President Obama fires a marshmallow gun and lets robots roam his White House at the White House Science Fair.

Three-year-old Danielle Fairchild probably can’t grasp the magnitude of what she’s enabled. The little girl adopted by Fred and Dale Fairchild in Duluth, Georgia was born with half a thumb and no fingers on her right hand. Half-way across the country a smart teenager and five other girl scouts were looking for a science and technology project to complete.

Danielle Fairchild Writes with Help of Prosthetic Hand

Dale Fairchild contacted Kate Murray and the troop of The Flying Monkeys and a partnership was born. 13-year old Murray was born with a thumb but no fingers on her left hand. Despite this digital abnormality she took up the violin five years ago using a device that clips to the bow and wraps around her left palm. And she thought she could help someone else learn to write.

Upon hearing about little Danielle The Flying Monkeys flew into action, learning all they could about prosthetic limbs, talking to doctors and learning how to build one from scratch.

Fast forward to February 7 as Kate Murray, Gaby Dempsey and Mackenzie Gewell present their prosthetic hand device to President Obama in the White House at the second White House Science Fair.

As the President held the BOB-1.2 plastic device in his hand, he said, “This is outstanding.”

President Obama Pumps Air Cannon at White House Science Fair

The Flying Monkeys won a $20,000 Innovation award from For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology (FIRST) Lego League. FIRST is the non-profit organization started by inventor Dean Kamen, who famously brought us the Segway. And for Murray a trip to the White House is “super exciting.”

She says, “I want to be a mechanical engineer when I grow up. I want to design cars to be more fuel efficient and/or rely entirely on wind or solar energy.”

14-year old Joey Hudy unwittingly stole the show providing spectacular photo opportunities as President Obama listened the story about how the Phoenix teen built his marshmallow air gun from PVC pipe with the help of employees at his local Home Depot. Then he asked if the device was operational and decided on the spot that the two should fire it together.

The President asked that everyone in the line of fire move back because this was an improvised activity while strolling through the student exhibits and talking to the winners of over 40 science fairs and competitions.

Joey Hudy with President Obama Impressed by Power to Shoot a Marshmallow Missile

When the gun popped, press cameras clicked wildly and they caught the child-like wonderment in the eyes of the President, which encapsulated the entire White House science fair.

Clearly, the President was impressed by the caliber of projects presented and the students themselves. He said, “Now, as I was walking around the science fair, I was thinking back to when I was your age. And basically, you guys put me to shame.”

President Obama lauded the whip smart students and their clever projects. But he was struck by something more.

He said, “It’s the fact that you recognize that you’ve got a responsibility to use your talents in service to something bigger than yourselves.”

He said some students will develop new products that change the way we live. He pointed out Hayley Hoverter, the winner of the 2011 Network For Teaching Entrepreneurship’s National Challenge. The 16-year-old Los Angeles resident invented a flavorless, colorless sugar packet that dissolves in hot water.

About her invention the President said, “It could potentially save up to two million pounds of trash each year — and that’s just at Starbucks.” Mastercard gave the teen $10,000 to turn her concept into a working business.

Next the President said that some students will see a problem in their town or city and do something about it. After 14-year old Benjamin Hylak was worried that seniors in nursing homes would get lonely he built a robot attached to a computer monitor. His telepresence robot which moves around the center and allows seniors to connect via Skype with their family and friends qualified him as a BROADCOM Masters Competition 2011 finalist.

Angela Zhang Explains Her Nanoparticle Cancer Treatment

President Obama said, “Inventions like Benjamin’s could make life better for millions of families.”

The same holds for the three representatives from California.

Angela Zhang of Cupertino, who has proposed a potential cure for cancer. This year, she won a $100,000 grand prize in the Siemens Competition in Math, Science and Technology for her nanoparticle cancer treatment. She says, “I keep saying 60 years from now I will probably be telling my grandkids everything that happened when I was 17.”

Hayley Hoverter of Los Angeles, who developed sugar packets that dissolve in hot drinks is the now the 16-year old CEO of Sweet (dis)SOLVE. She spoke at TEDx SoCal last year.

