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GE-free

Official ban on genetically engineered (GE) food imports and cultivation.

Mandatory GE Food Labeling Laws

Mandatory labeling of nearly all GE foods and a labeling threshold of 0.9-1% GE content. Threshold refers to content per ingredient in each food item.

Mandatory labeling of many GE foods and a labeling threshold higher than 1% or undefined. This includes laws with a threshold of 1% for the entire food item.

Mandatory labeling of some GE foods, but with numerous exceptions and no labeling threshold defined; or a vague mandatory GE food labeling law that lacks implemention and enforcement provisions.

No GE Food Labeling Law

[+] Click for Definitions and More Information "

Definitions
Genetically engineered (GE) foods, sometimes referred to as genetically modified (GM) foods, are created by artificially inserting genetic material from one or more organisms into the genetic code of another using modern genetic engineering techniques.
Labeling threshold is a percentage of GE content above which the product must be labeled.

More Information
Center for Food Safety completed the research for this map in September 2012 and will continue to update it as new information becomes available.

For more information, please contact:

Center for Food Safety
660 Pennsylvania Avenue SE Suite 302
Washington, DC 20003
(202) 547-9395
office@centerforfoodsafety.org

Original design by AMICI DESIGN/www.amici.com

First printing: July 2003
Second printing: September 2005
Third printing: September 2012
Online version: March 2013

In order to create this map, CFS interpreted current law and expert analysis to determine how best to represent large amounts of information in a straightforward graphic design. Each labeling regime has unique variations that are impossible to fully represent on a map. These laws are dynamic and subject to amendment.

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Center for Food Safety - GE Food Labeling Laws

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GE-free Official ban on genetically engineered (GE) food imports and cultivation. Mandatory GE Food Labeling Laws Mandatory labeling of nearly all GE foods and a labeling threshold of 0.9-1% GE content. Threshold refers to content per ingredient in each food item. Mandatory labeling of many GE foods and a labeling threshold higher than 1% or undefined.

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Okja - A Message from Lucy Mirando - June 28

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What's good for the planet must also be good for business. As nations around the world grapple with our urgent, shared responsibility to tackle the climate crisis, the businesses we invest in and scale must play a crucial role in redressing the balance between economic success and environmental destruction. The challenges are immense. Consider nutrition as one example. By 2050, the world's population will hit ten billion people. To feed these people, global food production will have to increase by 50 per cent.

You might think that means we'll need more of what we eat now. Well, think again. At Mosa Meat, a Dutch food technology startup, they're busy growing meat in the lab. In the past seven years, the company has brought down the cost of its lab-grown beef burger from an eye-watering €250,000 to just €9. And the price is set to come down even further. In September, Mosa Meat raised €47 million in funding to scale up its operation, taking it from laboratory experiment to production at pre-industrial volumes.

When it comes to meat's environmental impact, cows are in a league of their own. There are roughly 1.5 billion cows on the planet. Each one requires land, food and water, the total environmental impact of which is enormous. According to one 2014 study, beef production uses 28 times more land and 11 times more water than poultry and pork. During the 1990s, humans deforested an area the size of Portugal every year to make room for cows and cow feed.

"Food security challenges are putting immense pressure on our planet, causing deforestation, loss of biodiversity, water overuse and pollution," says Mayssa Al Midani, senior investment manager for nutrition at Pictet, a leading wealth and asset management company. Malnutrition alone has an annual economic cost of $2 trillion. As with so many of the crises we face, it risks spiralling out of control.

But what if we could take the cows out of beef? One of Mosa Meat's key breakthroughs was to make its meatless meat truly meatless. Back in 2013, its bank-breakingly expensive patty still relied on growing cells in fetal bovine serum, a sustenance found in cow fetuses. Each burger required 50 litres of the fluid - and each litre cost up to £700. It wasn't just economically unsustainable - using the blood of unborn cows was also a marketing disaster. "Ethically and marketing-wise, it's a very bad story," says Maarten Bosch, CEO of Mosa Meat. "This was one of the big breakthroughs." What was once an expensive, animal-based soup is now made entirely from plants, with the serum used to trick cells into growing as if they were still part of an animal.

