Environmental News Network

“Living drug factories” may one day replace injections

Patients with diabetes generally rely on constant injections of insulin to control their disease. But MIT spinout Sigilon Therapeutics is developing an implantable, insulin-producing device that may one day make injections obsolete.

Sigilon recently partnered with pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly and Company to develop “living drug factories,” made of encapsulated, engineered cells that can be safely implanted in the body, and produce insulin over the course of months or even years. Down the road, cells may also be engineered to secrete other hormones, proteins, and antibodies.

Adaptable and driven by renewable energy, saildrones voyage into remote waters

In March 2009, engineer Richard Jenkins broke the world land speed record for a wind-powered vehicle by sailing a bright green sailboat on wheels across a dried lakebed in Nevada at 126 miles per hour. Now, after many engineering developments and an orange paint job, Jenkins’ design autonomously sails the sea gathering ecologic, oceanic, and atmospheric data in the employ of NOAA.

Climate change broadens threat of emerald ash borer

More Canadian cities will experience damage from the emerald ash borer than previously thought. As a result of climate change and fewer days of extreme cold, the beetle may eat its way further north than originally estimated.

437 million tonnes of fish, $560 billion wasted due to destructive fishing operations

Industrial fisheries that rely on bottom trawling wasted 437 million tonnes of fish and missed out on $560 billion in revenue over the past 65 years, new UBC research has found.

A new giant virus found in the waters off Oahu

A new, unusually large virus that infects common marine algae has been characterized by researchers at the Daniel K. Inouye Center for Microbial Oceanography: Research and Education (C-MORE) at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa‘s School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology. Found in the coastal waters off Oʻahu, it contains the biggest genome ever sequenced for a virus infecting a photosynthetic organism.