Slashdot reader wooloohoo shares a new article from Cornell's Alliance for Science, a group who gives its mission as correcting misinformation and countering conspiracy theories slowing progress on issues including synthetic biology and agricultural innovations: There are two types of chickens: the broilers that we eat and the layers that produce the eggs. The layers don't have enough meat to make them useful for human consumption and since only hens can lay eggs, that leaves the male layers useless. As a result, billions of newly hatched male layer chicks are killed each year. Now the Israeli ag-tech startup eggXYt has found a way to humanely address this dilemma through the use of CRISPR — the gene editing technique that allows scientists to make targeted, specific genetic tweaks... By using CRISPR, eggXYt's scientists can edit the genes of chickens to make them lay sex-detectable eggs... The global egg industry saves the costs and the ethical conundrum of killing half of its product and billions of additional eggs are added to the global market to help meet growing demand.

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U.S. plant-based protein company Beyond Meat has signed global supply deals with fast food firms McDonald's and Yum! Brands, which includes KFC, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell and others. AgFunderNews reports: The three-year strategic agreement with McDonald's will see Beyond Meat become the 'preferred supplier' of patties for the fast food chain's new McPlant plant-based burger. Under their separate strategic partnership, Beyond Meat and Yum! Brands will co-develop a range of exclusive plant-based protein menu items for the latter's KFC, Pizza Hut, and Taco Bell chains. Bruce Friedrich, executive director of the Good Food Institute, said in comments sent to AFN that the two deals represent "the clearest sign yet that the future of meat will be plant-based." "The world's largest restaurant chains are placing plant-based meat directly on the plates of millions of customers around the world," he said. "With more restaurants and revenue than any other food chains on the planet, McDonald's and Yum! Brands will bring plant-based meat onto the mainstream menus of millions of people. When these restaurant chains move, the entire food industry takes notice."

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A new research study at the University of Missouri is using CRISPR gene-editing technology to produce mosquitoes that are unable to replicate Zika virus and therefore cannot infect a human through biting. Slashdot reader wooloohoo shared an announcement from Cornell's Alliance for Science: Alexander Franz, an associate professor in the MU College of Veterinary Medicine, collaborated with researchers at Colorado State University... Their work was recently published in the journal Viruses. Franz added that the genetic modification is inheritable, so future generations of the altered mosquitoes would be resistant to Zika virus as well... "[W]e are simply trying to expand the toolbox and provide a solution by genetically modifying the mosquitoes to become Zika-resistant while keeping them alive at the same time." Franz' research is designed to help prevent another outbreak of Zika virus disease from occurring while also addressing concerns that have some have raised about reducing populations of mosquitoes, which are a food source for some animals... The study was funded by the National Institutes of Health.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Register: Failed blood-testing unicorn Theranos trashed vital incriminating evidence of its fraud, prosecutors said on Monday. The imploded startup's extensive testing data over three years, including its accuracy and failure rate, was "stored on a specially-developed SQL database called the Laboratory Information System (LIS)," according to a filing [PDF] in the fraud case against Theranos's one-time CEO Elizabeth Holmes and COO Sunny Balwani. The database "even flagged blood test results that might require immediate medical attention, and communicated this to the patient's physician," we're told. Theranos claimed to have perfected technology that would allow industry standard blood tests to be run at great speed and with just a drop of blood, revolutionizing the health industry, and causing the business to be valued at $10bn. The reality, however, was that for one set of tests, the failure rate was 51.3 per cent. What does that mean? Prosecutors explain: "In other words, Theranos's TT3 blood test results were so inaccurate, it was essentially a coin toss whether the patient was getting the right result. The data was devastating." So devastating that the database was subpoenaed by a grand jury digging into fraud claims against Holmes and Balwani. But when investigators turned to take a copy of the database, guess what? From the filing: "On or about August 31, 2018 -- three months after a federal grand jury issued a subpoena requesting a working copy of this database -- the LIS was destroyed. The government has never been provided with the complete records contained in the LIS, nor been given the tools, which were available within the database, to search for such critical evidence as all Theranos blood tests with validation errors. The data disappeared."

