Today’s Newscripts post was written by C&EN intern and genomics fiend Puneet Kollipara.

This year marks the 10th anniversary of the Human Genome Project’s completion—when scientists successfully sequenced nearly all the base pairs of human DNA. It’s also the 60th anniversary of James Watson and Francis Crick’s discovery of the double-helix structure of DNA. What better way to commemorate those milestones than with a museum exhibition devoted to genomics?

VIPs browse “Genome: Unlocking Life’s Code,” which seeks to educate the public on genomics and its societal implications, following a reception honoring the exhibit’s launch. Credit: Puneet Kollipara

That’s exactly what the Smithsonian Institution and the National Institutes of Health have done in a new partnership. Last week they opened “Genomics: Unlocking Life’s Code” to educate the public on the science of genomics and its societal implications. A website accompanying the exhibit provides additional educational resources. The 4,400-sq-ft exhibit runs at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, in Washington, D.C., through September 2014, after which it will travel to other museums around the country.

The exhibit’s architects faced a number of challenges when dreaming up the installation. For starters, translating such a large, hard-to-visualize scientific field into a story that a general audience can understand was no easy task, says Vence Bonham, a researcher with NIH’s National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI). To aid in communicating the concepts, the exhibit features a number of high-resolution screens that play videos or animated graphics explaining key concepts in genetics and genomics.

The exhibit also emphasizes the use of activities to teach complicated subjects; for example, an interactive puzzle teaches visitors about how genomics could improve medicine by having them use genetic information to find the best drug for a disease. Another display asks visitors’ opinions of controversial issues in genomics, such as whether people are obligated to participate in genomic research.

Other activities within the exhibit are just plain cool: One lets you build a necklace that has a vial containing a visible sample of your own DNA — a way to remind you that nearly all your cells contain the code of life. To make the DNA visible, visitors take a sample of their cheek cells and place them into a detergent- and alcohol-containing solution that breaks down cell membranes and causes the genetic material to clump together.

Another more unique challenge during the creation of “Genomics” was the ever-changing nature of the scientific field: Just as genomics is continually evolving, so too must the exhibit. To address this challenge, the designers made the exhibit flexible enough that individual elements can be swapped or edited easily, says NHGRI Director Eric Green. The exhibit architects don’t just expect to have to make changes — in a way they welcome them, because new discoveries will likely benefit society.

The exhibit features a variety of activities, including a polling station where users can sound off on their opinions about controversial issues in genomics. Credit: Donald E. Hurlbert and James Di Loreto / Smithsonian

Visitors won’t just be able to learn about genomics. Another interactive activity will let them participate in studying it, too — sort of. NIH researchers plan to set up a station where visitors can volunteer to participate in a series of surveys on their perceptions of genetics and genomics. They’ll also be asked to share how their perceptions of social norms and constructs change as they’re exposed to genomic information.

The surveys aren’t ready to go public yet. Once the surveys are ready, though, the reports that follow from them, says Barbara Biesecker, also a researcher with NHGRI, will serve as a “first foray” into how the general public perceives and is influenced by genomics. The findings could help scientists improve how they write and talk about genomics to the public, or how physicians explain genetic testing to patients, she says.

The icing on the genomics-exhibit cake was news that came out the day “Genomics” was unveiled to reporters. To the surprise of those in attendance (including me), the U.S. Supreme Court handed down a landmark decision holding that human genes can’t be patented.

The ruling might have stolen the show. But in a way it actually enhanced the unveiling, and it will enhance the exhibit itself, NHGRI’s Green says. “I think it makes it incredibly emblematic of why we need to help educate the general public about the field of genomics,” he tells C&EN. “And now here we give them an exhibit and a website to understand what they need to know about genes and genomes and genetics.”

I spoke with Gevo’s CEO Pat Gruber yesterday at the BIO show in Montreal. He was rather forthright about what happened. First, they were running the plant at full scale with their own yeast and had their separation process running. They were producing truckloads of isobutanol. The facility had previously been an ethanol fermentation plant. With the new operating conditions, a dormant microbe sprang to life, contaminating the process. The product was still being made but the company decided to shut down the plant and decontaminate it.

