Plant DNA editing breakthrough vital to
future food supply
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Lucy is the editor of Verdict. You can reach her at
lucy.ingham@pmgoperations.com
For the first time in history,
researchers have successfully edited mitochondrial plant DNA in a move that has
significant positive repercussions for future food security.
Found in mitochondria, the part
of the cell responsible for converting energy into a fuel source, mitochondrial
DNA is one of a number of DNA types found in animals and plants.
However, due to the
industrialised nature of modern farming, the diversity of mitochondrial DNA in
most crops is extremely poor.
This means that it is a significant
weak point within the food supply, as a disease targeting the mitochondrial DNA
has the potential to wipe out large portions of a given crop in a short period
of time.
This has already happened. In
1970, for example, 15% of the American corn crop was killed in a single year
due to a fungal infection targeting a gene found in the mitochondrial DNA of
all corn in Texas.
By successfully editing
mitochondrial plant DNA for the first time, researchers have created the
possibility for crops to be engineered to have far greater genetic diversity,
building increased resistance to potential disease.
Plant DNA editing a historic achievement
The feat was achieved by
scientists at the University of Tokyo in Japan, and represents a dramatic
breakthrough for the field.
While animal mitochondrial DNA
was successfully edited in 2008, this is the first time the feat has been
achieved in plants. It follows the successful editing of chloroplast DNA in
1988 and nuclear DNA in the 1980s.
The reason mitochondrial plant
DNA editing has taken so much longer than for animals is that in plants this
area of the cell is much more complicated. While in animals the mitochondrial
genome is a small molecule that is very similar in all species, in plants it
large and varied.
“The plant mitochondrial genome
is huge in comparison,” explained Associate Professor Shin-ichi Arimura, from
the University of Tokyo.
“The structure is much more
complicated, the genes are sometimes duplicated, the gene expression mechanisms
are not well-understood, and some mitochondria have no genomes at all – in our
previous studies, we observed that they fuse with other mitochondria to
exchange protein products and then separate again.”
The researchers adapted a gene
editing technique known as mitoTALENs, which has previously been applied to
animal mitochondrial DNA. This allowed them to cut the DNA at a specific gene
and delete it.
Trump
officials deleting mentions of ‘climate change’ from U.S. Geological Survey
press releases
Under Director James Reilly, the U.S. Geological Survey has
drawn criticism for deemphasizing concerns about climate change.
NASA
A March news release from the
U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) touted a new study that could be useful for
infrastructure planning along the California coastline.
At least that's how President
Donald Trump’s administration conveyed it.
The news release hardly stood
out. It focused on the methodology of the study rather than its major findings,
which showed that climate change could have a withering effect on California's
economy by inundating real estate over the next few decades.
An earlier draft of the news
release, written by researchers, was sanitized by Trump administration
officials, who removed references to the dire effects of climate change after
delaying its release for several months, according to three federal officials
who saw it. The study, published in the journal Scientific
Reports, showed that California, the world's fifth-largest economy,
would face more than $100 billion in damages related to climate change and
sea-level rise by the end of the century. It found that three to seven times
more people and businesses than previously believed would be exposed to severe
flooding.
“We show that for California,
USA, the world's fifth largest economy, over $150 billion of property equating
to more than 6% of the state's GDP and 600,000 people could be impacted by
dynamic flooding by 2100,” the researchers wrote in the study.
The release fits a pattern of
downplaying climate research at USGS and in other agencies within the
administration. While USGS does not appear to be halting the pursuit of
science, it has publicly communicated an incomplete account of the
peer-reviewed research or omitted it under President Trump.
“It's been made clear to us that
we're not supposed to use climate change in press releases anymore. They will
not be authorized,” one federal researcher said, speaking anonymously for
fear of reprisal.
In the Obama administration,
press releases related to climate change were typically approved within days,
researchers said. Now, they can take more than six months and go through the
offices of political appointees, where they are often altered, several
researchers told E&E News.