In the next three years, Bosch hopes to really start scaling his business. "It's about rolling out the technology. It's about building factories. And that takes time and requires a lot of capital." Within a decade, he anticipates that the meatless meat industry will be large enough to have an impact on a global scale. "We will need hundreds and hundreds of factories costing billions of euros to kick a dent in the current meat industry," says Bosch. "This is a huge field we're disrupting."

"We need vast investments and engagement programmes to facilitate the shift to more stable food systems that are beneficial not only for people, but also for the planet," says Al Midani. For Pictet, that means redefining nutrition. "We don't just invest in food companies, but also the enablers of sustainable food systems, the companies that are going to help enable us to secure our future food supply and our health whilst mitigating the negative impacts on the planet." From farm to fork, such a holistic strategy is essential if we are to fix our broken global food supply chain.

Bosch estimates that Mosa Meat can reach price parity with conventional meat producers by around 2026. And, after that, meatless meat can, in theory, keep on getting more and more economically and environmentally sustainable. "Our conversion rate of nutrients into meat is a lot more efficient than a cow," says Bosch. That conversion rate - essentially how much stuff is required to make a quantity of meat - is crucial for the future of our planet. Make meatless meat more economically and environmentally efficient than meat derived from animals and, suddenly, you don't have the need for industrial-scale cattle farms.

But it's not just the food that we eat that's having a huge environmental impact - it's the way it moves around the world. To enable our complex, global supply chain we have come to rely on one commodity above all others: plastic, reams and reams of plastic. And when it comes to single-use plastics, by far and away the worst offender is flexible plastic packaging. Plastic bags and wrappers make up a quarter of all UK consumer plastic packaging, yet only four per cent is currently recycled. But it doesn't have to be this way. As well as everyone reducing how much single-use plastic they consume, companies are also working on technological breakthroughs to create environmentally sustainable alternatives.

"There's no question that plastic packaging is a vital industry," says Daphna Nissenbaum, CEO and co-founder of TIPA, an Israeli firm that is leading the field of packaging innovation. Founded in 2010, the company has a simple goal: accept that plastic packaging is necessary and replace it with material that behaves just like organic waste. "Compostable flexible plastics have actually been around for decades with limited capabilities, and therefore limited adoption," says Nissenbaum. TIPA's breakthrough has been to make compostable, flexible plastics so good that companies and consumers won't be able to tell the difference. And, if the technology works, nature won't even notice we're here.

"We need new technologies, innovations and solutions that not only tackle the current social and environmental challenges of our food systems but that do so at a viable economic cost," says Al Midani. She adds that doing so will help incentivise behaviour that is better for both individual and planetary health. From food technology that provides healthier alternatives to agricultural technology while improving crop yields and requiring fewer natural resources, the breakthroughs needed to achieve this have already been made.

In the world of plastic packaging, there are five key traits that any good product needs: it needs to be transparent, durable, flexible, printable and machineable. Nail those tricky attributes with a compostable plastic and, it's hoped, all the big players in the food distribution industry will start paying attention. "We've proven that our technology works as well as conventional plastic, and even better in some cases," says Nissenbaum. Unlike the current deluge of flexible plastic, most of which will sit in landfill for thousands of years or be incinerated, TIPA's environmentally sustainable alternative breaks down just like a banana peel - within six months it becomes nutrient-rich soil, and nature goes on undisturbed.

Putting together that engineering puzzle was a major breakthrough for TIPA. Its compostable plastic needs to protect the shelf-life of food while it is packaged, shipped and shelved, but then immediately start to decompose once sent to landfill. To do this, TIPA created new, durable films from compostable polymers. "We have films that are suitable for laminates, standalone films, films that run on different kinds of packaging machinery, and our lab is always working on new solutions to extend shelf-life, increase machinability and more," Nissenbaum explains. "I think that within five years, compostable packaging will be everywhere."