“We had to identify the sources of the contaminant, change the pipes, sanitize the equipment, train the staff and modify the operating conditions to favor our yeast,” Gruber recounted. He emphasized that these plants are not sterile like a pharma plant would be. Instead, vectors of contamination are controlled so they stay at very low levels.

When I wrote about biobased chemicals last summer, analysts held out Gevo as an example of a success story. It was shortly after the story ran that Gevo stopped its process at its Luverne, Minn. plant due to problems with contamination. The episode shows the kind of growing pains that the industry and its followers are learning to anticipate and accept.

Other companies might face different kinds of growing pains – for Gevo there was what is called technical risk. Other firms are making chemicals such as biosuccinic acid. They also face a market risk because for most applications their product is not a drop in raw material, so downstream customers must adopt it.

This year is the tenth anniversary of the World Congress for Industrial Technology. Historically, it seems to take about a decade for a new chemical concept to reach commercialization, and then some more time to penetrate new markets. This makes 2013 a very interesting year for the biobased chemical industry.

Included in the changes are revisions to the safety requirements. Former committee leaders told me a few years ago that the last guidelines revision, completed in 2008, had more explicitly addressed safety than earlier versions, so the newly-proposed revisions take the criteria a step further.

Here’s what the requirements say now in the safety section:

7.3 Laboratory Safety Skills.
Approved programs should promote a safety-conscious culture in which students understand the concepts of safe laboratory practices and how to apply them. Programs should train students in the aspects of modern chemical safety appropriate to their educational level and scientific needs. A high degree of safety awareness should begin during the first laboratory course, and both classroom and laboratory discussions must stress safe practices. Students should understand responsible disposal techniques, understand and comply with safety regulations, understand and use material safety data sheets (MSDS), recognize and minimize potential chemical and physical hazards in the laboratory, and know how to handle laboratory emergencies effectively.

And here’s what’s proposed (overall, there’s a shift from “shoulds” to “musts”):

Section 7.3 Laboratory Safety Skills (p. 14-15)
Programs must train students in the aspects of modern chemical safety appropriate to their educational level and scientific needs. Approved programs must promote a safety-conscious culture in which students understand the concepts of safe laboratory practices and apply them.

• Programs must train students in the aspects of modern chemical safety appropriate to their educational and scientific needs.
• The promotion of safety awareness and skills must begin during the first laboratory experience and be incorporated into each lab experience thereafter. Classroom and laboratory discussions must stress safe practices. Students should be actively engaged in the evaluation and assessment of safety risks associated with laboratory experiences.
• Safety understanding and skills should build throughout the curriculum and be assessed.
• Students should
  • understand responsible disposal techniques
  • understand and comply with safety regulations
  • understand and use material safety data sheets (MSDS)
  • recognize and minimize potential chemical and physical hazards in the laboratory and know how to effectively handle laboratory emergencies.
• Students must undergo general safety training as well as lab-specific training before beginning undergraduate research.
• Approved programs must have an active, departmental safety committee.

What say you, readers? Are the proposed changes necessary or sufficient? What would you add or subtract?

From McCoy and Darbeau’s piece this week: “Please send comments to cpt@acs.org by Aug. 1 so they can be discussed at the next CPT meeting. The committee will also hold an extended open meeting on Sept. 8 at the ACS national meeting in Indianapolis that will focus on the guidelines revision. Details will be posted on the CPT website. CPT plans to publish the new guidelines in 2014.”

This year is the show’s tenth anniversary and it is reported to be the largest one yet with 1200 attendees. There are actually seven tracks of breakout sessions which makes it rather difficult for this reporter to follow along.

The major change that I’ve noticed compared to my first show four years ago is in the content of the presentations. It used to be all about the super microbe – speakers would show off elaborate slides with metabolic pathways – they all looked like very complicated subway maps. Since then the industry has learned that microbes can build a lot, but they can’t build your business for you.

This year the subject matter is all about scale up and applications. The language is more MBA than MicroBio. Supply chains, value chains, financing, customers, joint ventures, IPOs. Of course by now any start-up with a microbe has learned by now if their business plan is worth money or not – and only those that answer yes are still here.

