Category Archives: Genetic Engineering

The prospect of creating life in the laboratory is as fascinating as it is terrifying. Will we really be able to modify the genetic code of a living creature to mold it to our design? Will we be able to assemble different bits of living creatures to create a new one?

A few years back, J. Craig Venter announced the creation of a living, self-reproducing bacterial cell with a DNA sequence produced in the laboratory. According to Laurie Garretts 2013 article for Foreign Affairs about this experiment, the creature moved, ate, breathed, and replicated itself. Garrett quotes from an older interview with Venter from 2009: Theres not a single aspect of human life that doesnt have the potential to be totally transformed by these technologies in the future.

These technologies refer to the world of synthetic biology, the ability to construct living creatures from the assembly of different parts in a sort of Lego world of the living. Playing the game of life is no longer the stuff of sci-fi stories. If you need further proof, I refer you to the Big Think video featuring Nobel Prize-winner Jennifer Doudna (as well as a recent interview), exploring the universe of CRISPR technology the good and the bad of it. Also, check out the excellent Netflix documentary series Unnatural Selection.

The question, as this technology evolves, becomes one of regulation and control. As Richard Lewontin asked in his essay on synthetic biology for The New York Review of Books, In cases where there is a conflict between the immediate and the long-range consequences or between the public and private good, how can that conflict be resolved?

The difference between the gothic speculations of Mary Shelleys Frankenstein and todays reality is twofold: First, we are building these creatures fiction is now real. Second, money plays a huge role in it. There is great financial gain in genetic engineering, an industry that according to estimates offered by Drew Endy from Stanford Universitys bioengineering department, contributes two percent of the U.S. economy and is growing at a pace of 12 percent each year.

The problem, as Lewontin reminds us, is that we often cannot rely on those who pursue invention for profit or for military interests to have the publics best interest in mind. So, as we create new lifeforms for different purposes, who will control them? The stockholders of biotech companies? The government? How will we reach a consensus on such a divisive topic that has clear global reach?

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The stakes are so high, and discussion must be brought into the open. There are great possibilities and great dangers. There is money to be made and cures to be found. There are horrible weapons and potential environmental chaos, too. The biosphere is a complex network of unpredictable interactions and responses that affect us and every other voiceless creature on this planet. Collectively as the human species, we must have some control over where all this is going. But how?

The opinions of scientists matter, of course. Corporate accountability and manufacturer liability are certainly reasonable. And there also should be democratic participation and transparency. We are all stakeholders in this debate.

All sorts of questions come into the open, questions that we should already be thinking about very seriously. Years have passed since this started, and there hasnt been much progress on addressing those questions. Synthetic creations such as genetically modified organisms (GMOs) are widely available, and a growing number of people are eating them. As far as science is concerned, there is no reason for us not to. (It is telling that so much conflict goes into the commercial labeling of such products, so that people actually know what they are consuming.)

How could we enforce the full public participation? How can we guarantee that different sectors of the population in this and other countries know enough about the various issues to reach a well-informed opinion? Some of the issues involved are extremely technical, and even the experts disagree on the details, as is the case with most cutting-edge research. How can we guarantee that government legislators are free of party bias or lobbying influences as they decide how to rule on the matter? Will the health and social benefits from the technology outpace its potential dangers?

Governments will face internal conflict, as they need to protect their citizens, defending them from any enemy that might use synthetic bioweapons. They may, of course, manufacture the weapons as well, perhaps mirroring the nuclear dtente policy of Mutually Assured Destruction: If you attack me, I attack you, and we both die. Very safe policy indeed, and very morally advanced.

If such technologies are used in wars or terrorist attacks, how efficiently will we be able to isolate from them? Judging from the responses to the COVID pandemic, government efficiency leaves much to be desired. Unless you plant your own organic garden and live in some sort of ecologically insulated bubble, synthetic biology will be knocking at your door. The question, then, is whether it will usher in a new era for humanity, or end up as the latest example of a promising technology that is used to inflict pain and destruction. Such technologies have emerged from physics (nuclear bombs) and from chemistry (poison gas). Now that its biologys turn, hopefully our past experiences have made us wiser.Hopefully we know better, now.

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Synthetic biology has the power to cure and kill. How will we use it? - Big Think

The NationalBioengineeredFood Disclosure Standard(NBFDS) which narrowlydefines bioengineered foods as those that contain detectable genetic material that has been modified through certain lab techniques and cannot be created through conventional breeding or found in nature kind of shot in the middle and missed every constituency,"observes Nate Ensrud, VP, US technical services, certification, and food safety solutionsatFoodChain ID, which helps firms to comply with the standard.

For some stakeholders in the natural foods industry, he says,it missed the mark,both in scope (the definition fails to capture thousands of products that have been produced with genetic engineering) and application (many objected to bioengineered vs GMO as the chosen terminology and the option to use digital disclosures on food labels).

For other stakeholders who believeslapping a blanket statement about bioengineering (which has thousands of different applications) on a jar of pasta sauce is about as useful as saying 'science was used to make this product," the NBFDS in its current form is just acostlybureaucratic headachewithout any obvious consumer benefit.

A major sticking point is the definitionof bioengineered, which excludes meat and dairy from animals fed GM feed, incidental additives, and highly refined oils and sweeteners made from GM crops such as soybean oil and high fructose corn syrup if they contain no detectable modified DNA.

Gene-edited foods, in turn, occupy something of a grey area. They may not contain detectable genetic material that has been modified through traditional rDNA techniques, but how easy is it for a third party to determine if gene-edited material meets the definition ofcannot be created through conventional breeding or found in nature?

Back in the day, says Ensrud, We were mostly talking about a series of crops that very obviously had genes inserted to express different traits.

"But since then, theres been a substantial proliferation of gene-edited products, products made using synthetic biology and so on, and while the [alternative meat, egg, and dairy]movement used to be pretty aligned, this is not the case anymore [as anyone following the social media debate about whether 'biotech' companies should be allowed to exhibit at Natural Products Expo West can see].

For example, under the NBFDS, firms deployingsynthetic biologyto re-tool the DNA of microbes to produce everything from flavors, sweeteners, and colors to animal-free collagen, egg, or dairy proteins are not required to label their ingredients as 'bioengineered' if there is no detectable level of the genetically modified host micro-organism in the final product.

