Heat affected crop during a green drought

Drought Tolerance: Recent Efforts in Biotechnology

Drought continues to be a primary driver of famine and crop loss around the world, with the accompanied water shortages not only affecting food production, but also drinking water availability. It is predicted that, by 2025, over two and a half billion people will be facing those sort of water shortages, especially as the effects […]

Проводящий пучок Pteridium aquilinum

Plants Fight Flooding From Climate Change With Root Bending

Recent events shed a light on what we possibly face in the future, as hurricanes and other weather events become more severe due to the increased energy capacity of the atmosphere from greenhouse gas influx. The colloquial term for this process is climate change. And scientists are hard at work on finding ways to mitigate […]

Embryonic smooth muscle cell

Correcting Muscular Dystrophy With CRISPR and Gold Nanoparticles

Being one of the earliest focused upon diseases for CRISPR to treat other than retinitis, Duchenne muscular dystrophy has seen a lot of scientific effort be put into finding a cure or at least a palliative treatment to restore some amount of strength. Previous attempts have involved various types of viral vectors to help remove […]

Neuron-SEM-2

A Nematode Neuron Gene May Hold Key To Treating Neurodegenerative Disorders

Neurodegenerative disease research has long been focused on understanding the underlying genes and molecules involved in the breakdown of mental function. But it is a multi-faceted process, involving some of the most complicated cell types in the human body. The main focal point has been on determining how the diseases progress and what can be […]

Brown rice

Golden Rice 3.0 Offers Iron and Zinc In Addition To Vitamin A

Nutrition and a sufficiently rounded diet of vitamins and minerals is key to remaining healthy. This is true for every person in the world. Unfortunately, there are many, billions even, that lack critical nutrients in their diets. This is often due to a combination of poverty, location, climate, and a societal and cultural focus on […]

Golden Retriever 10weeks

A Breakthrough In DMD Treatment In Dogs May Pave Way To Human Cure

Degenerative diseases are never a fun topic to talk about. They involve the gradual wasting away of the body or mind, the losing of oneself over time to decay. History has long focused on such disorders and the horrors both for the person and those around them. It is no surprise then, that with the […]

Root cyst nematode infection

Parasites Hijack Plant Stem Cells For Gall Tumor Growth

The horrors of nematodes may never cease, but they can teach us some surprising things, including a method of plant control that may completely alter our approach in dealing with the nematodes themselves. Infestation and Takeover The first step to explaining this new insight is to break down how the nematodes infect plants in the […]

Neural Stem Cells and Growth Hormone Receptor

Using CRISPR Proteins To Record A Video Clip Into Bacterial Genomes

Analyzing biological phenomena is often difficult to accomplish, even with modern technology. In many cases, for the actions of small biomolecules and other hard to see functioning parts of a cell, we can only take snapshots that tell us a moment in time. But that’s not all that helpful for understanding the actions of enzymes […]

Golden Rice

Vitamin Biofortification: Using Biotechnology To Improve Nutrition

Vitamin deficiencies plague practically every civilization in the world. Even in countries that are well-off, members of the population still have to watch their food intake and ensure that they are consuming an array of foods in order to meet their needs. Governments and food producers often supplement this by adding necessary vitamins into most […]

E coli at 10000x

How To Control GMOs: Biocontainment and Genetically Modified Bacteria

When dealing with bacteria in a lab setting, it is often a requirement to ensure that the risk of the bacteria escaping from containment is as minimized as possible. This is especially so if developing bacteria that produce a substance that one wouldn’t want to allow to get into the wild. Escape Risk and Non-Competitiveness […]