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Reuters notes the "miraculous speed" of mRNA vaccines, while also calling it "a glimpse of what's possible if it can be applied post-pandemic to treat cancer or rare diseases." The vaccine market alone is worth about $35 billion each year, and investors apparently believe mRNA companies will capture around two-third of that, leading market researcher Bernstein to evalaute the combined worth of mRNA companies at nearly $180 billion. The technology is the closest thing yet to making medicine digital. MRNA vaccines essentially inject genetic code that instructs a recipients' cells to construct a part of the virus. The body recognizes the produced protein as foreign and mounts a future immune response when exposed. Moderna and BioNTech's vaccines show the technology works fast. Vaccines typically take a decade to develop. They took less than a year... The speed of mRNA therapeutics is a big advantage. For example, flu vaccines only reduce the risk of illness by up to 60% because makers must guess which strains will be prevalent each season. Sometimes they're wrong. Shaving months off means better guesses, and higher efficacy. The bigger opportunity comes from the validation of the mRNA "platform". Instructing cells to produce desired proteins could lead to multiple advances. Perhaps they can instruct the body to more vigorously attack cancerous cells or repair damaged tissue. Producing missing proteins might fight inherited diseases... Success against Covid-19 means these companies will be flush with cash from sales and attract partnerships and scientific talent. That should make 2021 a watershed.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNN: A biotech conference in Boston last February that's already been flagged as a Covid-19 superspreading event led to at least 245,000 other cases across the US and Europe, a new genetic fingerprinting study shows. One single case seems to have been responsible for many of the other eventual cases, the team at the Broad Institute in Massachusetts reported. Their study finds two particular genetic fingerprints of viruses associated with the conference and then tracks those lineages across the US. One "was exported from Boston to at least 18 US states as well as to other countries, including Australia, Sweden, and Slovakia," the team, led by Bronwyn MacInnis, director of pathogen genomic surveillance at the Broad Institute, wrote in the journal Science. One was especially bad. A virus carrying one mutation -- a small genetic change they've flagged as C2416T -- was apparently carried to the conference by a single person, and ended up infecting 245,000 people. A subset of the viral strain with a mutation known as G26233T ended up in 88,000 of these cases. "A single introduction had an outsize effect on subsequent transmission because it was amplified by superspreading in a highly mobile population very early in the outbreak, before many public health precautions were put in place," the team wrote. "While Massachusetts accounted for most early spread related to the conference, Florida accounted for the greatest proportion of cases overall," they added.

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Long-time Slashdot reader sixoh1 shares "an interesting spin on biotechnology tools that we've been seeing explode lately like Crisper-CAS and mRNA." Ars Technica writes: This is in no way a route to a practical therapy, but it does provide a fantastic window into what we can accomplish by manipulating biology. The whole effort described in the new paper is focused on a simple idea: if you figure out how to wreck one of the virus's key proteins, it won't be able to infect anything. And, conveniently, our cells have a system for destroying proteins, since that's often a useful thing to do... This system relies on a small protein called "ubiquitin." When a protein is to be targeted for destruction, enzymes called ubiquitin ligases chemically link a chain of ubiquitins to it. These serve as a tag that is recognized by enzymes that digest any proteins with ubiquitin attached to them. So, the idea behind the new work is to identify a key viral protein and figure out how to attach ubiquitin to it... Unfortunately, there are no proteins that attach ubiquitin to the viral spike protein. Or, rather, there were no proteins that fit that description. But a team at Harvard has now produced one. They fed atomic-level details of the proteins' structure into software that finds the most energetically-favored interactions between proteins, simulated mutations, and eventually engineered the most promising ones to test their efficacy, ultimately cutting the presence of the viral spike protein in tested cells by 60 percent. Ars Technica ultimately calls it "A mildly insane idea for disabling the coronavirus," though "Unfortunately, it's also likely to be absolutely useless... this is likely to be a non-starter, especially given that there are promising vaccines and many other potential therapies ahead of it in the pipeline for safety testing." Yet "while the details of this work aren't really significant, the fact that we've developed all the underlying technology needed for it is worth keeping in mind."

