civilizations are subject to the same law.

The general interest in science, the casual reading of science magazines, the following of scientific trends - all are pretty typical behaviors for science fiction writers. That's why I find it disappointing that Atwood claims that what she has written totally isn't science fiction.

Here is what she wrote at the time Oryx and Crake was published:

Like The Handmaid's Tale, Oryx and Crake is a speculative fiction, not a science fiction proper. It contains no intergalactic space travel, no teleportation, no Martians. As with The Handmaid's Tale, it invents nothing we haven't already invented or started to invent. Every novel begins with a what if, and then sets forth its axioms. The what if of Oryx and Crake is simply, What if we continue down the road we're already on? How slippery is the slope? What are our saving graces? Who's got the will to stop us?

After acknowledging that it was science fiction in a 2005 article, she has once again backed away from the term in an interview published several weeks ago in the New York Times:

Her nightmarish, futuristic scenarios have caused some of her books to be tagged as science fiction, though she thinks that genre doesn’t quite fit — “since there aren’t aliens and spaceships and the other usual things,” she said.

It's not as if Atwood isn't familiar with the genre, or willing to acknowledge that some SF works are "brilliant", it's that she wants to draw a line between science fiction, which is "gizmo-riddled and theory-based space travel, time travel, or cybertravel to other worlds, with aliens frequent" and speculative fiction, which is about "human society and its possible future forms, which are either much better than what we have now, or much worse". The problem is that her definition excludes many award-winning works that are considered by most to be science fiction, including Greg Bear's Darwin's Radio and Nancy Kress's Beggars in Spain (to name two stories that are bioscience based), as well as the entire ribofunk subgenre.

Science fiction readers consider novels like hers that look at the future of humanity to be part of the genre, so I think she's pretty much stuck with the label. I just wish she could embrace the genre that she seems so reluctant to be a part of.

(If you are interested in a longer discussion of "science fiction" as a genre category, there is a long thread on the topic at Making Light.)

Tags:science fiction, genetic engineering, Margaret Atwood, Oryx and Crake

Beast Men and other Bio Horror SF at Apex Magazine

There is something about the nature of biology - growing things, squishy internal organs, monsters and mutants - that lends itself to the horror end of the science fiction spectrum. And they aren't always just chilling entertainment; such horrifying stories can be used to look at philosophical questions about what it means to be human. The March 3rd edition of Apex Magazine ("where science fiction and horror collide") has a couple of good examples of that this month. As Sarah Brandel writes in her introductory essay "Beast Men and the Human Animal":

Another facet of the question ‘What is human?’ addresses the differences between human beings and other members of the animal kingdom. If, in some respects, tiny variations in DNA are all that separate human beings physically from their closest primate relatives, where is the genetic line drawn between what is human and what is not? (There are easy answers from a species perspective—only members of the same species can produce viable offspring—but we’re not looking for easy answers here.)

I won't quote any more, because there are spoilers for the stories, but you can read them online yourself:

• "The Puma" by Theodora Goss
• "The Mind of a Pig" by Ekaterina Sedia
  

And for some more good creepiness, here are a couple of other biology-science fiction-horror stories from their archives:

• "Organ Nell" by Jennifer Pelland
  
• "The New Breed" by Michael A. Burstein
  

(And if you enjoy what you read at Apex, consider clicking on their "Donate" button and making a small contribution.)

Tags:science fiction, horror, genetic engineering, organ donation

Help Needed: Can you identify this novel with a body-parts-for-sale plot line?

Mark Tushnet emailed me with a question I couldn't answer, and I'm hoping one of you kind readers might be able to help:

I'm trying to locate a novel I read, published in the last decade but not one of those on your list in that post, with the following plot line (it's a subordinate plot line to the main story): A person needing money sold a small body part, and prospered, but also found the sale altruistically satisfying. So, part by part, he sold off major body parts, to the point where he was reduced to a torso and head carried around by his close friend. In the end, a recipient of one of the body parts invents a technique for perfectly replacing lost body parts, so the donor is at the book's end restored to a full complement of body parts, mostly "artificial." (I use the story in teaching about legal regulation of risk -- students tend to think that there's something wrong about selling some body parts, although they disagree about where to draw the line, but don't have any objection to "selling" the risk to those same body parts at ordinary, risky jobs.)

