Dragon blood inspires synthetic peptide

The peptide DRGN-1 may have a pharmaceutical application to prevent wounds from becoming infected.

http://www.nature.com/articles/s41522-017-0017-2

CRISPR-cas9 gene editing vs metastatic non-small-cell lung cancer

Yes, in humans.  

http://www.nature.com/news/crispr-gene-editing-tested-in-a-person-for-the-first-time-1.20988

If successful, this could be a major development in a model of therapy for curing many diseases.

A new method for use in pathogen identification

The method uses magnetic beads coated with Fc-mannose-binding lectin to isolate pathogens from fluid or tissue samples.

news 

http://wyss.harvard.edu/viewpressrelease/267

and the paper here:

http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0156287#abstract0

A course on the Ebola Virus

Here's an Emory University online course: 

Ebola Virus Disease: An Evolving Epidemic

Through the Looking Glass

What can we learn about the latest photonic and optical tools for biological applications?

From the 2016 SPIE Photonics West BIOS expo, we asked a few of the many exhibitors to shed light on some of these tools and the science behind them.  

I would like to thank the following participants in this 2/13/16 video.  My apologies for the low quality, I shot it with a point and shoot still camera.  More information can be found by following the links to their websites.

1. Mary Harper Ph.D. talks about advanced microscopy products.  

http://www.etaluma.com/

2.  Xiaoshi Zhang, Ph.D  shows us the eXtreme Ultraviolet Ultrafast Source (XUUS4) from KMLABS.  More about the science and technology making nanoscale imaging down to the atomic level may be found here:

http://www.kmlabs.com/content/high-harmonic-generation

3. Ben Barbieri, Ph.D. , President of ISS gives us a clear and concise explanation of FRET (Förster resonance energy transfer) 

There is a class in April 2016 to learn more about this and related subjects:

https://www.fluorescence-foundation.org/courses.aspx?id=champaign2016

and be sure to check out the ISS website

http://www.iss.com/

4. Dipl. -Phys. Uwe Ortmann from the Berlin based PicoQuant talks to us about confocal microscopy which enables us to image single molecules and proteins. The website includes links to workshops and courses: http://www.picoquant.com/

 5. Bob Kressin, President of KS Technologies shows how his company designed a spectroscopy (determine the chemical composition of a substance and match it to a database of materials) device using DLP (think video projector) technology.  https://kstechnologies.com/

6. Scott Rudder, Vice President of Marketing and Sales at IPS Innovative Photonic Solutions talks to us about Ramen spectroscopy which enables us to examine molecular structure (you could for example identify the active pharmaceutical ingredients and polymorphic forms of a drug) I'm sorry Scott but my camera ran out of card so you were not able to finish telling us about the Integrated Ramen Probe but there is more about it here:

http://ipslasers.com/integrated-Raman-probe.html 

The video is about 13 minutes, we hope you enjoy seeing the latest advances in biophotonic and optics technology.

For other videos on photonics see:

http://spie.org/app/spietv/default.aspx