Neil de Grasse Tyson with Braeden Benedict at White House Science Fair

Braeden Benedict of Ranchos Palos Verdes designed a device to detect concussions in athletes after one of his football teammates experienced prolonged concussion symptoms and had to stop playing contact sports. The 15-year old designed a helmet-mounted sensory detector that turns red when an athlete is hit hard enough to cause a concussion.

He took the top prize in America’s 2011 Top Young Scientist competition at the Discovery Education 3M Young Scientist Challenge where he won $25,000 for his efforts.

The President spoke of the adversity several groups of students overcame just to be at the science fair. A rocketry team from Presidio, Texas came from the 4th poorest school district in the nation where most students speak English as a second language. Parents raised money to help the students make the trip to Washington D.C. Mr. Obama said they even sold a goat to make the journey to the White House.

He applauded the winners of the Michigan Regional Contest of the National Engineers Week Future City Competition. Three Detroit students imagined a clean energy future for their city and while they were doing so their school burned down, forcing them to merge with another school while they completed their project. The team said, “(Future City) helps me make a better city to live in.” They designed there vision around a city following the theme of “Fuel Your Future: Imagine New Ways to Meet Our Energy Needs and Maintain a Healthy Planet.”

Samantha Garvey Tells President Obama about Mussels

The President also acknowledged 18-year old Samantha Garvey, who has spent a lot of time with the President lately. The high school senior from New York made headlines after winning a spot in the semi-finals of the Intel science talent search. But more than her ingenious project studying mussel predation on Long Island she captured the attention of America because when she found out she was a semi-finalist she was homeless.

Since then she has appeared on television and sat in the First Lady’s box at the State of the Union Address last month. At the White House science fair the President announced that the teen would like to work for NOAA or EPA some day. Pointing at them he said, “This is Dr. Lubchenco. She is the head of NOAA. Lisa Jackson, right there, head of EPA. You might, you know, just want to hook up with them before you leave.”

The President said that all the students who participated in the science fair inspired him. He said, “It’s young people like you who make me so confident that America’s best days are still to come.”

President Obama Tells Science Fair Students They Are Paving the Way to the Future

Dale Fairchild says that before The Flying Monkey’s created BOB-1 for little Danielle to use as she learns to write the toddler used her right hand like a flipper. But after the molded plastic device arrived, complete with a Vel-cro(TM) strap to attached a plastic pencil holder, the girl began using her fingerless hand to pick things up.

The teen engineers have never met Danielle Fairchild but their prosthetic hand device is going through the expensive and lengthy patent process, placing the teen inventors on track to help many more people besides the little girl in Georgia.

C-SPAN coverage of President Obama’s speech to the White House Science Fair, Feb. 7, 2012. (15:13)

For years, scientists have been talking about the era of personalized medicine. While many preparations are underway, the biggest hurdle to widespread adoption has been the prohibitive cost to read a person’s entire DNA. Our genetic code provides a full road map to preventing and treating disease. We just don’t know how to read it yet.

Since the first entire human genome was sequenced in 2000, the price and time it takes has tumbled into affordability.

But the entire biotechnology industry has rested on the belief that personalized medicine won’t work until it takes a day or less to map a whole human genome and the cost reaches the $1,000 price point.

Well, 2012 is the year. At this week’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Life Technologies unveiled its latest gadget, a $150,000 high-speed gene sequencer, which allows entire human genome sequencing for $1,000 per genome.

Outfitted with a semiconductor chip instead of tiny microscopes, the Benchtop Ion Proton sequencer is ready to read our DNA fast and cheap. That means this technology will quickly move from the research lab to the doctor’s office where patients will pay a little more than the $1,000 it costs to sequence a full genome.

There are companies already doing some high-speed, fast-turnaround gene sequencing. But they rely on just pieces of a genome, looking for particular markers to identify risk for specific diseases. No company until now has been able to run a full genome for $1,000 in less than a day.

Life Technologies’ Dr. Robert Bennett says, “For the first time, you’ll be able to sequence an entire human genome in a matter of a few hours.”

Immediately following the announcement, the company said that Baylor College of Medicine, Yale School of Medicine, and The Broad Institute have signed on as the first three customers of the new semiconducting gene sequencer.

