Genetic engineering

Scientists at the Salk Institute hope to tackle climate change and food security by unraveling the genomic architecture behind various plant species, and have gleaned some valuable new lessons from the fastest-growing example we know of.

A gene known as Myc is linked to cancer growth, but has long been considered “undruggable." Now, researchers at Vanderbilt University have found a way to bypass it and shut down a protein that it interacts with, shrinking tumors in a matter of days.

One of the most promising emerging cancer therapies is CAR T cell immunotherapy, where a patient’s own immune cells are supercharged to fight tumors. Now researchers have found a way to refresh exhausted immune cells and get them back into battle.

Genetic engineering has been proposed as a way to deal with the deadly mosquito, and a new project by Texas A&M AgriLife Research is looking to enable risk-free "test runs" of such genetic changes that are automatically deleted after a period of time.

DEET may be an effective mosquito repellent, but it can cause irritation, and has to be reapplied every few hours. Scientists are now working on a more innocuous, longer-laster alternative, that involves introducing genetically engineered bacteria onto the skin.

The US Food and Drug Administration has approved a genetically modified pig for human consumption and therapeutic use. The pig is engineered to be free of a certain sugar molecule responsible for severe allergic reactions in some people.

Scientists have genetically modified a tomato to produce L-DOPA, a drug used to treat Parkinson’s disease. The researchers say the innovation could be an easier way to produce the medicine in regions where access to the synthesized drug is restricted.

Wheat is one of the most widely grown crops, so any increases in its yield could go a long way towards reducing world hunger. That's where a new variety comes in, as its yield is reportedly up to 11 percent higher than that of regular wheat.

The 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry has been awarded to the two scientists who discovered and refined the CRISPR/Cas9 gene-editing tool. This allows for relatively simple editing of genes and could revolutionize medicine, agriculture and other fields.

In a breakthrough that promises to revolutionize the precision breeding of animals, scientists have used the CRISPR gene editing tool to produce infertile animals that become "surrogate sires" and produce sperm containing only donor animal DNA

By tweaking the CRISPR gene-editing technique to target RNA instead of DNA, researchers have been able to destroy toxic accumulations of this molecule, which could pave the way for new treatments for muscular dystrophy and related conditions.

In April 2020, a bull calf named Cosmo was born to a team of scientists. This probably wouldn’t normally be news except that this particular bouncing baby boy had his genome edited as an embryo, to make him more likely to produce male offspring.