An amendment tabled in the new UK agriculture bill, designed to allow access to new gene-editing technology, has been withdrawn but the government has pledged to conduct a public consultation on the issue, amid indications that it could eventually offer its support for the technology.

The amendment, withdrawn on Tuesday (28 July) after a lengthy debate in the House of Lords, has stirred up considerable debate in the past few weeks, both over environmental concerns as well as potential ramifications for the future agrifood trade relationship of the UK and the EU.

Despite the withdrawal of the bill, the decision is not quite clear cut just yet, as it does not technically prevent a similar or adapted amendment being reintroduced at a later stage.

However, there are indications that the UK government is not ready to offer its support for such an amendment right now, before the public consultation has been completed, but is generally looking favourably at gene editing, sources told EURACTIV.

A spokesperson for DEFRA [Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs] confirmed to EURACTIV that the government will carry out a public consultation before making any changes to the current approach.

They said that existing GMO regulations will remain in force through the EU Withdrawal Act, but declined to comment further on what exactly this consultation will entail.

However, the spokesperson stressed that organisms produced by modern mutagenesis techniques (such as gene editing) should not be subject to genetic modification regulation if the changes to their DNA could have occurred naturally or through traditional breeding methods.

The government recognises the opportunities precision breeding techniques could bring for farmers and the environment and remains committed to science-based policy and regulation of precision breeding techniques, such as gene editing, they said.

This standpoint echoes that of the UK National Farmers Union, who recently came out in favour of the technology.

The withdrawal of this amendment was welcomed by environmental groups, who have been fiercely campaigning against the amendment, which they warned could open the doors to a wide range of genetic engineering techniques.

The campaign group Beyond GM tweeted that this is a good outcome but warned that the government is still committed to deregulation and we must demand a more democratic and inclusive process.

Another UK umbrella campaign organisation, GM Freeze, added that they will be pressing for the consultation to be a meaningful in-depth consideration of public opinion and up to date science.

The amendment was staunchly defended by some members of the Lords, including Lord Krebs, who stressed the potential of the technology to make UK agriculture greener, more productive and more sustainable.

Baroness Hayman said she hoped that any future discussions on GMOs will be much more nuanced, seek to find common ground and be focused on the outcomes we are trying to achieve, rather than on very divisive attitudes.

She added she would argue that it is their responsibility to provide the appropriate regulatory framework for these advances, after what has been widely seen as the flawed ECJ judgment of 2018, referring to the European Court of Justice ruling that organisms obtained by new plant breeding techniques should, in principle, fall under the GMO Directive.

Baronness Young of Old Scone expressed concerns that rushing to deregulate gene editing to bring the UK into alignment with the US risks not being able to continue to do business with our major existing EU markets.

She added that it would be prudent to wait for the EU study on gene-editing, due to be published next April.

Beat Spth, director of agricultural biotechnology for EuropaBio, an influential biotech industry group, previously told EURACTIV that he hoped this amendment would offer an opportunity for a modernisation of the decades-old approach in view of ground-breaking new science, something he added is overdue both in the UK and in the EU.

With this move, the UK would send a strong signal to its leading public science institutions working on biotechnology and genome editing, he said.

[Edited by Zoran Radosavljevic]

The rest is here:

UK gene editing amendment withdrawn, but government commits to consultation - EURACTIV

TIRUCHI

The Bharatiya Kisan Sangh (BKS) has urged the Tamil Nadu Chief Minister not to give no-objection certificate for taking up field trials of Bt brinjal in the State.

To our surprise, the Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee(GEAC) has recently granted permission to undertake Biosafety Research Level (BRL) - II tests of Bt brinjal, a genetically modified (GM) crop in your State. The trials are also allowed in some other States, N.S.Parthasarathy, State general secretary, BKS, said in a representation to Chief Minister Edappadi K.Palaniswami.

Condemning it as an unilateral decision of the committee, Mr.Parthasarathy sought to draw the attention of Mr. Palaniswami to the developments pertaining to the field trials of GM crops, including brinjal in the country.

There are several serious issues such as environmental pollution, human health, productivity and market monopolisation, which need to be addressed before allowing such trials of GM crops, Mr.Parthasarathy said.

Objections from almost stakeholders over the past few decades are yet to be satisfactorily answered. Furthermore, most of the prestigious institutions, including parliamentary standing committee, the technical expert committee of Supreme Court, views of eminent scientists and representatives from agriculturally important states have expressed their apprehensions over the trials. Many States have even banned GM food crops/ trials.

GAEC is party to the miserable failure of Bt cotton technology and illegal perpetuation of herbicide tolerant cotton. Under such circumstances the decision of GEAC is autocratic but also appears to be taken with some ulterior motive, he charged.

It was also sad that GAEC was trying to test GM crops in the field when the country was in the grip of the pandemic.

The BKS was raising awareness about the hazards of the technology and it is our earnest request to the Government not to allow the testing of GM crops in general and Bt Brinjal in particular within Tamil Nadu in the interest of entire farming community and consumers, Mr.Parthasarathy said and urged the Chief Minister to deny NOC to any agency for conducting field trials of GM crops and remain vigilant to check any unethical trials in the State.

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(MENAFN - The Conversation) Our society has evolved so much, can we still say that we are part of Nature? If not, should we worry and what should we do about it? Poppy, 21, Warwick.

Such is the extent of our dominion on Earth, that the answer to questions around whether we are still part of nature and whether we even need some of it rely on an understanding of what we want as Homo sapiens. And to know what we want, we need to grasp what we are.

It is a huge question but they are the best. And as a biologist, here is my humble suggestion to address it, and a personal conclusion. You may have a different one, but what matters is that we reflect on it.

Perhaps the best place to start is to consider what makes us human in the first place, which is not as obvious as it may seem.

This article is part of Life's Big Questions The Conversation's new series, co-published with BBC Future, seeks to answer our readers' nagging questions about life, love, death and the universe. We work with professional researchers who have dedicated their lives to uncovering new perspectives on the questions that shape our lives.

Many years ago, a novel written by Vercors called Les Animaux dnaturs ('Denatured Animals') told the story of a group of primitive hominids, the Tropis, found in an unexplored jungle in New Guinea, who seem to constitute a missing link.

However, the prospect that this fictional group may be used as slave labour by an entrepreneurial businessman named Vancruysen forces society to decide whether the Tropis are simply sophisticated animals or whether they should be given human rights. And herein lies the difficulty.

Human status had hitherto seemed so obvious that the book describes how it is soon discovered that there is no definition of what a human actually is. Certainly, the string of experts consulted anthropologists, primatologists, psychologists, lawyers and clergymen could not agree. Perhaps prophetically, it is a layperson who suggested a possible way forward.

She asked whether some of the hominids' habits could be described as the early signs of a spiritual or religious mind. In short, were there signs that, like us, the Tropis were no longer 'at one' with nature, but had separated from it, and were now looking at it from the outside with some fear.

It is a telling perspective. Our status as altered or 'denatured' animals creatures who have arguably separated from the natural world is perhaps both the source of our humanity and the cause of many of our troubles. In the words of the book's author :

We will probably never know the timing of our gradual separation from nature although cave paintings perhaps contain some clues. But a key recent event in our relationship with the world around us is as well documented as it was abrupt. It happened on a sunny Monday morning, at 8.15am precisely.

