Articles

With the UK no longer a member of the European Union, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) has opened a public consultation on the regulation of gene editing in England. We spoke to Synthetic Biology Group Leader, Dr Nicola Patron about her view of the debate and why it’s important for scientists to share their expertise with policymakers.

Without healthy soils, we’d have precious little food to eat. But this fundamental resource is being eroded by climate change and overuse of agrichemicals. Under severe threat are the communities of microbes which live in and around crops, helping them to thrive, yet we still know precious little about what our treatment of soils is doing to those microorganisms.

Most microbes live in and around our crops causing no harm whatsoever, often providing vital nutrients through decomposing organic matter, or symbiosis with plant roots. Yet a sudden event, perhaps just a fateful gust of wind, can turn even the most placid of microbes into a devastating pathogen.

Postdoctoral Scientist Nasmille Larke-Mejía is researching to help improve agricultural practices and increase crop yield as well as impacting the socioeconomic landscape in Colombia, as part of our GROW initiative funded by GCRF-UKRI.

Plants and us - we’re not so different, especially when it comes to the daily rituals of life - and circadian clocks show we’re all creatures of habit.