The main story line probably had something to do with the "amputee's" friend, but he can't remember any other details. It's not any of the novels mentioned in this post.

If you think you can identify the story, you can email Mark at
mtushne (at) law (dot) harvard (dot) edu
or leave a comment below.

Tags:body parts, organ selling

Time Lord regeneration physiology; or, Does the Doctor have to be a white dude?

If you've been following the science fiction news over the past few days, you've probably heard the BBC's announcement that Matt Smith will follow David Tennant in the role of the Doctor in the long-running Doctor Who series. Ever since Tennant announced he would step down in the role, there has been rampant speculation as to who would replace them.

Some of the rumors were that the eleventh Doctor might be played by a black actor such as Chiwetel Ejiofor or Paterson Joseph (who would have been my pick) or a woman like Alex Kingston or Catherine Tate. It doesn't take more than a glance at Smith's photo to realize that he is neither a woman, nor black. Maybe he'll be the greatest Doctor ever, but even if he is, I'm still a bit disappointed that he's a super young white dude. Graeme McMillan summed it up nicely in his rant at io9:

Maybe the BBC didn't want to bring too much upset to their flagship family program, especially with the change in producers and showrunners, and worried that moving too far away from the familiar would make viewers leave the show in concern that it's not the same show they've loved for the last X number of years. If so, it's a shame, and - I think - a miscalculation; I really doubt that audiences would have had any problem with a black Doctor, or a female Doctor (or, for that matter, a black female Doctor, for anyone who wants to write fanfic that Martha Jones is actually a future Doctor herself); despite a stereotype and tradition for stuffiness, Britain is a strongly multicultural environment, and even if it wasn't, characters like Martha, or the admittedly-annoying Mickey, or even Captain Jack Harkness, had been quietly pushing the envelope on Who since its revival. Even if the BBC wasn't ready for a different kind of Doctor, the audience, I believe, was.

Of course this sparked a lot of discussion in the comments of the post, with some people agreeing and others disagreeing, with some people arguing that the Doctor just is white and is male and can't actually be anything else. But can he? What do we know about the biology of the Time Lords?

In case you aren't a Doctor Who fan, a bit of background is in order. The Doctor is a Time Lord from the planet Gallifrey, a member of a race who can live a very very very long time by the process of regeneration when their body is at the point of death. They aren't immortals, though, since they can only regenerate 12 times, giving them a total of 13 long lives. During regeneration every cell in a Time Lord's body is replaced, but memories (and perhaps their whole brain) remains intact. The regenerated body has a completely different appearance and personality. But how different can different be?

Over the years the Doctor has changed the color and texture of his hair, the shape of his face and mouth and nose, and even his height. While his skin color hasn't changed much, fellow Time Lord Romana was able to "try on" a blue body during her first regeneration, so it seems that variation in skin color is certainly possible. We even glimpsed a black Time Lord in the Doctor's flashback to his youth on Gallifrey in the episode "The Sound of Drums". Taking all these factors into account, I don't think it would be at all inconsistent with what we know about his physiology for the Doctor to regenerate with dark brown skin and tightly curled black hair, looking very much like a human with black African ancestry.

So what about the possibility of the Doctor changing from male to female? While it appears uncommon, the Doctor did meet another Time Lord, I. M. Forman, who had regenerated in both male and female form. It certainly doesn't seem implausible for a sex change to occur if the newly regenerated version sports modified DNA and every cell is regrown from scratch.

It seems like anything is possible. Will we see a non-white, non-male doctor? Only time will tell.

Image (top): Matt Smith, the Eleventh Doctor.
Image (middle left): Eleven Doctors, from the Doctor Who Tardis Index File article on The Doctor.
Image (middle right): Regeneration forms "tried on" by Romana in the episode "Destiny of the Daleks". From the Wikipedia article on regeneration.
Image (bottom): black Time Lord glimpsed in the episode "The Sound of Drums", from the YouTube clip.