This means that milk, ice cream, or cream cheese containing Perfect Days animal-free whey protein, which is expressed by a genetically engineered strain of fungi in a fermentation tank; or beverages containing Cargills EverSweet Reb M sweetener, made by GM bakers yeast, will not trigger a bioengineered label, if no GM material is detectable in the final ingredient.

However, burgers containing Motif FoodWorks 'meaty' animal-free heme protein myoglobin which is also made in a fermentation tank using a pichia pastoris yeast strain probably will trigger a bioengineered disclosure under the NBFDS, as trace amounts of the host microbe may be in the final product, says the company.

But even for exactly the same ingredient - myoglobin - no two companies producing this via fermentation are necessarily subject to the same labeling requirements when it comes to bioengineered food, saysBelgian startup Paleo, which has engineered a strain of pichia pastoristo express myoglobin in an extra-cellular fashion (it's secreted outside the cell).

This means its easier to separate myoglobin from the yeast cells during downstream processing and purification, such that Paleo'smyoglobin would not trigger bioengineered labeling in the US and would not be subject to EU GMO regulations, argues co-founder Hermes Sanctorum.

"Weve tested our heme proteins through PCR and there is no recombinant DNA whatsoever in our products.

The difficulty for companies trying to navigate this minefield is that the NBFDS doesn't really talk much about microbes"or much less explain how you label them with the exception of something like certain probiotics where genetically engineered bacteria might be the end product itself [rather than a production platform for something else], notes Ensrud.

To further complicate matters, he says:Then theres a really vague section of the of NBFDS that says if a company has actual knowledge its using something bioengineered, even if a food is not on the BE list, it is supposed to make a disclosure, which feels like a throwaway line, but how do you determine that?

He adds:We don't know a lot about how this will be enforced because the USDA has been clear that they're not going to be proactively enforcing this, but will be reliant on complaints. And so far, we havent seen very many well-structured complaints that can help us say, these are the areas that companies are going to challenge, and I don't know that it's going to be one of the first areas people think about because microbes are not included in the list of bioengineered foods.

(FoodNavigator-USA has asked USDA how manywritten complaints have been filed with the AMS Administrator alleging violations of the NBFDS and will update this article when we hear back.)

The detectability factor makes practical sense, argue many stakeholders: if there's noGMOactually in the food, why should you have to label it?

But for organizations such as the Non-GMO Project that take issue withgenetic engineering in the food supply chain per se, whether there's actually any 'modified genetic material' left in soybean oil or a natural flavor is hardly the point, notes Ensrud.

Their goal is to establish a GMO-free supply chain, and so the gap between their definition of what should be labeled GMO and the NBFDS is an ocean wide.

Having said that, the Non-GMO Project has arguably gained traction as a result of all this confusion, given that foods without bioengineered labels are not necessarily Non-GMO given the narrow scope of the federal law, prompting shoppers that care about avoiding genetic engineering to seek outthe butterfly logo while shopping if they want to be sure.

So what about disclosure options, which like everything else in theNBFDS, have generated a lot of controversy? The standardpermits multiple options:

Aspects of the digital disclosure options have just been successfully challenged in a lawsuitbrought by the Center for Food Safety and others, with a court sending USDA back to the drawing board to make revisions consistent with Congressional requirements around consumer access.

So what does this mean for companies currently using the QR code or text message option? According to Ensrud, We did see some companies choose to use the QR code, but not a large majority by any means. The ones that were choosing QR codes told us they liked the flexibility, as perhaps they were still trying to remove some bioengineered foods from their supply chain and would move from having to disclose to not having to disclose, which would require a change in labels, which can be costly and laborious.

The opposite is also possible. If a company has to make an emergency shift from a non-GMO source to a GMO source for an ingredient [not that unusual given current supply chain volatility], it would likely change the labeling requirements. For companies that have less settled supply chains, this change in requirements could make things more difficult.

Sam Jockel, a senior associate at law firm Alston & Bird, noted that There is still an opportunity for either USDA or the plaintiffs in this case to appeal theruling, which I am watching for.

According to George Kimbrell, legal director at the Center for Food Safety, which filed the lawsuit challenging many aspects of the NBFDS, The Court did not set a deadline, but under law agencies cannot unduly delay such action and must complete it in a reasonable time.

Should the order ultimately stand, said Jockel,it appears that USDA would have discretion in terms of timing as the court did not set any deadlines for USDA to conduct its post-remand proceedings.

For those who think this means that the QR code will go away, added Jockel, The statute passed by Congress requires an electronic/digital link disclosure as one of the options along with the text and symbol, so the QR code option is not going away.

The Consumer Brands Association said it is still reviewing the court order, but added:"We plan to stay engaged during the forthcoming rulemaking and legal process, especially considering the potential impact on the companies using QR codes or texts. Consumer Brands will also continue supporting the valuable role digital disclosures play in boosting consumer transparency through programs like SmartLabel.

Jockel also noted that the scope of the products that require mandatory disclosure is actually subject to change.

Companies will want to watch for any updates to thelist of BE Foodsas AMS is required to review and consider updates on an annual basis. As the judges order put it in reference to the agencys regular updates to the List of BE Foods, AMS did not ignore the likelihood of progress. As evidence of that, the agency is currently proposing to expand the list to include insect-resistant sugarcane.

Greg Jaffe, biotechnology project director at the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), told us that an informal surveyconducted in his local Giant grocery store earlier in the year found that almost no companies use the symbol on the package with most seeming to opt for the bioengineered food or contains a bioengineered food ingredient option, although several brands had adopted QR codes.

My informal survey also found many foods disclose even though they probably only have highly refined ingredients, so companies are clearly erring on the side of giving more information to the consumer than might be required.

So has the law helped consumers make informed choices? Or are blanket references to bioengineered foods just wallpaper to busy shoppers?

I think that the law has provided consumers who want to know this information, more information than they would receive without the law, said Jaffe, who described it as a step in the right direction in terms of transparency, in part because companies were not providing this information voluntarily anywhere for the consumer who wanted it.

