Asimov Press

A Visual Guide to DNA Sequencing How to “read” nucleic acids, from Sanger to nanopores.

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A Visual Guide to DNA Sequencing.

Learn how different DNA sequencing technologies work, from Sanger sequencing to Illumina to nanopores. (Complete with illustrations!)

Written by Evan DeTurk. Illustrated by Ella Watkins-Dulaney.

Baseline Drift A eulogy to the reference human.

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The Institute for Human Reference was founded in 2053.

Their goal? To "define the reference human."

The task, of course, proved impossible. For decades, humans had quietly been altered in hundreds of ways. Averages were no longer clinically useful.

[New Fiction] BASELINE DRIFT

How Nature Became a 'Prestige' Journal Since launching in 1869, Nature has evolved from a periodical offering commentary on pigeons to the prestige journal in science. But how did Nature build its reputation, and can it last?

Read the full article & preview all pieces in Issue 09: www.asimov.press/p/nature

How did @Nature become "prestigious" to scientists?

In our opening article of Issue 09, writer Robert Reason traces the journal's history.

By understanding how Nature’s prestige was constructed, we can also clarify which elements are deserved and which are entrenched.

Why the FDA Is Slow to Remove Drugs On the 90-year saga of oral phenylephrine.

Also our final article in Issue 08! Written by Michael DePeau-Wilson
( @MedReporterMike )

Read & subscribe: www.asimov.press/p/drug-remo...

Phenylephrine, marketed as a nasal decongestant, was first sold in the U.S. in 1938.

In 2007, a formal petition was filed to have it removed based on evidence showing it did not work. The FDA (finally) pulled it until 2024.

This is the 90-year saga of an ineffective drug.

A Most Important Mustard On the origins of Arabidopsis thaliana, the premier model for plant biology.

www.asimov.press/p/arabidopsis

Arabidopsis thaliana, plant biology's ubiquitous model organism, came from the Harz Mountains of northern Germany.

It was discovered in 1542 by Johannes Thal and, over the next 500 years, spread through labs around the world.

@AlexandraBalwit tells the story in a new essay.🔻

Out today: A broad-coverage antivenom, made by mixing eight different antibodies from a llama and alpaca, protects mice against snakebites from 17 of 18 deadly species in Africa.

The antivenom outperformed a WHO-approved remedy that is already on the market.

Read: www.asimov.press/p/broad-ant...

Making the Electron Microscope In a little over a century, the electron microscope evolved from a tool barely capable of resolving virus particles into one able to capture atomic detail.

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Electron microscopes are one of the great feats of human engineering.

These towering metal tubes, filled with detectors and electromagnetic coils, are used to image the smallest of molecules.

Our latest essay by Smrithi Sunil is a deep dive into the making of these machines.

The Price of E. coli Bioengineers commonly view microbes as reprogrammable “cellular factories” for manufacturing high-value molecules. But what are we throwing away?

A new quantitative essay from Sam Clamons.

Read & subscribe: press.asimov.com/articles/pr...

Scientists often engineer microbes, like E. coli, to make drugs and other molecules.

But what if, instead, we could isolate ALL the components of a cell into little vials and sell them? How much would, say, 1 liter of cells be worth?

The answer, it turns out, is about $600,000.

We previously published an interactive about the repressilator, a type of gene circuit.

You can drag sliders to learn how promoters, decay rates, and other parameters affect its behavior.

We'd like to publish more digital interactives like this. So what should we make next?

Asimov Press 2025 Survey Your feedback will significantly shape our coverage!

We're planning to scale up next year, with lots more articles and multimedia formats (and books).

We'd love to hear from you before then. What articles do you like, what do you not like, and how can we do better?

1-minute survey: forms.gle/FSePEaW1rxD...

Asimov Press 2025 Survey Your feedback will significantly shape our coverage!

We're planning to scale up next year, with lots more articles and multimedia formats (and books).

We'd love to hear from you before then. What articles do you like, what do you not like, and how can we do better?

1-minute survey: forms.gle/FSePEaW1rxD...

A Liver on Ice How a liver goes from a brain-dead donor to a living recipient.

Read & subscribe: press.asimov.com/articles/liver

Writer Donna Vatnick spent dozens of hours observing a liver transplant.

She watched as surgeons extracted an organ from a dead donor, placed it on ice, flew it to another hospital, and transplanted it into the recipient.

The full story, told in intricate detail, is out now:

Our Next Book: Making the Modern Laboratory An update on a forthcoming book from Asimov Press, which will delve into the origins of the machines, equipment, organisms, and reagents that have become familiar features of molecular biology laboratories over the last sixty years.

Read and pitch an idea: press.asimov.com/articles/ma...

Our next book: "Making the Modern Laboratory"

An illustrated, coffee table-sized volume, it covers the origins of the machines, organisms and tools used in modern biology research. More importantly, it's a call to imagine the FUTURE of the laboratory.

Come help us write it!

A Shift from Animal Testing There has been a push toward animal-free alternatives in scientific research. But the success of such alternatives hinges upon whether and where they can outperform standard animal models.

Read & subscribe: press.asimov.com/articles/an...

The F.D.A. wants to make animal studies “the exception rather than the norm for pre-clinical safety/toxicity testing” over the next 3-5 years.

But just how likely is this to happen? Our latest essay, a Deep Dive into non-animal methods by Celia Ford, answers your questions.

The World’s Most Common Surgery In 4,000 years, cataract surgery went from a crude procedure involving thorn instruments to a 20-minute operation with a 95 percent clinical success rate. The next step is broadening access.

Read & subscribe: press.asimov.com/articles/ca...

Today we are launching Issue 08 of the magazine.

Our first piece is THE WORLD'S MOST COMMON SURGERY.

It explains how cataract surgery went from a crude procedure involving thorn instruments to a 20-minute operation with a 95 percent clinical success rate.

Our GMO restaurant pop-up, FARMA, was just featured in The Economist.

www.economist.com/science-and...

Image by Martina Maritan, Scripps Research Institute.

Some fun numbers about the "speeds" of cells:

1. Sugar molecules move at ~250 mph in a cell, about 2x the speed of a Cessna 172 plane.
2. Every protein is hit by ten trillion water molecules each second.
3. ATP synthase (which makes ATP) spins around 8,040 times per minute.

An Oral History Interview with ARIA CEO Ilan Gur The Spotify version of today’s episode can be found at this link.

Read a short transcript: press.asimov.com/articles/aria

Watch the full interview on Eric Gilliam's blog: www.freaktakes.com/p/an-oral-h...