Longevity science

“Organ-on-a-chip” technologies could not only do away with animal models that have proven disappointingly unreliable, but their ease of use and affordability could speed up the drug discovery process.

The newest of these, gut-on-a-chip, attempts to mimic the physiology, structure, and mechanics of the human intestines. It is roughly the size of a thumb drive and contains a central chamber that houses a pliant, porous membrane lined with human intestinal epithelial cells, producing an artificial intestinal barrier. It can even harbor the microbes normally abundant in our gut’s luminal space.

Not only does the 3D chip mimic organ anatomy, the membrane is controlled with a vacuum pump to produce the peristaltic motions that occur during digestion.

Building a vast digital simulation of the brain could transform neuroscience and medicine and reveal new ways of making more powerful computers.

Reductionist biology—examining individual brain parts, neural circuits and molecules—has brought us a long way, but it alone cannot explain the workings of the human brain, an information processor within our skull that is perhaps unparalleled anywhere in the universe. We must construct as well as reduce and build as well as dissect. To do that, we need a new paradigm