Tags:Doctor Who, Time Lord, regeneration

Regrowing Body Parts: Real Bionic Women

Nina Munteanu has a very interesting post about the latest military technology that uses nano-scaffolding to regrow internal organs and other body parts.

Much like a real scaffold, the nano-scaffold guides cells to grab onto it so they can begin to rebuild missing bones and tissue. “The tissue grows through tiny holes in the nano-scaffold, in the same way a vine snakes its way up a trellis,” writes Vito Pilieci of the Vancouver Sun. “after the body part has regenerated, the nano-scaffold breaks down, is absorbed into the person’s body and disappears entirely.” The nail, bone and tissue re-grew completely.

As Nina points out, this sounds very much like the "anthrocyte" nanomachines that rebuilt Jaime Sommers in the rebooted version of The Bionic Woman . . .

Tags:organ growth

TruBlood and the All-American Vampire

Imagine that you are a vampire, dependent on human blood for nourishment. What would happen if an artificial replacement were available? That's the premise of HBO's new series True Blood, based on Charlaine Harris' Sookie Stackhouse Southern Vampire mysteries:

Thanks to a Japanese scientist's invention of synthetic blood, vampires have progressed from legendary monsters to fellow citizens overnight. And while humans have been safely removed from the menu, many remain apprehensive about these creatures "coming out of the coffin." Religious leaders and government officials around the world have chosen their sides, but in the small Louisiana town of Bon Temps, the jury is still out.

You can find out more about TruBlood, the "synthetic blood nourishment beverage" at TruBeverage.com, including which type is right for you. Apparently my beverage of choice would be Type A, a light and delicate brew "painstakingly imagined inducing an overall calmness." Yum!

Unfortunately the site doesn't reveal any secrets about TruBlood, other than that it contains "varied cellular content than actual blood", which isn't even grammatical. Fortunately, investigative site BloodCopy had a scientific analysis performed to determine its composition. It turns out to be a complex mixture of components that is consistent with actual blood.

True to the advertising, varied cell types were detectable once I had completed my staining protocol. All of the normally occurring formed elements were present excluding platelets. In addition, there were a few white blood cells that I couldn't easily identify leading me to think that these cells may be the product of incomplete blood formation from a lab grown tissue culture process. In experiments performed with laboratory tissue cultures, directed blood cell formation is frequently unable to produce the large cells called Megakaryocytes that break apart to form platelets. It may be that vampire healing mechanisms are so different from ours that clotting agents aren't required, allowing some easier to produce cell type that would fulfill the same nutritional niche to be substituted in place of the platelets.

The report concludes that "none of the contents of these samples comes directly from human or animal subjects", and suggests that the components are actually cultured cells and hormones and other substances secreted from genetically modified bacteria. Basically, it's blood that's been reconstituted from its component parts, rather than drained from an animal. I wonder if it will turn out to be real human blood, harvested from imprisoned blood donors (TruBlood is people!), or maybe I've just watched too much sci-fi horror.

Anyway, it's the added hormones that differentiate between the different flavors of TruBlood. The Type A formula that was recommended for me has high levels of melatonin and arginine, making me sleep better and improving my circulation, I suppose. Download the analysis (pdf)*

The in-depth report "Vampires in America" (below) has more. Watch it to learn more about TruBlood, vampire biology, sex, and organized anti-vampire organizations.

In Focus: Shedding The Light on Vampires in America (HBO)
by HBOclips

There is also a TrueBlood comic that gives the background for the series.
TrueBlood premieres on HBO on September 7.

* If you actually look at the report there is an odd figure that looks like a 3D representation of hemoglobin, with the protein subunits labeled "bacteria", "cow blood", "female vascular organ", and "HBOC" (hemoglobin based oxygen carrier). It doesn't make any sense at all. I suppose the artist saw those words in the report and thought "Ooh, sciency!"

(video via io9)
Tags:TruBlood, TrueBlood, vampires, synthetic blood

Is Cordwainer Smith's Future Today?