In the case of the California
coastline study, the press release went through the office of James Reilly, the
director of USGS, a former astronaut who is attempting to minimize the
consideration of climate change in agency decisions. Reilly is preparing a
directive for agency scientists to use climate models that predict changes
through 2040, when the effect of emissions is expected to be less severe. The New
York Times first reported on the directive.
At his 2018 confirmation hearing,
Reilly promised to protect the agency's scientific integrity.
“If someone were to come to me
and say, ‘I want you to change this because it's the politically right thing to
do,’ I would politely decline,” Reilly told lawmakers. “I'm fully
committed to scientific integrity.”
A spokeswoman for USGS said the
agency has no formal policy to avoid references to climate change.
“There is no policy nor directive
in place that directs us to avoid mentioning climate change in our
communication materials,” said Karen Armstrong, the spokeswoman.
“Scientists at USGS regularly develop
new methods and tools to supply timely, relevant and useful information about
our planet and its processes, and we are committed to promoting the science
they develop and making it broadly available,” she added.
The agency's press release about
the California coastline study was significantly altered to mask the potential
impact of rising temperatures on the state's economy. Instead, it described the
methodology of the study and how it relied on “state-of-the-art computer
models” and various sea-level rise predictions.
“USGS scientists and
collaborators used state-of-the-art computer models to determine the coastal
flooding and erosion that could result from a range of peer-reviewed, published
21st-century sea level rise and storm scenarios,” the final press release
said. “The authors then translated those hazards into a range of projected
economic and social exposure data to show the lives and dollars that could be
at risk from climate change in California during the 21st century.”
The USGS release didn't include
the dollar figures outlined in the study.
An earlier draft of the press
release, which was put online by the environmental group Point Blue
Conservation Science, a participant in the study, compared the possible effect
on Californians to the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. The release had stark
recommendations for coastal planners and emphasized that by the end of the
century, a typical winter storm could threaten $100 billion in coastal real
estate annually.
“According to the study, even
modest sea level rise projections of ten inches (25 centimeters) by 2040 could
flood more than 150,000 residents and affect more than $30 billion in property
value when combined with an extreme 100-year storm along California's coast,”
the draft stated. “Societal exposure that included storms was up to seven times
greater than with sea level rise alone.”
The agency has omitted climate
change from other press releases.
A release in 2017 that publicized
a study on how polar bears were expending more energy due to a loss of sea ice
did not mention climate change. It noted that a “moving treadmill of sea
ice” in the warming Arctic forced polar bears to hunt for more seals and
placed pressure on their population in the Beaufort and Chukchi seas, without
stating that climate change is a key driver of sea ice conditions.
Another USGS release, on shifting
farming regions due to climate change, mentioned "future high-temperature
extremes" and "future climate conditions" but not climate
change. The first sentence of the study that it was intended to promote
mentions climate change. It was published in Scientific Reports.
Some of the USGS studies point to
national security repercussions. One study released last year found that a
military installation in the Pacific Ocean that would play a role in a possible
nuclear strike by North Korea could become uninhabitable in less than two
decades due to climate change. The study, which was ordered by the Department
of Defense, was released by USGS without a press release.
USGS conducts important climate
research and manages the Landsat satellite system that has tracked human-caused
global changes for almost 50 years. Government researchers study sea-level rise
and glacial melt and manage regional climate adaptation centers housed at universities
from Hawaii to Massachusetts.
Allowing valuable information to
fall through the cracks is a waste of taxpayer dollars and could prevent
science from being included in policy decisions, said Joel Clement, a former
climate staffer for the Department of the Interior, USGS’s parent agency.
Clement, who is now a senior fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School's Belfer
Center for Science and International Affairs, said the promotion of studies is
an important way to get information into the hands of planners, homeowners, and
policymakers. He said Interior appears to be suppressing climate science.
“It's an insult to the science,
of course, but it's also an insult to the people who need this information and
whose livelihoods and in some cases their lives depend on this,” Clement said.