The atomic bomb that rocked Hiroshima on August 6 1945, was a wake-up call so loud that it still resonates in our consciousness many decades later.

The day the 'sun rose twice' was not only a forceful demonstration of the new era that we had entered , it was a reminder of how paradoxically primitive we remained: differential calculus, advanced electronics and almost godlike insights into the laws of the universe helped build, well a very big stick. Modern Homo sapiens seemingly had developed the powers of gods, while keeping the psyche of a stereotypical Stone Age killer.

We were no longer fearful of nature, but of what we would do to it, and ourselves. In short, we still did not know where we came from, but began panicking about where we were going.

We now know a lot more about our origins but we remain unsure about what we want to be in the future or, increasingly , as the climate crisis accelerates , whether we even have one.

Arguably, the greater choices granted by our technological advances make it even more difficult to decide which of the many paths to take. This is the cost of freedom.

I am not arguing against our dominion over nature nor, even as a biologist, do I feel a need to preserve the status quo. Big changes are part of our evolution. After all, oxygen was first a poison which threatened the very existence of early life, yet it is now the fuel vital to our existence.

Similarly, we may have to accept that what we do, even our unprecedented dominion, is a natural consequence of what we have evolved into, and by a process nothing less natural than natural selection itself . If artificial birth control is unnatural, so is reduced infant mortality.

I am also not convinced by the argument against genetic engineering on the basis that it is 'unnatural'. By artificially selecting specific strains of wheat or dogs , we had been tinkering more or less blindly with genomes for centuries before the genetic revolution. Even our choice of romantic partner is a form of genetic engineering. Sex is nature's way of producing new genetic combinations quickly.

Even nature, it seems, can be impatient with itself.

Advances in genomics , however, have opened the door to another key turning point. Perhaps we can avoid blowing up the world, and instead change it and ourselves slowly, perhaps beyond recognition.

The development of genetically modified crops in the 1980s quickly moved from early aspirations to improve the taste of food to a more efficient way of destroying undesirable weeds or pests.

In what some saw as the genetic equivalent of the atomic bomb, our early forays into a new technology became once again largely about killing, coupled with worries about contamination. Not that everything was rosy before that. Artificial selection, intensive farming and our exploding population growth were long destroying species quicker than we could record them.

The increasing 'silent springs' of the 1950s and 60s caused by the destruction of farmland birds and, consequently, their song was only the tip of a deeper and more sinister iceberg. There is, in principle, nothing unnatural about extinction, which has been a recurring pattern (of sometimes massive proportions) in the evolution of our planet long before we came on the scene. But is it really what we want?

The arguments for maintaining biodiversity are usually based on survival, economics or ethics. In addition to preserving obvious key environments essential to our ecosystem and global survival, the economic argument highlights the possibility that a hitherto insignificant lichen, bacteria or reptile might hold the key to the cure of a future disease. We simply cannot afford to destroy what we do not know.

But attaching an economic value to life makes it subject to the fluctuation of markets. It is reasonable to expect that, in time, most biological solutions will be able to be synthesised, and as the market worth of many lifeforms falls, we need to scrutinise the significance of the ethical argument. Do we need nature because of its inherent value?

Perhaps the answer may come from peering over the horizon. It is somewhat of an irony that as the third millennium coincided with decrypting the human genome , perhaps the start of the fourth may be about whether it has become redundant.

Just as genetic modification may one day lead to the end of 'Homo sapiens naturalis' (that is, humans untouched by genetic engineering ), we may one day wave goodbye to the last specimen of Homo sapiens genetica. That is the last fully genetically based human living in a world increasingly less burdened by our biological form minds in a machine.

If the essence of a human, including our memories, desires and values, is somehow reflected in the pattern of the delicate neuronal connections of our brain (and why should it not?) our minds may also one day be changeable like never before.

And this brings us to the essential question that surely we must ask ourselves now: if, or rather when, we have the power to change anything, what would we not change?

After all, we may be able to transform ourselves into more rational, more efficient and stronger individuals. We may venture out further, have greater dominion over greater areas of space, and inject enough insight to bridge the gap between the issues brought about by our cultural evolution and the abilities of a brain evolved to deal with much simpler problems. We might even decide to move into a bodiless intelligence: in the end, even the pleasures of the body are located in the brain.

And then what? When the secrets of the universe are no longer hidden, what makes it worth being part of it? Where is the fun?

'Gossip and sex, of course!' some might say. And in effect, I would agree (although I might put it differently), as it conveys to me the fundamental need that we have to reach out and connect with others. I believe that the attributes that define our worth in this vast and changing universe are simple: empathy and love . Not power or technology, which occupy so many of our thoughts but which are merely (almost boringly) related to the age of a civilisation.

Like many a traveller, Homo sapiens may need a goal. But from the strengths that come with attaining it, one realises that one's worth (whether as an individual or a species) ultimately lies elsewhere. So I believe that the extent of our ability for empathy and love will be the yardstick by which our civilisation is judged. It may well be an important benchmark by which we will judge other civilisations that we may encounter, or indeed be judged by them.

There is something of true wonder at the basis of it all. The fact that chemicals can arise from the austere confines of an ancient molecular soup , and through the cold laws of evolution, combine into organisms that care for other lifeforms (that is, other bags of chemicals) is the true miracle.

Some ancients believed that God made us in 'his image'. Perhaps they were right in a sense, as empathy and love are truly godlike features, at least among the benevolent gods.

Cherish those traits and use them now, Poppy, as they hold the solution to our ethical dilemma. It is those very attributes that should compel us to improve the wellbeing of our fellow humans without lowering the condition of what surrounds us.

Anything less will pervert (our) nature.

To get all of life's big answers, join the hundreds of thousands of people who value evidence-based news by subscribing to our newsletter . You can send us your big questions by email at and we'll try to get a researcher or expert on the case.

More Life's Big Questions :

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Have humans evolved beyond nature and do we even need it? - MENAFN.COM

The giant American chestnut tree all but disappeared 70 years ago, killed by a blight that struck at the turn of the last century. By 1950, an estimated four billion of these magnificent trees were gone from our Eastern forests, and the tree, once dominant, is considered functionally extinct. We talk with researchers and volunteers who are working with promising new technologies to restore the American chestnut tree. There are still wild remnants of the tree in our forests - could you identify an American chestnut tree if you happened upon it?

Airdate: Tuesday, July 28, 2020

Listen to the conversation.

GUESTS:

This Granite Geek article in the Concord Monitor inspired us to look into American chestnut tree restoration:Breeding isn't resurrecting the chestnut tree; genetic engineering might.

Here's information from The American Chestnut Foundation:Why Bring Back the American Chestnut?

This transcript was machine-generated and contains errors.

Laura Knoy: From New Hampshire Public Radio, I'm Laura Knoy and this is The Exchange. The once dominant American chestnut all but disappeared 70 years ago, killed by blight that struck at the turn of the last century and despite many efforts to restore the trees since then, researchers have struggled to produce a blight resistant American chestnut. But now some are looking to new technology to turn this venerable tree's fortunes around. And today, on The Exchange, we ask, can we bring the American chestnut back?

Laura Knoy: Our guests are Kendra Collins, New England regional science coordinator for the American Chestnut Foundation. Also Thomas Klak, University of New England, professor of Environmental Sciences and vice president of the Foundation's Maine chapter, and Doug McLane, president of the Vermont/New Hampshire chapter and involved in local pollination efforts. And welcome to all of you. And Doug, I want to start with you. Why restore the American chestnut? What is it about this tree that makes it so great that you think it's worth all the effort?