Dr. Richard Gibbs, Director of the Human Genome Sequencing Center at Baylor says, “A genome sequence for $1,000 was a pipe-dream, just a few years ago.”

Not to be outdone, another company that builds gene sequencers also just announced that its new generation of machine will read an entire genome in less than 24 hours. Illumina hasn’t announced how much it will cost on a per genome basis.

It’ll be a year or so before these lightweight machines will begin showing up in doctor’s offices. But when they do it is still unclear what running a person’s genome will show.

Doctors must first be trained to use the new technology. The power of personalized medicine and the promise of rapid, inexpensive gene sequencing lies in being able to identify genetic mutations to make medicine more effective, reduce drug interactions, improve preventive health and give the patient more information about his or her health.

But this kind of broad ability could also open up a pandora’s box of privacy concerns. Namely, how much of a person’s genetic information should be accessible to insurance companies, which conceivably could discriminate against people with predisposed genetic risks for certain diseases.

Regardless of any controversy, reaching the genome milestone of $1,000 per genome is changing the face of medicine forever.

Richard Lifton, Chair of the Department of Genetics at Yale School of Medicine says, “The technological advances in the new instrument promise to be game-changing for both research and clinical applications.”

It’s almost Christmas and the value of the gifts of the Three Wise Men is on the rise. For those not remembering the Nativity story the Three Wise Men brought three items, gold, frankincense and myrrh to the birth of baby Jesus. Quite valuable way back when, the three items are still quite rare today.

Boswellia Tree Hangs in the Balance

Dutch forest ecologist Frank Bongers is trying to preserve the fast-disappearing tree that produces frankincense, a tree highly adapted to survive the harsh conditions in Ethiopia. But he says that fires, human encroachment and species are overpowering the dry-land ecosystems.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources includes 10 Boswellia tree species on its Red List of Threatened Species. Eight are listed as vulnerable to extinction.

And Dr. Bongers thinks that the frankincense tree could be 90 percent wiped out in the next 50 years.

He says, “This is a rather alarming message for the incense industry and conservation organizations.”

While frankincense isn’t a major commodity, about 2,500 tons of the Christmas ingredient are purchased in the U.S., Europe, North Africa and China every year.

Bongers is studying the tree’s genetics to better understand its diversity as a means to save it from extinction. One suggestion he has is to stop tapping the tree for its sap after five years.

In another frankincense tree study five years ago, scientists discovered that taking resin from Boswellia trees for frankincense caused them to produce one-third the number of seeds as trees that had never been tapped.

He says, “There’s not a shortage of frankincense, but there’s no regeneration of the forests. There are no young trees anymore.” He also suggests growing saplings in nurseries and planting them where they are safe from fire and animal grazing.

While it would be sad to lose an entire tree species to extinction, Christmas will still have gold and myrrh.

The first scientific team to sequence the genomes of 100 one-hundred year olds wins $10 million. It’s the latest offering from the science competition organization, X Prize Foundation, a non-profit designed to spur science and technology by awarding big cash prizes for significant breakthroughs.

Their most famous and first prize was the Ansari X Prize which started the commercial race to space.

Now the foundation is challenging biologists to sequence the genetic code of 100 centenarians in an effort to learn something new about longevity. Is there a longevity gene or are these folks just doing the right combination of eating right and exercising to get the most out of their lives?

Studies of very healthy elderly people show that they don’t eat a vegetarian diet. They are often obese, smoke and drink and get little exercise. Those who study the healthy elderly find there is something inexplicable that prevents them from getting diseases like Alzheimer’s and they just don’t age like other people.

With more people living longer, the new X Prize genomics competition will shed some light on aging and to see if the secret to a long life is written in our DNA.

Dr. Thomas Perls, an Alzheimer’s researcher at Boston University is the director of the New England Centenarian Study, the largest study of centenarians in the world. He is thrilled that Archon Genomic X Prize is focusing on sequencing the genomes of 100 centenarians.

And he is helping the competition find the one-hundred-plus year olds, drawing from his own study which has a minimum age requirement of 105 to participate.

