Genetics & Molecular Biology

Production of most major foods involve nitrate and phosphate fertilizers, but excessive fertilizer use is bad for the environment.  That is why scientists came up with modern technologies that use less fertilizer and, on the other end, fewer pesticides. But some countries or processes like "organic" ban modern products, so their nitrogen runoff is excessive. Perhaps a new form of genetic engineering will be the first product to be allowed under their marketing guidelines since Mutagenesis.   If we could use mutually beneficial relationships between plant roots and soil microbes to…

Since being discovered in 1993, microRNAs have gone on to win a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, thanks to private sector uptake with the COVID-19 vaccines that saved the world during the pandemic that emerged from Wuhan, China in early 2020.  Errors in the manufacture of over 1,000 microRNAs can put us at risk for developmental disorders, cancer, or neurodegenerative disease and a new study looks at a molecular machine called Microprocessor (MP), which trims longer molecules called primary microRNAs (pri-miRNAs) - without cutting other kinds of RNA that resemble pri-miRNAs.…

When Senator Elizabeth Warren had her claims of native ancestry debunked by DNA testing, it was a warning shot to everyone who identifies that way - don't take a test. Most native Americans had long said that anyway, they knew how biology worked better Washington DC staffers. After five generations there is a chance there will be no evidence of an ancestor so natives have long told their communities not to participate. If there are only a few hundred in a database, the database is meaningless and natives tribes can continue their 'we agree you are and you agree you are native' policy rather…

It is easy for wealthy countries to spend $135 billion on an organic food process that uses higher quantities of older, more toxic pesticides at greater environmental strain, because it is a niche luxury item. In countries that are poor, which often means  outside natural breadbasket climates, the organic food process means cycles of famine and starvation. Science can help with that. Like humans, plants have a natural ability to adapt to unfavorable weather conditions but nature is only about individual survival, and humans need to think about yields if we're going to keep land use…

Prokaryotes, single-cell organisms such as bacteria, undergo inversions which cause a physical flip of a segment of DNA and change an organism’s genetic identity the way you might change a wig. They can occur within a single gene, in defiance of the more common 'one gene codes for one protein' standard. It has been known since the 1920s that bacteria can flip small sections of their DNA to activate or deactivate genes, but somersaulting pieces have never been found within the confines of a single gene, and that ability can have profound impact, the way flipping the letters of "dog" and…

In 1929, an experiment with 28 barley varieties showed why barley, one of the world’s most important cereal crops for at least 12,000 years, has been so adaptable, growing everywhere from Norway to the mountains of South America, and why that means the future remains bright for whiskey and beer. In most cases, random changes to DNA allowed it to survive in each new location so scientists nearly 100 years ago set out to discover the genes that changed to predict which varieties will thrive in which places. Modern work is highlighting for media its implications in a world of future climate…

Brown adipose tissue is different from the white fat around human belly and thighs. Brown fat helps to turn calories into heat and it was once thought that only small animals like mice and newborns had brown fat but some adults retain it. If some people have it, perhaps others can activate it also, and a study found a previously unknown built-in mechanism that switches it off shortly after being activated.  Which means it doesn't help against obesity. A group discovered a protein responsible for this switching-off process called AC3-AT. Mice that genetically didn't have AC3-AT were…

Life may be detected in a single ice grain containing one bacterial cell or portions of a cell which means it could be found in the frozen sea spray from the moons orbiting Saturn or Jupiter. Finding that will take is a mass spectrometer onboard a spacecraft, and that will happen when the Europa Clipper mission launches in October with the The SUrface Dust Analyzer. The authors couldn't simulate grains of ice flying through space at 2 to 3 miles per second to hit an observational instrument so they used an experimental setup that sent a thin beam of liquid water into a vacuum, where it…

The upside to greater wealth equality than at any point in human history is that nearly everyone can afford food for the first time ever. The famines of the 1980s have been effectively eliminated by science. The downside is that cultural maturity has not kept pace with our biological mandate to eat like we may not have food next week. That is why obesity could soon overtake alcohol and even cigarettes as the top lifestyle disease source. Up to 20 percent of people could soon have fatty liver disease and a third of those may develop non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) that can progress to…

Microplastics are a kernel of biological concern that gets magnified by hype, like endocrine "disrupting" chemicals or weedkillers detectable in breast milk. In modern times, we can detect anything in anything, so the 'zero' levels of the 1960s no longer exist, because testing is 1,000,000 times more sensitive than it was in the past. The presence of something does not mean real risk. There are sharks in the ocean but people in Montana are smart enough to know that hazard does not translate into their risk. That's why concern about microplastics in sex toys are overblown. It posits that…