“What's shocking about it is that this has been taken to a new level, where
information that is essential to economic and health and safety—essentially
American well-being—is essentially being shelved and being hidden.”
In the last year of the Obama
administration, USGS distributed at least 13 press releases that focused on
climate change and highlighted it in the headline, according to an E&E News
review. Since then — from 2017 through the first six months of 2019 — none has
mentioned climate change in the headline of the press release, according to the
list of state and national releases posted on the USGS website. Some briefly
mentioned climate change in the body of the release, while others did not refer
to it at all.
Other studies have been quietly
buried on the agency's webpages.
That subtle form of suppression
fits a pattern elsewhere in the federal government.
Politico recently reported that officials at the Department of
Agriculture buried dozens of studies related to climate change. In one case,
agency officials tried to prevent outside groups from disseminating a
climate-related study. The research looked at how rice provides less nutrition
in a carbon-rich environment. That could have global consequences because
hundreds of millions of people have rice-based diets around the world.
The Interior Department has been
accused of deleting climate change references from previous press releases. In
2017, The
Washington Post reported that the agency deleted a line
mentioning climate change in a press release about a study on flood risks to
coastal communities. That line was: “Global climate change drives sea-level
rise, increasing the frequency of coastal flooding.”
Interior Secretary David
Bernhardt, a former energy lobbyist, is under investigation for his ties to the
energy industry while serving in government. A separate investigation is
exploring whether he sought to block an Interior Department study on the
dangers that a pesticide posed to endangered species.
There is no evidence that Trump
political appointees at the agency have blocked climate studies from taking
place, but the censoring of press releases has affected the work of researchers
worried about their jobs, according to another federal researcher.
“We are pretty cognizant of political pressures, and with these
press releases people are definitely biting their nails over ‘how should we
word this’ and if there are proposals within USGS, should we use climate
change or not,” the researcher said. “It's a lot of stuff that definitely
filters down, and it affects the reality of people on the ground doing the work
when you're not sure of how I should present this. It's definitely a huge waste
of time.”
Scott Waldman, E&E News
Before science reporter Scott Waldman
joined ClimateWire in 2016, he
covered state energy policy at Politico New York and has
worked for the Albany Times Union, Erie
Times-News and The Baltimore Sun. His work also
has appeared in Scientific American.
The Trump Administration Is Accused
Of Burying Climate Change Research; Here’s What We Know
07.08.19
Super hurricanes pummeling coastal
regions and wildfires burning out west. Devastated olive crops and
ever-shrinking supplies of cocoa. The hottest temperatures in recorded
history. Mussels cooking in their shells because
it’s so hot. This is climate change, and it’s happening now, manifesting in
intense weather patterns and negative changes to the food chain. And it’s
happening regardless of whether or not we believe in it — and whether or not we
know what to expect.
We do know what to expect, of
course, thanks to a network of scientists and researchers who study climate
change and its outsized impact on practically every facet of life. It’s how we
know that U.S. meat and dairy producers
are some of the biggest contributors to climate change. It’s how we
know that the 57 percent drop in Italy’s
olive production — which will have devastating consequences for
Italy’s economy and the world olive oil supply — is due to climate change. It’s
how we know our future might be free of chocolate and coffee, that the food
supply chain could break down irreparably, leading to the malnutrition and even
starvation of millions of people.
The Trump administration,
meanwhile, loathes this information and wants to limit our access to it —
according to a bombshell investigation by Politico. The outlet claims
that the
Trump administration has “a persistent pattern” of refusing to “draw attention
to findings that show the potential dangers and consequences of climate change,
covering dozens of separate studies.” In other words, the Trump administration is
purposefully trying to bury studies from the Department of
Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service which reveal just how dangerous
climate change is.
Per Politico,
“The Trump administration, researchers say, is not directly censoring
scientific findings or black-balling research on climate change. Instead, they
say, officials are essentially choosing to ignore or downplay findings that
don’t line up with the administration’s agenda.”
