Stronger Plants, Stronger Science, and Stronger Communication
By Melinda Yerka This is a painting done by Sir Charles Bell in 1809 of a soldier dying of tetanus. Doesn’t look too comfortable, hmm? Tetanus is a condition brought on when certain bacteria, called Clostridium tetani, enter deep puncture wounds, such as the proverbial rusty nail, or in this soldier’s case, a dirty sword…
By the year 2050, the Earth’s population will double. If we continue with current farming practices, vast amounts of wilderness will be lost, millions of birds and billions of insects will die, and the environmental cost will be immeasurable. Clearly, the world needs a better way to meet the demand for increased food production. To…
Last week, Barack Obama was sworn in as the 44th President of the United States. It was a monumental inauguration for many reasons. Never in the history of this country has a non-white man held this high office.Never before has the internet played such a huge role in the election, transition, and future administration of…
While I was browsing the genetic engineering news for something to write about, a letter in the San Diego Reader caught my attention. “The Present Craziness” by Pat Palmer read had a very bizarre take on biology, have a read: Thanks for the optimistic article “Can We Create New Life?” (Feature Story, November 26). One…
Hawai’i is a remote archipelago of islands with a declining sugar industry. The new expanses of open acreage are now being filled with GE crop trials, and controversy. The University of Hawai’i produced the first GE Papaya resistant to Papaya Ringspot Virus, which grows there today (and even surrounds and protects organic plots of Papaya),…
In the debate over genetic engineering, there are many emotions in play, such as optimism, anxiety, compassion, greed, joy, and fear. One emotion seems to dominate the anti-GE activists, and that is fear. Fear of corporations, fear of science, and fear of the unknown are wielded as weapons to scare the public into rejecting the…
Back in October, I posted about Poplar trees genetically engineered to remove carcinogens from groundwater. The project is moving from the experimental stage into real world application, as described in Fighting pollution the poplar way. The test site was used for oil storage in the 1960s, and became contaminated with trichloroethylene. TCE is an industrial…
Arcadia Biosciences has developed rice that uses nitrogen more efficiently, so the plants need less fertilizer. As described in the Guardian article Biotech firm plans to fund GM rice crops with carbon credits yesterday, Arcadia “is working with the Chinese government to reward farmers in China that grow the firm’s genetically modified (GM) rice, with…
Where a transgene incorporates into a plant’s chromosomes can not be controlled. So, scientists have to transform many plants, and hope that at least one individual didn’t have the transgene interrupt a native gene. One solution to this problem is called a mini-chromosome. This technique uses the natural centromere sequence of an organism to build…