Getting to that point will require a lot of different stakeholders working together. But Nissenbaum is confident that the moment for meaningful, large-scale change has arrived. As humanity's impact on the planet risks passing a tipping point, the urgent need for action has focused minds to elegantly tackle what was once seen as an intractable problem. "People join the journey because they have an opportunity to help change the world - to change the future for our kids," says Nissenbaum. "When given the opportunity to make a difference, people devote a tremendous amount of energy, as well as our most precious commodity - time - to make a change."

--
Pictet is a leading independent asset and wealth management group, with more than CHF570 billion in assets under management, and more than 4,800 staff across 30 global offices. Pictet Group's Responsible Vision embraces new financial models that are based on solid science and innovative partnerships, and also take account of environmental, social and governance factors in investment decisions and active ownership practices. Find out more here: group.pictet/responsible-vision

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The future of food is about a lot more than just lab-grown burgers

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What's good for the planet must also be good for business. As nations around the world grapple with our urgent, shared responsibility to tackle the climate crisis, the businesses we invest in and scale must play a crucial role in redressing the balance between economic success and environmental destruction.

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In November 2018, at a gene-editing " summit" hosted by scientific societies from the U.S., the U.K., and Hong Kong, a Chinese researcher announced that he had created the world's first genetically modified babies. He Jiankui fully expected to be celebrated for a scientific breakthrough; he mentioned the Nobel Prize. Instead, he was almost universally condemned.

Key figures associated with the U.S. National Academies and U.K. Royal Society joined in the criticism but did not reject heritable genome editing. Instead, they objected to the Chinese researcher's timing. It was too soon, they said. It hadn't been done as they thought it should have been. But according to the researcher now being called a "rogue," it was the National Academies' 2017 report that had given him the green light for his experiments.

In the aftermath of this headline-grabbing debacle, the scientific societies decided on a do-over. They declared it time to " define a rigorous, responsible translational pathway" toward clinical use of heritable genome editing. They set up a carefully selected international commission with the mandate to map the scientific details of howdesigner-baby technology could be brought to the fertility clinic.

This mandate was flawed from the start. The idea that now is the time to set aside the deeply controversial question of whether heritable genome editing should be done at all so that a small group of experts can settle the nitty-gritty details of how it should take place is entirely backward. It flies in the face of the widely shared acknowledgment that scientists alone cannot make this decision; that we must have wide-ranging and inclusive public discussions aimed at building broad societal consensus. It undermines policies in some 70 countries around the world that prohibit heritable genome editing. And it's a slap in the face to the many scientists, biotech executives, human rights and social justice advocates, and others who support a moratorium or ban on altering the human germline.

The commission's 225-page report, released on Sept. 3, does have some strong points. It is more cautious than the previous report, recommending that heritable genome editing should initially be allowed only in the exceedingly rare cases where embryo screening for severe genetic conditions would not be an option. And it paints a vivid picture of the significant technical hurdles facing those eager to pursue heritable human genome editing: shortfalls in the editing tools, in the technologies necessary to test safety and efficacy, even in our understanding of the genetics underlying most heritable diseases.

These findings ought to lay to rest the unfounded assumption that engineering the genomes of human embryos will soon be safe and effective. But even the most cautious considerations of technical safety can't stand-in for the fundamental point that the decision about whether to allow heritable genome editing should be driven by our values, not settled by the science.

The commission claims they are not endorsing heritable genome editing, merely constructing maps of the technological path in case a country should wish to use them. At best, this puts the cart before the horse - and sends both horse and cart down a one-way road.

Heritable genome editing can't be separated from its real-world consequences. There are already clear signs that legalizing it would lead to reproductive tourism, jurisdiction shopping, and mission creep. As an example, the U.K.'s approval of so-called " mitochondrial donation" for a small number of women with certain mitochondrial DNA diseases was quickly followed by fertility clinics in Ukraine, Spain, and Greece offering this high-risk technique, with no evidence of effectiveness, for general and age-related infertility.

A similar trajectory is all too easy to foresee if heritable genome editing is approved, even for limited circumstances. Especially where fertility services are offered on a for-profit basis, it's unlikely that any boundaries would hold. We could soon see fertility clinics marketing genetically "upgraded" embryos, tempting parents-to-be with ads about "giving their child the best start in life." From there, a normalized system of market-based eugenics could emerge, exacerbating already existing discrimination, inequality, and conflict.