He added:I dont think many consumers look for this information or make purchasing choices based on it. With that said, for many consumers, knowing that there is transparency and information is available is important (i.e. knowing that information that some people might want is not hidden or inaccessible).

Asked about the growing number of ingredients produced by genetically engineered microbes, he said:Many ingredients made with engineered organisms also will not require disclosure, but I think it is important that those companies are transparent and provide information to consumers about the origin of the ingredients in their products, whether or not it has to be disclosed as bioengineered.

Being transparent with consumers will build trust, educate consumers about the use of biotechnology in foods, and allow for consumer choice.

Further reading:

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SPECIAL REPORT: Bioengineered food labeling: 'They kind of shot in the middle and missed every constituency' - FoodNavigator-USA.com

An incredibly old way of making drugs is now an incredible new way to make drugs. Scientists have genetically reengineered a yeast fermentation process in order to produce chemotherapeutics instead of beer.

Vinblastine is the most complex compound produced with engineered yeast so far, the researchers say. Its naturally occurring ingredients are normally harvested from an endangered plant in Madagascar, and the chemotherapeutic is on the World Health Organization's essential medications list. Synthetic production of vinblastine could eliminate supply problems, lower costs, and save lives.

Getting it right took 7 years.

"It's like getting an orchestra to play in tune, because all of those steps have to work together in order to get to that final product," said article co-author Jay Keasling, PhD. "If you feed yeast sugar, it produces beer and wine. In this case, we've replaced the ethanol pathway with pathways to produce these natural products."

Genetically engineered yeast (along with E coli) is a key microorganism used in biopharmaceutical production. Yeast has been redesigned to produce other naturally occurring compounds, such as cannabinoids and the antimalarial drug artemisinin. The process involves removing a sequence of biochemical reactions, or metabolic pathway, from a plant cell and reconstructing it inside a yeast cell.

Vinblastine is part of a family of more than 3000 plant-produced molecules called monoterpene indole alkaloids (MIAs), several of which have been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration as therapeutics. Each MIA comes from a different plant, some of which are rare or in danger of extinction from overharvesting, according to Keasling.

"Engineering a yeast to produce these molecules would enable their production in a simple platform, fermentation, rather than having to grow individual plants or harvest them from the wild," explained Keasling. "We've essentially co-opted this age-old method for producing beer and wine to produce these other important products."

The international team of researchers, led by the Technical University of Denmark in Kongens Lyngby, Denmark, wanted to prove that they could synthetically manufacture all kinds of MIAs, so they started with the most complex one they knew of: vinblastine.

Vinblastine has something like 30,000 genes. The researchers first had to identify a 31-step sequence. It is the longest biosynthetic pathway ever removed from a plant and inserted into a microbe, according to the researchers.

Until now, vinblastine could only be produced by using two active ingredients, vindoline and catharanthine, harvested from the leaves of the Madagascar periwinkle plant. It can take more than 4000 pounds of dried leaves to produce a single gram of vinblastine. Supply delays resulted in an international shortage of the drug from the summer of 2019 until 2021.

Although the researchers couldn't produce vinblastine directly in yeast, they succeeded in genetically engineering yeast to produce vindoline and catharanthine. These compounds were then purified and coupled chemically to form vinblastine.

Reconstructing vinblastine's metabolic pathway required 56 genetic edits, according to the researchers. Biochemical reactions that occur at each step along the pathway require enzymes so the researchers had to ensure that enzymes were produced in the correct amount.

"You can't have one step working significantly better than all the other steps, or one step that doesn't work very well at all," said Keasling. The enzymes also depend on other factors, such as vitamins and minerals, which also had to be inserted into the sequence.

The researchers produced only a very small amount of vinblastine, but the technique opens the door for production of numerous other naturally occurring compounds, including an antiaddiction molecule that's expensive to manufacture because it's produced by plants in small quantities.

"This molecule we chose is kind of like a holy grail. It's a big molecule, it's really challenging to produce in any other way," Keasling said. "And so, if we can do this molecule, that means that the other ones are definitely doable."

Funding for the research was provided by the National Institutes of Health, the European Research Council, the Wellcome Trust, the Open Philanthropy/Silicon Valley Community Foundation, the Weston Havens Foundation, and the Centre for Trophoblast Research.

Nature. Published August 31, 2022. Full text

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Yeast-Fermented Chemo: Now We Can Brew Anything - Medscape

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This week, we share the second part of a recorded discussion hosted by the Civil Liberties Defense Center. CLDC has been at the forefront of anti-repression legal work for decades now, working on many of the Green Scare cases, in which the FBI infamously hounded and smashed radical environmental organizing between 2000 and 2008. In this discussion, Chava and Lauren speak with Letha, a long-time supporter for Marius Mason, who is the last remaining Green Scare prisoner. Marius is a former Bloomington resident whose public organizing and clandestine acts of sabotage in the 1990s presaged many of the ecological concerns which have now become global issues as we face climate catastrophe. Marius was harshly sentenced to almost 23 years in prison for acts of sabotage against logging, highway construction, water privatization schemes, and corporate genetic engineering. He came out as a trans man while inside and is being held at the federal prison in Connecticut.

Thanks to theCLDCfor organizing this important discussion and for all their work.

You can find out more about how to support Marius here:https://supportmariusmason.org/

Here are some of our favorite previous episodes about Marius:

Last Weeks Episode: https://www.kitelineradio.org/podcast/321-marius-mason-the-last-green-scare-prisoner/

8 | Dear Marius

45 | Ongoing Support for Marius Mason and His Family

150 | Be Like Water: J11 Reflections on Marius Mason’s Journey Through Federal Prison

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September 23, 2022: The Integrity of Marius Mason WFHB - WFHB News

Portfolio manager Cathie Wood is known for having an aggressive appetite for risk when it comes to the investments she makes in her exchange-traded fund, the ARK Innovation ETF (ARKK -2.02%). Between its stakes in biotech companies with no products on the market and in rising stars like Tesla, its holdings are often in long shots that have the potential to be transformative for their industries or for the world.

On that note, there are two promising -- but speculative -- biotechnology businesses in the ARK portfolio that investors might be interested in if they're patient enough to hold onto their shares for a few years before seeing major returns. Over the next five years, Wood's thesis for both will be tested, so people who buy shares now could join in her eventual profits -- or her losses, which have been substantial for both stocks over the last 12 months.