Science Fiction writer Cordwainer Smith (1913-1966) set his stories thousands of years in the future, when the Instrumentality of Mankind rules Earth and humans have servants - the Underpeople - created by genetically modifying animals. Wikipedia has a few more of the elements of Smith's future universe:

• the planet Norstrilia (Old North Australia), a semi-arid planet where an immortality drug called stroon is harvested from gigantic, virus-infected sheep each weighing more than 100 tons. Norstrilians are nominally the richest people in the galaxy and defend their immensely valuable stroon with sophisticated weapons [...]. However, extremely high taxes ensure that everyone on the planet lives a frugal, rural life, like the farmers of old Australia, to keep the Norstrilians tough.
• the punishment world of Shayol [...], where criminals are punished by the regrowth and harvesting of their organs for transplanting
• planoforming spacecraft, which are crewed by humans telepathically linked with cats to defend against the attacks of malevolent entities in space, who are perceived by the humans as dragons, and by the cats as gigantic rats, in "The Game of Rat and Dragon".
• the Underpeople, animals modified genetically into human form and intelligence to fulfill servile roles, and treated as property. Several stories feature clandestine efforts to liberate the underpeople and grant them civil rights. They are seen everywhere throughout regions controlled by the Instrumentality.
• Habermans and their supervisors, Scanners, who are essential for space travel, but at the cost of having their sensory nerves cut to block the "pain of space", and who perceive only by vision and various life-support implants. A technological breakthrough removes the need for the treatment, but resistance among the Scanners to their perceived loss of status ensues, forming the basis of the story "Scanners Live in Vain".

The result is a richly imagined future shaped in part by advanced bioengineering technology. You can read number of Smith's short stories for free online:

• "Scanners Live in Vain" (as noted above, Scanners have their sensory nerves cut to to be able to survive the "pain of space")
• "Mother Hitton's Littul Kittons" (about the defense of Norstrilia)
  
• "The Dead Lady of Clown Town" (a story of the dog girl D'joan)
• plus several others
  

The Cordwainer Smith Blog (maintained by his daughter Rosana Hart) is asking for tips on science news items that look like part of Smith's future:

Many things which Cordwainer Smith wrote about are happening now– animal cloning, for one So I have started a category of this blog called “It’s Happening Now,” and when you come across news items that remind you of something in a CS story, do come by and post a comment on this post with links if it was something online you found. Please comment on what bit of what story it reminds you of!

There's already one example up: use of rat brain cells to guide a robot which echos the laminated mouse brain computer in Smith's "Think Blue, Count Two". I'm trying to think of some good examples of my own.

Tags:Cordwainer Smith, biotechnology, genetic engineering

Biology in Science Fiction Roundup: August 16 Edition

Here are some biology in science fiction bits from the past couple of weeks.

Written Word

The Philadelphia Inquirer talks to Dorothy Hearst about her new fantasy novel Promise of the Wolves:

Hearst is no scientist; she's a fiction writer. But her debut fantasy novel, Promise of the Wolves, draws on research that suggests humans and canines (first wolves, then dogs) have a long, shared history.

"The book is based quite a bit on the theory of co-evolution," Hearst said, "which is the idea that wolves and later dogs are what made us the dominant species on the planet - that we evolved because of them, and they evolved because of us."

Like much of science these days, that theory is contentious. But it's been widely reported and discussed in the last couple of years, with some researchers asserting that humans grew stronger by taming wolves, then hunting with them. In turn, wolves began to look less like themselves and more like dogs as selective breeding for certain characteristics also gave rise to changes in the animals' appearance. In short, Hearst said: "We made dogs and dogs made us. Some of the genetic [research] is fairly controversial, but there is some evidence that wolves and humans have been together for 150,000 years - and other evidence that suggests it could have happened before we were even fully human."

The Guardian profiled John Wyndham, author of Day of the Triffids.