He says, “It’s very hard to get there without some genetic advantages.”

Noted biologist Craig Venter is co-chairing the Archon Genomics X Prize, which will be judged on accuracy, completeness and the speed and cost of sequencing.

He says, “We need 10,000 genomes, not 100, to start to understand the link between genetics, disease and wellness.” This X Prize is merely the first step in revealing the genetic secrets of a long life.

Irving Kahn, oldest living financial analyst

In 1978, he began his own firm, which now manages more than $700 million in assets. He adapts to the changing times and now communicates with friends and clients all over the world via the Internet. BBC News interviewed him about the 2008 financial crisis in 2008.

If you know people like Irving, send them to the Medco 100 over 100. That’s the search to find the 100 centenarians to have their genomes sequenced.

These people could hold the secrets to better health for us all, hidden within our own genetic code. This prize could also unleash the era of personalized medicine where health and disease treatment will vary based on a person’s DNA.

After the healthy centenarians have been selected the teams will race for the $10 million prize, which will be given to the first team that accurately sequences the whole genome of 100 subjects within 30 days for $1,000 or less per genome, at an error rate no greater than one per million base pairs (that’s 98% accuracy).

The human genome contains more than six billion pairs of nucleotides, the building blocks of DNA. Ultimately, the competition looks to usher in a new era of personalized medicine through sequencing the whole human genome to a level of fidelity never before measured.

Kahn, the oldest living money manager says, “I’m at the stage in life where I get a lot of pleasure out of finding a cheap stock.”

With the new twist on the genomics X Prize, science will begin taking stock of healthy elderly people and study their secret to a long and healthy life.

History of the Archon Genomics X Prize
The $10 million Archon Genomics X PRIZE presented by Medco was originally launched in
October 2006, its purse underwritten by a generous donation from Dr. Stewart and Marilyn
Blusson, challenging scientists and engineers to sequence 100 whole human genomes in 10
days or less for less than $10,000 per genome at an unprecedented rate of accuracy.
In the following years, sequencing technology progressed through multiple platforms, carving
out niche research markets, each with its strengths and weaknesses. Teams originally registered
to compete were not yet able to meet the requirements.

In 2010, Grant Campany, who has 20 years of experience in the life sciences industry, signed on
as Senior Director for the Archon Genomics X PRIZE. A new approach to the competition was
developed by Mr. Campany, X PRIZE Foundation leadership and the competition’s Scientific
Advisory Board, including Dr. Venter, X PRIZE Foundation Scientific Advisory Co-Chair, and
one of the first to sequence the human genome in 2000 and create the first cell with a synthetic
genome in 2010. Recognizing that no single technology was serving medical/clinical
requirements, the Archon Genomics X PRIZE presented by Medco was revitalized to be more
inclusive, relevant and robust.

Every year about 10-15 people in the U.S. contract the plague. Just the sound of the world plague sounds ominous. But the illness is much less of a death sentence than it was during the Dark Ages. Now, a quick dose of antibiotics and the plagued person is right as rain.

After completing the first reconstruction of the plague’s genome, scientists have discovered why the Black Death is just an annoying bug to us now. They discovered that the disease itself hasn’t changed much in hundreds of years but we have.

After extracting DNA from dried blood in the teeth of Londoners who died from the Black Death which killed nearly half of 14th Century Europe, scientists reconstructed the genome using only skeletal remains.

Kirsten Bos, a PhD candidate at McMaster University in Ontario played dentist to the plague victims. The anthropologist who specializes in skeletal pathology and infectious disease in past human populations. She then removed 40 teeth from some of the 600 skeletons housed in the Museum of London, drilled into the pulp inside the teeth to extract a black powdery material, which was likely dried blood that contained DNA from the plague bacteria.

And when she was done, Bos returned the teeth, minus a little DNA, to the skeletons at the museum.

While studying the genome of the original Black Death bacteria and the strain commonly found today, the science team discovered astonishing similarity between them. The strain that ravaged Europe, killing 50 million Europeans between 1347 and 1351 and the plague strain today which sickens about 2,000 people each year are almost the same.

Scientists found only a few dozen changes among more than 4 million building blocks of DNA. And they found no discernible reason why the virulent pathogen of yore is so tame today.

