Dish of the day: breeding and mutating food species may be the only convincing plan anyone has for feeding the world Photograph: Victor de Schwanberg/Science Photo Library
From Inside the meat lab: The future of food
Could ethical concerns ultimately drive public acceptance of the new food technology? Cor van der Weele, Professor of Humanistic Philosophy at Wageningen University, is convinced that’s the case, with artificial meat at least. “People will see the moral benefits of cultured meats. Taking stem cells from a pig rather than killing millions of pigs in factories is already a more attractive idea to consumers.” She quotes studies of the viability of growing meat in sunlight-fuelled “bio-reactors” placed in desert areas: the reduction in resources is staggering. “It would require 1% of the land and just 2% of the water that traditional meat production does. And it would involve a 90% reduction in greenhouse gases,” she says.
Eating real meat in 2035 could be as morally questionable as eating foie gras – and about as expensive. As Dr Mark Post says: “A meat-eater with a bicycle is much more environmentally unfriendly than a vegetarian with a Hummer.”
Meredith Wadman, nature.com
Four consumer and medical groups led by Washington, DC-based Knowledge Ecology International are asking the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) to say no to that question. On 25 October, they petitioned the agency to exercise a…
“The question is: is ritonavir being made available to the public on reasonable terms? If you think it’s reasonable for Americans to pay more than the rest of the planet for something we paid for as taxpayers, then you would deny our petition,” says James Love, the director of Knowledge Ecology International. This applies to all fields.
Mice Genetically Engineered to be Super-Sensitive to the Smell of TNT, Will Be Used to Clear Landmines
A Belgian organization called APOPO already uses giant African pouched rats as a cheaper way to sniff out landmines. The rats are not genetically modified, but their sense of smell is sharp enough to detect TNT.
…While the furry minesweepers are effective (with two handlers, they can cover a field in one hour that would take two full days for metal detectors), they need nine months of training to become reliable, a process that costs around 6,000 euros per rat.
The genetically engineered mice, however, are so sensitive to TNT that encountering the molecule is likely to change their behavior involuntarily, so they would need little to no training.
[Molecular Neurobiologist} Charlotte D’Hulst… used genetic modification to ensure that the mice have 10,000 to 1,000,000 odor-sensing neurons with a TNT-detecting receptor compared with only 4,000 in a normal animal, “possibly amplifying the detection limit for this odor 500-fold,” she says.
Each odor-sensing neuron in a mouse’s nose is spotted with one kind of odor receptor. Usually, each specific receptor is found in one out of every thousand odor-sensing neurons, but about half the scent-detecting neurons in D’Hulst’s mice have the TNT-detecting receptor.
(via Genetically Modified Mice Could Be Tiny Landmine-Sniffing Heroes | MIT Technology Review)
We’ve been doing this to animals for as long as we’ve been around, the technology is different but the game remains the same. I’m interested in seeing where this ends up and mice become an avenue for potential technological fixes for other problems.
(via shedsumlight)
, , and Next-Generation Digital Information Storage in DNA.Science 1226355 Published online 16 August 2012 [DOI:10.1126/science.1226355]
The paper that’s making the rounds at the moment. io9 has a great breakdown about why it’s attracting so much attention. Frankly stated, the only reason I care about it is because it lets me draw attention to George Church’s beard.
Mixed Messages
- How California’s GM food referendum may change what America eats [Guadian | Comment is free]
- GM crops good for environment, study finds [Guardian]
Undivided by Patricia Piccinini as displayed at Arter, Space for Art in Istanbul, June 2011.
How does it feel?
Hylton, Wil S. “Craig Venter’s Bugs Might Save the World.” The New York Times. 30 May 2012. Web. 4 June 2012. [source]
Every scientist and budding scientist is an evil scientist to somebody else.
Elaine R. Mardis as quoted in Eisenberg, Anne. “A Geneticist’s Research Turns Personal.” The New York Times. 2 June 2012. Web. 4 Jun. 2012 [source]
Dr. Michael Snyder, a professor and chairman of the genetics department at the Stanford University School of Medicine, sequenced his genome and learned that he had a high risk for Type 2 diabetes. Not long after learning about this risk, he caught a cold passed on to him by his children that may have helped prompt the onset of diabetes via stress. However because Dr. Snyder had analyzed his genome and monitored his molecular data (RNA, proteins, metabolites and autoantibodies) from his blood samples, he was able to make the necessary changes to his lifestyle and treat his diabetes 18 - 20 months before his next doctors visit. Dr. Snyder was thus able to avoid any serious damage by combining the new, genomic sequencing, with the old, standard blood tests.
Don’t get all of your hopes up yet, human genome sequencing is still $4,000 but according to George M. Church, a professor at Harvard Medical School, the price could fall to $1,000 or less within the next year.
You can read his study at this link, it’s pretty cool.