Amid our multiple ongoing crises, it would be easy to overlook another report on still speculative biotechnology. But this one represents a profoundly consequential step, one that tries to settle in advance the coming decision about whether to engineer genes and traits passed on to future children and generations. It's another attempt to focus discussion on "the science," while minimizing the complex social realities in which scientific and technological developments unfold.

Katie Hasson is program director on genetic justice and Marcy Darnovsky is executive director of the Center for Genetics and Society, a non-profit organization based in Berkeley, California that works to encourage responsible uses and effective governance of human genetic and assisted reproductive technologies.

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In November 2018, at a gene-editing " summit" hosted by scientific societies from the U.S., the U.K., and Hong Kong, a Chinese researcher announced that he had created the world's first genetically modified babies. He Jiankui fully expected to be celebrated for a scientific breakthrough; he mentioned the Nobel Prize.

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Clinical gene therapies rely on viruses such as the adeno-associated virus (AAV) to deliver genes into a cell. CRISPR-based gene therapies act as molecular scissors to remove defective genes, add in missing sequences, or create a change in gene expression.

However, in response to AAVs, the host immune system can prevent the whole process by producing antibodies against the virus. This can result in rapid clearance of the virus and prevent them from delivering therapeutic payloads.

"Many clinical trials fail because of the immune response against AAV gene therapy," said Dr. Samira Kiani, co-senior author and associate professor of pathology at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC); member of the Pittsburgh Liver Research Center (PLRC); and McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine (MIRM). "And then you can't readminister the shot because people have developed immunity."

To overcome this challenge, researchers created a system that uses CRISPR in a different way. They developed a CRISPR-based transcriptional repressor system that can be used to control DNA and RNA levels through transcriptional control and gene editing on demand. The team believes that having transcriptional control over genes involved in immunity can produce therapeutic avenues to treat a broad range of acute and chronic inflammatory conditions.

The researchers explored this possibility by targeting the myeloid differentiation primary response 88 (MyD88) gene. This essential adaptor molecule is key in innate and adaptive immune signaling pathways, the response to septicemia, and the formation of adaptive immunity against viruses (including AAVs). MYD88 mutations are implicated in a number of lymphoid malignancies.

The CRISPR-controlled repression system was developed by fusing two transcriptional repressors -- heterochromatin protein 1 (HP1a) and Krüppel-associated box (KRAB) -- to the MS2 coat protein which was recruited by a guide RNA (gRNA) aptamer binding to a nuclease-competent CRISPR complex containing truncated gRNAs. Truncation of gRNA enables the application of a nuclease competent Cas9 protein for transcriptional modulation of genes.

The researchers started by examining synthetic immunomodulation of MyD88 in vivo using a CRISPR-based enhanced transcriptional repressor. Treatment with CRISPR to repress endogenous Myd88 led to a significant reduction in the level of Myd88 in blood (~84%), lung (~75%), and bone marrow (~63%) of mice. This confirmed the CRISPR-controlled system can be a potent transcriptional modality for the key immunomodulators in vivo.

Next, the team targeting the Myd88 locus with AAV1/CRISPR to evaluate if pretreatment with the CRISPR system can increase the efficacy of clinical gene therapies. Mice were pretreated with the CRISPR-controlled immune suppression system (AAV1/Myd88) and subsequently treated with two rounds of AAV9-based gene therapies 7 and 14 days apart.

The pretreated mice had decreased levels of Myd88 expression and lower immunoglobulin levels against both the pretreatment (AAV1) and gene therapy (AAV9) viruses. The researchers suggest that using this CRISPR prophylactically can increase the efficiency of subsequent viral-based gene delivery by preventing a surge in humoral response.

"We're hitting two birds with one stone," said Dr. Mo Ebrahimkhani, associate professor of pathology at UPMC, and a member of PLRC and MIRM. "You can use CRISPR to do your gene therapy, and you also can use CRISPR to control the immune response."

