Andrew D Hanson

Excited to share the Hanson Lab’s @adhansonlab.bsky.social 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.
🔗 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Well, the forceful, ongoing anti-GMO backlash set off by Monsanto’s messaging style (which in hindsight seems almost milquetoast compared to Palantir’s) doesn’t augur well…

This is seriously mistaken as @Ignatzz.bsky.social says. Western science was basically born in the late medieval church (see e.g. the works of St. Albert the Great) & largely nourished by the church thereafter. And note that the Church of England honored Darwin’s work by burial in Westminster Abbey.

Or any of these & more:
Rev.
Lt.
Capt.
Maj.
Col.
Gen.
All of which could be scientists or physicians in this day & age - & hence ordering mol biol reagents!

Can biofuels replace fossil energy sources? A few calculations indicate otherwise 👉🏻 e360.yale.edu/features/cor.... Running numbers academic.oup.com/plphys/advan...) is the way to go. Things get worse with jet fuel (source @adhansonlab.bsky.social) 👇

“And he said, Draw not nigh hither: put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is (w)hol(l)y ground(less) (speculation)”

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.

Left. Percentage of fruit and vegetable supply that is imported into the US. The trends for both fruit and veg show a steeply increasing curve, leading to 60% of fruit imported and 40% of veg. Right. Percentage of US cropland devoted to corn (30) soybean (30) wheat (15) and other (15), with fruits and vegetables being grown in only 10% of current cropland.

Food Rx: Integrating horticulture research to improve nutrition and health.
A compelling perspective - the chronic health problems facing Americans require better access to affordable, nutritious fruits & vegetables! Yet the US greatly underproduces these healthy foods.
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Food Rx: Integrating horticulture research to improve nutrition and health | PNAS It is clear that the escalating epidemic of insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes has reached a crisis level in the United States, that overweight...

Traditional wisdom tells us that healthy food, in particular fruits & veggies, is the best medicine. Here @adhansonlab.bsky.social elaborates an straightforward 1-stop resource for decision-makers & concerned citizens 👉🏻 www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Excellent reflection on #SynBio in a company context, and on the future of engineering biology.

Perhaps it fires the therapeutic ‘silver bullet’?

It’s at least equally useful to know that around 1/2 the nitrogen in our DNA comes from the Haber-Bosch process & that 🇨🇳 is the world’s largest🍏 producer.

OrthoRep as a lab-scale sandbox to study molecular evolution ⬇️ Great to see directed evolution being connected with the vast field of evolutionary theory! Up to now, there’s been surprisingly little crossover between #SynBio and #Evolution.

I witnessed Margaret Thatcher’s downsizing of the world-class 🇬🇧 network of government ag research institutions in the 1980s. What were some of the best jobs for plant scientists just vanished. Since then I’ve always cautioned people against thinking that government science jobs are totally secure.

For an informative case of analysis (read: take-down) of a (biomedical) paper in real-time in social media, head over to X and search for LMHR. This case could stand as an example for teaching & I think it will likely be used this way in future.

Sin duda alguna!

#SyntheticBiology postdoctoral position in our group in University of Florida's Horticultural Sciences department. Work is directed evolution to improve enzymes that underlie important crop traits ⬇️

Vertical farming limitations and potential demonstrated by back-of-the-envelope calculations (Samuel J Lovat, Εlad Noor, Ron Milo) doi.org/10.1093/plph... #PlantScience

I 💯 endorse the CSPB/SCBV Annual Meetings as first-class science in a congenial & collegial environment!

Amen on both counts! Thank you Quentin & Kelly!

The Return of the Dire Wolf Colossal Biosciences has genetically engineered the first dire wolf to live in over 10,000 years. Here's what that means for other extinct species.

This is analogous to 1930s German work to bring aurochs back from extinction by selectively breeding modern cattle that had some traits of the aurochs. The result was cattle that look like, but genetically are not, aurochs.
theconversation.com/the-quest-to...
time.com/7274542/colo...

It’s precisely the elegant simplicity of this piece that’s so compelling. Of course it doesn’t capture all the factors. But it transmits a scientifically defensible message that anyone can understand. We need more messaging like this if science is to be seen as serving everyone not just scientists.

On a per-cup basis, coffee requires almost 7.5 x the land area that tea does.
doi.org/10.1073/pnas...

Not German, but may be relevant:

“Queen siembra vientos, recoge tempestades”

Yes, the planting density seemed OK but there was not enough information in the Methods or Fig. S12 to tell plot size, or whether guard rows were used.

The village of Brockley Green (Suffolk - not so far from Cambs.) is famous for its cowslips (P. veris). They feature in the village sign.

The yield data are all in units of weight of tubers *per plant*, not *per unit land area* (which is more agriculturally relevant).

And I would think you have better disease control options in tunnels than in vertical farms, where diseases can run rampant via the hydroponics and force shutdown to decontaminate (before it happens again). This has been another of the problems, also cost of skilled labor to run the hi-tech systems.

Excellent substrate for fermentation to SAF, tho.

Running Fermi calculations as a superpower to gauge reality Making Fermi calculations is a way to estimate rough but reliable numbers that enable right reasoning in science and engineering—and a skill that all scien

🙏 ! An independent way to estimate this would be from dietary survey data. This might even capture the variation. I’ll keep this in mind for future classes on #FermiCalculations (which you clearly value too). See our ‘how-to’ article:
doi.org/10.1093/plph...