CRISPR Therapeutics (CRSP -2.68%) is a gene-editing biotech that is working to develop cures for hereditary conditions including sickle cell disease and beta-thalassemia. Before the end of 2022, it expects to ask regulators at the Food and Drug Administration to approve the gene therapy exa-cel, which it claims can functionally cure both diseases. That means sometime in 2023, it could be realizing revenue from sales of its treatments for the first time ever, which will be a major catalyst for the stock.

But CRISPR's true potential actually lies beyond exa-cel. It's also investigating a handful of candidates as off-the-shelf immunotherapies that could treat different cancers, among them lymphoma. The off-the-shelf aspect is what differentiates these programs from the immunotherapies in development by most other companies, and it's also the most exciting thing about CRISPR.

A common problem with sophisticated cell therapies made using genetic engineering is that the patient's body may reject the cell therapy upon infusion. To get around that issue, biopharmas use each patient's own cells as the starting material to manufacture their specific therapy. That's effective, but it's also tremendously expensive because of the costs involved with drawing a sample, shipping it to a manufacturing site, processing it to make a single person's therapy, and then shipping it back to be infused into the patient.

What CRISPR hopes to do is produce non-personalized immunotherapies that don't trigger rejection. If it succeeds, its treatments will be far more scalable to manufacture, far more profitable to sell, and maybe even more effective than those produced by its competitors. That possibility is exactly what Wood is betting on with her investment, but it's almost certain to take a bit longer than a year or two to come to fruition because of how ambitious the goal is.

If you're willing to take a risk that CRISPR won't ever be able to figure it out for the chances of outsized rewards if it does, this is a good stock to buy.

Intellia Therapeutics (NTLA -5.54%) also plans to use advanced gene-editing techniques to treat people's genetic diseases. Like CRISPR Therapeutics, it doesn't have any revenue outside of what it makes from collaborations -- and that only totaled around $33 million in 2021. In terms of its pipeline, it has an early-stage program for sickle cell disease, and other early-stage programs aiming to address transthyretin amyloidosis, a rare hereditary liver disease.

Excitingly, its therapies for those conditions could be curative, though management is careful to remind investors that those treatments could still deliver much-needed relief to patients for long periods without being complete cures, technically speaking. But it isn't anywhere close to commercializing any of its therapies, so it's definitely a stock you'll need to hold onto for at least three or four years before it has the possibility of delivering major returns.

Furthermore, Intellia is developing capabilities similar to CRISPR's with regard to off-the-shelf immunotherapies, though CRISPR's are further advanced. It's pretty clear that Wood bought into Intellia to diversify her bet on easily scalable immunotherapies and give herself two opportunities to succeed. It might make sense for you to do the same if you're looking to hedge your other gene-editing stock plays.

Alex Carchidi has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends CRISPR Therapeutics, Intellia Therapeutics, and Tesla. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

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2 Risky Cathie Wood Growth Stocks to Buy and Hold for 5 Years - The Motley Fool

A way to make Cavendish banana plants temporarily resistant to Fusarium fungus could lead to new ways to protect them from Panama disease

By Michael Le Page

Bananas are at risk from a fungal disease

Ezequiel Ferreira/EyeEm/Getty Images

Banana plants that produce the worlds most widely eaten variety of the fruit have been made temporarily resistant to a devastating fungal disease that is spreading around the world and destroying plantations. The hope is that the work could lead to ways to make bananas permanently resistant.

The question is, can we continuously trigger this mechanism? says Gert Kema at Wageningen University in the Netherlands. We need to know more about it.

The main banana exported to Western countries used to be a variety called Gros Michel. But in the 1920s, a strain of Fusarium fungus called tropical race 1 (TR1), which causes Panama disease, began wiping out plantations in banana-producing areas. By the late 1950s, growers had switched to the Cavendish banana, which isnt as tasty as the Gros Michel, but is highly resistant to TR1.

Now, however, another strain of Fusarium called TR4 that can kill many varieties, including the Cavendish, is spreading to more and more countries. In many places bananas are a staple crop, so this fungus is a threat to food security as well as livelihoods.

Kema and his colleagues wondered if exposure to TR1 would protect Cavendish bananas against TR4. The team uprooted young plants and dunked them in a solution containing assorted types of TR1 fungus. At various time intervals from 30 minutes to 10 days later, they then immersed plants in a solution with spores of TR4 in it.

The team found that prior exposure to a particular strain of TR1 from Brazil provided significant protection against TR4 up to 10 days later.

Somehow you are switching on a protective mechanism that also protects plants from TR4, says Kema. But the protection is only temporary.

This kind of protective effect has been found in other plant species before, he says. Plants dont have immune cells that remember pathogens like animals do, so the effect is the result of switching on general protective mechanisms rather than specific ones that result from a vaccine. The team is now trying to work out the precise mechanisms in bananas, with the aim of finding ways to permanently turn them on without exposing plants to a live fungal disease.

Even if it can be done, this, or other approaches such as genetic engineering, wont solve all the industrys problems, says Kema, not least because TR4 is far from the only disease affecting bananas.

The main issue is the worlds heavy reliance on a single variety of the fruit, he says. Cavendish accounts for more than half of all bananas grown and 95 per cent of exports. Because the Cavendish is sterile like most edible bananas, all Cavendish bananas are genetically identical clones. All this makes plantations especially vulnerable to diseases.

Diversification is crucial, says Kema. The banana industry needs to invest in developing new varieties that are both tasty and disease-resistant, supermarkets need to stock them and consumers need to buy them. Banana production at this point in time is not sustainable, says Kema.

Journal reference: PLoS One, DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0273335

More on these topics:

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Bananas threatened by devastating fungus given temporary resistance - New Scientist

Do you believe the telegraph was giving telegraph operators cancer? If not, it's only because there was no Robert F. Kennedy Jr. or US Right To Know group promoting fear and doubt about it the way they do vaccines, food, and cell phones.