I’ve been told to expect some major announcements this morning so follow along with my tweets @MelodyMV if you want the dish. Yesterday Myriant said it got its bio succinic acid plant up and running in Lake Providence, LA. It will be ramping up tp 30 million lbs per year.

Read all about it: Misleading headlines can even plague presidential elections. Credit: Byron Rollins/AP/Wikipedia

The Newscripts blog would like to be closer Internet buddies with our glossy print Newscripts column, so here we highlight what’s going on in the print issue of C&EN.

There’s an unfortunate trend that seems to be becoming increasingly popular in today’s science news world. The recipe goes like this: Take one misleading headline, add an introductory sentence that takes liberties with the subject matter it’s covering, and stir in one gullible blogosphere, and before you know it, you have a distorted science news story that appears to be popping up everywhere.

That’s the controversy that C&EN Senior Editor Carmen Drahl took on in last week’s Newscripts column. Carmen stumbled upon a press release purporting to have found a way to analyze human health through the measurement of genetic material. She called bullocks on the claim, and the journal responsible for the press release apologized.

According to Carmen, this incident is nothing new. She says National Geographic blogger Ed Yong and many others have been leading a battle against misleading public relations for years. She also remembers stumbling across two particularly dubious “news stories” herself. One centered on the ENCODE (ENCyclopedia Of DNA Elements) Project. As Carmen remembers, the project’s attempts to catalog the pieces that make up the genome led to press releases that claimed so-called junk DNA served a life function, which in turn led to a barrage of articles both deriding the articles as hype and asking for clarification on what constitutes as “junk.”

The second “news story” centered on the 2010 claim that a bacterium had somehow replaced phosphorus in its DNA backbone with arsenic. “I can tell you the effect this second release had on me—lots of sleepless hours covering the backlash to what became known as #arseniclife,” Carmen says.

“Misleading news releases, and the misleading reportage that often goes hand in hand with them, are bad for science,” she continues. “With oversimplification or omitted information, readers and viewers (whether they’re fellow scientists or laypeople) never hear about the real reasons why scientists are excited about findings—the beauty and importance are often in the details.” As Carmen puts it, misinformation can lead to “science whiplash,” where readers are left oscillating between two debatable claims with no resolution. Think of the endless debate about whether red wine is good for you, she says. “That’s the kind of thing that breaks down people’s trust in science in general.”

For the second part of her column, Carmen focuses on the lighter subject of Prince Harry’s recent visit to the U.S. and the three-dimensional printed doll he received during his travels. To celebrate the royal visit, Carmen says she busted out “a proper cup of tea” that she brewed using the teamaker she bought in London last year.

And Carmen’s Newscripts connection with British royalty doesn’t stop there. She is already looking for ways to incorporate the new royal baby into her next Newscripts column. “Maybe Harry will give his little niece or nephew the 3-D printed doll as a gift,” she wonders.

4th opinion: Myriad – isolated DNA is not patentable, but synthetic DNA is.

— SCOTUSblog (@SCOTUSblog) June 13, 2013

To the network:

Cleantech Chemistry: The Gut(microbe)less Gribble – Biofuel Hero? and IEA Looks To Fossil Fuel Industry to Control Climate Change

Newscripts: Amusing News Aliquots and Hey, ACS, Where’s My Comic Book?

The Chemical Notebook: Why Doesn’t Radio Shack Sell 3D Printers?

The Watch Glass: Nitrogen Fixation and Systems Biology’s Clinical Future and Environmental Issues of 1976 and Crime Labs in 1967

It’s a boy: And he’s pregnant. Credit: Chicago Department of Public Health

Newest scare tactic to prevent teen births: photos of pregnant boys. [Today]

Speaking of dude looks like a lady, Aerosmith’s organist is a leading geneticist in his spare time. [CNN]

Mountain livin’ changes the way people talk. In a related story, talkin’ about mountain livin’ makes the Newscripts gang want to drop the letter g from gerunds. [Perth Now]

Here’s a job we don’t want: tiger acupuncturist. [CBS News]