Although Wyndham was writing at the height of the cold war, his anticipation of the rise of genetic engineering means that the story remains just as relevant - and terrifying - today. Wyndham was also redefining the science fiction genre. Up until the late 1940s, sci-fi was almost exclusively set in space and involved what Wyndham himself described as "the adventures of galactic gangsters". By choosing instead to write about situations that were rational extensions of the present day, Wyndham pioneered a form of sci-fi that he labelled "logical fantasy" but which is widely known now as "speculative fiction".

I'm not sure I agree with their definition of speculative fiction, which I think of as including space opera as well as mundane science fiction, high fantasy and lots in between.

Television

Paul Levinson's The Genesis Virus has been turned into a TV series pilot.

Primeval debuted on BBC-America last Saturday night in the US. I enjoyed it. So did Annalee Newitz at io9.

Movies

At SFGate Peter Hartlaub lists his "favorite science movies of all time" - and by "science movies" he means science fiction, comedy or drama that features science themes.

The "classic" B-movie The Wasp Woman is now available as a DVD download from EZTakes.com.

Janice Starlin, purveyor of her own line of cosmetics, finds herself nearing middle-age (in a time when 38 was the new 94). A stranger with an accent and an unnatural love of wasps enters her life and promises her the elixir that will prolong her youth forever - until the wasp becomes the wasped.

io9 reports on the so-bad-its-funny movie based on the novel The Possibility of an Island and made by its author Michel Houellebecq, which is "a sci-fi movie about cloning, weird religious sects and human life after the apocalypse" that apparently includes a slapstick bikini contest.

Weird and Cool Bioscience

At Wired Science Brendan Keim reports on "Emerging Cognitive Neuroscience and Related Technologies", a report compiled for the Department of Defense which evaluates the military potential of "brain science", including mind reading, various forms of cognitive enhancement, mind control and brain-machine interfaces.

Greg Laden reports on recent experiments in which a "blog of rat brain cells" was used to steer a robot that navigates via sonar.

There is the strange story of Bernann McKinney who spent tens of thousands of dollars having her pitbull Booger cloned by Korean scientists. In a very bizarre twist, McKinney may actually be a fugitive from justice in the UK.

Kwabena Boahen gives a TED talk about "Making a computer that works like the brain"

Weird Universe points out a breakthrough in organ transplants from animals to humans: a new chemical treatment process that strips the organ down to its scaffolding, and allows the transplant patient's own cells to fill in the holes.

Parasitic Plants Steal RNA, Spy on Their Hosts

There are viral parasites that attack other viruses "hijacking its genetic machinery and making copies of its victim's DNA".

The Knight Science Journalism Tracker takes a look at a US News & World Report article about human evolution and genetic engineering.

Wired reports on "galactic panspermia", which suggests that space might be teeming with microbial life.

Metafilter discusses Mike the Headless Chicken, who lived for 18 months after having most of it's head chopped off.

Neurophilosophy takes a look at kuru, the human prion disease that spread by ritual cannibalism.

Tags:science fiction, biology

Would You Eat Vat Meat?

The public television show YOUR WEEK asked people whether they would eat "Frankenmeat":



I don't completely understand why meat grown in a tube is grosser than meat cut from the bones of a dead animal. If the texture is the same, why not eat it?

Or perhaps they realize the deadly danger of cultured flesh. Just listen to "The Chicken Heart", a 1937 radio play:

I tell you that mass of flesh was a chicken heart...the tissue of which for some reason is undergoing constant, rapid, accelerating growth. With every passing hour its growth is doubling. Do you know what that means? If it is now one block in size, within thirty hours that cannibal flesh will have increased in size to one square block to the thirtieth power. VOICE RISES. In thirty hours every inch of this whole city will be crushed under that moving flesh. Within sixty hours it will have covered the entire state. Within two weeks the entire United States. You ask for the National Guard. I say call out the entire army. Blast this thing off the earth.

Aaaaaaaah! Not the cannibal flesh!! Listen to the story.

Related post: Cultured Meat
(video via Wired Science)

Tags:vat meat

Mary Robinette Kowal: For Solo Cello, op.12

His keys dropped, rattling on the parquet floor. Julius stared at them, unwilling to look at the bandaged stump where two weeks ago his left hand had been. He should be used to it by now. He should not still be trying to pass things from his right hand to his left. But it still felt as if his hand were there.