Johannes Krause of the University of Tubingen in Germany says, “They’re almost identical. Even a mother and a child show more genetic differences than the ancient Black Death strain and modern plague strain.”

In the intervening years, the bacteria has changed very little while humans have changed a lot. Changes in medical treatment, sanitation and economics put people in a stronger position to fight the plague, which is generally passed from fleas on rodents to people or livestock.

The study authors say that the plague was so deadly because circumstances then were different not because the bacteria was particularly lethal.

Scientists also discovered that by being so devastating the plague essentially changed the human immune system. Study co-author Hendrik Poinar of McMaster University says, “It changed the human immune system, basically wiping out people who couldn’t deal with the disease and leaving the stronger to survive.”

Julian Parkhill, a disease genome expert at the UK Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute wasn’t involved in the Black Death genome project but has studied the bacteria. He says, “Getting an effectively complete genome sequence of a bacterium that lived nearly 700 years ago is incredibly exciting.”

Chris Chase, a veterinarian from South Dakota State University says this research has promise for understanding livestock diseases too. He says, “I could see that it could have big effects on cattle diseases that have been with us for a long time, pathogens like brucellosis and tuberculosis, and how they have changed under vaccine pressure from their ancestors. That can that help us to design new vaccines.”

This is the first time a science team has been able to reconstruct an pathogen of this size. Several years ago a team rebuilt the 1918 influenza virus contained in the lungs of frozen Eskimos. The genome of the plague bacterium is much larger than the flu virus.

Genome Sizes:
Black Death — 4,367,867 base pairs
1918 Flu — 582,970 base pairs
Human — 3,000,000,000 base pairs

Base Pair Basics

In molecular biology and genetics, the linking between two bases on opposite complementary DNA strands that are connected via hydrogen bonds is called a base pair (often abbreviated bp).

In basic Watson-Crick DNA base pairing, adenine (A) forms a base pair with thymine (T) and guanine (G) forms a base pair with cytosine (C). In RNA, thymine is replaced by uracil (U).

Some DNA- or RNA-binding enzymes can recognize specific base pairing patterns that identify particular regulatory regions of genes.

The size of an individual gene or an organism’s entire genome is often measured in base pairs because the structure of DNA is usually a double helix. Hence, the number of total base pairs is equal to the number of nucleotides in one of the strands (with the exception of non-coding single-stranded regions of telomeres).

As of Wednesday afternoon officials said 17 people had died in Germany and one in Sweden. A recent E. coli outbreak across Europe is believed to have started in northern Germany but it appears to be causing people to fall ill all around the world, including two cases in the U.S.

The unusually virulent strain of the bacteria commonly found in animal stomachs, including our own, has contaminated fresh vegetables and forced many markets to stop selling cucumbers, tomatoes and lettuce. At first, Germany pointed a finger at cucumbers imported from Spain but later withdrew the accusation.

Officials are worried that they may never know the cause of the food-borne illness, which has sickened over 2,000 people in under a week.

While e. coli bacterial outbreaks occur periodically from poorly handled produce, this outbreak has health officials and scientists more concerned. For one it is striking healthy adults over age 20 and is causing kidney failure, stroke and some patients to lapse into comas. That makes this much more serious than typical outbreaks which cause gastrointestinal distress for most and are more tend to be more serious for the elderly and children.

Scientists immediately ran a gene sequence of the new bacteria and found it is a new strain of E. coli, which had mutated from two other strains to combine their poisonous effects and become much more deadly.

Hilde Kruse, a food safety expert at the World Health Organization says, “This is a unique strain that has never been isolated from patients before.” And she adds, “Various characteristics that make it more virulent and toxin-producing.”

According to health experts this outbreak is already the third largest, following a 1996 Japanese outbreak and a 2000 Canadian outbreak. And it may be the deadliest.

The new European E. coli strain shows the presence of genes typically found in two different types of E. coli: enteroaggregative E. coli (EAEC) and enterohemorrhagic E. coli (EHEC).