Doug McLane: Boy, that's a that's a big question. And good morning, Laura. Nice to be here. The best analogy I can give to somebody is if we were trying to tell our grandchildren that we used to have a really cool tree called a Sugar Maple and it was beautiful and it gave sugar and if they nobody had ever seen a sugar maple, it would be hard to describe how grand it was. And the same with the American chestnut. Very few of us, anybody under 90 years old, has really never seen a good stand of wild American chestnut. So we have to go by the historical record that they were the most dominant tree in north eastern North America, the most dominant hardwood. And there are all kinds of reasons that I'm sure Tom and Kendra will go into. But there are hundreds of reasons for trying to bring back the American chestnut.

Laura Knoy: Well, and just remind us, Doug, how dominant it was. The descriptions are pretty remarkable.

Doug McLane: The most common and probably the best one is the range of American chestnut used to be from Maine to Georgia, and they said a squirrel could travel from Maine to Georgia on chestnut trees without ever touching the ground. There were approximately five billion trees that died, all within a period of one human generation.

Laura Knoy: And huge trees, right Doug, Like huge, huge around and wide wide canopies. Just to remind us how magnificent these trees were.

Doug McLane: Yeah, they were. They were called the redwoods of the East, although I think like most trees, probably most of them were what we would think of as a large oak tree. And some of them got massive with five and six foot diameter bases.But the main thing was that they were the most important food for the forest, mast food. And so they for that deer, turkey, bear, Native Americans, settlers and they're still delicious to eat. I think kind of the best way to someone's heart is often through their stomach and they are delicious.

Laura Knoy: Well, and Kendra you recently wrote a top ten reasons why the chestnut is worth restoring. In addition to what Doug said, what other reasons would you add, Kendra?

Kendra Collins: Well, the American chestnut is a great species for forest biodiversity. It's as Doug mentioned, it's a great species for wildlife. It provides shelter. It provides food. At different growth stages it provides different kinds of habitat. So getting these trees back into the forest would be really beneficial to eastern forests, especially in the face of so many other important tree species declining. This is a really hopeful effort from a human use standpoint. There's a lot of great uses for chestnuts, a great timber species that grows tall, straight up and limbless for the first 50 or so feet. So from a timber perspective, it's a dream. It's very rot resistant wood so a variety of uses there. Settlers used it for log cabins. Most of the tobacco barns you see in Connecticut are made out of chestnut, split rail fences in the Smokies are original chestnut. So it's a great timber species. You can also definitely get some great carbon sequestration benefit out of chestnuts, a long lived and fast growing hardwood. And from a reclamation standpoint, it can grow on pretty marginal sites. It's been used in the central Appalachians for a lot of mine land reclamation. But I think the biggest reason is just to show that we can save a tree species. There's a lot of other species in decline. The effort for chestnut has been ongoing for almost one hundred years now. And we're really seeing some hope at the end of the tunnel. And we're really looking to our story, too, to prop up some of these other species like ash and elm that are declining.

Laura Knoy: Well, I want to ask you all a little bit later about how your efforts to restore the chestnut might translate into efforts to save these other tree species that we all love in New England and that we hear are struggling as well. But what about the the tree's ability, Kendra, this is interesting to me, and I did not know this until yesterday, this particular tree's ability to survive and thrive in poor soils. Why is that so important right now, especially in the eastern United States?

Kendra Collins: Well, it gives us a lot of options for where to plant chestnuts, it's, you know, generates a more of a general species in terms of where it can survive. But as I mentioned, in the central Appalachians, it's been used quite a bit for mine land reclamation. So when you have these mine spoil sites that are generally just sort of a mineral substrate, kind of crushed up rocks, really, you can plant chestnuts and they will actually grow and help get a new forest going in these sites, which is a lot more beneficial to the environment, to the native species, than reclaiming it into, say, a grass field, which is often what is happening. So that would be the big, big one for me.

Laura Knoy: Tom, it's been said that the chestnut died out before we really had a chance to study and appreciate fully its ecological importance. But the famed forester Gifford Pinchot said he believed this tree's ecological importance was as impressive as the tree itself. That's a quote that you see a lot. What do we know, Tom, about the role that this tree used to play in forest ecosystems?

Tom Klak: Good morning, Laura. Nice to be on your show. Yeah, it was super important ecologically. The science of ecology was not as advanced back then as it is now. We know six species of moths went extinct when the chestnut suffered the blight because of the chestnut was their host plant. I'm sure there are many other relationships that got lost in the destruction of the blight, some of the studies that have been done lately to ensure --we'll get into this issue of the transgenic chestnut -- but studies have indicated when when tadpoles are fed chestnut leaves detritus, they do better than they do on other species that have replaced the chestnut like maple and beech. So it gives you a little bit of an indication of the richness of the forest that's been lost. They said that in some places, the chestnut burrs which contain the seeds would be one foot deep or more in the forest floor come October. So you can imagine the wildlife benefits of that. And no doubt that wildlife was much more abundant back when the chestnut thrived.

Laura Knoy: You know, give us a little bit more on that tadpole study, Professor Klak, because I think it does demonstrate what was lost in terms of forest health, which we're all told is so important right now, especially given climate change. Give us a little bit more on that tadpole studies, how the tadpoles were healthier eating the leaf litter of chestnut trees than other trees.

Tom Klak: Right. Yeah, so that connects us with why we were studying this, and it's our colleagues at State University of New York in Syracuse and the Environmental Science and Forestry College. So they have been testing in many different ways how the what we call the transgenic chestnut -- we'll talk more about that in a minute, that's the one that has the wheat gene inserted to give it blight tolerance -- how does it perform compared to the wild chestnut tree? And in all the studies, the evidence shows that it performs exactly the same. No difference. But a kind of surprisingly out of that work was the fact that the tadpoles actually did better on chestnuts, be they your wild chestnuts or the ones with the wheat gene inserted, which, again, was a revelation. It wasn't the point of the study, but it gives you a little bit of an indication of the important ecological relationships that we've lost and how the forest has suffered. Certainly they've suffered just from from not having the food of the chestnut in fall and into the winter. But there's many other things that I'm sure we're going to find out when we bring more and more chestnuts back.

Laura Knoy: Wow. I find that fascinating. Kendra, what does that suggest to you? Again, these tadpoles being a lot happier and healthier, I guess, eating chestnut left-over than maple or other type of leaf litter?

Kendra Collins: Well, I will admit, I am not a tadpole expert either, my background is in forestry and specifically American chestnut. But, you know, I think ecologically what that says to me is that this was a food source that was very abundant and available to these species of frogs and that they developed the ability to thrive with that food source.And having lost it, they found other species that they can eat. But having chestnut back might be might make them even happier.

Laura Knoy: Doug, I have to ask you a very basic question, and we're on the radio, so you're going to have to use your best descriptive skills. Would we recognize an American chestnut if we saw it?