~ "For Solo Cello, op.12", Mary Robinette Kowal

Puppeteer and writer Mary Robinette Kowal is a nominee for this year's John W. Campbell Best New Writer Award. Several of her short stories have biological themes:

• "For Solo Cello, op. 12" is about how far a professional cellist is willing to go through to regrow his lost hand.
  
• "Cerbo en Vitra ujo" is the horrific story of a smart but naive girl searching for her boyfriend in a future where "excess" children can be taken for their body parts.
• "Death Comes But Twice" is a Victorianesque tale of reanimation.
  

The all touch on the horrific side of the biological, and I enjoyed reading them all.

• Read "For Solo Cello, op.12" @ COSMOS
  
• More free fiction from Mary Robinette Kowal
• Jon Armstrong's interview with Mary Robinette Kowal (via SF Signal)
  

Image: MoM by |spoon| on Flickr
Tags:science fiction, biology, Mary Robinette Kowal

Organ-supplying clones - an idea that just won't die

Almost 54 years ago a Boston doctor, Joseph Murray, transplanted a kidney from 24-year-old Ronald Herrick to his identical twin brother Richard Herrick, who was dying of chronic kidney disease. Because the twins had developed from a single fertilized egg, they were genetically identical, which meant that Richard did not suffer from the immunological rejection problems that had caused earlier experimental transplants in animals to fail. Now, of course, people who receive transplants can take immunosuppressive drugs to prevent rejection of the transplanted organ. But wouldn't it be easier - or at least make a better story - if we all had an identical twin (or two) to provide us replacements for failing organs?

While we can't retrospectively create a same-aged twin, reproductive cloning could be used (at least in theory) to generate a younger genetic duplicate. That is the idea behind the 2005 movie The Island, where clones are raised in an isolated colony, until (they are told) they win the lotter, which allows them to move to an unspoiled tropical island. I don't think it's too much of a SPOILER to reveal that there is no island. Instead the lottery "winners" are sent to a medical facility to have their organs harvested for their "sponsors". A couple of the clones escape, and, of course, havoc ensues.

The movie isn't particularly original, however. The Wikipedia page for The Island suggests that it might have been inspired by Michael Marshall Smith's 1996 novel Spares. The closest similarity, however, was to the 1979 horror movie Parts: The Clonus Horror. The makers of The Clonus Horror was similar enough that its makers actually filed suit against DreamWorks (producers of The Island) for copyright infringement, and as the case was preparing for trial, a "seven-figure settlement" was reached.

So which movie to put in your Netflix queue? Annalee Newitz at io9 says The Clonus Horror is definitely the better of the two.

It is indeed almost exactly the same movie as The Island, except in two respects. One, it is actually creepy and interesting; and two, the place the clones are told they're going is "America," not "the island." Which makes the whole movie way more of a political thriller and enlivens the plot.

Head over to io9 to watch a creepy clip.

Tags:The Island, Parts: The Clonus Horror, Spares, cloning, organ transplant

Biology in Science Fiction Roundup: April 12 Edition

Here are some Biology in Science Fiction bits from around the internet:

Books and Comics

Ursula LeGuin talked about science and the fantastic in her review of Salman Rushdie's new fantasy novel The Enchantress of Florence:

Some boast that science has ousted the incomprehensible; others cry that science has driven magic out of the world and plead for "re-enchantment". But it's clear that Charles Darwin lived in as wondrous a world, as full of discoveries, amazements and profound mysteries, as that of any fantasist. The people who disenchant the world are not the scientists, but those who see it as meaningless in itself, a machine operated by a deity. Science and literary fantasy would seem to be intellectually incompatible, yet both describe the world; the imagination functions actively in both modes, seeking meaning, and wins intellectual consent through strict attention to detail and coherence of thought, whether one is describing a beetle or an enchantress. Religion, which prescribes and proscribes, is irreconcilable with both of them, and since it demands belief, must shun their common ground, imagination. So the true believer must condemn both Darwin and Rushdie as "disobedient, irreverent, iconoclastic" dissidents from revealed truth.