On May 24th, 1844 a telegram was sent from the Capitol because Samuel Morse, the inventor, wanted a government contract. Because he was diplomatic, he let the daughter of Henry Ellsworth, first Commissioner of the U.S. Patent Office, draft the message. And because young people need to Live In Important Times, the message proposed by young Annie was "What Hath God Wrought. (1)

There was fear. Fear of electricity in wires and its effect on humans, fear of rapid communication meaning more false claims making their way around the world - "Does it not render the popular mind too fast for the truth?" - and the paucity of thought telegrams required, like older people fear emojis that replace words in text messages. Humans have an evolutionary mandate to fear, nature is out to kill us and everything else, and science has always battled that fear the same way it has battled nature when it comes to disease and the elements and food.

While science and technology always fight for progress, there have also always been people who worried about that. Sometimes for good reasons. Early steam trains had to be tested using dogs because it was unclear if the human body could go 25 miles per hour for long periods of time without our organs being affected. Testing solved that and progress marched on. Yet in the modern era, where people act not out of public concern but because they are paid to promote fear and doubt, no amount of testing will help. A train would not get approved due to lawsuits and claims that such an evil FrankenHorse 'needs more testing.'(2)

Weedkillers like atrazine and glyphosate, and therefore farmers and shoppers, suffer due to such thinking now. Lacking any evidence of harm, activists and their carefully placed allies in epidemiology insist the harmful effects are real, scientists have just not found them yet. They embrace homeopathic beliefs like endocrine disruption and dream up stories of chemical cocktails. It is not just chemicals, being anti-biology is also wildly profitable. The Non-GMO Project is a financial juggernaut, but GMOs, the most recent form of genetic engineering on the market, have never harmed plant, human, or other animal in decades of use. Despite the science proving GMOs completely safe, Non-GMO Project sells stickers for nearly 70,000 products. There are only 11 GMOs on the market. To line their pockets anyway, they sell stickers for products like salt. Anti-science Luddites who buy their clients' products are so clueless they think salt is an organism with a gene that can be modified. Salt.(3)

To future generations, people who embrace this folklore and shamanism about agricultural progress are going to be derided the way we now look at old articles claiming that too many books were going to cause the brains of children and women to rot. Parents were told by the same kind of social authoritarian busybodies that now dominate states like California to worry if their children played outside too much.

It seems ridiculous(4) but so is the notion that a weedkiller which only acts on a biological pathway found in plants can cause human cancer. Or that a drop of a weedkiller in water equivalent to 160 Olympic-sized swimming pools will turn frogs 'gay', as famed weedkiller activist Professor Tyrone Hayes of Berkeley termed it. Or at least change their voices. Neither of which he ever showed data to prove.

He didn't need data, he had a group of professional protesters repeating the weedkiller equivalent of the claim that the telephone would create bad manners in those who used it.

People who fear progress never know how backward they look while claiming they see something scientists can't see. Yet young people of the future will.

NOTES:

(1) His effort failed, government did not fund it. Good thing too. After its failure to get government money, the private sector took over and put up 10,000 miles of line and communication took off. Had the government taken it on, we'd have a porkbarrel mess like cable television and solar power.

Issue changes, but young people still need to live in important times. American actor Timothe Chalamet is equally convinced the apocalypse is just around the corner and buying a ticket to his new film will make you feel better about that.

(2)The plight that holds back beneficial products like Golden Rice for poor countries - because it was a free effort by scientists, no company behind it, environmentalists easily blocked it with their own highly-paid attorneys.

(3) Meanwhile, mutagenesis, the less-precise precursor to GMOs, created when plants are dunked in chemicals and bathed in radiation to force mutations, is certified organic. Literally thousands of products are on the market, but since they already were before the anti-GMO craze took off (blame King Charles III)they get the fancy sticker sold to them by 80 companies in the US who stay in business by selling organic stickers.

(4) Writing in The Atlantic, Adrienne LaFrance details worries like that the telephone would make the left ears of people different than the right. Sound crazy? It actually sounds a lot like the many weird epigenetics claims we have had in the last 15 years. Epigenetics is a valuable tool for anti-science activists because it covers so much ground, literally any change due to anything, it can't be proved wrong.

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'What Hath God Wrought' - Today, Luddites Are Concerned About Weedkillers Like They Once Were The Telegraph - Science 2.0

Dr. C.N. Manjunath inaugurates 62nd International Conference of Microbiologists Association; recommends Nobel Prize for a Microbiologist for service during COVID

Mysore/Mysuru: Stressing on the need for educating children on the importance of maintaining oral health and hygiene, Dr. C.N. Manjunath, Director, Sri Jayadeva Institute of Cardiovascular Sciences and Research, Bengaluru, maintained that oral health is key for body health as food enters the body from mouth.

He was speaking after inaugurating the 3-day 62nd Annual International Conference of the Association of Microbiologists of India on Microbes and Society: Current Trends and Future Prospects (MSCTFP-2022) at Senate Bhavan in Manasagangothri campus here on Wednesday.

Complimenting Microbiologists for developing vaccines for COVID-19 in a record time, Dr. Manjunath said thanks to genetic engineering and generic sequencing, the vaccine for the pandemic could be developed in just a year.

Highlighting the contributions of microbiologists to mankind amidst the pandemic, he said that they have done a very commendable job during times of health crisis.

I am of the opinion that a renowned microbiologist should get the Nobel Prize either this year or next year, considering the role microbiologists have played in COVID crisis. They have worked overtime to produce vaccines for the deadly pandemic, which has taken the lives of lakhs of people across the globe, he noted.

Pointing out that until the COVID pandemic, only microbiologists and doctors were aware of RT-PCR test, Dr. Manjunath opined that it became a common name because of the pandemic. The test also gained importance for detecting the viral infection, he added. He further said that it is regretful to note that Antibiotics were excessively used or misused during the pandemic, which may result in side effects in the future.

University of Mysore (UoM) Vice-Chancellor Prof. G. Hemantha Kumar, Padma Shri Prof. S. Ayyappan, Chairman, KSTA, Bengaluru and former UoM VC Prof. K.S. Rangappa too spoke.

Dr. Anil Dutt Semwal, Director, DRDO-DFRL,Mysuru, Prof. R.C. Kuhad, Chairman, Academy of Microbiological Sciences, AMI, New Delhi, Prof. Praveen Rishi, President, AMI, General Secretary Prof. Namita Singh, Prof. S. Satish and Prof. S. Chandra Nayaka, Organising Chairpersons, MSCTFP-2022 and others were present.