Because many people likely ate contaminated vegetables but didn’t have strong reactions, doctors believe the outbreak may be much larger. Those with mild responses to the bacteria probably wouldn’t seek medical attention. They may stay home from work and recover quickly, thinking they had the flu.

The WHO put information about haemolytic uraemic syndrome (HUS) and enterohemorrhagic E. coli (EHEC) on its website after most people in Germany developed those two diseases from exposure to the bacteria.

A WHO statement says that as of May 31, nine of the patients in Germany had died of HUS and six of EHEC. It goes on to say, “There are many hospitalized patients, several of them requiring intensive care, including dialysis.”

NBC News reported that according to doctors, two-thirds of patients in Hamburg, Germany, were suffering from severe neurological problems such as language difficulties and seizures.

First, physicist Dr. Michio Kaku looks back over the natural disasters that rocked the world and does some future disaster forecasting as well.

2010 started with a major earthquake that killed 200,000 and 3 million homeless in Haiti. Then later in the year a gigantic quake in Chile knocked the Earth off its axis and shortened our 24-hour day by one micro-second. Dr. Kaku insists that the planet is not trying to seek revenge on the human species, which has also been very busy this year.

Top Bio Stories

According to Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News 2010 was a big year for biology. Last year third-generation gene sequencers came to market which opened the door to generate DNA sequences as well as epigenetic information with single-molecule sensitivity in real time. This was also the year that synthetic biology became mainstream. J. Craig Venter created a bacteria from scratch, making Synthia the first fully synthetic, self-replicating cell.

2010 Also saw the gene patent wars heat up. In the Spring a New York court declared the patent on the breast cancer genes BRCA1 and 2 invalid. This case will likely end up before the U.S. Supreme Court before it’s finished but the Justice Department now supports the lower court’s ruling, saying that naturally occurring phenomena such as genes should not be subject to intellectual property laws.

Stem cells, aging and cancer rounded out a full year for biotech. After President Obama repealed former President Bush’s ban on research involving embryonic stem cells this year a federal court judge placed the future of embryonic stem cell research in limbo again.

After all the excitement about the anti-aging benefits of sirtuins, the chemical found in red wine, is still not well understood. A couple of drug candidates involving the activator and inhibitor are in clinical trials but haven’t made the medical strides they promised last year.

A cancer vaccine called Provenge made it to market this year to help treat prostate cancer. Several other treatments are in late stage clinical trials and could be ready next year.

Top Physics and Space stories

One of the most inspiring space endeavors to finish a rocky trip in 2010 was the Japanese Hayabusa mission. It rendezvoused with asteroid Itokawa in 2005 after being pummeled by a large solar flare in 2003. The goal was to gather dust from the asteroid and bring it back to Earth.

After all the technical mishaps Japanese researchers didn’t hold much faith that the probe would return with any dust. But after a triumphant return to Earth in June, a few specks of the asteroid were identified. Now scientists have another tool to understand the beginnings of our solar system.

But 2010 was all about space water. Remember water on Mars? That was so last year. This year confirmed water on the moon and on one of Saturn’s moons.

Saturn's Moon Enceladus, as viewed from NASA's Cassini Spacecraft

The ever-impressive NASA Cassini Equinox mission continues to blow us away with amazing imagery from the Saturnian system, including what appears to be liquid water shooting from the south pole of Saturn’s moon Enceladus. The spacecraft has been orbiting the ringed gas giant since 2004, buzzing past its many moons and delivering some of the most detailed observations of this iconic planet we have ever seen.

But closer to home, NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter found that the moon not only has water ice stored in the shadows of its deepest and darkest craters, but there appears to be a lot of water just below the surface.

Discovery News asks how much water is there.

Writer Ian O’Neill says, “Bucketloads. 600 million gallons stashed away in 40 craters as measured by a NASA instrument that flew on board the Indian Chandrayaan-1 mission. But how much water is 600 million gallons? That’s enough water to fulfill Seattle’s water needs for a whole year… or enough water to manufacture 588 billion bags of Cool Ranch Doritos (according to one commenter who obviously has way too much time on his hands).”