Doug McLane: Boy, that's yeah, that's a great question. You certainly would if you belong to the American Chestnut Foundation. Well, my wife sometimes doesn't even like to drive in a car with me because I'm looking more at the trees for chestnut leaves than at the road. And it's a very distinctive leaf and a very distinctive shaped tree and also the fact that it's the very last native tree to flower. So they were just flowering a week and two weeks ago, long after the oaks and the elms and the maples have flowere. So it's fairly easy to pick out a wild American chestnut. But the sad reality is only one out of, whatever, ten thousand ever makes it to flowering stage. So you kind of have to look at the leaf and not for the flowers. And yeah, once word gets around, it's actually, it's a contradiction. We say there are very few chestnuts left. There are a lot of chestnuts growing out there. It's just that very few of them make it to the reproductive stage, which is what they would need to survive without human help.

Laura Knoy: So how far do they make it, Doug, like 10 years or 15 years?

Doug McLane: Oh, there are quite a lot of them that are 50 and 70 years old. There is a surprising number of large surviving American chestnuts. But the idiosyncrasy that they only reproduce, even though every tree has a male and female flowers on it, they only reproduce if there's a second tree fairly nearby. So the odds of having them grow into reproductive stage and having two of them close by is rare indeed.

Laura Knoy: Interesting. And you know, when I was a kid, we had a big, big chestnut tree in the backyard. But I'm guessing that was a different kind of chestnut. So there are other chestnuts, right? Like how can you tell the difference?

Doug McLane: Well, well, no. See, it's by name only. In other words, the horse chestnut is really not even related other than being a tree. But most people who work with horse chestnuts in their neighborhood and the burr looked very similar to the nuts that boys like to throw at each other and stuff are very similar looking. They're in inedible in a horse chestnut.They're very edible in an American chestnut. So really, most everyone that thinks they've seen a chestnut tree has seen a horse chestnut, which is an import from Europe, although the Buckeye from Ohio and areas like that is a native, a native. So, yeah, very few people have really seen a healthy big American chestnut tree.

Laura Knoy: Well, I want to remind our listeners that you can join us with your questions and stories about the American chestnut. That's what we're talking about today on The Exchange and the many, many efforts to restore these trees since they were not completely, but mostly wiped out in the last century. So all of you have made the case as to why it is worthwhile to restore this tree. And Kendra, that gets into the American Chestnut Foundation. When did this group get started and what's your approach now toward restoration?

Kendra Collins: Sure, so the American Chestnut Foundation is a little over thirty five years old, we were founded in 1983 and we were also lucky to piggyback off earlier chestnut restoration work, some other programs that had kind of gotten going and not quite made it as far as they had hoped. So we're the effort, I would say has been going on for about one hundred years, but our organization is a little over thirty five years old. Our initial approach was primarily a conventional breeding program, and since then technologies have advanced, scientific knowledge is advanced, and we've expanded that to this three pronged approach that we call 3BURR, which is the three B's are breeding, biocontrol and biotechnology, united for restoration, kind of a play on the fruit that the chestnut produces, which is a burr. It's very cute. And so our breeding work is conventional breeding. It is taking on at our Staff Research Farm in Meadowview, Virginia, as well as by our 16 state chapters throughout the native range. It's really how we get a lot of our work done is through our chapter programs. The biocontrol work is something we support but is done primarily by research partners in Maryland and West Virginia. And then the biotechnology work primarily encompasses the transgenic tree that Tom has mentioned. This was developed by Suny'S Environmental science and forestry school in Syracuse itself and the research team there led by Bill Powell. So those are kind of the three directions we're going. There's certainly a lot of overlap, especially between the breeding and biotechnology. Those biotech tools have really advanced recently. And so we are actually using a lot of biotechnology tools to better assess our breeding program and help us make any adjustments that we can to make that project, that piece of our work, more efficient and more successful.

Laura Knoy: So conventional breeding, most people know what that is, Kendra, we all learned about, you know, plants in high school biology, biocontrols, that's basically when you try to use another biological element to go after the blight. Is that right, Kendra?

Kendra Collins: That's what biocontrol is, yes. And the primary bio control option for chestnut or at least what's receiving the most attention and work is hypervirulence. And this is a case where there's a virus that actually reduces the virulence of the fungus and therefore makes it less pathogenic on the tree. And that just gives the tree a little bit of an edge and we're hoping enough of an edge that it can survive. So it's certainly a worthwhile avenue.

Laura Knoy: Well, and coming up, we'll talk about the third leg of what you mentioned, biotech. There's a lot going on there and sometimes it's controversial. I also want to let listeners know that we have an amazing old picture of these trees on our Web site that gives you a sense of just how huge they could be. Come check it out at NHPR.org/Exchange. Today, a new chapter in the long effort to restore the American chestnut. As we've heard, these giant trees once dominated Eastern forests, but since the 1950s, they've been considered functionally extinct. Now, though, some researchers feel they're closer than ever to restoration. After many decades. We're finding out more and hearing from you. What legends have you heard about these trees that were so important to Eastern ecosystems and communities? How much effort do you think should be made toward restoring them, given the many other challenges that our forests face? With us for the hour, Kendra Collins, New England regional science coordinator for the American Chestnut Foundation. Also Thomas Klak, University of New England Professor of Environmental Studies and vice president of the Foundation's Maine chapter, and Doug McLane, president of the Vermont/New Hampshire chapter, who's also actively involved in local pollination efforts. And Celia in Thornton is calling in. Hi, Celia. You're on the air. Thanks for being with us.

Caller: Hi. Good morning, Laura. I just happened to wake up very late this morning and heard your show and leapt out of bed and called right away. I live near the Welch-Dickey trailhead surrounded by National Forest in Thornton and five years ago when I worked for the, volunteered for the Squam Lake Science Center. I was given two seedlings of American horse chestnut or chestnut trees and told to plant them close to each other, which I did with no special attention. I now have two beautiful, maybe six feet tall trees close to each other that are doing very well, surrounded by the national forest. And I'm just wondering is a question for your expert, should I be doing anything to ensure there the fact that they will live and thrive for the next hundred years?

Laura Knoy: Wow. It's great to hear from you, Celia. And I love that you jumped out of bed and gave us a call. And Doug McLane, I'm going to throw that to you, please.

Well, that's fascinating for a lot of reasons. I hike the Welch-Dickey trail myself. We all do. Planting trees in the wild, you have a pretty good chance that they will live a long time. But you also have to realize that pretty much every single American chestnut that's planted will die of the blight. The ones that survive to old age, and we have what we believe is the Vermont New Hampshire champion right near us here up in Rumney. And it's probably reached, I can't quite get my arms around the trunk, and it's probably that old because it's in the edge of the blight range. And so there's not a lot of blight pressure. So to answer the question of what can you do to help your trees, as long as they have good sunlight, that's the most important thing. And I think you're off and running. Those trees will be fun to watch grow. Just don't be too disappointed if they do get the blight, because there's hope on the way with the work that the foundation is doing, we hope to be able to pass out blight resistant nuts in our lifetime.

Laura Knoy: Ok, so just to clarify then, it isn't that this tree completely died out. There are individual success stories, but they're fragile, Doug, is that it?

