Health & Medicine / Biotechnology

The 3-D Simulation that Lets Your Surgeon Practice...on You

A new technology lets doctors test out procedures on a simulation of the patient's anatomy. 10.28.2009

Future Tech: Doctor on-Call? Cell-Phone Cameras Can Diagnose Disease

Developing nations often have a lack of medical facilities but good cell phones. The CellScope turns the latter into the former. 10.20.2009

Five Questions: Turning Microbes Into Micro Refineries

Synthetic biologist Reshma Shetty predicts that we will eventually engineer organisms to grow everything that we manufacture today. 10.12.2009

The Second Coming of Gene Therapy

For years, gene therapy produced tons of hype but no results. Recently, though, new approaches have yielded its first successes: breakthrough treatments for blindness, cancer, and the deadly bubble boy disease. 09.02.2009

3-D Scanning: How to Put the Real World Into Your Computer

The recent imaging of two 300-million-year-old proto-spiders was just the tip of the iceberg: Here are 12 new scanning technologies that are bringing amazing 3-D images into Hollywood, medical care—and home PCs. 08.12.2009

Discover Interview: Thanks, Evolution, For Making the Great Building Material Called DNA

Electronic computers are great at what they do. But to accomplish really complicated physical tasks—like building an insect—Erik Winfree says you have to grow them from DNA. 08.11.2009

Shadow Life

DISCOVER Fiction: In the post-economic future, big-ticket science is dead and amateurs hunt aliens using gear scored cheap on eBay. 08.04.2009

Are Smart Drugs the Answer to Bad Moods—and a Bad Economy?

Today’s mind-altering chemicals can improve your memory, alertness, and mood. Just wait until you see what tomorrow’s crop can do. 04.02.2009

Autonomous Claw Could Become the World's Tiniest Surgeon

Snowflake-like robot could be used in biopsies and other procedures. 02.06.2009

Evolution by Intelligent Design

Bioengineers will likely control the future of humans as a species. 02.02.2009

Is That a Dead Mouse You're Cloning?

Researchers clone living pups from long-dead, frozen rodents. 01.12.2009

Skipping the Problem Is a Jump Towards Curing Paralysis

Researchers discover a way to re-route brain signals to a paralyzed limb. 01.10.2009

#9: Your Genome, Now Available for a (Relative) Discount

The first cost around $1 million; now, it's more like $200,000. 12.21.2008

#16: Researchers Produce Human Blood from Stem Cells

It's not quite the same, but lab-generated blood gets the job done. 12.19.2008

#41: A Synthetic Genome Is Built From Scratch

The art of recreating an entire bacterial genome. 12.14.2008

#47: Biologists Watch HIV Replicate in Real Time

Using fluorescent proteins, researchers observer the virus forming. 12.13.2008

#68: Solved: The Mystery of Gravity-Defying Sap

One synthetic tree accomplishes what loads of scientists never could. 12.10.2008

#74: Viruses Are Put to Work Building Superbatteries

Engineers turn viruses into little engineers. 12.09.2008

20 Best Brains Under 40

Young innovators are changing everything from theoretical mathematics to cancer therapy. 11.20.2008

What Is This? A Papier-Maché Piñata?

There's no candy hidden in these, but they do hold other secrets. 11.05.2008

The Invention that Saved—and Destroyed—Millions of Lives

A new book describes how German chemists find the secret to nitrogen fertilizer—and explosives. 10.12.2008

A Visual Tour of the World of Science

An upcoming museum exhibit shows Technicolor microexplosions, water lilies as delicate as breast tissue, and more. 10.02.2008

Fighting for the Right to Clone

Stem cell and cloning guru Robert Lanza has battled the Catholic Church, the White House, and violent protesters. 08.19.2008

How to Teach Science to the Pope

The Vatican keeps close tabs on the latest science—and integrates new research into its modern theology. 08.18.2008

10 Ways Genetically Engineered Microbes Could Help Humanity

Fighting cancer, producing renewable fuels, and making your clothing glow in the dark. 08.06.2008

The Beautiful Mind of Freeman Dyson

Thoughts and illustrations from the head of a science legend. 06.09.2008

A Dead Man's Eyes Hold the Key to His Age

Proteins in the eye offer a new means of identifying corpses. 05.02.2008

In Election Year, Stem Cell Question Grows Still Gnarlier

Bush says he won the war, but the prez ain't seen nothin' yet. 03.03.2008

A Chat With George W. Bush’s Conscience

Embryonic stem cells crashed against Leon Kass’ old-school moralism. 02.20.2008

9. The Genome Turns Personal

With individual sequencing, medicine may soon be custom-tailored to your own DNA. 12.12.2007

Beauty Sans the Beast

Lab-grown skin saves cute li'l bunnies from cosmetics testing. 11.07.2007

Space-Faring Fungus Hats and Synthetic Biology

If the science moves like Moore's law, get ready for bio-freakiness. 10.22.2007

The Future of Blood

Some researchers tinker with real blood; some create from scratch. 08.06.2007

World's Smallest Liver

A nano-sized laboratory could help find cures for liver diseases. 05.01.2007

Good News for Alcoholics

Artificial livers can be grown in a petri dish 03.20.2007

Blinded by Science: The Way of All Flesh

Bringing home the bacon may become a thing of the past when we can grow our own. 07.12.2006

Taking the Sting Out of Brain Cancer

A new drug treatment uses scorpion venom to find tumors. 06.30.2006

Cancer Rewind?

