Synthetic Biology
Podcast: How synthetic biology can tweak DNA in viruses, plants or even animals to improve the environment, health, agriculture and industrial processes
Welcome back to Dirt to Dinner: Digging In, where we dig into what’s going on in the food and ag world ...
How Ginkgo Bioworks leverages synthetic biology to shape future of food
Patrick Boyle is currently the Head of Codebase at Ginkgo Bioworks, a Boston-based synthetic biology company that makes and sells ...
Fertilizers are critical for farming — but they are often environmentally costly. Synthetic biology may offer a solution
Almost everything about synthetic fertilizer sucks. It sucks for the climate, generating 2.5 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, more than ...
Viewpoint: ‘All-natural’ animal meat misnomer designed to make plant-based foods look bad
The culture war pitting plant-based meat against its animal-based counterpart rages on, it seems. Plant-based alternatives are called “ultra-processed,” “fake” ...
As grocery store prices rise, consumers open to experimentation opt for animal meat over more expensive plant-based versions
In a survey of more than 1,200 US adults, Purdue University found that consumers largely preferred beef from cattle over ...
Is lab-grown meat environmentally harmful?
U.C. Davis researchers concluded that producing cell-cultured meat could actually be more burdensome to the environment than its traditionally farmed ...
Viewpoint: Claiming a ‘slippery slope’, Non-GMO Project opposes synthetic palm oil, which would protect biodiversity, limit climate change and reduce pollution
Palm oil is ubiquitous, in part because it has a higher yield and lower cost of production than any other vegetable ...
Lab-grown meat: This may be the only way to sustainably boost global meat production
Some may baulk at the idea of meat originating in a lab, but the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate ...
Could beanless brews redefine the coffee industry and sharply reduce its carbon footprint?
The link between coffee and climate change is well-documented. The industry has been hit with low harvests, uneven yields and uncertainty ...
By 2050, there will be more plastic than fish in the ocean. Here’s a ‘natural’ solution — genetically-modified plastic-eating microbes
“Recycling is basically a myth. Nothing really gets recycled—it ends up in the landfills and oceans and leads to toxic ...
Cutting-edge fashion: From bacteria-dyed fabric to algae-based textiles, green fashion is experiencing a technological boom
A crop of scientists and fashion tech pioneers are increasingly looking to nature for clues as to how to develop ...
Healthy junk food? Here’s how nutrient-dense plant powders can take the guilt out of guilty pleasures
“The reality is that most families, especially now with the cost of food skyrocketing, can’t afford to eat fresh food ...
Record heat waves wreak havoc on attempts to wipe-out disease-carrying mosquitoes
Scientists have warned that some mosquito-borne diseases, like malaria and dengue fever, may spread into new territories as the world ...
Traits found in roots of desert plants could help crops survive escalating droughts due to climate change
Germinating Arabidopsis (thale cress) and alfalfa with a microbe taken from the roots of a common desert plant has been ...
A feast for bioengineered yeast? How leftover agricultural waste can be transformed into bioplastics, pharmaceuticals and fuel
Yeast has been used for thousands of years in the production of beer and wine and for adding fluff and ...
Bioengineer or die: The genetically-engineered toolkit plants need to survive a climate-changed future
Climate change is affecting the types of plant varieties we can cultivate, as well as how and where we can ...
From beer hops to tropical cocktails, we are beginning to see a spectacular explosion of flavors and smells, thanks to genetic modification
Someday the flavors and smells added to most foods and drinks could be created in yeast-brewing tanks rather than extracted from plants ...
Challenging food protectionism: Understanding what’s stifling precision fermentation and cellular agriculture movements
“There is an enormously bright future for precision fermentation and cellular agriculture; the efficiencies alone make that true,” Bill Liao, ...
Pineapple scraps don’t have to go to waste — they can be used to make bioplastics
A collaborative research between universities in Thailand and Malaysia have developed a unique kind of bioplastic sheet using pineapple stems from ...
Viewpoint: Breakthroughs in effort to create ‘synthetic’ embryos have sparked criticism — but the research could help us reduce prevalence of miscarriages and genetic disorders
Are human embryo models a cause for hope or alarm? A recent breakthrough in the race to create ‘synthetic’ embryos ...
Future food: Carbon-neutral chicken, 3-D printed cake and 8 other foods likely to be on your plates soon
Here are 10 products coming soon to your plates that are set to redefine our gastronomic experiences. Plant scientists at ...
‘More than just eating bugs’: Future proteins made from fungi, algae, and bacteria offer sustainable alternatives to current global diet
Would you eat a burger enriched with mealworms? Fake bacon sliced from a mass of fermented fungi? Milk proteins extruded ...
Feeding China’s gargantuan meat appetite releases gigatons of carbon. Could cultured meat address soaring demand and climate disruptions?
The largest protein markets in Asia need to massively scale up their adoption of novel meat substitutes in the coming ...
Future protein: ‘If meat-loving habits prove too hard to shift, the obvious solution is to replace meat with meat’
Globally, 80 billion animals die for our dinners each year — and a joint report by the United Nations and the ...
Fact checking lab-grown meat rejectionists: No, animal cells used to make cultivated meat do not cause cancer
Meat grown in labs is made using cells taken from animals, but those cells are not cancerous and there are many ...
Dissecting claims that lab-grown meat can meaningfully help address climate change
One of the major drivers for businesses focusing on cultivated (or lab-grown, or cultured) meat is its potential for cleaning ...
What role could GMOs play in achieving sustainable biofuel?
One of the primary benefits of using GMOs in biofuel production is the potential for increased crop yields. By engineering ...