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Children should be educated about oral health and hygiene - Star of Mysore

At the start of the year, McDonalds launched a plant-based burger sizzled on a flat-iron grill, then topped with slivered onions, tangy pickles, crisp shredded lettuce, Roma tomato slices, ketchup, mustard, mayo and a slice of melty American cheese. For a while, it looked like a glimpse of the future.

The US test run of the McPlant burger was quietly shelved last month (it is still available in some markets, including the UK) in one of a series of setbacks for a meatless-meat industry that only a year ago was claiming it could change the great American menu for ever.

Getting meat eaters in the US to adopt plant-based alternatives has proven a challenge. Beyond Meat, which produces a variety of plant-based products, including imitations of ground beef, burgers, sausages, meatballs and jerky, has had a rough 12 months, with its stock dipping nearly 70%.

Multiple chains that partnered with the company, including McDonalds, have quietly ended trial launches. In August, the company laid off 4% of its workforce after a slowdown in sales growth. Last week, its chief operating officer was reportedly arrested for biting another man on the nose during a road rage confrontation.

Its a dramatic reversal of fortune. Just two years ago, Beyond Meat, its competitor Impossible Foods and the plant-based meat industry at large seemed poised to start a food revolution.

After nearly a decade of development, plant-based meat started hitting the mainstream in 2018. Grocery stores started selling Beyond Meat ground beef and sausages, while more restaurants were offering plant-based meat on their menus. Burger King announced the launch of the Impossible Whopper, while other fast-food chains came out with similar launches, like a plant-based breakfast sausage sandwich at Dunkin and meatless pepperoni pizza at Pizza Hut.

For a time, Wall Street went vegetarian. In 2019 Beyond Meat was valued at over $10bn (8.9bn), more than Macys or Xerox. The most bullish investors believed that plant-based meat would make up 15% of all meat sales by 2030. But the reality of Americans interest in plant-based meat has proven more complicated than investors thought, and the adoption of meat alternatives has been slower than what was once hoped. Today Beyond Meat is valued at just over $900m (799m).

The sobering story is similar to those experienced by many new ventures that see exhilarating hype after a flood of Silicon Valley venture capital cash, fueled by excitement about innovation. Bill Gates backed Beyond Meat, and a number of venture capital firms that typically invest in tech startups funneled money to startups making plant-based meat. Even the meat industrys biggest players have, ironically, invested in companies coming up with plant-based meat.

The bulls in the industry, I think, had a very wild, very optimistic estimate of how big the market could get, said John Baumgartner, an analyst at Mizuho Securities. There was a lot of exuberance in this category. It was new, it was different, it was on trend.

But the consumer environment is tough, and this stuff is not cheap, he added. Its going to take time to change cultural practices. Its not going to happen overnight.

Some investors believed that plant-based meat would become what plant-based dairy alternatives have become to the dairy market, Baumgartner said. Dairy alternatives, like almond, oat and soy milk, now make up 15% of the market and are worth $2.5bn (2.2bn). A third of Americans drink some kind of non-dairy milk weekly.

But plant-based meats are different. For one, milk alternatives have been around for decades, while the development of plant-based meat really only started about a decade ago. Lactose intolerance has driven many Americans to choose non-dairy milk. And unlike plant-based meat, which is usually just as expensive or even slightly more expensive than regular meat, plant-based milks are priced between non-organic and organic milk, making their cost more accessible to consumers.

Both are, of course, better for animal welfare and potentially for tackling climate change, even more than plant-based meat. Research has shown that reducing meat consumption is the most effective thing individual consumers can do to fight climate change. One major study showed that a huge reduction in meat consumption ideally 75% less beef, 90% less pork and half the number of eggs per world citizen is essential to avoid climate catastrophe.

But consumers seem hesitant to adapt their behavior when the environment not their health or wallets is the sole beneficiary. Despite the increasing alarm over climate change, the number of Americans who are vegetarian or vegan has remained relatively stable over the last 20 years. About 5% of Americans in 2018 said they are vegetarian, while 3% are vegan, according to a Gallup poll.

Even when participants in a study conducted at Purdue University in Indiana were given information about the carbon footprint of meat production, participants were more likely to go with regular meat over a plant-based alternative.

Bhagyashree Katare, an author of the study, said that participants may have been put off by the taste of plant-based meat and the fact that it is not necessarily a healthier alternative to regular meat. Many plant-based meat alternatives are comparable to their real meat counterparts in nutritional content. That it costs about the same as meat also diminishes its attractiveness to consumers.

If Im spending money in a restaurant, and Im a meat eater, why would I spend money on plant-based meat? I would rather eat an actual burger, Katare said. Its a technology, and it takes a long time for people to trust the technology and adopt it. I think thats where plant-based meat is. Maybe the technology will improve, and it will get better health-wise.

Different companies have taken varying approaches to developing their plant-based meat products. Beyond Meat has focused on using natural ingredients, like protein from peas, mung beans and brown rice, for its meat. Impossible Food, its Silicon Valley competitor, has taken a more technological approach, using genetic engineering and fermentation to make its meat alternatives.

The goal for many of these companies has largely been to develop a plant-based product that matches the texture, taste and juiciness of real meat. While a Beyond Meat sausage or Impossible Burger is much closer to real meat than vegan sausages or veggie burgers, researchers are still trying to make plant-based meat tastier, healthier and cheaper.

Its still quite early on in the plant-based food industry, said David Julian McClements, a professor of food science at the University of Massachusetts Amherst who researches plant-based food alternatives. Its very challenging. Meat has a very complicated structural architecture, very complex, fibrous structure And that structure is what determines its appearance and its texture, the way it behaves in your mouth when youre chewing it, how chewy or juicy it is.

When making their arguments against plant-based meat, lobbyists for the meat industry have pointed out that these meat alternatives are processed food. One ad campaign called them ultra-processed imitations and asked consumers whats hiding in your plant-based meat?

Plant-based meat has also struck a nerve in Americas neverending culture wars. Ten conservative states in 2018 and 2019 outlawed the use of meat in labels for products that are not coming from animals, targeting the plant-based meat industry. Republicans took on a talking line in 2021 that Democrats were going after red meat as a part of Joe Bidens climate plan, though it was based mostly on speculation and false reports.

