Developing a drug costs an estimated US$2.6 billion. Since 9 out of 10 drug candidates never reach the market, much of this money is wasted as decades of potential new drug targets have yet to be exploited. …

A genome, which is an organism’s complete set of genetic instructions, is very large. The human genome is estimated to have 3 billion base pairs, containing roughly 25 000 genes. Driven by lower sequencing costs, there is more biological data from genomic sequences, molecular pathways, and diverse populations than ever…

What if your body could monitor itself to detect and treat diseases before symptoms even manifest? — Well, your immune system already does that (to an extent)! Your immune system is constantly protecting you against disease and infection and helping you recover after injury. As soon as our body has trouble fighting off a disease, we might head to a doctor for a diagnosis, take medication for…

By understanding how biological macromolecules, like proteins, DNA, and RNA, coil into three-dimensional shapes, researchers can study how changes to their structure influence their function, the part they play in diseases, and their interactions with other biomacromolecules. Structural bioinformatics is dedicated to just that — creating new computational methods to…

This short article reminds me that adopting a programmatic approach to biology can be an inconvenience. Before diving headfirst into synthetic biology and bioengineering in the last months, I was already attracted to computer science and engineering. I thought I’d be able to make the most out of my knowledge…

The trillions of cells in your body have the ability to detect and respond to various stimuli and inputs, coordinate tasks, build structures, and adjust to their environment. What if we could program cells to react to custom inputs and thus produce desirable outputs? Well, it’s possible with synthetic biological…

What does it take to engineer the building blocks of life? — Proteins are responsible for most of the work done in cells. From the structure and function to the repair and regulation of tissues and organs, proteins are incredible agents of biology, often considered nano-machines. …

Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) is a promising storage medium, capable of storing and archiving our abundance of data. When bits are converted to bases, data can be encoded in DNA. To encode data is to convert it from one form to another. Encoded images, audio recordings, videos and characters can be…

How can something that has existed much longer than mankind itself solve one of our most pressing and significant problems today? — By the end of 2025, the entire digital universe is predicted to made up of 175 zettabytes of data (1 zettabyte is 1,125,899,910,000,000 megabytes). Global demand for data has surpassed the world’s capacity to store it all. What’s the solution to this growth in data volume? Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) molecules!