Researchers at MIT's McGovern Institute and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard have exposed a class of programmable DNA editing systems called OMEGAs (Obligate Mobile Element Guided Activity), which may play a role in shuffling small pieces of DNA throughout bacterial genomes. The details of their discovery are published in Science. Programmable enzymes, particularly those that use a RNA guide, can easily be adapted for various purposes

Those divisions have been widening of late. But they aren’t nearly as incendiary as social or “affective” polarization, which is about anger, distrust, resentment, tribal identity, and mutual loathing (see Fig. 1). As a team of prominent social scientists warned last year, social polarization in conjunction with legislative gridlock and hyper-partisan media have created an “American sectarianism” that threatens democracy itself.

The Director-General of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), QU Dongyu, today called for urgent assistance to help save Afghanistan's next wheat harvest, keep life-sustaining farm animals alive, and avoid a deterioration of the country's already severe humanitarian crises.FAO is seeking $36 million to speed up its support to Afghan farmers and ensure they will not miss the upcoming winter wheat planting season,

A new report by the Regulatory Horizons Council sets out how the United Kingdom could take a leading role in shaping regulation that will allow innovative and safe products using genetic technologies to be commercialized.The report supports the proposals from recent government consultation and builds on them by providing additional recommendations for what a new regulatory approach should look like over the longer term.

A research team from the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) has developed a plant that produces more oil by manipulating the availability of sugar for oil synthesis. The work is part of a University of Illinois-led biosystems design project to engineer two of the most productive American biomass crops—energycane and Miscanthus—to accumulate an abundant and sustainable supply of oil for biodiesel, biojet fuel, and bioproducts.

Researchers from Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University conducted a study to investigate the role of OsUBC26, a rice ubiquitin-conjugating enzyme, in rice plant's defense against blast fungus Magnaporthe oryzae. The findings are published in Molecular Plant Pathology.The functions of ubiquitin-conjugating enzymes in plant immunity remain a mystery to scientists. Thus, the study was conducted to pinpoint the function of OsUBC26 in rice resistance to blast fungus.

The first Pre-COPMOP2021 workshop organized by ISAAA, Malaysian Biotechnology Information Center, Public Research and Regulation Initiative, and the US  Department of Agriculture, was held on August 4-6, 2021. The topics tackled were risk assessment, gene drives, synthetic biology, socio-economic considerations, public engagement, among others. These workshops aim to prepare participants to COP15MOP10, which is scheduled in two parts: part 1 in October 2021 as an online event, which will be followed by the second in-person part later in 2022.

The Wageningen University & Research (WUR) has announced that it will provide potential partners with free licenses to work on its patented CRISPR technology to help eliminate hunger around the world. The license must be applied to gene editing plants for non-profit applications.CRISPR-Cas enables genetic material to be changed relatively simply, very accurately, and efficiently. Worldwide there are over 3,000 CRISPR-Cas-related patents, of which WUR also holds several.

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) today launched its Global Action on Green Development of Special Agricultural Products: One Country One Priority Product (OCOP). This Action aims to develop green and sustainable value chains for special agricultural products, support small and family farmers reap the full benefits of a global market and ultimately help the transformation of current agri-food systems and the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

The visit of ICRISAT Governing Board Chair Dr Prabhu Pingali provided an opportunity for staff at headquarters to present the organization’s work and accomplishments and update on the latest research in the pipeline. Interacting with the staff, Dr Pingali shared his appreciation on the work being done. His observations mainly centered on creating greater visibility for ICRISAT’s success and impacts,