Collaborating with Google, Lumen Bioscience applied Bayesian black-box optimisation, a machine learning approach, to increase spirulina biomanufacturing productivity. A new paper shows that applying machine learning (ML) to bioproduction can significantly increase recombinant protein production and thus advance the scalability of spirulina-based biologic drugs. Under a research collaboration funded in part by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Lumen Bioscience worked with Google Accelerated Science to apply ML to increase the productivity of Arthrospira platensis (spirulina) using Bayesian black-box optimisation. The results of the collaboration, which are pending peer-review, have been published in pre-print on the bioRxiv server. The paper describes how the ML approach of Bayesian black-box optimisation was used to guide experiments in 96 photobioreactors, exploring the relationship between production outcomes and 17 environmental variables, including pH, temperature and light intensity.

I think it's safe to assume that Shogo Shimada, a thoracic and cardiac surgeon at the University of Tokyo Hospital, did not start his career thinking he might one day be implanting robots into living animals. Yet that is just what Shimada and a team of surgeons and roboticists from around the world have now achieved. Their work is the latest in a long line of attempts to solve problems in biology using robots. When I hear about this sort of research, it usually involves micro-robots. And then there's talk of smaller, nano-size robots that can swim through the bloodstream and deliver drugs or make repairs, as referenced in the 1966 sci-fi film "Fantastic Voyage."

A friend recently confided in me about his fertility problems. His physician had told him his sperm were small and malformed, to the point that he might struggle to get his wife pregnant. In an effort to make him feel less bad, perhaps, she added that male fertility problems were currently at "epidemic" levels in the UK. Recent articles in several major news outlets told this same worrisome tale. For instance, one BBC headline screamed, "sperm count drop'could make humans extinct'".

How many people start every year with a promise to themselves that they are going to eat better, drink less and exercise more? I don't have any fancy stats to hand, but I'll go out on a limb and say it's a lot of people (including myself). Of these people, how many are still on track a few weeks later? Even with all the will power in the world it's really difficult. Unfortunately, there's no magic bullet either, nothing that can convert a pizza-eating wine guzzler into a quinoa loving, spirulina sipping health fanatic.