The Amazon Omnivoracious blog interviews Scott Sigler about his new novel, Infected.

io9 writes about the new comic book Transhuman.

Television

Evolutionary biologist and noted atheist Richard Dawkins is scheduled to appear in the current season of Dr. Who, playing himself. Presumably Dawkins has received acting tips from his wife Lalla Ward, who played Romana, companion of the Fourth Doctor. If Dawkins isn't your cup of tea, Nature Editor Henry Gee suggests some other "celebrity scientists and not-so-scientists" who might be right for a Dr. Who bit part. The current series premiered in the UK on April 5 on the BBC, and premiers in the US on SciFi on April 18.

David Eick (Bionic Woman producer/Battlestar Galactica writer-producer) is working on a proposed TV series based on PD James' Children of Men.

The new season of ReGenesis has started in Canada, and Eva Amsen of the easternblog blog is writing the Facts Behind the Fiction articles that accompany each episode. Very cool.

Movies

Shock Till You Drop reviews the new I Am Legend DVD, including the bonus feature "Cautionary Tale: The Science of I Am Legend".

Big Picture Big Sound reviews the new GATTACA Blu-Ray DVD, which includes a "featurette" on the science behind genetic engineering. i09 has some GATTACA "behind the scenes" trivia.

The new official "REPO: The Genetic Opera" web site has launched, with music, video and stills. (via Bloody-Disgusting)

The Ruins ("Terror Has Evolved") has a some evil plants, according to io9.

Ain't it Cool News reports on the remake of Attack of the Killer Tomatoes.

LiveScience writes about the creatures in 10,000 BC.

Bloody-Disgusting lists "The 10 Worst Things That Could've Been in Brundle's Machine ... Besides a Fly" (ew)

Other

Wired Science has the top 5 real biology concepts in BioShock.

Tags:science fiction, biology

Organlegging and REPO! The Genetic Opera

Imagine the horror of a future in which organs are for sale - and can be repossessed for non-payment. Now imagine that tale told with rock music, singing and dancing. That would give you REPO! The Genetic Opera, touted as "Rocky Horror meets Blade Runner", which is coming soon to the big screen. The movie takes place in the near future where a biotech company, GeneCo, finances organ transplants. That is high risk in more ways than one:

"They’re not just buying them for health reasons. In this future it’s kind of like the next phase of plastic surgery. Upgrading your body parts, upgrading your internal organs has become a fashion statement. It’s legal for the organ financing companies to repossess your organs if you don’t make your payments on time. Our story is about one of these organ Repo Men, and his 17-year-old daughter [Shilo], who doesn’t know what her dad [Nathan] does for a living. It’s kind of her coming-of-age story discussing about the world outside and, of course, daddy’s dark secrets, and all put to music."

There have been many science fictional futures where human organs are an expensive commodity: Robert Silverberg's short story "Caught in the Organ Draft", the organleggers in Larry Niven's Known Space universe*, and the sale of organs by those desperate for money in Frederick Pohl's Gateway, all spring to mind. Ben Zimmer points out in the Oxford University Press blog that some people have started to use the term "organlegger" to describe real trafficking of human organs, so regular organ trading really that unlikely a future.

But what about repossession? A year ago a patient at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center became the first known recipient of a heart that had been transplanted before. It had not spent very long in the first recipients body, however, because that patient died on the operating table. The second transplantation was performed six days later. Even more impressively, a liver graft was retransplanted thirteen years after transfer to the original recipient. So, if the organ is still healthy, why not use it again? There are a number of technical reasons why reuse of a healthy organ might fail:

The heart already has been exposed to the tissue and antibodies of two people, which increases rejection risk and requires extra vigilance on the part of cardiologists and specialists in immunology. Also, because the heart’s vessels already have been grafted once, a second procedure is more complex and potentially time-intensive for surgeons. In addition, the heart muscle itself may be stressed from lack of oxygen and the inherent trauma of two operations.

