Lifeboat Foundation

There are 1.4 billion insects for each one of us. Though you often need a microscope to see them, insects are “the lever pullers of the world,” says David MacNeal, author of Bugged. They do everything from feeding us to cleaning up waste to generating $57 billion for the U.S. economy alone.

Today, many species are faced with extinction. When National Geographic caught up with MacNeal in Los Angeles, he explained why this would be catastrophic for life on Earth and why a genetically engineered bee could save hives—and our food supply—worldwide.

In field trials, colonies fed mycelium extract from amadou and reishi fungi showed a 79-fold reduction in deformed wing virus and a 45,000-fold reduction in Lake Sinai virus compared to control colonies.

Though it’s in the early stages of development, the researchers see great potential in this research.

“Our greatest hope is that these extracts have such an impact on viruses that they may help varroa mites become an annoyance for bees, rather than causing huge devastation,” said Steve Sheppard, a WSU entomology professor and one of the paper’s authors. “We’re excited to see where this research leads us. Time is running out for bee populations and the safety and security of the world’s food supply hinges on our ability to find means to improve pollinator health.”

Continue reading “Fungus provides powerful medicine in fighting honey bee viruses” »

Killing ticks and inoculating people has failed, so researchers try immunizing mice via vaccine-laced food.

• By Angus Chen on January 29, 2019

Scientists have discovered that grasses are able to short cut evolution by taking genes from their neighbours. The findings suggest wild grasses are naturally genetically modifying themselves to gain a competitive advantage.

Understanding how this is happening may also help scientists reduce the risk of genes escaping from GM crops and creating so called super-weeds—which can happen when genes from GM crops transfer into local wild plants, making them herbicide resistant.

Since Darwin, much of the theory of evolution has been based on common descent, where natural selection acts on the genes passed from parent to offspring. However, researchers from the Department of Animal and Plant Sciences at the University of Sheffield have found that grasses are breaking these rules. Lateral gene transfer allows organisms to bypass evolution and skip to the front of the queue by using genes that they acquire from distantly related species.

Continue reading “How our plants have turned into thieves to survive” »

Circa 2018

From medical to agricultural to solar, quantum dots have uses far beyond the humble TV.

Continue reading “How quantum dots supercharge farming, medicine and solar, too” »

Circa 2017

Microbes can thrive on radioactive waste products and make them less likely to leak out of underground respositories.

The excessive use of pesticides has brought about numerous disastrous effects on the environment, and among them, it has recently drastically reduced the bee population in various areas of the world. Yet, not many countries took remedial measures, even after realizing the dangers, but this was not the case with France.

It is on track to becoming the first European country to ban five pesticide varieties, as scientists believe that these neonicotinoids are extremely dangerous since they kill bees.

However, while bee-keepers and environmentalists are extremely happy with this decision, sugar beet and cereal farmers are not very excited about it, since they are afraid that in this way, their crops will be more prone to pests and insects.

Continue reading “France Becomes First Country In Europe To Ban All Pesticides Linked To Bee Deaths” »

Plants are master chemists, and Michigan State University researchers have unlocked their secret of producing specialized metabolites.

The research, published in the latest issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, combined plant biology and machine learning to sort through tens of thousands of genes to determine which genes make specialized metabolites.

Some metabolites attract pollinators while others repel pests. Ever wonder why deer eat tulips and not daffodils? It’s because daffodils have metabolites to fend off the critters who’d dine on them.

Continue reading “Machine learning unlocks plants’ secrets” »

Imagine taking medicine oblivious to the fact that a food allergy can effect you taking simply medicine.

Certain substances derived from foodstuffs are used as excipients in drugs and vaccines for their pharmaceutical properties. Some of these food-derived excipients contain food proteins either intentionally or unintentionally as contaminants. As such, patients who have IgE antibodies directed against these food proteins are theoretically at risk for allergic reactions when exposed to the food proteins in the medications. However, such reactions are quite rare, usually because the amount of food protein is not present in a large enough quantity to elicit a reaction or because the particular protein is not a common allergen. When the food protein appears as an unintentional contaminant, the amount of protein, if any, that is present might be variable and might elicit reactions only from some lots of medication that happen to contain more of the food protein or illicit reactions only in patients who are exquisitely sensitive or happen to have IgE antibodies directed against a particular epitope in the contaminating protein. In most circumstances these medications should not be routinely withheld from patients who have particular food allergies because the overwhelming majority will tolerate the medications uneventfully. However, if a particular patient has had an apparent allergic reaction to the medication, allergy to the food component should be investigated as a possible cause. Even in this circumstance (ie, an allergic reaction to a medication in a patient allergic to a particular food and the presence of the food protein in the medication), the food protein would still have to be demonstrated to be causal by using appropriate testing because other allergens present in the medication could have been the cause or the medication might be capable of non–IgE-mediated mast cell degranulation.