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: PhD in genetics might seem like an unusual requirement for the role of head chef. It makes more sense when the man running the kitchen is not just in charge of frying your chicken burger -- he created the meat himself. "This burger takes something between two to three days to grow," says Tomer Halevy as he chops red onions, iceberg lettuce and avocado. He proceeds to batter what appears to be a strip of raw chicken before dipping it in breadcrumbs. Halevy uses the word "grow" because chickens do not need to be slaughtered en masse to produce this type of meat. Cells taken from "source" chickens are cultured in a laboratory, creating potentially endless supplies of muscle and fat tissue. Some cells were removed from eggs, meaning the meat is from birds that were never even born. The result is the signature dish of a new venture in Israel, the Chicken, the world's first cultured meat restaurant experience. Still closed to the public owing to coronavirus restrictions, the eatery near Tel Aviv opened its doors to the Guardian for the first private visit by a journalist. At the Chicken, bottles of red wine line the walls, black stools surround circular tables, and the warm glow of hanging bulbs lights the restaurant. The entire back wall is made of glass. Behind it is the production facility where lab-coated scientists wander around between large metal vats. It is petri-dish-to-table service. "The meat was made on the other side of the glass. That's true local production of meat," jokes Ido Savir, CEO of the restaurant's parent company, SuperMeat. The breaded patty is deep-fried in oil, before being placed on a sweet brioche bun, flavored by wasabi and chilli mayonnaise, with a side of sweet potato chips. Similar to many chicken burgers, it breaks and flakes when pulled apart and is extremely tender. It tastes, at least to this reporter, like a chicken burger. Halevy, who also holds the role of head of product at SuperMeat, explains that muscle cells naturally contract when they are grown, making the fibers that result in the flakes of the burger that you would expect. While Halevy says he could make a recreation of a chicken breast -- with longer fibers and a dryer, denser bite -- one was not offered, and others in the industry have said a fillet is much harder to create outside the bird. For now, like others in the nascent industry, the start-up is focused on minced chicken. It is aiming to sell to meat companies that often reprocess chicken anyway, for example, into patties and nuggets. The report notes that SuperMeat cannot charge customers since there is no regulation around cultured meat in Israel. Those who try the product must also sign a waiver agreeing to "voluntarily assume any and all risks." The industry is still very much in its infancy, but it was given a significant boost this week when Singapore became the first state to approve the sale of cultured meat.

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Singapore has granted San Francisco start-up Eat Just Inc. regulatory approval to sell its laboratory-grown chicken in the city-state -- the world's first government to allow the sale of cultured meat. CNN reports: The product, created from cultured chicken cells, has been approved as an ingredient in chicken bites following Singapore Food Agency (SFA) approval, Eat Just said Tuesday. Initially, the chicken bites will debut in a Singapore restaurant, with plans for wider expansion into dining and retail establishments in the country, Josh Tetrick, co-founder and CEO of Eat Just told CNN Business. The product will be priced at parity with premium chicken, he added. The cultured meat is created in a bioreactor -- an apparatus in which a biological reaction or change takes place -- Eat Just said. It has a high protein content and is a rich source of minerals, according to the company, which plans to sell the product under the GOOD Meat brand. For now, with manufacturing hubs in Singapore and Northern California, the company only has approval to sell the meat in Singapore, but it hopes to expand sales of cultured meat -- including cultured beef -- into the US and Western Europe, Tetrick said.