Beyond gene therapies, the study demonstrated that the CRISPR-based immune repression system can prevent sepsis in mice by preventing the upregulation of a wide range of inflammatory markers. The researchers offered that this system could be a powerful tool to prevent exaggerated inflammatory responses and severe tissue damage for a variety of inflammatory conditions including emerging infectious diseases such as COVID-19.

"The main goal of this study was to develop CRISPR-based tools for inflammatory conditions," said lead author Farzaneh Moghadam, a PhD student at the UPMC. "But when we looked at bone marrow samples, we saw that the group treated with our tool showed a lower immune response to AAV compared to the control group. That was very interesting, so we started exploring how this tool contributes to antibody formation against AAV and could potentially address safety and efficacy concerns with gene therapy trials."
Do you have a unique perspective on your research related to synthetic biology? Contact the editor today to learn more.

Copyright © 2020 scienceboard.net

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myeloid differentiation primary response 88

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New CRISPR-repressor system improves efficiency of gene therapies

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Clinical gene therapies rely on viruses such as the adeno-associated virus (AAV) to deliver genes into a cell. CRISPR-based gene therapies act as molecular scissors to remove defective genes, add in missing sequences, or create a change in gene expression. However, in response to AAVs, the host immune system can prevent the whole process by producing antibodies against the virus.

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Scientists are seeing promising early results from the first studies testing gene editing for painful, inherited blood disorders that plague millions worldwide, especially Black people.

Doctors hope the one-time treatment, which involves permanently altering DNA in blood cells with a tool called CRISPR, may treat and possibly cure sickle cell disease and beta thalassemia.

Partial results were presented Saturday at an American Society of Hematology conference and some were published by the New England Journal of Medicine.

Doctors described 10 patients who are at least several months removed from their treatment. All no longer need regular blood transfusions and are free from pain crises that plagued their lives before.

Victoria Gray, the first patient in the sickle cell study, had long suffered severe pain bouts that often sent her to the hospital.

"I had aching pains, sharp pains, burning pains, you name it. That's all I've known my entire life," said Gray, 35, who lives in Forest, Mississippi. "I was hurting everywhere my blood flowed."

Since her treatment a year ago, Gray has weaned herself from pain medications she depended on to manage her symptoms.

"It's something I prayed for my whole life," she said. "I pray everyone has the same results I did."

Sickle cell affects millions, mostly Black people. Beta thalassemia strikes about one in 100,000 people. The only cure now is a bone marrow transplant from a closely matched donor without the disease like a sibling, which most people don't have.

Both diseases involve mutations in a gene for hemoglobin, the substance in red blood cells that carries oxygen throughout the body.

In sickle cell, defective hemoglobin leads to deformed, crescent-shaped blood cells that don't carry oxygen well. They can stick together and clog small vessels, causing pain, organ damage and strokes.

Those with beta thalassemia don't have enough normal hemoglobin, and suffer anemia, fatigue, shortness of breath and other symptoms. Severe cases require transfusions every two to five weeks.

The treatment studied attacks the problem at its genetic roots.

In the womb, fetuses make a special type of hemoglobin. After birth, when babies breathe on their own, a gene is activated that instructs cells to switch and make an adult form of hemoglobin instead. The adult hemoglobin is what's defective in people with one of these diseases. The CRISPR editing aims to cut out the switching gene.

"What we are doing is turning that switch back off and making the cells think they are back in utero, basically," so they make fetal hemoglobin again, said one study leader, Dr. Haydar Frangoul of the Sarah Cannon Research Institute in Nashville.

The treatment involves removing stem cells from the patient's blood, then using CRISPR in a lab to knock out the switching gene. Patients are given strong medicines to kill off their other, flawed blood-producing cells. Then they are given back their own lab-altered stem cells.

Saturday's results were on the first 10 patients, seven with beta thalassemia and three with sickle cell. The two studies in Europe and the United States are ongoing and will enroll 45 patients each.

Tests so far suggest the gene editing is working as desired with no unintended effects, Frangoul said.

"The preliminary results are extremely encouraging," he said.

The study was sponsored by the therapy's makers - CRISPR Therapeutics, with headquarters in Zug, Switzerland, and Massachusetts-based Vertex Pharmaceuticals. Some study leaders consult for the companies.

