Pleiotropy: One Gene Can Affect Multiple Traits
Ingrid Lobo How can a mutation in one single gene cause a disease with a wide range of symptoms? This situation is referred to as pleiotropy, and it has been identified in a wide range of species, even humans. Image: LaCasadeGoethe @ Pixabay
Gene Drives in Plants: Opportunities and Challenges for Weed Control and Engineered Resilience
Luke G. Barrett et al. Plant species, populations and communities are under threat from climate change, invasive pathogens, weeds and habitat fragmentation. Despite considerable research effort invested in genome engineering for crop improvement, the development of genetic tools for the management of wild plant populations has rarely been given detailed consideration. Gene drive systems that […]
Genetic Warfare: Super Humans and the Law
Morial Shah Every technology we develop carries potential for great good or harm. But the question of whether we can or should effectively stop that technology from being used for hostile purposes or armed conflict remains moot. … Legal regimes governing the use of such technologies – the Biological Weapons Convention, the Oviedo Convention of […]
The Amino Age and the New abNormal Doctors
Northern Tracey mRNA is apparently the only new cure for all our ills. They’re even giving this new era in medicine a name calling it the ‘Amino Age’ but is it all it’s cracked up to be? … The amino age is the offered solution but is it a solution at all or just another […]
An Open Letter to Bill Gates on Food, Farming, and Africa
Community Alliance for Global Justice/Agra watch, Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Aftica (AFSA) Dear Bill Gates: You were recently featured commenting on the global state of agriculture and food insecurity, in a recent New York Times op-ed by David Wallace-Wells and also in an Associated Press article. It is your preferred high-tech solutions, including genetic […]
Biotech Giants Using GMOs to Build Food Tyranny
Colin Todhunter The article below was written the day before India’s state-run biotech regulator, the Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee (GEAC), approved genetically modified (GM) mustard for commercial cultivation. This decision was taken on 26 October 2022. The regulatory clearance for GM mustard means the crop is fit for environmental release. However, the Supreme Court has […]
Food Freedom – Part 1: The Genetic Engineering and Synthesization of Our Food System
Lucy Crisetig With Covid policies reshaping everything from farmland ownership to meat processing to restaurant eating to food costs and availability, it’s clear that critical battle lines are being redrawn. One of the most disturbing new battlefronts has to do with the most age-old of rights, the right to grow, raise, harvest, produce and consume […]
Transmissible Viral Vaccines
James J. Bull, Mark W. Smithson, Scott L. Nuismer Genetic engineering now enables the design of live viral vaccines that are potentially transmissible. Some designs merely modify a single viral genome to improve on the age-old method of attenuation whereas other designs create chimeras of viral genomes. Transmission has the benefit of increasing herd immunity […]
