BioQuakes

AP Biology class blog for discussing current research in Biology

Author: khanjugation

CRISPR Produce… the future of Food?

For years, people have been getting their food from, primarily, agricultural and cattle sectors; however, with CRISPR, everything is about to change. Or is it? Can CRISPR actually be used to make food in labs and completely change the way that the world receives their nourishment? These are questions that tech, scientists, and investor moguls have been asking for years, and Bill Gates’ new start up may have found the answer!  

Memphis meats, a new tech company that is backed two tech moguls, Bill Gates’ and Richard Branson, believes that they have found a new way to feed the world. The Memphis team have been successful in creating lab grown meat, using the CRISPR method. With their proprietary patented technique, Memphis meats could be changing the world. One may not understand how beneficial lab grown food would be. It would: save animals, lower the amount of water use (while raising the cattle), and be able to be made both healthier and tastier.

 

The company uses a special technique that allows them to manufacture skeletal muscle, that is edible, using cells from the poultry species Gallus gallus, and from the livestock species Bos Taurus. In addition, Memphis meats is also exploiting new and innovative ways to make their products better for the environment and public health, and more affordable, and in turn, scalable – mass produced. With all this great innovation and progress, Memphis Meats says that they are a long way from making a product that is ready for customers and consumers. However, the future of food and agriculture is promising.

What do you think? Could CRISPR and “lab meats” change the way that humans get their food? Only time will tell.

This article is by Jon Christian from Futurism. The research and technology is proprietary and patented and not for the public to see.

article: https://futurism.com/bill-gates-startup-crispr-lab-meat

GOC Bypass… The Future of Food?

For years, scientists have been trying to find ways to avoid the imminent world food shortage crisis. Is there a scientific breakthrough that could help the world get more grain yield in plants and help avoid a worldwide food shortage? These are questions that farmers and scientists around the world have been trying to find the solution to for decades. Professor Xin-Xiang Peng, of South China Agricultural University, and his team believe that they have found the answer, a process they call the GOC Bypass method.

Professor Xin-Xiang Peng and his team conducted thorough research on rice plants, specifically, and tried to find a way to further maximize their grain yields. Peng and his team believe that with the growing population of the world and less useable cultivatable soil, scientists must find a way to maximize grain yield, in order to produce more food. After intensive research, Peng and his partner, Zheng-Hui He, believe that they have found a way to partially bypass a process called photorespiration and reuse the materials used in photorespiration in photosynthesis. This process is called GOC Bypass. Xiang and his team bioengineered the CO2 to be diverted from photorespiration and to instead be used during photosynthesis, causing increased grain yield.

Peng and He discovered that bioengineered rice plants have a 27% greater grain yield than normal rice plants. To achieve this, they converted a molecule called glycolate, which is a product of photorespiration, and converted it to CO2, using three rice enzymes: glycolate oxidase, oxalate oxidase, and catalase (AKA GOC). The CO2 was then diverted to photosynthesis, which was able to, in turn, create a higher grain yield as the photorespiration in the rice plants went down by approximately 25% and the net photosynthetic rate increased by about 15%, due to the higher concentrations of CO2 being able to be used for photosynthesis. Thus, increasing the grain yield in rice plants and harvesting more food from the same crop.

Biologically engineering food has been around for most of the 2000’s, but the GOC Bypass method is a new method that could potentially help combat the need for more food, due to the population growth and the decrease of cultivatable land. Peng and He’s research is promising, but it is still in its early stage. So, only time will tell if the GOC Bypass method will be of any use to mankind in the future and if this process can be used with a variety of different crops.

What do you think? Could the GOC Bypass method help solve the worlds emerging food crisis? Only time will tell.

The research is from Zheng-Hui He, Xin-Xiang Peng’s Engineering a New Chloroplastic Photorespiratory Bypass to Increase Photosynthetic Efficiency and Productivity in Rice, at the South China Agricultural University. The research was published by the Molecular Plant Shanghai Editorial Office in association with Cell Press, an imprint of Elsevier Inc., on behalf of CSPB and IPPE, SIBS, CAS.

 

 

 

Microbiomes… an Athlete’s Key to Success!

For years, scientists have been trying to see what makes a professional athlete different from someone who didn’t quite make the cut. Is there something that professional and elite athletes have that other athletes or inactive individuals don’t? Is it possible to give a mediocre athlete a supplement to improve their performance? Dr. Jonathan Schieman and George Church from the Wyss Institute at Harvard University believe the answer is yes, and they think they’ve found the answer, microbiomes.

Dr. Schieman and his team conducted thorough research on NBA players, marathoners, and Olympic rowers to see if there was a common microbiome that these high-level athletes all shared that sedentary individuals did not. After immense amounts of testing and making sure the proper controls were in place to avoid confounding, and lurking variables, Schieman and his team were able to find one particular organism that was elevated in the guts of athletes’ bodies more than sedentary individuals.

Schieman and his team were able to isolate a particularly abundant organism in athletes that feeds off lactic acid. Lactic acid is a naturally occurring chemical compound that generates during particularly intense and strenuous muscle exercise. Thus, the researchers believe that the organism they isolated has a particularly important effect on making athletes stronger. In addition, the researchers have recently conducted a new study on rugby players and found that rugby players have more of this organism in their body as well as a more diverse range of microbiomes than a sedentary individual.

The microbiome space is particularly new, so one cannot conclude that these findings will be significant to athletes in the future, a realization that Schieman has come to terms with. However, if Schieman and Church find more conclusive and concrete evidence that these, and other, organisms can yield a much better athlete, the sports world could change forever.

What do you think? Can microbiomes be used to make more elite athletes? Only time will tell.

————————–

The research is from Jonathan Schieman and George Church from the Wyss Institute at Harvard University. A comprehensive scientific journal entry has not been released to the public due to intellectual property concerns, as the findings are part of a privately-owned company.

Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:EscherichiaColi_NIAID.jpg

Survival of the Fittest or Laziest?

For hundreds of years biologists have essentially fully accepted Darwin’s theory of “Survival of the Fittest;” but, have they been wrong all this time? Scientists believe that there could be a link from high metabolic rates to extinction. Luke Strotz, scientist and researcher at the University of Kansas, studied the effect of metabolic intake, energy intake by an organism, in mollusks.

Strotz and his team decided to use mollusks as their objects of interest due to the sheer abundance of data that they could retrieve from the past 5 million years. Strotz observed that certain mollusk species with higher energy intakes are extinct; while, mollusks species that have considerably lower metabolic intakes are still in existence today. Thus, in the mollusk group, it was quite clear that the higher metabolic rate correlated with faster extinction. Although this study is quite primitive in nature, and thus should not be compared to humans, it is perplexing to see that a species in the mollusk group can continue to exist because of its “laziness” or low metabolic intake.

Although Strotz’s evidence is convincing, I personally do not believe that “Survival of the Laziest” should be taken seriously, as mollusks are extremely different from humans. Thus, it would be illogical to compare the correlation of this study to that of the lives of humans. So, unfortunately, it appears laziness is most likely not a trait that the human race should endorse.

What do you think? Can laziness really save the human race? Only time will tell.

 

The research from Luke Strotz is published in the journal: Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

 

Powered by WordPress & Theme by Anders Norén

Skip to toolbar