The world’s best sci-fi-themed bars. It’s like they were made for the Newscripts gang. [io9]

Florida scientists dismiss the notion of “vampire mosquitoes.” Somewhere a “Twilight” fan sighs heavily in disappointment. [News 13]

Turns out antidepressants kill the libidos of male minnows. No word yet on whether some Barry White music and a bottle of wine might mitigate these effects. [TreeHugger]

There’s no front basket for E.T. to sit in, but this helicopter bike can actually fly (with video). [Gizmodo]

And while we’re on the subject, these scientists are tired of waiting to hear from aliens–they’re phoning E.T. first. [NBC News]

The Gribble lives in the sea and eats wood. Image: Laura Michie, University of Portsmouth

The tiny animal eats wood that finds its way into the sea. The wood can come from mangrove swamps or wash into estuaries from land. Gribbles, also called ship borers, have also been known to chow on wooden sailing vessels (including, rather famously, those of the Columbus voyages). “I’m sure they’ve taken down a few pirate ships, too” says Simon J McQueen-Mason a BBSRC researcher and materials biology professor at the University of York.

Most critters that eat wood or other lignocellulose plant material rely on symbiotic relationships with a diverse population of gut microbes – called the microbiome – to break down the tough-to-digest meal. When news reports suggest that pandas may hold the key to biofuels breakthroughs because they can live on tough bamboo, it’s really the microbes, and the enzymes made by the microbes, that are of interest.

(You can read a C&EN cover story about pandas, microbiomes and biofuels )

But the Gribble has no microbiome. And it doesn’t have the squishy, absorptive digestive system that most animals have. In fact, it digests its meals of wood in a sterile, hard-sided chamber in its hind gut. McQueen-Mason likens the environment to “a steel container you might use in an industrial lab.”

Instead of microbial helpers, the gribble has a separate organ where it produces the key enzyme itself. Termites do not do this (they have microbes). The gribble “must use quite aggressive chemistry; the enzyme is so harsh that it would kill any microbes” that might otherwise occupy the space, McQueen-Mason says.

The research team found the mystery organ and looked at the genes expressed there. Many of them encoded instructions for making what is called GH7 cellulase. This is a family of enzymes that are normally found in wood-degrading fungi. “These cellulases are abundant but were never reported in an animal before,” McQueen-Mason notes. “We were able to express the genes in a lab fungus and describe the properties.”

They also used X-ray crystallography to discover the structure of the enzyme and show how it binds cellulose chains and breaks them into small sugar molecules.

The GH7 cellulase, an enzyme made by the Gribble, breaks down cellulose into simpler sugars.

The Gribble’s enzyme appears to be very rugged and long-lasting, which is a good quality for an enzyme that might be used in an industrial setting to make biofuels from wood or straw, McQueen-Mason points out. It works very well in highly saline conditions and may also function well in ionic liquids. The use of salt water and ionic liquids for biofuels processing may cut down on the use of expensive, precious fresh water. And like a true catalyst, the enzyme may be reusable.
You can see a video of the Gribble  – which I highly recommend – it’s kind of cute.

For more on the enzyme, check out the journal paper: ‘Structural characterization of the first marine animal Family 7 cellobiohydrolase suggests a mechanism of cellulase salt tolerance’ www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1301502110.

About a year ago, I decided the best deployment of unused capital in my Scottrade account was to purchase shares of Radio Shack. My investment thesis was this: 1) I bought a TRS-80 there 30 years ago. 2) I made guitar effects pedals using Radio Shack parts there about 20 years ago. That’s it. The whole idea was predicated on nostalgia. I’m in the red thus far.

I have learned a lot about Radio Shack—the business side, not where they keep the capacitors—after the fact. (The capacitors are in a metal case with pull out drawers near the back.)

For instance, the profit center of the company is the stuff you normally think of when you think of Radio Shack: The thing that connects one electronic gizmo to another, like when you are installing an entertainment center. The problem is there isn’t much growth in that business.

The growth comes from smart phones and the like. The problem here is that the profits here are slimmer and Radio Shack has too much competition.

This is where 3-D printers come in and why my griping about Radio Shack is relevant to chemistry.

