Posted on 10/06/2018 2:02:35 PM PDT by BenLurkin
Pentagon research project called "Insect Allies." Funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the project involves using gene-editing techniques like CRISPR to infect insects with modified viruses that could help make America's crops more resilient. If a cornfield were hit by an unexpected drought or suddenly exposed to a pathogen, for example, Insect Allies might deploy an army of aphids carrying a genetically modified virus to slow the corn plant's growth rate.
According to the DARPA website, these "targeted therapies" could take effect in a single growing season, potentially protecting the American crop system from food security threats like disease, flooding, frost and even "threats introduced by state or non-state actors.
… Insect Allies, is less concerned. "Anytime you're developing a new and revolutionary technology, there is that potential for [both offensive and defensive] capability," Bextine told The Washington Post. "But that is not what we are doing. We are delivering positive traits to plants… We want to make sure we ensure food security, because food security is national security in our eyes."
Insect Allies is still in the early stages of development, and at least four U.S. colleges (Boyce Thompson Institute, Penn State University, The Ohio State University and the University of Texas at Austin)have received funding to carry out research. Bextine told The Washington Post that the project recently achieved its first milestone — testing whether an aphid could infect a stalk of corn with a designer virus that caused fluorescence. According to the Washington Post, "the corn glowed."
(Excerpt) Read more at livescience.com ...
Tacky!
Awww...see? Floofy friends!
I need to take a shower and start my day packing up some stuff but I’ve got The Slows again.
Brothers. They live in Italy, which is Scenic.
So cute! I need lots of floofys in the next couple of days, so thanks!
Good morning. I love the part where the orange one just falls over.
Priceless!
Thanks! :o])
Good answer.
Of course, another good answer would be a photo of a deer being taken down by a wildcat.
It’s all in the marinade, or stew ingredients.
There, there, little kitteh. It’s OK.
IT’S FRIDAY!!!!
Frappy Hieday, everyone. I’ll be hieing as soon as I can get through today’s meetings.
Howya, ArGee! We’re going to a museum this afternoon to study wildlife. Fun times.
That's way cool. All the museums in NYC feature still life mock ups (at least, during the day). The only wildlife we can study around here is in zoos, or walks on 2 legs.
In South Carolina, the wildlife is really wild.
The way my S-I-L tells it (native of Greenville, pronounced GREEN-vul) I would have to concur.
Ah. Ok. I never thought of that, and cooked it with curry, but I still wasn’t fond of it. If I ever have occasion to cook it again, I’ll look for some marinades.
I would have supposed curry was for elephant and tiger and stuff.
Curry actually takes the gaminess out of wild meats, but I’m not that fond of wild meat, regardless. My dad would get a deer the first few years we moved down from Alaska, but I never liked eating venison.
And though we lived on an island the first five years of my life, I was never a seafood eater. Go figger.
OK. Two and two are four. Four and four are eight. Eight and eight are sixteen. ...
Thanks. The imperfect end to an otherwise glaringly imperfect and ridiculously horrendous day. I’m not even going to ask if anything else can go wrong because I know it can.
I quit.
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