Not gonna happen in Texas! Greg Abbott, the states governor, tweeted in response to the fake reports.

Despite naysayers against plant-based meat, McClements is optimistic that science can bring better meat alternatives, ones that will eventually be harder for meat eaters to resist.

Just because its processed doesnt mean its unhealthy. You can design good nutrition and health into these products. Some companies are really making a big effort to do that.

There is still a lot of cash going toward companies working on better alternatives. The Good Food Institute, a non-profit that promotes plant-based alternatives, estimated that such companies got $1.4bn (1.2bn) in funding in 2021 a record for the industry. Companies are also making a wider array of products, including alternatives to fish and steak.

The ideal situation is you make a product that is indistinguishable from meat, and its cheaper, convenient and accessible, McClements said. Then if you have a choice between meat and this product, you always buy the plant-based one because you know its better for the environment, its definitely better for animal welfare, and it should be better for your health if designed properly.

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Id rather eat an actual burger: why plant-based meats sizzle fizzled in the US - The Guardian

You dont need a medicaldegree to see that health tech is hot right now.

Amazons $3.9billionacquisitionof One Medical, a network of primary-care clinics, made it clear that technology companies have big plans to transform the healthcare industry. Alphabet, the parent company of Google, has two separate subsidiaries (Verily and Calico) developing tools and treatments to fight diseases and aging.

And the Apple Watch on your wrist is packed with health-focused features including heart and sleep tracking, medication management, and, as of this month, a body temperature sensorto help women track ovulation cycles.

The next generation of breakthroughs aresure to be even more consequential, as startups harness cloud computing, A.I., and ever tinier chips to dream up new products and services.

For the venture capital investors who specialize in health tech, the era of startup innovation is spurring a frenzy of activity. The number of VC investments in health tech has increased significantly in both size of valuations and number of deals in the past five years, and some large VC firms are rolling out special funds devoted exclusively to health tech. In 2018, health tech VC deals raised $21.3 billion over 2,249 deals. In 2021, deal values totaled $50 billion across 3,315 health tech deals.

Fortune surveyed the field of health tech venture investors to pick out some of thetop dealmakers in the sector. The eleven investors below are among the most active in Pitchbooksdatabase of the largest health tech funding deals over the past five years. The investors represent a range of organizations, from large, general purpose VC firms like Andreessen Horowitz, to specialized, health tech-focused boutiques like Arch Venture Partners and Oak HC/FT.

Read on to meet the VC investors with their fingers on the pulse of the health tech industry.

Age: 47

Home base: Bay Area, California

Big deals: Livingo; Commure, Ro Health

To say that Taneja is the VC who wrote the book on health tech is no exaggeration hes co-authored three books about his vision for healthcare as accessible, proactive, and affordable. As the strategist behind some of General Catalysts most successful investments to date, Taneja has put his healthcare philosophy to work. His early bet on Livongo, a digital health startup, turned into the biggest exit in health tech in history after the company was acquired by Teledoc for $18.5 billion in 2020.

Taneja describes Livongos success as a catalyzing event in the industry. Theres many founders and entrepreneurs that got inspired to build companies that follow Livongos model. He is also an investor in Commure, Ro, and Transcarent. Taneja recently became the CEO of General Catalyst, a role so recent its not listed on their website yet, but comes after he has increasingly spearheaded the firms investment plans. Its a phenomenal time to get into building companies in the healthcare sector, he says. Its an opportunity to shape what the next generation of healthcare systems is going to look like.

Age: 52

Home base: Menlo Park, California

Big deals: Devoted Health (led $300 million series B), Insitro, Freenome

When Pande joined Andreessen Horowitz in 2014 with the bespoke title Professor in Residence, the then five year old venture capital firm was wary of healthcare investing. But after spotting some startups he was excited about, Pande convinced firm co-founders Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz to go big into the space. In 2015, a16z, as the firm is often referred to, launched its first $200 million Bio fund with Pande at the helm. The exponential growth of each fund since then speaks for itself; a16z is now on its fourth a $1.6billion fund. Pande led the $300 million series B funding round into Devoted Health, a digital health startup focused on Medicare beneficiaries. The 2018 investment was one of the largest to date in the sector, and Pande credits the strength of the startups founding team and its unique business model. Among Pandes other big hits are investments in Freenome and Insitro.

Age: 31

Home base: San Francisco, California

Big deals: Precision Nanosystems, Loop Genomics, Apama Medical

El-Bibany describes her role in health tech venture capital as bridging the gap between academia and industry. Its a task shes ideally suited for. Having focused her research on stem cell engineering, microbiome research, and DNA damage and repair as a student, El-Bibany got sidetracked from her goal of pursuing a Phd when an opportunity arose to join Rising Tide VC in 2014. She built the firms entire health tech and biotech practice. From there, she was hooked on investing.

Her first investment ever was in Precision Nanoystems, which was acquired by Danaher Life Sciences last year. Other key investments she has made are in Loop Genomics which was acquired by Element Biosciences and Apama Medical, which was acquired by Boston Scientific. El-Bibany doesnt view her wins as only financial successes, and cites advances in healthcare as a driving motivation. Her advice to startups? Start with the problem, not the solution. Oftentimes, we see interesting technology that is built and then teams search for a problem to solve it with, she explained. Other times, we see teams that have very well characterized the problem at hand, and then build a technological solution to fix it. I usually encourage teams to do the latter, El-Bibany says.

Age: 65

Home base: Connecticut

Big deals: Athenahealth, VillageMD, Devoted Health

When Lamont got into venture capital in the 1980s, the health tech investing field as we know it did not exist. There was no one else that was focusing on [healthcare], she says. So I made that sort of my expertise and practice. As a pioneer in the sector, Lamont has set a high bar for those who have followed, with more than thirty investments in some of the most highly valued health tech companies to date. The VC firm that Lamont started in 2014, Oak HC/FT, was the lead investor in VillageMD, which now has a $14.3 billion valuation. Lamont was also an early investor in Athenahealth and the biggest investor at the time of Athenahealths IPO; the company sold last year for $17 billion. She was also an early investor in Devoted Health, Aspire Health, which was acquired by Anthem, and OncoHealth which was acquired by Arsenal Capital Partners.