I’ve written about 3-D printing in the past. It is, essentially, a new technique for processing plastics. To make a part, one doesn’t need a costly mold. But the tradeoff is that the user can’t make many of the same part very efficiently. Thus, the technique is ideal for designers to make prototypes. And 3D printing also holds promise for hobbyists and tinkerers of all kinds, especially when firms such as 3D

For sale, at Staples, not Radio Shack.

Systems are offering machines for as little as $1,300.

It would seem like Radio Shack would be an ideal retailer for 3D printers and, perhaps more importantly, the consumables involved: cartridges of acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene and polylactic acid. 3D printers are today very much like ham radios were 40 years ago and computers were 30 years ago: outlets for curiosity and creativity. 3D Printers are also cool. Who wouldn’t be fascinated seeing a 3D printer in a store, perhaps churning out a new object right before your eyes in a demonstration? Why, people might even walk into Radio Shack deliberately to see a 3D printer up close. It would be the first time the store had a draw since it did away with the Battery Club.

But there is a first retailer getting into the 3D printing business with 3D Systems printers: Staples. Is that a good fit? I suppose. They sell toner and report covers. It is the store of last resort for Blue Fun Tak in early September. I think Radio Shack would have been better, to be honest. But Staples outfoxed Radio Shack and that’s the point.

BAM! Don’t mess with Tesla. Credit: APS

If you read this blog with any regularity (I know there’s at least one of you out there, two tops), you’ll remember a post I wrote awhile back bemoaning the lack of chemistry coloring books. I had just come across a supercool version about biology—filled with stem cells and neurons and viruses, oh my!—and was wondering what a chemistry version (perhaps produced by the American Chemical Society) might look like.

Well, that coloring book still hasn’t materialized, and now I’m even more miffed: The physicists have comic books. And notice that I didn’t say “a” comic book. They have many of them.

I spotted a few of these at the American Physical Society (APS) national meeting, held in Baltimore, back in March. One called “Nikola Tesla and the Electric Fair” caught my eye, as well as a S-E-R-I-E-S of books about the original laser superhero Spectra (you know how it goes: She discovers her powers after a class on lasers and winds up being able to cut through metal and play CDs … just your typical teenage drama). These educational aids for middle school classrooms are distributed by APS.

Able to spot-weld a building in a single bound. Credit: APS

But I wouldn’t even say they’re just for middleschoolers. I read all the way through the story of Telsa: It brings to life the epic battle between himself and Thomas Edison over alternating current (AC) and direct current. I guess I never realized that the “War of the Currents” ended when Tesla successfully used AC to light the infamous World’s Fair in Chicago (where the Ferris Wheel also made its debut). Via the comic, I also discovered that Tesla had a fondness (perhaps a little too much fondness) for pigeons.

So even I learned something!

But it wasn’t until I received a press release about Stephen Hawking’s new comic book that I was pushed over the edge to write this post and point out this educational trend.

Page from new Hawking comic detailing how he learned of his disability. Credit: Bluewater Productions

“Stephen Hawking: Riddles of Time & Space” is produced by Washington-based Bluewater Productions. It chronicles the cosmologist’s life, including how he discovered that he had ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, and his dispute with scientist Fred Hoyle over the Big Bang Theory.

You can get your print copy of it here for $4.33.

Folks making comic books about physics is by no means a bad trend. But I’m once again left wondering, “Where’s the chemistry equivalent?” We may not have Stephen Hawking or Nikola Tesla to brag about, but surely we’ve got someone who’s got an interesting story to relate to the general public? Organic chemist R.B. Woodward, in all his Mad-Men-esque glory? One of the many bearded chemists of yore?

What about Kevlar, the original polymer superhero? Or how about turning the periodic table of elements into superheroes, an idea originated by a graphic designer here?

Readers, what kind of chemistry comic book would you like to see? (And ACS, when can we have one, pretty please?)

Chemists are notoriously bad at tooting their own horns to the public (go ask someone on the street to name a famous chemist, and you’ll see what I mean). But I’m certain they’ve got interesting stories to tell—the tales have just got to be drawn out.