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Kenya’s agriculture is set to benefit from several gene-editing projects that target some of the country’s key food crops and livestock. Farmers raising sorghum, maize, bananas, pigs and cattle can expect good news from ongoing research projects that aim to improve disease resistance and build more robust crop and animal…

Though the past year delivered social, economic, health and personal difficulties that challenged people across the globe, science strutted its stuff. As the public looked to scientists to help them understand COVID-19 and deliver effective vaccines, they began looking more favorably upon a powerful tool known as genome editing. Here…

As the world fights the SARS-CoV-2 virus causing the COVID-19 pandemic, another group of dangerous pathogens looms in the background. The threat of antibiotic-resistant bacteria has been growing for years and appears to be getting worse. If COVID-19 taught us one thing, it’s that governments should be prepared for more global…

Latin American researchers are using gene editing to breed hardier varieties of staple crops and fruits, according to an Alliance for Science Live webinar. Among them are Claudia Stange Klein, a professor in the Department of Biology of the Faculty of Sciences at the University of Chile, who…

Genome editing is set to revolutionize plant breeding and could help secure the global food supply, according to a new paper in Cell. The technology is emerging at a time when the Food and Agriculture Organization is predicting the human population will reach 10 billion by 2050, requiring an…

Research on Ghana’s first gene-edited crop — a high-yielding sweet potato with increased beta carotene content — is under way at the University of Cape Coast. “For sweet potatoes, we want to look at how we can use the CRISPR-Cas9 system to increase beta carotene,” said Samuel Acheampong of…

Many Africans still don’t understand scientists, or what they do. Scientists are widely seen as aloof and detached — a misperception has negatively impacted societal attitudes toward scientific innovations on the continent. Now Science Stories Africa is bridging that gap between scientists and ordinary folks. By giving scientists the chance…

Since the World Health Organization classified the Zika virus epidemic as “public health emergency of international concern” in 2016, researchers have been looking for ways to control the spread of the virus, which can cause birth defects and other neurological problems. In one strategy, which was approved by the United…

Edible insects got one step closer to Europeans’ kitchens this month. The European Food Safety Authority released a scientific opinion on mealworms, concluding that the edible insects have “a high protein content” and pose “no safety concerns” to consumers. The assessment on dried yellow mealworm (larva…