Doug McLane: Well, here's here's the contradiction. And it's a hard one to wrap your arms around. The blight does not kill anything in the soil. So the blight does not kill the whole tree. It kills what's above the ground. But the chestnut has a tremendous ability to re-sprout. So most of the chestnuts and here's a number that I think is amazing. There are an estimated three to four hundred million surviving American chestnuts east of the Mississippi. Most of them are re-sprouted from old trunks that died when the blight hit over one hundred years ago. So that the tenacity of the tree is amazing. I was hiking at the Appalachian Trail years ago down in North Carolina, and I saw chestnut trees all day, but most of them in the one to two inch range. They just very seldom get big before the blight hits them. So the genetic diversity is out there. But what isn't out there...it's a little bit like somebody who saw the last surviving passenger pigeon in the world in the Cincinnati Zoo in the early 90s and hundreds, the species wasn't extinct but was doomed to extinction. So it's a little bit like the American chestnut. It's not extinct, but it's not able to overcome the blight without some human help.

Laura Knoy: Ok, well, Celia great to hear from you. And let's take David in Canterbury. Hi, David. You're on the air. Welcome.

Caller: Hey, good morning. Boy, I love these kind of shows. I have two native. I was cutting firewood and I saw those chestnuts. The two of them are approximately four or four and a half inches high. They're going up 20, 25 feet tall. And I'm wondering what I can do. I thought, I had chickens with composted chicken manure put around to root out the drip line, help to boost their immunity to is there anything you can put into soil that will help them?

Laura Knoy: Wow. And I love this question. Kind of relates to Celia was saying, what can I do to help these, you know, these few remaining trees survive? Kendra, do you want to jump in?

Kendra Collins: Yes, sure. You know, I don't think that fertilizing them is going to help with immunity, but certainly chicken manure is going to have a lot of nitrogen. Chesnut eats up nitrogen. So if you wanted to grow fast, go for it. They would appreciate a little snack. The one tool for landowners that have chestnuts that they want to keep going. The assumption is that these are wild American chestnuts with no tolerance to the blight. So there's one tool you can kind of keep in your back pocket, and that's called mud packing. You can actually, if you monitor your trees for the presence of light cankers, which are fairly obvious, they'll look like sort of sunken damage spots on the stem of the tree. The fruiting bodies of the fungus are bright orange. So you'll see those, they are about the size of a pinhead, but you'll see a lot of them in those cankers and they they attack the living tissue under the bark and just work their way around whatever system they land on, whether that's the main trunk or a branch mud-packing, you can actually cut back that canker and put a mud compress on that area, wrap it in plastic, and it should kill an individual canker.

Kendra Collins: Now, this is a great tool if you catch the canker relatively early before it's girdled half the tree, you're not going to go mud-pack every tree in the forest. So it's not a solution for your organization to restore the species, but it can keep trees on your property going for a little bit longer.The only other thing I would add is that if anyone does have chestnut trees on their property, we would love to hear about them. One of the ways that we incorporate new trees in our program is by getting reports from landowners and interested citizens that might find them out hiking. We have some great resources on our website, ACF.org, for identifying the trees, for getting a form,for filling out a form to send in with a sample and all those to actually come to my office. And I'm always happy to look at more of them.

Laura Knoy: Well, and David and Celia, we always have links on our website to these resources. So you can go to our website as well. It's NHPR.org/Exchange. And again, check out the picture of these huge, huge chestnut trees from must be more than a hundred years ago that we've got there, too. It's pretty amazing. Thank you for calling in, David. And a couple of emails I'd like to share with you. Lee in Westmoreland says when are transgenic trees are likely to be available to buy at something like a garden center, I want to address that. And then Jeanne in Saco, Maine, writes in, should we be concerned about genetic engineering and its effects on the local environment with the chestnut restoration project? So two great comments from our emailers. And to you first, Tom, I know you've been working on some of this transgenic research at the University of New England. So to Lee's point first, when might transgenic trees be likely to be available?

Tom Klak: We we don't know that ourselves, because the decision is going to be made by three federal agencies that are evaluating the transgenic tree, so it's right now a regulated item. The argument, the petition, has been submitted to the particularly to the Department of Agriculture to get to the nonregulated status. So it's up to them to make a decision. It's worth noting that the USDA will soon have a public comment period where your listeners can can chime in about the transgenic chestnut. And we don't know exactly when that's going to happen, but USDA tells us it's going to be soon. So it has to go through the regulatory process and after that, then there will be opportunities for dissemination.

Laura Knoy: So before we get into the concern that Jeanne raises, and I have another email, too, that raises a similar concern. Just a little backdrop, please, Tom. So you mentioned earlier a wheat gene that scientists have been breeding into the American chestnut that seems to be working. This is after many years of traditional sort of crossbreeding or hybrid breeding with a Chinese chestnut tree did not work. Is that a correct summary, Tom?

Tom Klak: Yes. The we talked earlier about the importance of biotechnology in science in general and advancing our understanding and ability to deal with problems, especially a problem like this that we created. It's worth noting, why do we have why why has the most important tree of the eastern United States going functionally extinct? Well, we accidentally imported this lethal pathogen from Asia when people brought in the Japanese chestnut and the Chinese chestnut. So that's how it got here. So we need to think about, well, how do we reverse that? So what we've discovered with with biotech and Kendra mentioned this, we've been doing a lot of revealing work with genomics. And what that has revealed is that the Chinese chestnut tree, which has the ability to tolerate the fungal blight, it's a multiple gene process that allows the Chinese chestnut tree to tolerate the blight. Up until very recently in the genomic revelations, it was thought it was only two or three genes that mattered on the Chinese tree. Now we know it's many more genes than that. So that's the issue right now of how one would move a great number of genes from the Chinese tree over. The other approach, and this is the biotech approach, is to identify a single gene that can allow the American chestnut tree to tolerate the blight.

Laura Knoy: It turns off that that lack of resistance....Go ahead, Tom.

Tom Klak: Yes, it detoxifies the acid. The fungal blight uses an acid to kill the American chestnut. The fungal blight doesn't need to kill the American chestnut, an important thing, it can survive on other dead material in the soil. And it does. And survive on the bark of the Chinese chestnut, on the American chestnut, as it has for millions of years in Asia when it has coevolved with the Chinese chestnut. So what the wheat gene insertion into the chestnut does is allow it to tolerate the fungal blight, doesn't kill it. The fungal blight can happily reproduce and function without killing chestnut trees. And so that's the approach that my students and I have been working on at the University of New England.

Laura Knoy: So I think to you next, Doug, but also you Kendra, but you Doug. What about Jeanne's concern and I've heard this elsewhere, concern that genetic engineering will have harmful impacts on the local environment if you were able to do this genetically modified American chestnut tree and it took off and it thrived, there is concern that it might put some other unknown materials out in the wild. And I just wonder how you feel about that, Doug.

Doug McLane: Well, that's a big question, no pun intended, but I might go out on a limb a little bit on this and give you a personal reflection, which is that the people that are concerned about biotechnology, I think certainly have their hearts in the right place and I actually identify with that a lot. I don't think we should willy nilly just think that we should fool with genes and Mother Nature. I think the chestnut tree deserves a definite special exception because it's talking about a keystone species that will likely go extinct without some help. So to answer your question. There's really not a... the downside of biotechnology is that it simply doesn't work, that the tree is not able to go back into our forests and compete against the large hardwoods that it has to become again a dominant species. The danger is not that it will somehow run amok and pollute other trees. Chestnut spread very slowly. They were the last species to come back north after the glacier retreated. They don't have lots of seeds like elm tree or a maple tree. They have a very large nut that's easy to keep track of and control. So if it doesn't work, we'll have to go on to the next thing but right now it is the the best hope we have for saving the chestnut tree.

