Biotechnology news

• The Administration’s Orwellian Defense of Importing Foreign Price Controls

  10-12-2018 15:47
  The Trump administration is out with a new blog post defending its plan to adopt foreign price controls for medicines covered under Medicare Part B. The blog was written in the wake of growing backlash from free-market thought leaders who are challenging the administration’s draconian proposal.
  The latest blog post from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) includes numerous inaccuracies, with the chief example being the distorted view of how drugmakers set their prices in
  
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• USA – GM CROPS CAN OFFSET CLIMATE CHANGE IMPACTS

  10-12-2018 06:56 via abca.com.au
  Source: Cornell Alliance for Science
  New research suggests that the type of yield gains made possible by genetic engineering (GE) will be needed to offset climate change impacts on agriculture.
  The researchers said their study, published yesterday in Environmental Research Letters, has “important implications for regions lagging in the adoption of new technologies which could help offset the detrimental effects of climate change.”
  Though agricultural productivity in Africa and Asia i
  
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• AUS – GM COTTON THRIVES IN NORTHERN AUS

  10-12-2018 06:52 via abca.com.au
  Source: ABC Landline
  It’s being described as a possible game changer for farmers and even the pastoral industry in northern Australia — the resurgence of cotton.
  The CSIRO has predicted that if 15,000 hectares of the crop were grown in the Ord region of the Kimberley, it would be worth $80 million.
  If the same was done in Queensland, beef spin-offs would grow that figure to $340 million…
  The turning point was the development of a genetically modified cotton variety called Boll
  
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• SPAIN – DROUGHT RESISTANT PLANTS DEVELOPED

  10-12-2018 06:48 via abca.com.au
  Source: phys.orgExtreme drought is one of the effects of climate change that is already occurring. This year, the decrease in rainfall and the abnormally hot temperatures in northern and eastern Europe have caused large losses in cereals and potato crops and in other horticultural species. Experts have long warned that to ensure food security, it is becoming necessary to use plant varieties that are productive in drought conditions. Now, a team led by the researcher at the Center for Research in
  
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• USA – USDA APPROVES EDIBLE COTTON

  10-12-2018 06:43 via abca.com.au
  Source: The Scientist
  The US Department of Agriculture has announced it would deregulate a strain of cotton that university researchers had genetically engineered to carry low levels of poisonous gossypol in its seeds. The idea is that the modified cotton’s seeds could be grown for food.
  Cotton is known for its white fibers that can be woven into soft fabrics. But for every pound of fluffy, white lint, the plant produces 1.6 pounds of peanut-size seeds. Those seeds contain high levels
  
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• INT – PROJECT UNDERWAY TO MAP EVERY PLANT, ANIMAL, FUNGUS GENOME

  10-12-2018 06:39 via abca.com.au
  Source: The Guardian
  An ambitious international project to sequence the DNA of every known animal, plant and fungus in the world over the next 10 years has been launched.
  Described as “the next moonshot for biology”, the Earth BioGenome Project is expected to cost $4.7bn (£3.6bn) and involve reading the genomes of 1.5m species.
  “Having the roadmap, the blueprints … will be a tremendous resource for new discoveries, understanding the rules of life, how evolution wor
  
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