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schwit1 shares a report from Phys.Org: Forget glue, screws, heat or other traditional bonding methods. A Cornell University-led collaboration has developed a 3-D printing technique that creates cellular metallic materials by smashing together powder particles at supersonic speed. This form of technology, known as "cold spray," results in mechanically robust, porous structures that are 40% stronger than similar materials made with conventional manufacturing processes. The structures' small size and porosity make them particularly well-suited for building biomedical components, like replacement joints. The team's paper, "Solid-State Additive Manufacturing of Porous Ti-6Al-4V by Supersonic Impact," published Nov. 9 in Applied Materials Today. "If we make implants with these kind of porous structures, and we insert them in the body, the bone can grow inside these pores and make a biological fixation," Moridi said. "This helps reduce the likelihood of the implant loosening. And this is a big deal. There are lots of revision surgeries that patients have to go through to remove the implant just because it's loose and it causes a lot of pain." Moridi added: "We only focused on titanium alloys and biomedical applications, but the applicability of this process could be beyond that. Essentially, any metallic material that can endure plastic deformation could benefit from this process. And it opens up a lot of opportunities for larger-scale industrial applications, like construction, transportation and energy."

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CNET reports: Two new species of greater glider, a cat-size marsupial that lives in the forests of Australia, have been discovered after scientists ran DNA tests on new tissue samples of the animals. A new study published in Nature's public access Scientific Reports journal details the findings... Using genetic sequencing tests from tissue samples taken from various gliders found in areas of Queensland, Victoria, as well as museum specimens, researchers were able to confirm differences in the gliders' DNA... The new study focusing on the genetics of greater gliders found three distinct species living in the southern, central and northern areas of Australia. Researchers from Australian National University, the University of Canberra, CSIRO and James Cook University worked together on the study. "There has been speculation for a while that there was more than one species of greater glider but now we have proof from the DNA. It changes the whole way we think about them," study researcher Denise McGregor told The Guardian.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Tesco is to become the first UK retailer to set a sales target for plant-based alternatives to meat as it steps up efforts to offer shoppers more sustainable options. The UK's largest supermarket will on Tuesday commit to boosting sales of meat alternatives by 300% within five years, by 2025. Over the past year, demand for chilled meat-free foods -- the most popular line including burger, sausage and mince substitutes -- has increased by almost 50%, the retailer said. As a result, it is expanding into more categories and creating larger "centerpiece" dishes for two people as well as family-sized portions. The target is part of a wider package of sustainability measures developed with its charity partner the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) to try to halve the environmental impact of the average UK shopping basket. Dave Lewis, who steps down as Tesco chief executive on Wednesday, said: "We know from tackling food waste that transparency and ambitious targets are the first steps towards becoming a more sustainable business." Among 11 new plant-based foods going on sale at Tesco this week are centerpiece dishes using the wheat protein favorite seitan as a meat substitute, including a beef-free joint and hunter's chicken-free traybake. Turkey-free crowns and vegan mince pies are launching in time for Christmas.

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The Telegraph reports: Peter Scott-Morgan stands, wide-eyed and tearful. "Good. Grief." he says quietly. "I was unprepared for the emotion... It's quite extraordinary. It really is." Using an exoskeleton, Scott-Morgan is experiencing what it is like to stand for the first time in months after being diagnosed with motor neurone disease in 2017, the same incurable condition that killed scientist Stephen Hawking. The remarkable step, however, is just the first in the 62-year-old's bold journey to control his disease by becoming the world's first, full-fledged cyborg. "Think of it as a science experiment," he laughs. "This is cyborg territory, and I intend to be a human guinea pig to see just how far we can turn science fiction into reality." Eventually, Scott-Morgan wants the exoskeleton to encase his upper body, giving him superhuman strength and the ability to tower above "flesh and blood" humans. A mind-reading computer will be plugged directly into his brain, expressing his thoughts almost instantly. Meanwhile, his paralyzed face will be replaced by a hyper-realistic avatar that will move in time with a speech synthesizer... Scott-Morgan says he isn't deteriorating but becoming a new version of himself — one that will eventually pave the way for a breed of humans that can augment their capabilities using technology... Instead of answering a question by laboriously typing out individual letters using a gaze tracker, in a similar way to Hawking, he will rely on the AI to provide a full and instant response. Eventually, the machine will speak for itself using phrases it has learned from Scott-Morgan — crossing a controversial line in what it means to be human.... Someday, the scientist hopes he can exist completely outside his physical body, with his personality, traits and knowledge downloaded on to a machine.

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