Laura Knoy: Well, Kendra, get your thoughts on that, too, after a short break. So coming up, we'll look more at new efforts to restore the American chestnut. This is The Exchange on NHPR.org. Today, the decades long effort to restore the American chestnut, why it matters to both ecosystems and communities and whether a new chapter is at hand. We're finding out more and we've been hearing from you. And Kendra, Tom and Doug, just before the break, we were talking about a concern raised by a listener who was worried about the possible impacts of a transgenic American chestnut, one that has used biotechnology to be resistant to this blight that wiped out this species. And Doug, in response, you said you were not concerned that these trees would, quote, unquote, pollute the forest. I did receive an email early this morning from Steve Taylor from the Stop GE Trees campaign. It's long, so I won't read the whole thing, Steve, but thank you for writing in. He says that chestnut restoration project under the direction of researcher William Powell intends to release a blight resistant American chestnut into wild forest ecosystems. He says corporate backers of Powell and the American Chestnut Foundation support use of the iconic American chestnut as a strategy to break through longtime public opposition to FE trees. In other words, genetically engineered trees. And there's a couple other points he makes. But that is the main point concerned that these trees would irreparably harm natural ecosystems and also that this is just an excuse, a sort of nose under the tent for more genetically modified plants and trees. And it's a big, big controversy and a big concern. And Kendra, I'm going to let you jump in on that.

Kendra Collins: Sure. So first, I'd like to correct just the assumption that big Ag or big business is behind this effort, that is absolutely not true. The lab at ESF has received funding primarily from from philanthropic sources. The tree is going to be in the public domain. The effort behind this is coming from a place of wanting to help and repair an ecosystem. That out of the way, the safety of this is something that the researchers at ESF have taken very seriously.

Laura Knoy: And sorry to interrupt, but ESF is what, just remind us again?

Kendra Collins: SUNY's Environmental Science and Forestry College in Syracuse. That's where this transgenic tree has been developed in Bill Powell's lab.

Laura Knoy: SUNY is the State University of New York. Go ahead.

Kendra Collins: Yes. And the ESF.edu/chestnut website is great, if any listeners have questions or are interested to learn more about their project, they've got a lot of great information up. The gene from wheat was selected in part because it was assumed it would be effective at preventing the blight from killing the chestnut, but also because it had been shown to be relative or very safe. It's from wheat. It's in a lot of other plants that are already in the ecosystem that are consumed by humans on a regular basis. So it's not nearly as, scary, I guess, as others they could have chosen for folks who are a little uncomfortable with the technology, but they've also done a really great job of testing these transformed trees in comparison with wild type chestnuts for their partnerships with mycorrhizal fungi, for their tadpole feeding, for bee feeding on pollen, for a variety of things that would be stand-ins for how these trees would perform in the forest. Deregulation is actually really important for being able to test these trees. At this point anyone who wants to plant transgenic chestnuts has to do it under permitted conditions, which are pretty limiting. To be able to test these things on the landscape the deregulation is actually going to really be helpful, assuming it goes through because other research groups will have access to these trees to help us really determine if they're going to be able to be the tool for restoring the American chestnut. One other thing that I think it's important to remember is just because this tree is deregulated doesn't mean it's immediately going to be planted in the forest. We need to diversify this tree with a variety of backgrounds of wild American chestnuts so that we actually have a population that can go back into the forest and that's going to take a few generations of crossing. There are some tools we can use to make that work go a little faster, but it's not going to happen overnight. But we're going to have plenty of time to assess the program as it moves forward for its effectiveness.

Laura Knoy: Well, permitting processes can move slowly, regulate regulatory processes can move slowly. Trees certainly grow slowly. So, Tom, I guess I'll throw this to you. How has the fact that we've been in a pandemic since early March, people are not, you know, meeting in person? I guess people are going out in the field, but you can't go out in large groups. So how has the pandemic affected the work that you're doing, Tom, on the American chestnut and its restoration?

Tom Klak: Right now, the pandemic, of course, has affected everything, and I'm sure all our listeners, your listeners are thinking about that every day, every sort of common everyday activity is shaped by the pandemic. And all my students went home to their their home states when the pandemic struck back in March. We've been able to reconstitute though, I've been doing a lot of work alone in my lab and also in the field. As you mentioned, we can do work outside. And I've hired a student to work with me as an undergraduate, and is a graduate, and now lives in Maine. And he's been tremendously helpful. His name is Flynn Willsey. So we've made a lot of progress and what we've been doing is developing the pollen from the transgenic chestnut in the University of New England greenhouse and a plant chamber, a high intensity light chamber. And this relates to Kendra's point about the need to diversify the genetics because the transgenic begins as a clone and we need to bring a variety of different genetic mixtures together. That's why going back to an earlier point, it's worth underscoring that listeners can help by finding wild trees and growing them in their yards like some of the callers mentioned they're doing. So we need genetic diversity from the wild population, coupled with the wheat gene blight tolerance aspect in order to bring the tree back, because the wild tree has everything going for it except for the fact that the imported blight kills it. And so that's the one thing we're inserting. Otherwise, the transgenic tree is ninety nine point nine nine nine percent pure American.

Laura Knoy: So here's a question for you, Tom. You mentioned earlier about how traditional crossbreeding had not had the positive results that you had hoped for, given the complexity of all the genes from that Chinese chestnut that for a long time researchers had tried to cross-breed into the hardier, blight resistant American chestnut. And so that has been going on for a long time, has not given the results that were hoped for. There are concerns, though, about these genetically engineered trees. What about, Tom, the biocontrols that we talked about earlier, finding a way to stop the blight?

Tom Klak: Right. Kendra mentioned before that that's sort of the third leg of our approach, and it's more limited than the other two being the biotech approach and the the breeding approach because it only affects individual trees. So we can have some success with biocontrol and to keep a particular tree alive for a little bit longer, which is a good idea. But it cannot solve the problem of trying to bring back a tree that had perhaps four billion individuals throughout its eastern range. So I've used it myself to keep some trees alive that we've pollinated this summer. But it's not an overarching solution like the other two big, major thrusts of the American Chestnut Foundation.

Laura Knoy: We also touched on this earlier. And Doug, I'll throw this to you. You know, New England has other beloved trees that are threatened. The elm, the ash, the hemlock. We've done stories on those. How do you feel, Doug, about the argument that let's focus our research efforts, our research time, our research money on those trees that are still with us instead of trying to revive a tree that is mostly gone? What do you think, Doug?

Doug McLane: Well, you asked the one of us... that is a complicated answer because I'm almost as involved in American Elm restoration. It's a wonderful tree. That we all remember when we were younger. And the elm does have blight resistant varieties, so it's not nearly as crucial. The chestnut does not have, as much as we all hope whenever we find a big tree, ooh, maybe this one has resistance. They don't seem to, they all seem to get the blight. Many American elms reach large size and reproductive stage. So you're right. We have the the beach tree and the elm tree and the chestnut tree are all dealing with blights imported from Asia. And yeah, we have to think big. I do know that ESF is working on the American Elm with transgenics and who knows where this will lead. So the goal right now is to find one tree, which is the chestnut, and show that it will work and then we can diversify. Quickly, I want to remind the caller that called in and a lot of people that have a chestnut or two or three that they look after, what can I do for it? And Kendra had mentioned that probably a dose of fertilizer is not generally what they need. But one thing that is very, very helpful and easy to do, which is to put a big mat of woodchips. You can get them free from your local tree people that have...they're looking for places to dump them. Probably not bark chips that you get at a nursery, but actual hardwood, soft wood chips. If you put a big layer of them under a chestnut tree, it can help mimic the forest floor, which is what these trees want.

