TECH & INNOVATIONAt the forefront of the fight against antibiotic resistance, a team of scientists led by St. Jude Children's Research Hospital researchers have developed a new weapon. The second-generation antibiotic shows early effectiveness against common bacterial infections that have the potential to develop antibiotic resistance and pose a serious health threat to children and adults.
Three major universities are now engaged in a patent lawsuit to protect their rights to use genome editing technology called CRISPR-Cas9. The fallout will have far more impact than the simple settling of ownership and intellectual property rights, however; experts believe that CRISPR-Cas9 may be the most efficient route toward a ticking off items on a laundry list of amazing biotechnological discoveries.
College rivalries are nothing new. Some even reach legendary proportions. USC vs. Notre Dame, Alabama vs. Auburn, Army vs. Navy. They make for great football. Not so much when it comes to technological rights, as we're discovering in the ongoing battle between UC Berkeley and MIT, as they wrestle over the patent for a machine that just might revolutionize genetic engineering.
China has shocked the world and has since been ordered to "rein in" its scientists who have edited the DNA of human embryos for the first time, a practice that has been banned in many parts of the world.