I suspect we'll be eventually be able to overcome those issues. I've seen some roughly used repossessed cars, though, and I'm not sure I'd want a kidney in the same beat-up condition.

REPO! The Genetic Opera isn't due to be released until April 25, but there was a sneak peek at the SXSW festival in Austin. Ain't it Cool News has two wildly different reviews: one guy loved it, is still humming the tunes and thinks it will be a new cult classic. A second viewer thought it was horrible, and noted that 20 people walked out of the screening. I'm thinking that a gory movie with bad acting (Paris Hilton has a major role), bad singing and a cheesy plot might just be the recipe for packed midnight screenings on college campuses around the country.

Tags:REPO! The Genetic Opera, organ transplant

Bioscience News Roundup: 02-11-08

Some interesting bioscience bits from the past week:

io9 reports on the open source biohacking community. You can join the community yourself at Sourceforge.

Join the fight against cancer, against all sorts of disease! Or would you rather see some glowing bacterium, get your own ecoli farm set up to amaze your friends? This open, free synthetic biology kit contains all sorts of information from across the web on how to do it: how to extract and amplify DNA, cloning techniques, making DNA by what's known as oligonucleotides, and all sorts of other tutorials and documents on techniques in genetic engineering, tissue engineering, synbio (synthetic biology), stem cell research, SCNT, evolutionary engineering, bioinformatics, etc. And since the project is open, it's free for you to revise or share your experiences, or even share your genes (got anything cool?). The more eyes, the better-- you can't ignore these awesome possibilities (or even the not-so-cool ones*).

The big bioscience story was the creation of a human three parent embryo: the nucleus from a traditionally-created (if that's the right term) in vitro fertilized embryo was transferred into a donor egg. The donor egg had most of its DNA removed, but still contained mitochondria. More at Genetics and Health

Mind Hacks writes about the 1959 special issue of the American Journal of Psychiatry on 'space psychiatry'.

PLoS Biology published an article about chameleons using color change as social signals. Wired has the basics, including a funky chameleon video.

Bruce Sterling writes about work by the Army to hack mitochondria:

Oxford University biochemists look for ways to get mitochondria to feed on fats, instead of sugars -- without all the nasty side-effects of a constant cheeseburger binge. (((Did I mention it also makes you slender, sexy, and ravenously erotic at the age of 60? See if you can't slither through that rusting thicket of bayonets surrounding at the mitochondria plant, ladies))) If the scientists are successful, small rations of the ketone cuisine could boost a soldier's stamina, and maybe even keep him nourished for days at a time....

The Neurophilosophy blog has video from the World Economic Summit in Davos:

In this film, Scoble talks to the Brazilian neuroscientist Miguel Nicolelis, who discussed his recent experiments in which a monkey with a brain-computer interface implanted into its motor cortex controlled the movements of a robot that was located more than 7,000 miles away.

New Scientist writes about a "DNA-based fabricator" created by CalTech bioengineers. They used it to create "two-legged DNA molecules that walk along a ladder-like track."

They also report on a nifty ink jet printer designed by scientists at Wake Forest to "print" using cells rather than ink.

Technology Review reports on recent experiments towards gene therapy for chronic pain

Researchers at Mount Sinai School of Medicine injected a virus carrying the gene for an endogenous opioid--a chemical naturally produced by the body that has the same effect as opiate painkillers such as morphine--directly into the spinal fluid of rats. The injections were targeted to regions of the spinal cord called the dorsal root ganglia, which act as a "pain gate" by intercepting pain signals from the body on their way to the brain. "You can stop pain transmission at the spinal level so that pain impulses never reach the brain," says project leader Andreas Beutler, an assistant professor of hematology and medical oncology at Mount Sinai.

It looks like there is one common ancestor for the blue-eyed.

Forbes looks at how to cheat death

Nature reports that insect-eating plants produce useful enzymes (subscription required)

Carnivorous plants are not the first organisms to come to mind when searching for biomedical compounds. Yet, like something from science fiction, researchers are discovering enzymes in the digestive fluids of carnivorous pitcher plants that could prove useful in controlling infections.

Tags:science fiction, biology