Lamont says the most important factor in a startups success is the people. Its really about the resourcefulness, relentlessness, and the talent of the CEO and then the team, she says. And decades after helping spark investor interest in the sector, Lamont is more optimistic than ever: Now we have multi-generations of entrepreneurs whove grown up in healthcare and understand it better and are creating better models that will have more impact on the true costs and quality of healthcare.

Age: 43

Home base: San Francisco, California

Big deals: Synchron, Encoded

A two-time startup founder, scientist, and electrical engineer, Eltoukhy brings a rich breadth of experience to his role as the head of life science investments at Green Sands Equity. In his twenties, Eltoukhy built a startup that merged semiconductor technology with DNA sequencing, selling it a few years later to Illumina. He eventually parlayed his experience to backing other entrepreneurs. There was a dearth of investors in the healthcare side that had experience of founding companies from the idea stage and taking them all the way to an exit or IPO and into a standard of care, he says.

He was an early investor in Synchron, a company conducting the first brain computer interface and Encoded, a therapeutics company that uses genetic engineering. Eltoukhy says success in health tech comes from not only having a great idea, but from an idea that matches the moment. In healthcare, timing is everything because the timelines are so long, he explained. Some things that sound like great ideas may be too early to develop because of regulatory hurdles or technology that is too early to develop, so its important to understand where a field is about to take off and investing at the right time, he says.

Age: 59

Home base: San Francisco, California

Big deals: Altos Labs, Resilience

With an astonishing track record of prescient investments, and a flair for making big, sometimes controversial, pronouncements, Nelsen is a unique figure within the world of health tech tech. Of the more than 150 companies he has been involved with, 48 have reached valuations above $1 billion. His philosophy, he told Geekwire in 2016, is to bet on great science, take risks with risk takers, tackle big problems, and to ignore convention.

As Managing Director and co-founder of ACH Venture Partners, Nelsen focuses on health tech and pharmaceutical investments. He led the series B, C and D funding rounds in Resilience, a biomanufacturing startup that aims to speed up deployment of vaccines and other medicines. He was also an early investor in Juno Therapeutics which was acquired by Celgene and Array BioPharma which was acquired by Pfizer.In March 2022, ARCH closed a $2.5 billion fund in biotechnology investments.

Age: 65

Home base: Los Angeles, California

Big deals: Livingo, Flexus, Progeny

Seidenberg has seen healthcare from every angle a physician, then executive, and now investor with over 40 investments in health tech. Seidenberg looks for companies that can see around the corner. She was an early investor in Livongo Health, which was acquired by Teledoc in an $18.5 billion deal. She was also an early investor in ARMO Biosciences, Flexus Biosciences, and True North Therapeutics. She helped incubate Progyny, one of the first fertility technology companies to ever go public. She believes a teams grit is just as important as a standout idea: The most important thing that makes or breaks these companies ends up being the people, you can have a great idea and the wrong team, and you wont have a great outcome, she says.

Age: 36

Home base: Edinburgh, United Kingdom

Big deals: Honor, Ro, Tempus

Singlehurst stands out on this list as a generalist investor, but he views that as a strength, not a weakness when it comes to healthcare investing. There seems to be a general consensus that specialist investors do health care, and non-specialist investors cant do everything else. We dont believe thats true, he explained. As the head of private investments at Baillie Gifford, Singlehursts team has led the firms investments in startups Ro, Tempus, and Honorall some of the biggest health tech deals to date. Singlehurst joined Baillie Giffords graduate training program after finishing a masters degree in 20thcentury philosophy in 2010. At the time, the firm was only investing in public companies. Singlehurst helped spearhead the companys efforts to start investing in companies at their earliest stages, a division of Baillie Gifford that has since invested about $10 billion across over 100 businesses globally.

Age: 44

Home base: Boston, Massachussets

Big deals: Oscar, One Medical, Beam Therapeutics

Before he was a healthcare investor and a doctor, Yeshwant was a computer scientist. His interest in health tech was piqued after he helped a group of surgeons build medical software in 2002. Like many investors who helped build the health tech investing field, Yeshwant saw an opportunity to merge tech entrepreneurship with medical treatments. He helped found GVs incubation program, which has built companies such as Verve Therapeutics and Flatiron Health. Science is breaking open to benefit patients and were still at the early innings of new advances in gene editing and base editing, Yeshwant says. At GV, where he co-leads its life sciences group, Yeshwants portfolio includes more than fifty investments such as Beam Therapeutics, Oscar health and One Medical.

Age: 49

Home base: Washington D.C.

Big deals: Auris, Velocity Clinical Research

Salehizadeh was the first seed investor in surgical robotics company Auris, which was sold to Johnson and Johnson in 2019 for $5.7 billion. A longtime partner at Highland Capital, he struck off on his own several years ago to found NaviMed Capital, which focuses on growth buyouts in the health tech space. Trained as a doctor before he pursued a career on the business side of healthcare, Salehizadeh has said that he is skeptical of tech entrepreneurs with no healthcare experience who think they can disrupt the highly regulated industry. With NaviMed, he helped build Velocity Clinical Research, a firm that consolidates clinical trial sites, which was bought by GHO Capital last year.

Age: 31

Home base: Boston, Massachusetts

Big deals: Oshi Health, House Rx, Turquoise Health

Guerra told me that her investments are still in their early stages, but that doesnt mean she doesnt know how to spot a winner. Her investments with Bessemer Venture Partners include the firms leading investment in House Rxs Series A fundraising round. Before joining Bessemer, Guerra was an investor at BoxGroup Ventures. She is also the co-founder of Nucleate Bio, an entrepreneurship program that helps postdoctorate students and PhDs bring scientific projects to the commercial market.Guerra says that a founders drive and mission captures her attention. Im particularly excited to meet founders who have been outsiders or underdogs and have worked incredibly hard to turn those odds around, she explains. We are just in inning three of health tech so there is so much that we need to do to reverse the trends in rising healthcare costs and poor outcomes, she added.

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Health Tech startups are booming. These 11 VC investors are behind some of the hottest deals - Fortune