Laura Knoy: All right. Well, we have to wrap it up there. We could have talked a lot longer, but I do want to direct people to the website. There are more resources there and some pictures as well. And I really want to thank our guests for being with us. Kendra Collins, New England regional science coordinator for the American Chestnut Foundation. Thomas Klak, University of New England, professor of Environmental Studies and vice president of the Foundation's Maine chapter. And Doug McLane, president of the Vermont New Hampshire chapter. This is The Exchange on NHPR.

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What Will It Take to Restore the American Chestnut Tree? - New Hampshire Public Radio

Site Directed Mutagenesis is an in vitro artificial technique for creating mutation or alteration by insertions, deletions into any targeted DNA sequence. Mutations in the DNA can cause serious health issues like cancer. To understand the specific gene has become important in order to overcome major health issues. The site directed mutagenesis systems is technology PCR-based diagnostic technique. The genetic engineering using site directed mutagenesis can be used to produce insulin, modified vaccines and other drugs. Protein engineering using site directed mutagenesis has also proven useful in the production of interleukin, anticoagulants which has major contribution in the healthcare. Site directed mutagenesis systems provides simple, convenient and highly efficient, methods to create mutations in the targeted plasmid. The Gene Art Site-Directed Mutagenesis PLUS System brings our mutagenesis to the next level by making single or multiple alterations in the targeted gene. The Site directed mutagenesis systems are being widely used due to their availability and maximum adoption.

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Protein engineering has growing demand having the therapeutic as well as diagnostic values. Genetic engineering has major uses in medicine, research, industry and agriculture. Genetic engineering has been used in medicine to produce insulin, human growth hormones, human albumin, monoclonal antibodies, antihemophilic factors, vaccines, and many other drugs in turn driving the growth of site directed mutagenesis systems market. Infertility has become major problem in the young generation in the recent years. Genetic engineering has developed follistim, a genetically modified hormone used to treat infertility. Gardasil 9, a recombinant drug for treating Human Papilloma Virus causing cervical cancer in women, all these recombinant products are developed using genetic engineering leading to the growth of site directed mutagenesis systems market. These results by manipulations in the gene using site directed mutagenesis technology are unknown whether the gene shows desired response also, these manipulations are not reversed posing several ethical issues. Cloning practice has been banned due to its undesired results, leads to decline the growth of site directed mutagenesis systems market. Antibiotic resistance is a major disadvantage of genetically modified food products, leads to restrict site directed mutagenesis systems market.

The global site directed mutagenesis systems market is segmented on the basis of site, device type, application, end user, and region.

Based on site, site directed mutagenesis systems is segmented into following;

Based on device type, site directed mutagenesis systems is segmented into following;

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Based on end user, site directed mutagenesis systems is segmented into following

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The market of multiple site directed mutagenesis systems market has gained more importance due to increases number of alteration sites. Multiple site directed mutagenesis devices market is highly valued to as it can be used to code different alterations. Rising prevalence chronic diseases is the prime factor responsible to increase the growth of site directed mutagenesis systems market over forecast period. Based on device type, the real time PCR based site directed mutagenesis devices market expected to be highest revenue generating segment owing to its ability to provide results in less time. The genetic engineering has proven its importance by developing modified hormones like insulin increasing its high demand for treating diabetes. Based on end user the site directed mutagenesis systems market will be dominated by diagnostic laboratories over forecast period.

Globally the site directed mutagenesis systems market especially includes in North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific, Latin America, and Middle East & Africa. North America holds the maximum share in site directed mutagenesis systems market globally. Site directed mutagenesis device market will experience rapid growth during the forecast period in APAC. Due to emergence of new small players ultimately increasing the growth of site directed mutagenesis systems market in Latin America and MEA.

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The major player of site directed mutagenesis systems market include

The research report presents a comprehensive assessment of the market and contains thoughtful insights, facts, historical data, and statistically supported and industry-validated market data. It also contains projections using a suitable set of assumptions and methodologies. The research report provides analysis and information according to market segments such as geographies, application, and industry.

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Demand Scenario of Site Directed Mutagenesis Systems Market to Remain Positive Through 2029 - Lake Shore Gazette

The other day on the internet, I saw an old commercial of a semi truck that had these words painted on the side: JONNY KAT, KITTY LITTER. For some reason that had a profound affect on me. Imagine a semi full of kitty litter! Forty thousand pounds of scented, colored and packaged cat box contents!

That has to say something about our affluent society, about the shape of our civilization. Some of our past inventions are quite practical and ingenious. The self-sealing, puncture proof tire, mercury lights, insecticide ear tags, microwave ovens, the Salk vaccine, four-wheel drive, frozen orange juice and boxed beef. Pistachio tree roots are susceptible to certain kinds of root rot. But peach tree roots are more resistant. So the pistachio growers graft pistachio trunks onto peach tree roots. Clever.

Consider how much artificial insemination has done to improve the quality of our livestock production. Genetic engineering is space-age technology.

But sometimes when we strive to achieve we go off the deep end. Take the cell phone. When they first appeared on the scene they were expensive, heavy and required two hands to operate. Now you can get a disposable one with a camera that adds, subtracts, calculates square roots, tells you the time in Singapore, wakes you up, plays you a tune, gives you the weather and news, takes your pulse, calendars all your events and reminds you of them all, and controls all appliances in your house! What Id like to find is a cell phone that gives me more hours in a day!

And speaking of rotting edges affluence, how about aerosol cheese spread? I thought plasticwrapped, individual cheese slices were pretty decadent, but you can also foam it onto your crackers like shaving cream.

Yep, weve surrounded ourselves with creations that have gone a step beyond their original purpose; fender skirts, square headlights and veterinarians with PhDs. Some might even include Pekingese, Chihuahua or Appaloosa in that group, but I know how sensitive animal breeders are so I certainly wouldnt include them. Obviously our adventures into the extreme or entertaining are useful. We learn and perfect by doing.

Well, my digital ballpoint pen is playing Mammas Dont Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Cowboys, so I guess its time to brush my teeth and hit the sack. I hope the batteries are still charged in my computerized flosser. http://www.baxterblack.com

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Littered with Progress - Pleasanton Express

U.S. President Donald Trump announced that Eastman Kodak will receive a loan to manufacture ... [+] ingredients used in pharmaceuticals. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)

The news that Eastman Kodak Company had received a U.S. government loan to begin the production of active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) domestically is recognition of the risks associated with the far-flung supply chain for these critical materials. The Europeans have recognized these risks as well. But that doesnt make the economic challenge of doing this successfully any easier. The problem is that most APIs are commodities.

I spent seven and a half years at Kodak beginning in 1997 running their consumer digital operation, and during that time I got to know the manufacturing people in film and chemicals. The synthetic chemicals team, or Syn Chem as it was known, was an extremely capable crew. They knew what it meant to take a chemical synthesis from the laboratory to an industrial scale, and they practiced their trade on extremely complex materials photochemicals, dyes, couplers complicated molecules that are difficult to make. They knew what solvents (the liquids that you ran the reactions in) you used were important, because when youre done you had to get rid of all the waste products. You couldnt just dump the waste in the local river. You also liked to optimize reaction times (known as reaction kinetics), the amount of energy consumed, the use of dangerous intermediates, all things that were of lesser concern when you were operating at lab scale than when you were doing them at industrial scale. So there is little doubt in my mind that the Kodak team (I hope they havent lost too many of the Syn Chem crew) could make just about anything.