In fact, since Trump took office in
January 2017 and his Head of Agriculture, fellow climate denialist Sonny Perdue,
took over the USDA in April 2017, the ARS has only put out press releases for
two climate change-related studies, both of which were “favorable to the
politically powerful meat industry.” One stated that “beef production makes a
relatively small contribution to greenhouse gas emissions.” The other raised
concerns about the potential for “widespread nutritional problems” stemming
from removing animal products from one’s diet.
Perhaps a lack of press releases
doesn’t sound like much, but the
damage it is doing to climate research is marked. At least 45 studies — though
likely more — on climate change haven’t received the public attention required
to turn them into practical knowledge.
Here’s what the administration doesn’t want you to know.
Rice — a staple
food for 2 billion people — is being severely damaged.
In perhaps one of the most
groundbreaking studies on climate change and food supplies, scientists from the
U.S., Australia, Japan, and China worked together to determine how rising carbon dioxide levels would affect rice —
a staple food for upwards of 2 billion people. And what they found is
devastating: while research previously showed that rising CO2 levels might hurt
protein levels in cereals like rice, this May 2018 study confirmed the loss of
protein and found that CO2 levels
will also damage vitamins and micronutrients (such as iron, zinc, and B
vitamins) found in 18 genetically diverse kinds of rice.
What this means: because “rice supplies approximately 25% of all
global calories, with the percentage of rice consumed varying by socioeconomic
status, particularly in Asia” the damage done to global rice crops will
disproportionately affect people living in poverty—who already suffer from food
insecurity. The researchers believe that climate change-induced deficiencies
will directly, negatively impact “a global population of approximately 600
million” people who consume more than 50 percent of their daily calories via
rice.
Some consequences of malnutrition?
Lack of sufficient micronutrients, vitamins, and protein can impair “cognitive
development, metabolism, and immune system” and is a leading cause of death among
young children.
We’re getting a
clearer picture of what will happen to the food supply chain in the U.S.
Scientists discover how plants
breathe
By Nigel Barlow
July 8, 2019
Botanists have known since the
19th century that leaves have pores – called stomata – and contain an intricate
internal network of air channels. But until now it wasn’t understood how those
channels form in the right places in order to provide a steady flow of CO2 to
every plant cell.
A new study, led by scientists at
the University of Sheffield collaborating with colleagues at Lancaster
University and the University of Nottingham, used genetic manipulation
techniques to reveal that the more stomata a leaf has, the more airspace it
forms. The air channels act like bronchioles – the tiny passages that carry air
to the exchange surfaces of human and animal lungs.
The study, published in Nature
Communications, showed that the movement of CO2 through the pores most likely
determines the shape and scale of the air channel network.
Dr Marjorie Lundgren, Leverhulme
Early Career Fellow at Lancaster University said: “Scientists have suspected
for a long time that the development of stomata and the development of air
spaces within a leaf are coordinated. However, we weren’t really sure which
drove the other. So this started as a ‘what came first, the chicken or the
egg?’ question.
“Using a clever set of
experiments involving X-ray CT image analyses, our collaborative team answered
these questions using species with very different leaf structures. While we
show that the development of stomata initiates the expansion of air spaces, we
took it one step further to show that the stomata actually need to be
exchanging gases in order for the air spaces to expand. This paints a much more
interesting story, linked to physiology.”
The discovery marks a major step
forward in our understanding of the internal structure of a leaf, and how the
function of tissues can influence how they develop – which could have
ramifications beyond plant biology.
Professor Andrew Fleming, who led
the study from the Institute for Sustainable Food at the University of
Sheffield, said: “Until now, the way plants form their intricate patterns of
air channels has remained surprisingly mysterious to plant scientists.
“This major discovery shows that
the movement of air through leaves shapes their internal workings – which has
implications for the way we think about evolution in plants.”
The study also shows that wheat plants
have been bred by generations of people to have fewer pores on their leaves and
fewer air channels, which makes their leaves more dense and allows them to be
grown with less water.
This new insight highlights the
potential for scientists to make staple crops like wheat even more
water-efficient by altering the internal structure of their leaves.