(Artist rendering of moon landing...not a real picture)

2010 was the year that President Obama canceled the Constellation manned space program and scrapped plans to go to the moon. But it was also the year that commercial space flight became a reality. Leading the way into space is Virgin Galactic. SpaceX and Orbital Sciences are helping to privatize the space industry and will be fulfilling space services for NASA once the shuttle program is retired in early 2011.

But the biggest space story of the year was happening right here on Earth. Or rather under the Earth at the European nuclear science lab CERN. There particle physicists in search of the elusive Higgs Boson or God particle have successfully trapped antimatter for the first time.

Physicists capture antihydrogen for the first time in 2010

Capturing antihydrogen will allow physicists to study the beginning of the universe and try to figure out why if both matter and antimatter were created in equal amounts during the Big Bang that matter is all that mattered for its formation.

Top Stories by Accident

Science makes some its greatest discoveries through accidental encounters and without looking. A few stories found their way to us that way this year, mostly from the animal kingdom.

The most distressing story resulted from pictures of oil covered seabirds struggling in the slimy Gulf of Mexico after the BP Horizon Deepwater oil rig explosion and disaster. Months later, clean up efforts are still underway and scientists are looking at long term consequences of the largest oil spill in U.S. history.

But across the world, a two-foot long isopod — that looks like something Hollywood cooked up for a sci-fi movie — hitched a ride to the surface aboard a deep sea submarine, giving the world a glimpse of this rare giant creature.

Deep Ocean Submarine Finds Giant Hitchiking Isopod

The CBC’s science correspondent Bob McDonald puts the world’s first synthetic cell into perspective.

A cancer patient is helping doctors at the Mayo Clinic unlock a few genetic secrets. Rose Ellen Heley allowed oncologists to decode her DNA and map her genome.

Mayo Clinic researchers have learned something about her bone marrow cancer in the process that could help others suffering from cancer.

Dr. Keith Stewart says we are entering into the era of individualized medicine and using genetics will help treat all sorts of diseases including cancer.

The International Cancer Genome Project is the largest genetic undertaking since the Human Genome Project. It is trying to sequence the DNA of 50 types of cancer over the next few years.

Researchers decoded the genome for lung and skin cancer in mid December. CBC reports.

Fun fact: Scientists discovered one mutation per every 15 cigarettes smoked in lung cancer patients.

A Yeast Cell with Synthetic Genes, courtesy of Dr. Pamela Silver, Harvard Medical School

Life is often stranger than fiction. But the direction that biology is heading, synthetic life could be stranger than science fiction.

The emerging field of synthetic biology is moving closer and closer to creating new forms of life in the lab.

Amy Wright Collects Samples While Diving, courtesy of Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute at Florida Atlantic University

Cures to the most mundane and deadly illnesses have been found deep in the jungles, high in the mountains and hidden in the rainforests. But until recently not many scientists were looking to the ocean as another source of medicine.

But sponges, coral, snails and other marine creatures have a lot to offer the medical community. The small molecules that make them so adaptive to their harsh environments could give medical science an edge in fighting cancer, chronic pain and auto-immune diseases.

Story written and produced by Michelle Ma

Swine flu is racing across the world, spreading a deadly virus from continent to continent. The World Health Organization is worried about the beginning of a pandemic. The Center For Disease Control is trying to learn all it can about the new strain of human influenza A H1N1. And, vaccine manufacturers are hoping to offer some protection against this virus by fall.

But what makes this virus so tricky, so unusual and so deadly? Well, science is rushing to answer those questions.

Listen here.

Here’s the live virus outbreak map.

Photo by C. S. Goldsmith and A. Balish, CDC

Cows are more like people than we thought. Or so says new international research stemming from a six-year analysis of the entire genetic code for cows.

Over 300 researchers from over 25 countries have been poring over segments of DNA trying to identify which building blocks do what.

The preliminary results–spread out over 20 journal articles–could help advance medicine, cattle breeding and even reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Listen here.

Resveratrol, a key ingredient in red wine may lead to fountain of youth

Staying young and living longer is something that we all strive to do. Now science is coming closer to identifying a genetic fountain of youth and discovering proteins that control aging.

Resveratrol is a super-charging protein in cells that increase their energy and reduce the impact of free radicals which cause aging.