A chemical mixing machine in an Eastman Kodak Corp. manufacturing facility in Rochester, New York. ... [+] Photographer: Daniel Acker/Bloomberg News

But as I said, the first problem with APIs is that most of them are commodities, which means that batches of them are readily substitutable for one another regardless of where they came from. Chemicals are easy to characterize. Modern analytical techniques such as gas chromatography (GC), liquid chromatography (LC), and mass spectrometry (MS), often combined as GC/MS or LC/MS instruments, can be used to analyze a drum or a tank car load of chemical, and tell you exactly what is inside, along with what kinds of impurities and how much of each are mixed in. So if you have the choice among multiple batches that all have a high enough purity level and none of the contaminants that you cant deal with, the only difference is the price.

The second problem with domestic production of APIs is that they are largely tradable. A good is tradable to the extent that it doesnt need to be manufactured close to where it is consumed. Most products are tradable because the cost of shipping them is a relatively small percentage of their value, so if it costs less to make something in China and the shipping cost is less than the difference, it makes economic sense to make it there and ship it. Thats why the U.S. imports so much of everything from China the production costs differentials historically have been much higher than the shipping costs.

The third problem is drug pricing, especially for generics. No consumer likes higher prices, and the President himself have been putting pressure on manufacturers to lower drug prices. But if drugs are made from tradable commodities, that means the companies who formulate the drugs are driven to use the lowest cost sourcing, and that is generally not domestic (usually this means China or India). Once again we face the dilemma we want to make it in the U.S., but we dont want to pay for the higher costs.

Invest in process innovations. Employing newer manufacturing processes historically has been one of the most effective ways to disrupt incumbent manufacturers by offering lower costs. After World War II, European and Japanese steel manufacturers who had to rebuild their industries from scratch were the first to employ new manufacturing processes like basic oxygen and continuous casting. The new processes were more efficient, and their low-cost exports of steel to the U.S. started the long decline of the American steel industry. Korean and Taiwanese flat-panel display manufacturers were able to employ newer, more efficient equipment than the Japanese producers who started the industry, and now the same Korean and Taiwanese companies are under pressure from Chinese companies who are using even newer equipment.

A coming revolution is continuous flow chemical manufacturing, in which compact, continuous flow reactors promise far more efficient reaction processes. I had the opportunity to visit Snapdragon Chemistry two weeks ago, and it is amazing what they are doing. I had to rush back to the Baker Library at HBS and read up on chemical synthesis route design, which is the term used to describe a strategic development process for APIs. I have about 20 more scientific papers to read on this topic to get a better understanding, then you can ask me more. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has been beating this drum for some time now. Once again DARPA is one of the more visionary agencies we have.

Invest in biomanufacturing. Biomanufacturing uses living systems to produce chemicals and biomaterials. Living things already produce the most complex chemicals imaginable, so the idea is to harness cells by using genetic engineering to make new things. This is already used for many biopharmaceuticals, vaccines, and industrial enzymes, but researchers in the field think much more can be done. DARPAs Living Foundries: 1000 Molecules program is funding a lot of research in this area, so the possibilities are intriguing.

One country we might look to for an example is Denmark, where there is a strong cluster of firms who use fermentation to produce a wide range of products. Novozymes, based inBagsvrd outside of Copenhagen, is the world leader in industrial enzymes. Industrial enzymes have been the source of many advances in household laundry detergents like Tide, and are widely used in industries like textiles. Denmarks cluster of fermentation expertise traces back to the Carlsberg brewing company. The Carlsberg Laboratory, established in 1875, was chartered to develop a scientific basis for malting, brewing, and fermenting operations, and ongoing research there and knowledge spillovers have made the region a world leading cluster.

Where in America might we find people who know how to do this? According to the Brewers Association, the COVID-19 pandemic has been hard on many breweries, and it reports that A majority of breweries do not think their business can last three months given current conditions, suggesting thousands of closings. Brewers were the foundation of a lot of pharmaceutical manufacturing in India. As longs as the U.S. government is spending money at such a prodigious rate, maybe we could fund an agency to help brewers move into manufacturing chemicals.

Leverage FDA certification processes. One other thing the U.S. could consider is the FDA certification process for pharmaceutical manufacturing. How far back in the supply chain should it require certification? It probably doesnt need to start all the way back at earth, wind, fire, and water, but by strategically picking where it requires inspection, it could shape behavior along the supply chain. We would call that a non-tariff barrier.

The global pandemic is reshaping supply chains in many industries. The economics on some of the new designs havent been tested yet, but with some strategic thinking and actions, we could end up in a better place.

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Companies That Want To Make Pharmaceutical APIs Will Be Producing Commodities. Heres What They Should Consider - Forbes

Genome editing is a method of making specific changes to the DNA of a cell or organism. Enzymes cut DNA at specific sequences that, when repaired by the cell, change or edit into the sequence

Genome editing, or genome manipulation, or gene editing is a type of genetic manipulation in which DNA is inserted, deleted, modified, or replaced in the genome of an organism. Unlike early genetic engineering techniques, which randomly insert genetic material into the host genome, genome editing directs the insert to a specific location.

The North America genome editing market accounted to US$ 1,234.5 Million in 2019 and is expected to grow at a CAGR of 17.2% during the forecast period 2020 2027, to account to US$ 4,148.1 Million by 2027.

Biotechnology is a broad field of biology that utilizes biological systems and organisms to develop or manufacture products. Depending on the tool or application, it often overlaps with the relevant scientific discipline. Biotechnology is the technology of developing or creating various products using biological systems, living things, or parts thereof. Baking brewed bread is an example of a process that is part of the concept of biotechnology (using yeast to produce a desired product).

The North America Genome Editingmarketis growing along with the Biotechnology industry, but the market is likely to slow down its growth due to the shortage of skilled professionals, suggests the Business Market Insights report.

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According to International Services for the Acquisition of Agricultural Biotechnology Applications (ISAAA), 2017 statistics show that 53 developing countries plant 53%, which is about 100.6 million hectares of global biotechnology hectares. 47% of the five developed countries, which has a share of about 89.2 million hectares. The growth trend of GM crops is expected to grow in the future. In addition, the data revealed that, out of the 24 countries that cultivated biotech crops in 2016, 18 were considered biotech mega countries. About 50,000 hectares of genetically modified crops are grown in these countries. The United States remained the top producer of genetically engineered crops worldwide. The country planted 75 million hectares in 2017, which covered 40% of the worlds biotech crop planting. Similarly, Brazil is second with 50.2 million hectares, accounting for 26% of world production.

These factors are expected to offer broad growth opportunities in the Biotechnology industry and this is expected to cause the demand for GENOME EDITING assays in the market.

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NORTH AMERICA GENOME EDITING MARKET SEGMENTATION

By Technology

By Application

By End User

By Geography

Company Profiles

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North America Genome Editing Market is expected to reach US$ 4148.1 Million by 2027 with CAGR of 17.2% - Market Research Correspondent