“The fact that humans have
already inadvertently influenced the way plants breathe by breeding wheat that
uses less water suggests we could target these air channel networks to develop
crops that can survive the more extreme droughts we expect to see with climate
breakdown,” said Andrew.
This approach is being pioneered
by other scientists at the Institute for Sustainable Food, who have developed
climate-ready rice and wheat which can survive extreme drought conditions.
The X-ray imaging work was
undertaken at the Hounsfield Facility at the University of Nottingham. The
Director of the Facility, Professor Sacha Mooney, said: “Until recently the
application of X-ray CT, or CAT scanning, in plant sciences has mainly been
focused on visualising the hidden half of the plant – the roots – as they grow
in soil.
“Working with our partners in
Sheffield we have now developed the technique to visualise the cellular structure
of a plant leaf in 3D – allowing us to see how the complex network of air
spaces inside the leaf controls its behaviour. It’s very exciting.”
Nograles refiles measure seeking to end hunger among
the poor
Published July 9, 2019 2:14pm
PBA
party-list Representative Jericho Nograles has refiled a measure seeking to
alleviate hunger and address malnutrition in the country though social transfer
programs, public nutrition supplement, and regular feeding programs in schools.
House
Bill 1532, also known as the Zero Hunger Bill, aims to harmonize all laws
related to the Filipinos’ right to sufficient food as well as to “clarify the
scope and content of the right, establish standards for compliance, lay down
principles to shape the process of realization, and prohibit violations of the
right to adequate food.”
It
also seeks to complement government actions to help farmers manage the effects
of lifting the quantitative restriction on rice imports and improve the
country’s capacity to produce food.
“This
bill will not only help us fight hunger but it would also provide the much
needed lifeline for our farmers who are now reeling from the effects of the
liberalized importation of rice. We want to harmonize all programs related to
our desire to defeat hunger and increase our food production,” Nograles said in
a statement.
“In
essence, the measure seeks to institutionalize programs to make food a
sustained priority and a legal right and not an object of charity,” he added.
Under
the measure, the government is mandated to create programs that would ensure
the reduction of hunger by 25% in two and a half years after it is signed into
law and implemented.
Hunger
is also envisioned to be reduced by another 25% after five years, and another
25% after seven and a half years.
After
10 years of implementation, the measure aims to achieve zero hunger among the
poorest Filipinos.
At
the same time, the bill requires the government to ensure that the lands
devoted to food production will be increased to 50 percent of all prime
agricultural land in every region within 10 years of its implementation.
Within
the same period, the state should also ensure the steady increase of the
following indicators:
- Percentage
of development of ancestral lands
- Percentage
of rural population with access to productive resources
- Share of
budget spent on programs aimed at creating access to productive resources
- Percentage
of budget spent on agri-research, agri-extension, irrigation, training,
technology, credits and rural development
- Percentage
of rural female-headed households, or rural women, with legal title to
agriculture lands
- Percentage
of public budget allocation for social transfer programs to those unable
to feed themselves
- Coverage
of marginalized and disadvantaged population taking part in social
transfer programs
- Percentage
of marginalized and disadvantaged population covered by a public nutrition
supplement program
- Percentage
of population aware of available food and nutrition programs
- Coverage
of school feeding programs
Nograles
noted that periodic reviews would be made to ensure the set targets are being
met.
“In
measuring the incidence of hunger, the key primary data sources will include
national nutrition surveys, household surveys of the Philippine Statistics
Authority, namely the Family Income and Expenditure Survey and the Annual
Poverty Indicators Survey, and global hunger indices as benchmarks,” according
the bill.
During
the 17th Congress, Nograles and his brother, now Cabinet Secretary Karlo
Nograles, filed a similar measure but it made it through the House of
Representatives. —Erwin Colcol/VDS, GMA News
EU rice imports from Cambodia
drop sharply after tariffs
Country’s
losses in Europe offset by Chinese market
This article is
powered by Agra Europe
·
08
Jul 2019