Separately, Dr. David Williams of Harvard-affiliated Boston Children's Hospital gave partial results from a study testing a novel type of gene therapy that also seeks to restore fetal hemoglobin production for those with sickle cell.

Six patients including one as young as 7 were given the treatment, in which some of their blood stem cells were removed and altered in the lab to muffle the hemoglobin switching gene. None have had pain crises, five of the six no longer need transfusions and all have near-normal hemoglobin, he reported at the conference and in the medical journal.

Government grants paid for the work. Williams is named on a patent for the therapy, which Boston Children's has licensed to Bluebird Bio Inc. of Cambridge, Massachusetts. The company provided the therapy for the study, which will enroll 10 people in all to establish safety. A larger study to test effectiveness is planned.

Williams, who was not involved in Frangoul's study, said it "validates this approach" of targeting the hemoglobin switching gene to tackle sickle cell.
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Gene-editing treatment shows promise for sickle cell disease

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Scientists are seeing promising early results from the first studies testing gene editing for painful, inherited blood disorders that plague millions worldwide, especially Black people. Doctors hope the one-time treatment, which involves permanently altering DNA in blood cells with a tool called CRISPR, may treat and possibly cure sickle cell disease and beta thalassemia.

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This enlightening series from Vox digs into a wide range of topics such as the rise of cryptocurrency, why diets fail, and the wild world of K-pop. Watch trailers & learn more.

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Bill Nye Saves the World tackles GMOs | Netflix

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Transcendence Official Trailer #1 (2014) - Johnny Depp Sci-Fi Movie HD

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Rotten | Official Trailer [HD] | Netflix

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watch and make a list of the arguments on the worksheet

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There are hundreds of different cell types that make up the human body, each derived from a single origin: the fertilized egg. Researchers investigating how this complexity arises have made human-animal chimeric embryos by introducing human pluripotent stem cells into the embryos of other animals, such as mice and pigs. By tracking the outcomes of the human cells, they can discern how capable these cells are of differentiating into various cell types and contributing to the embryo. In work published in 2017, for instance, human cells contributed up to 1 percent of embryonic cells in a human-mouse chimera.

In a study published today (April 15) in , researchers describe their progress in producing a human-monkey chimeric embryo in an effort to determine whether having a more closely related host would allow the human cells to have a greater presence, thus paving the way for a better understanding of what cell types they can become and, possibly in the far future, a potential way to cope with the shortage of human organs available for transplant. The scientists made the chimeras by injecting human extended pluripotent stem (EPS) cells-also known as expanded potential stem cells-into early embryos of cynomolgus monkeys ( Macaca fascicularis). The team grew the chimeras for up to 20 days in culture and found that up to 7 percent of the embryos' cells can trace their lineage to the human EPS cells.

EPS cells-generated by treating pluripotent stem cells with factors that help them both maintain pluripotency and contribute to embryonic and extraembryonic tissues-were developed by Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte, a stem cell biologist at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, and colleagues in 2017.

"A precise confirmation of these cells' developmental potency can only be achieved in vivo . . . but chimeric assays are not easy," says Berna Sozen, a stem cell biologist at Yale University who was not involved in the study. In the past, researchers have had limited chimeric success, at least in part due to the evolutionary distance between humans and mouse or pig hosts, she adds.

In the new study, Izpisua Belmonte's team collaborated with Tao Tan of the Kunming University of Science and Technology in China and colleagues to tackle the challenge of evolutionary distance. They used a strategy described in two studies in 2019 by Tan's group and another team that allows researchers to grow monkey embryos in culture for up to 20 days.

The researchers injected each of 132 six-day-old monkey embryos with 25 human EPS cells. The next day, they found human cells in all of the embryos. Where those cells were found within the embryos shifted over time. At 15 days old, the 38 surviving chimeras had the highest contribution of human cells (about 7 percent) in the outermost layer of embryonic cells, and at 19 days old, the three surviving chimeras had the greatest proportion of human cells (about 5 percent) in the innermost layer. The team did not see much human-cell presence in the layer that would become the extraembryonic tissues, such as the placenta.

