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DTN 170: Ag Genomics Begins to Bear Fruit

Plus: First commercial nuclear satellite in orbit, fourth US reactor startup reaches criticality, America's uranium mining boom, the quest for large-scale DNA, China becomes second country to recover an orbital booster, and more.

— 6 min read

"Our goal is to reduce how often they need to do that. We simulate the entire chain so they can do the work in the lab and show up to the field already fine-tuned. If a company needs to test the communication link between a missile and its ground station, it has to launch the missile to gather data, maybe 10 or 20 times, and each launch can cost around $1 million. If they can instead produce that data and those recordings inside the lab, they can validate their equipment and arrive in the field far more prepared.”

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Ag Genomics Begins to Bear Fruit

“Agrigenomics is, to use an analogy, spring looking toward summer. Wielding modern genomics tools fine-tuned to agriculture, along with AI-driven insights from field technologies and satellites in low Earth orbit, traditional agriculture is transitioning to precision farming and the bounty it brings. Insights are compressing 30 years of field trials into a single growing season and enabling growers to express specific traits without introducing foreign genes and without hit-and-miss Mendelian hybridization.

This intensive application of science starts with comprehensive soil analyses and extends, not only to the major row crops, but also to such lesser-studied areas as fruits and forestry. Precision farming can bring incredible benefits to agrigenomics, just as precision genomics is doing for medicine. As agrigenomics begins to bear fruit, developers can look forward to a genomics-fueled bounty very, very soon.” (via Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News)

Close-up of the cyborg insect and the new diving suit, which has tubes that connect to the breathing holes of the insect and an oxygen generator mounted at the rear of the suit. Image via NTU Singapore

“In the study, which was published on Monday in Nature Communications, researchers outfitted Madagascar hissing cockroaches—one of the largest species of cockroach in the world—with a “diving suit” that included oxygen tubes and a protective shell. The oxygen tubes, similar to a scuba diver’s regulator, attach to the cockroaches’ “thoracic spiracles,” or breathing holes, on their bodies.

“By fitting a cockroach, which is a terrestrial species, into this diving suit, we allowed it to survive and operate in oxygen-deprived environments such as underwater, transforming it into an amphibious cyborg robot capable of operation across land and water,” the authors write in the study.” (via Scientific American)

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