Can we engineer life? 4.5 Novel plant breeding techniques
Plants have large and complicated genomes. Therefore, until recently, the insertion of foreign DNA was a kind of roulette: where will DNA be modified, will the insertion work, and will there be side effects? But by now, techniques have much improved and totally novel plant breeding techniques have been developed, carrying names like ZFNs, TALENs
Productive soils as a carbon sink
We know that plants grow faster in CO2-rich environments. Horticulturalists enrich the atmosphere in their greenhouses with CO2 to ensure better productivity. Can we imagine fast growing plants that would capture CO2 from the air, and on a large scale? A carbon sink, as it were? Yes we can, and we can do it in
Tetraethyl lead, the scandal that never erupted
Modern history is full of stories of new chemicals sold on a large scale and afterwards causing problems. Sometimes, this causes a major upheaval. But by far the largest poisoning in history, that by tetraethyl lead, never ended in a scandal. It just faded away, even though oil and motor car companies neglected well-known dangers,
Can we engineer life? 4.4 Plant gene technology, modern techniques
Modern techniques are in very rapid development. We can now analyse the most complex DNAs down to the level of individual base pairs, knowledge that will enable us to continue to produce enough food in times of climate change. And we get an increasing number of techniques to our disposal that make use of this
Can we engineer life? 4.3 Plant gene technology, history
Ever since mankind developed agriculture, we try to selectively breed plants in order to secure enough and good food. Our capabilities to purposely engineer plant genomes have increased a lot over the past few decades. There are many applications of plant gene technology now, and opportunities abound. And we won’t grow food crops with an
Bioenergy: fine, if from side streams
Why cannot we lift all barriers for the use of bioenergy? Because the energy sector is much larger than the food sector. The 20 billion tons of fossil fuels that mankind uses each year, is equivalent to 40 billion tons of biomass; whereas our yearly harvest for food is 9 billion tons, of which 3
Indirect effects, we often ignore them
‘Again and again, new products fascinate us: the smartphone, the airplane wing that can be glued, new medicines,’ says Ton Schoot Uiterkamp, ‘but we do not think in terms of chains and generally ignore the indirect effects of these inventions. If the first use is wonderful, we ignore the consequences of second, third and fourth
on: 5 November 2018