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If we want to Make America Healthy Again, it's not food dyes and trace chemistires. It is that most people fail to eat the foods we know fortify health. Shouldn't funding for research in fruit/veg production parallel medical investment? pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pn…

Plant Science Research Weekly: May 23, 2025 plantae.org/plant-science-… Untangling cell-specific root stress responses; MAMP-induced closure of plasmodesmata; A kinase switch coordinates symbiosis and immunity; Roadmap to get fruit and veg back on the table

It's absolutely essential that field trials be incorporated into plant syn bio/engineering biology DBTL cycles. Plants evolved to grow in the field, not in a white room with uniform conditions. The current absence of field evaluation is a system-level failure for research (IMHO).

Journals are just part of a system that incentivizes overselling end-to-end. But, as gatekeepers on the final products, they have agency. An editorial policy of “It’s complicated” falls short. Journals can ask for field trials to be done right & interpreted prudently.

In a new PNASNews publication, our faculty and collaborators are advocating for a bold shift: food as medicine. Only 1 in 10 Americans meets daily produce intake. It’s time to rethink food, health & agriculture and it starts with #HOS 🔗 linktr.ee/UFHortSci

AukeHoekstra We too calculated that replacing kerosene with SAF is only possible for a small fraction of today’s commercial jet fleet. As it takes only Google, a calculator, commonsense logic & ~15 min to make this calculation, why don’t policymakers run the numbers? doi.org/10.1093/plphys…

💯 respect Dr Unwin’s diabetes work. This calculation’s logic ⬇️ is flawed tho. Briefly: -Animal or plant lipids ultimately come from sugar made in photosynthesis -Converting sugar to lipid involves CO2 loss (from 🌱 or 🐄) -Eating lipids just outsources the CO2 loss to 🌱 or 🐄

Thoughtful piece centered on ‘the fallacy of misplaced concretenes’ (mistaking abstractions for concrete realities). This fallacy can account for much, incl. #SynBio’s embrace of the ‘cells as circuit boards’ abstraction - which is useful but can be taken too far. Jake Wintermute 🧬/acc

Many thinkers from the heavyweight Michael Polanyi (who saw science training as assimilation into a guild) to Malcom Gladwell (10,000 hours rule) say *there are no short cuts*. Also, many bioscientists ‘think with their hands’. Do we want brains untethered to operational reality?

A would-be smart smack-down to a serious science philosophy point. Let’s have a constructive conversation instead, Jason, e.g., how do you see bioengineering creativity being unleashed by setting relatively unformed minds to work on problems? Apart from a ‘less baggage’ argument.

Essential reading for everyone who has ever written, is writing, or will ever write an article that mentions nitrogen and agriculture in the same sentence.

2 questions: - What use would a unicorn be when we have perfectly serviceable horses of many kinds as well as donkeys & mules? - What does the impulse to ‘create’ a useless mythical monster say about the culture that celebrates this impulse?

See this opening statement for the prosecution ⬇️ (should read “There is a dire need for solutions….” BTW) 💯 some improvements in N use etc are possible. But another big energy use in ag is diesel. How to replace this? Animal traction? Which takes land.. doi.org/10.1007/s42994…

Excited to share the Hanson Lab’s Andrew D Hanson Lab new preprint! We used OrthoRep to evolve Arabidopsis HDH, a short-lived enzyme, selecting variants with up to 20× higher abundance. Mutations boosted lifespan, catalytic efficiency, or inhibitor resistance. 🔗doi.org/10.1101/2025.0…

Excellent, critical🧵 Marios Georgakis! BetaineS (there are various natural ones) have major benefits in plants. This has been clear for decades e.g. doi.org/10.1073/pnas.9…

An end to nicked ears! George the Mouse in a log pile house - Simon dell

An analogy is getting the skills to build cathedrals. At the start, much about physics & properties of stone was poorly understood. Result: -Some cathedrals collapsed (e.g. Beauvais ⬇️) -Architects & masons learned -Learning took *centuries* -“Stay humble, biodesigners” Jake Wintermute 🧬/acc

blog.aspb.org/july-17-plant-… Please join me and the rest of this great panel, discussing how we as a community should not oversell research outputs whilst at the same time demonstrating societal relevance. Lots to cover!