DNA Barcodes Gone Wild

A team of researchers at Sinai Health System'sLunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute (LTRI) and University of Toronto's Donnelly Centre has developed a new technology that can stitch together DNA barcodes inside a cell to simultaneously search amongst millions of protein pairs for protein interactions. The paper will be published today in the journal Molecular Systems Biology.

In recent years, DNA barcoding has enabled scientists to carry out highly parallel experiments, in which many different types of cells can be tested in the same tube. This has been further enabled by next-generation DNA sequencing which can efficiently count barcodes and 'read out' the results. However, the number of experiments that can be combined in the same tube has been limited to the number of barcoded cell types. Allowing barcodes to fuse together inside cells means scientists can now break that barrier. The new technology results in a 10-fold increased rate of discovery for the same price.

By 2020, China Wants a Rover on Mars

China plans to land a rover on Mars by 2020.

“The USA, Europe and India have all sent probes to Mars,” said Wu Weiren, the designer of its lunar missions in an interview with BBC News. “We will orbit Mars, land and deploy a rover—all in one mission.

According to the Associated Press (AP), the chief administrator of the country’s space program confirmed the plan at a news conference on Friday. The mission was approved in January. Also around that time China announced its plans to land a probe on the moon’s far side. 

“Our short-term goal is to orbit the moon, land on the moon and take samples back from the moon,” Weiren told BBC News. “Our long-term goal is to explore, land, and settle” the moon.

China National Space Administration head Xu Dazhe said the Martian undertaking is quite a challenge. “Only by completing this Mars probe mission can China say it has embarked on an exploration of deep space in the true sense,” Dazhe said at a press conference, according to theXinhua News Agency.   

WHY SPACEX'S ROCKET LANDING ON A DRONE SHIP IS A BIG DEAL

There couldn't have been a more perfect launch than yesterday's. The sun was shining, a gentle breeze was blowing, and SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket took off right on schedule. As we watched from a few miles away, the glare of the rocket's flames was searingly bright, hard to look at but impossible to look away from, like the sparklers kids play with on the Fourth of July. The sound, too, was like Independence Day, the boom and shake of a thousand fireworks going off, crashing through the sound barrier.

HOW YOU'LL DIE ON MARS

We're on our way to Mars. NASA has a plan to land astronauts on its surface by the 2030s. Private spaceflight companies like SpaceX have alsoexpressed interest in starting their own colonies there, while the infamousMars One project has already enlisted civilians for a one-way trip to our planetary neighbor in 2020.While many may dream of living their remaining days on Mars, those days may be numbered. The Martian environment poses significant challenges to Earth life, and establishing a Mars habitat will require an extraordinary amount of engineering prowess and technological knowhow to ensure the safety of its residents.

4 SCIENTIFIC NAMING CONTESTS THAT WENT AWRY

Sometimes, naming contests can go the way that their creators expected.Asteroids get perfectly appropriate names like 'Bennu' sent in by adorable kids. When the International Astronomical Union (IAU) asked people to submit names of exoplanets and stars in 2014, they got 45 perfectly reasonable names with the voting public mostly sticking to one person one vote, and rejecting such silly names as 'Starry Bunnies' in favor of the more academic (and boring) 'Helvetios'.

Other times, things don't go so smoothly. People running internet polls seem to forget that everyone with internet access can vote in the polls, not just the die-hard fans taking the contest seriously. Internet polls sent the rapper Pitbull to a rural Alaskan Walmart, almost sent Justin Bieber to North Korea, and almost got Austin Texas' garbage division renamed the “Fred Durst Society of the Humanitiesand Arts”.