Reversing cell division could have implications for cancer. 06.27.2006

Grow Your Own Organs

Organ printers build living transplantable organs one layer at a time. 06.25.2006

No More Nerve Damage

A new drug could reverse nerve damage in diabetics. 05.26.2006

Muscle Injection

Gene therapy could cure muscular dystrophy. 04.17.2006

Alzheimer's Hope

Gene therapy trial proves successful. 04.07.2006

Nanotube Knees and Elbows

Goodbye, metal: Doctors grow new bones. 03.31.2006

Young at Heart

Protein returns youth to cardiac muscle. 02.28.2006

Nerve Cell Repair

New hope for strokes. 01.19.2006

The Year in Science: Technology

Carbon nanotubes, lab-grown meat, humanoid robots, and more. 01.08.2006

The Year in Science: Medicine

The human gut's vulnerable to HIV, Race-based drugs approved, fetal skin grafts mend burns, and more. 01.08.2006

Tissue Engineering

Biochemistry that makes alchemy look easy 10.24.2005

The Brain

Neural implants will treat tremors, paralysis, and even memory loss 10.24.2005

I Spy a Bionic Eye

08.06.2005

Brain in a Dish

02.06.2005

The Biology of . . . Cryogenics

Wood frogs survive long periods in a deep freeze. Can people do the same? 02.06.2005

Bite Back

12.03.2004

Fat Into Bone

08.02.2004

Will Genetics Destroy Sports?

A new age of biotechnology promises bigger, faster, better bodies—and blood, urine, and saliva tests can't stop the cheating 07.25.2004

Fuzzy Duplicates

05.29.2004

Gross Anatomy

4 makes cadavers an art form and dissection uncomfortably real 03.28.2004

Artistic Neurons

11.10.2003

Discover Dialogue: Pharmacologist Susan Greenfield

Happy people are not ambitious; they do not build civilizations' 09.01.2003

Spray-On Organs

05.01.2003

Genetics

01.01.2003

The Chemistry of . . . Blood

The first safe substitutes for blood are ready to start flowing 07.01.2002

20 Biotech Geniuses to Watch

Will biologists ever work exclusively at universities again? 06.01.2002

Follow Up:

05.01.2002

Winner - Editor's Choice

Laurence M. Corash, M.D.; Co-founder & Chief Medical Officer, Cerus Corporation; Concord, California 07.01.2001

Blood Without Fear

Discover Magazine Innovation Awards 07.01.2001

Pulling Pain Up

03.01.2001

Future Tech

What's beyond silicon and fiber optics? Would you believe microprocessors with living brain tissue? 10.01.2000

Sexing the Genome

09.01.2000

Immortal Cells

Is this the end of facial wrinkles and aging arteries that clog? 06.01.1999

Vegetable Vaccines

09.01.1998

The Mothmobile

07.01.1998

Saviors

Someday the transplant you need may be growing on the hoof—or in a lab. 05.01.1998

Ontogeny Recapitulated

Biologists are learning how to turn on the genes that make our cells young. With them, we might repair our bones. Replenish our blood. Replace our limbs. And maybe some brain cells too. 05.01.1998

A Clone of One's Own

First sheep, then cows, soon monkeys: It's only a matter of time until the first human clone is cooing in its—uh, mother's?—arms. 05.01.1998

A Head Full of Hope

How do you launch something into orbit without using any fuel? A prototype spacecraft relies on a To attack a terrifying form of brain tumor, surgeons are adding a tiny new tool to their kit: a genetically tweaked virus, designed to mark cancer cells for death. 04.01.1998

The Year in Science: Genetics 1997

A Man-Made Chromosome 01.01.1998

Fake Cells

05.01.1997

Patent Medicine

01.01.1997

The Good Virus

As bacterial diseases develop resistance to antibiotics, medical resarchers rediscover an older strategy: setting one microbe to kill another. 11.01.1996

Gentle Bullets

01.01.1996

The Subtle Approach

01.01.1996

Fetal Attraction

In theory, brain cells that have been killed by Parkinson's disease can be replaced with cells from the brains of aborted fetuses. Now that the necessary politics and the technology are in place, neurosurgeons are about to find out if that theory is correct. 07.01.1995

The Mother of All Blood Cells

Stem cells, capable of generating an endless supply of red cells, white cells, and platelets, have also generated a heated scientific controversy--and millions of dollars for the man who claims to have found them. 03.01.1995

Weed on Parole

03.01.1992