Some scientists are estimating that people born after 1975 could start living to 125. A few even point to a future where we replace body parts that no longer function. And one lone futurist wants to become a robot.

Wine Therapy:

Making a toast to your health could have new meaning this holiday season. Researchers have identified a substance in red wine that may hlep prevent Alzheimer’s disease. ScienCentral’s Brad Kloza reports.

As the line between fact and fiction blurs in television and film productions, Hollywood is turning to the National Academies of Science for a much-needed dose of reality.

A new initiative, called the Science & Entertainment Exchange was announced yesterday and will match creative screenwriters and producers with scientists to keep the fiction realistic or at least scientifically accurate.

Science is facing some big questions, like how will we capture excess atmospheric carbon dioxide or how will we overcome antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections?

But, a one-celled organism that lives in the sea may have the answers to health and environmental issues living inside.

Cyanobacteria and bacteriophages are knocking down barriers in biology and could even help the environment down the road. But first, scientists need to figure out how these tiny sea creatures tick.

A few years ago scientists decided that they needed to make sequencing a complete set of human DNA affordable. So began the race to get to the $1,000 genome sequence.

Complete Genomics announced today that it has cut the price to do a full DNA run of a person to $5,000 starting next year.

An ambitious undertaking to count and categorize all life on Earth is under way and has hit a new snag.

With almost a half million species assigned unique DNA-based barcodes, a group of scientists is worried that the sampling technique may be leading to problems.

New research in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences shows that there may be a problem with the technique used to grab part of every organism’s genome.

Some of the top scientific minds met at University of Washington last spring. Their purpose–to discuss the future of personal genomics.

They met on the eve of the passage of the Genetic Information Non-Discrimination Act.

MIT biology professor Eric Lander, The Wellcome Trust’s Dr. Leena Peltonen, Bill Gates III, and Harvard Geneticist George Church discussed the state of the science.

Dr. Maynard Olson moderated the panel as they discussed the implications of knowing genetic predispositions for disease, talked about ways to get the public more engaged and, they shared whether or not they each had their genome sequenced or would if the chance arose.

Bill Gates, through his foundation, is trying to find cures to what ails us. He’s taking on malaria, tuberculosis and other diseases that kill millions every year. With better understanding of genes and our whole genetic map–our genomes–he says we can eradicate these global killers.

Eric Lander Background (26 minutes)
eric-lander-biology-background.mp3

Discussion moderated by Maynard Olson (37 minutes)
moderated-discussion-with-maynard-olson.mp3

Bill Gates comments (8 minutes)
bill-gates-on-personalized-genome.mp3

Thousands of spinal cord injuries and disease could disappear overnight if doctors and scientists could figure out how to turn some genes off and others on.

This medical mystery is getting a boost from the institute funded by billionaire Paul Allen. Today, the mouse spinal cord atlas was unveiled in Washington D.C. and it will provide a road map for neuroscientists asking specific questions related to the brain.

Today marks the 55th Anniversary of the discovery of DNA’s structure. It’s also the 5th Anniversary of the fully sequenced human genome. Yesterday the U.S. Senate passed the first genetic non-discrimination bill. It heads to the House where it will likely pass and President Bush says he’ll sign the GINA into law.

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is calling for a National DNA database to help solve more crimes and protect innocent people from being convicted. He’ll appear on Fox’s America’s Most Wanted tomorrow.

To mark all of these genetic occasions, National Institute of Health has declared April 25 National DNA Day.

A super synthesizing microbe is turning trash into gold. Or at least sugar which can be refined into biofuel. That’s almost as good as gold these days.

Everybody has 23 pairs of chromosomes. It’s just part of our genetic makeup. We get half from our mothers and half from our fathers. And that combination of genes outlines our natural abilities, our appearance and even what diseases we could develop. Now a company in California is trying to make decoding individual genome’s as common as a basic medical test.

Nutrigenomics is a relatively new science that explores the relationship between genetic makeup and certain nutrients found in food that may assist in the prevention of specific diseases. It may help scientists better understand certain genetic disorders. For now, it’s helping arthritic pets climb stairs more easily and lead better lives.