Scientists have found a fast and cheap way to edit your food’s DNA

Washington Post: Kuzma calls for mandatory regulatory process for gene-edited foods

August 13, 2018 | Patti Mulligan

“We need a mandatory regulatory process: not just for scientific reasons, but for consumer and public confidence,” Kuzma said. “I think the vast majority of gene-edited foods are going to be as safe as their conventionally bred counterparts. But I don’t buy into the argument that’s true all the time for every crop.”...

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Art's Work in the Age of Biotechnology | open call for art

Call for art for 2019 “genetic futures” exhibit

August 9, 2018 | Patti Mulligan

open call for art | 2019 Genetic Futures exhibit | Now accepting proposals from artists, scientists, designers, and makers. The NCSU Libraries, NC State’s Genetic Engineering and Society Center (GES), and the Gregg Museum of Art & Design have issued a public call for art for the upcoming exhibition Art’s Work in the Age of Biotechnology: Shaping our Genetic Futures....

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Publication: How social science should complement scientific discovery: lessons from nanoscience

July 12, 2018 | Patti Mulligan

Dr. David Berube, Professor of Science and Technology Communication, and GES Center affiliate, has published the following article in the Journal of Nanoparticle Research.  How social science should complement scientific discovery: lessons from nanoscience CITE AS: Berube,...

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Genome Editing in Agriculture – CAST Issue Paper

July 9, 2018 | Patti Mulligan

PRESS RELEASE: July 9, 2018. Twentieth-century advances in plant and animal breeding did much to help meet the increasing food, fiber, feed, and fuel needs of an expanding world. But continued population growth, resource shortages, climate change, and pest prevalence make sustainability a daunting yet essential task. Genome editing is a powerful new method that enables unprecedented control over genetic material and offers the opportunity to make rapid advances that influence agricultural practices....

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Kuzma quoted on ecological impacts and regulation of GE products

June 25, 2018 | Patti Mulligan

To critics, the case laid bare glaring weaknesses in the country’s oversight of genetically engineered, or GE, crops. While biotechnology’s defenders say the process is already overly rigorous, others have long argued that regulations, which haven’t changed significantly since 1987, don’t do enough to protect agriculture and the environment. Neither the USDA nor any government agency must weigh the full social, economic and ecological impacts of GE products, says Jennifer Kuzma, co-director of the Genetic Engineering and Society Center at North Carolina State University. “There’s really no place that’s looking at this broadly from a risk-benefit perspective.”...

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Weeds Are Winning in the War against Herbicide Resistance, Scientific American, By Brooke Borel, June 18, 2018

Kuzma in Scientific American article: Weeds Are Winning in the War against Herbicide Resistance

June 18, 2018 | Patti Mulligan

Herbicides are under evolutionary threat. Can modern agriculture find a new way to fight back? Excerpt: For farmers, protecting fields from pests and plagues is a constant battle fought on multiple fronts. Many insects have...

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Publication: Comparative, collaborative, and integrative risk governance for emerging technologies

May 7, 2018 | Patti Mulligan

GES Co-director, Dr. Jennifer Kuzma and affiliated faculty member, Dr. David Berube, have published an article in the journal Environment Systems and Decisions that argues for a risk governance approach to emerging technologies, such as synthetic biology...

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SciLine Briefing: Jennifer Kuzma on Gene Drives

May 7, 2018 | Patti Mulligan

VIDEO: GES Center Co-director Jennifer Kuzma recently participated in SciLine’s first Media Briefing on Gene Drives. Date recorded: April 25, 2018 About This Media Briefing: Gene drives represent a new take on genetic engineering offering...

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Publication: Voluntary Programs To Encourage Refuges for Pesticide Resistance Management

April 17, 2018 | Patti Mulligan

Dr. Zack Brown, assistant professor of agricultural economics and GES Center Executive Committee member, has published an article in the American Journal of Agricultural Economics which examines the implications of using behavioral approaches to managing pesticide...

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Jennifer Kuzma in the WSJ: Referring to gene-editing as “breeding” seems disingenuous

April 16, 2018 | Patti Mulligan

Is This Tomato Engineered? Inside the Coming Battle Over Gene-Edited Food The agriculture industry, which hopes Crispr technology will transform the business, faces opponents who call it ‘GMO 2.0’ By Jacob Bunge and Amy Dockser...

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Sophia Webster

Student spotlight: Sophia Webster wins 1st place at Graduate Student Research Symposium

March 22, 2018 | Patti Mulligan

Kudos to Sophia Webster, a GES PhD candidate in Entomology and Plant Pathology, for winning first place at Graduate Student Research Symposium! Sophia is part of the 2012 IGERT cohort whose focus is mosquitoes and human health. The first IGERT course took place in Lima and Iquitos, Peru where the cohort attended tropical medicine symposiums, visited health clinics and several farms to speak with farmers. The cohort also shadowed NAMRU workers door to door in in Iquitos as the workers completed their household mosquito checks and surveys. Additionally, the cohort conducted household experiments on the density dependent effects of mosquito larvae in household containers....

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close-up of rat with genetic code reflected in eye

WIRED: Process of Elimination

February 21, 2018 | Patti Mulligan

A deep dive into the inception of the Genetic Biocontrol of Invasive Rodents (GBIRd) program, this article in WIRED details how Karl Campbell of Island Conservation came across GES Co-Director Fred Gould's research suggesting that the genetic engineering techniques being used to manage insect populations could also be applied to other species, like rodents. And then, what happened when CRISPR came along....

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Journal of Responsible Innovation publishes ‘Roadmap to Gene Drives’ special issue

January 26, 2018 | Patti Mulligan

The Genetic Engineering and Society Center at NC State hosted a workshop in February of 2016, supported in part by the National Science Foundation, entitled ‘A Roadmap to Gene Drives: A Deliberative Workshop to Develop...

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Dr. Rodolphe Barrangou, Associate Professor, Barrangou Lab Lead and GES Center affiliated faculty member

Barrangou Wins NAS Prize in Food and Agriculture Sciences

January 18, 2018 | Patti Mulligan

Dr. Rodolphe Barrangou adds another award to his long list of accolades: the 2018 NAS Prize in Food and Agriculture Sciences for his discovery of the genetic mechanisms and proteins driving CRISPR-Cas systems....

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Gould quoted in Nature on synthetic organisms unable to breed with wild counterparts

January 16, 2018 | Patti Mulligan

Fred Gould is quoted in Nature, discussing a gene editing technique designed to make interbreeding between synthetic and wild organisms impossible. The technology, which targets gene expression, could be applied to mosquitoes to control infectious diseases, such as malaria, or to invasive species, like Asian carp. "This is an ingenious system."...

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