biotech

Violins made by the Italian master craftsman Antonio Stradivarius are worth millions of dollars for their unparalleled sound. And that's great, for the handful of musicians who can afford these centuries-old instruments. This month, a new violin made from wood treated with a fungus actually trumped a Stradivarius in a blind listening test, offering hope for violinists who want high tonal quality at an affordable price.

When Lisbeth Ceriani was diagnosed with breast cancer, she wanted a blood test to find out if she carried one of the two dreaded BRCA genes, which could increase her risk of ovarian cancer by up to 50 percent. She decided that if she were a carrier, she would have doctors remove her ovaries. But the sole purveyor of the BRCA tests, Utah-based Myriad Genetics, refused her insurance. Myriad holds the patent on the BRCA genes, and thus exclusive R&D rights, so there were no alternative tests, and Ceriani found herself unable to make a decision about her future health.

Annalee Newitz thinks genome hackers are the future of biotech. So much so that her blog io9 (part of Gawker Media) recently sponsored a worldwide synthetic biology "mad science" contest dedicated to encouraging the emergence of homebrew labs, grassroots genetics, and, of coure, garage genome hackers.

Don’t tell anyone, but Doug Ausenbaugh has built an underground drug farm—in bucolic southern Indiana, no less. It’s cleverly cached in an old limestone mine near the hamlet of Marengo. There, carefully cultivated stalks flourish under the glare of artificial lights and the rainlike spatter of drip irrigation.