Next, the researchers analyzed a readout of which genes were active during chimera development and observed a different suite of genes than they did in monkey embryos that weren't injected with human cells. "We plan to take a closer look at the molecular pathways we identified as involved in interspecies communication and to determine which ones are critical to the success of this process," Izpisua Belmonte writes in an email to The Scientist. In other words, how are monkey and human cells interacting with one another during the embryo's development?

"These advances have accelerated our ability to study developmental and regenerative processes," he continues. "This knowledge could also be instrumental to advancing the goals of regenerative medicine, such as developing tissues to address the critical shortage of organs for transplant."

"For this to become a reality, there are a number of obstacles," says Jacob Hanna, a stem cell biologist at the Weizmann Institute in Israel who was not involved in the work. The primary obstacle is that, whether human cells are being transplanted into mouse, pig, or monkey embryos, "the integration efficiencies we see in all cross-species experiments are very, very low."

On the other hand, "it's incredible that now we see so much evidence that human cells can survive and differentiate in other organisms," he adds. The next question to address in pursuit of making human organs for transplant is, "how can we make integration either directed to a certain organ or . . . try to make the cells more competitive?"

Researchers around the world are "trying to understand [EPS] cells, but we need to collect much more data before we can actually start to discuss any potential clinical applications," agrees Sozen. "It is really hard to say that it will ever be possible to grow organs for transplantation by creating these animal-human chimeras, but this research should continue for us to understand whether we will ever achieve this."
T. Tan et al., "Chimeric contribution of human extended pluripotent stem cells to monkey embryos ex vivo," Cell, doi:10.1016/j.cell.2021.03.020, 2021.

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Human-Monkey Chimeras Shed Light on Development

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There are hundreds of different cell types that make up the human body, each derived from a single origin: the fertilized egg. Researchers investigating how this complexity arises have made human-animal chimeric embryos by introducing human pluripotent stem cells into the embryos of other animals, such as mice and pigs.

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Her birth has also led to a debate about the ethics of using technology to create a child.

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Microchipped Employees in Wisconsin | The Daily Show

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Microchipped Employees in Wisconsin | The Daily Show

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Microchipped Employees in Wisconsin | The Daily Show

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Gene editing could probably edit intelligence in a ‘a few decades’: Walter Isaacson

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up to 1.40mn

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hypothétique 1

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Look at these examples to see how zero, first and second conditionals are used.

If you freeze water, it becomes solid.
If it rains tomorrow, I'll take the car.
If I lived closer to the cinema, I would go more often.

Try this exercise to test your grammar.

Read the explanation to learn more.

Grammar explanation

Conditionals describe the result of a certain condition. The if clause tells you the condition ( If you study hard) and the main clause tells you the result ( you will pass your exams). The order of the clauses does not change the meaning.

If you study hard, you will pass your exams.
You will pass your exams if you study hard.

Conditional sentences are often divided into different types.

Zero conditional

We use the zero conditional to talk about things that are generally true, especially for laws and rules.

If I drink too much coffee, I can't sleep at night.
Ice melts if you heat it.
When the sun goes down, it gets dark.

The structure is: if/w hen + present simple >> present simple.

First conditional

We use the first conditional when we talk about future situations we believe are real or possible.

If it doesn't rain tomorrow, we'll go to the beach.
Arsenal will be top of the league if they win.
When I finish work, I'll call you.

In first conditional sentences, the structure is usually: if/ when + present simple >> will + infinitive.

It is also common to use this structure with unless, as long as, as soon as or in case instead of if.

I'll leave as soon as the babysitter arrives.
I don't want to stay in London unless I get a well-paid job.
I'll give you a key in case I'm not at home.
You can go to the party, as long as you're back by midnight.

Second conditional

The second conditional is used to imagine present or future situations that are impossible or unlikely in reality.

If we had a garden, we could have a cat.
If I won a lot of money, I'd buy a big house in the country.
I wouldn't worry if I were you.

The structure is usually: if + past simple >> + would + infinitive.

When if is followed by the verb be, it is grammatically correct to say if I were, if he were, if she were and if it were. However, it is also common to hear these structures with was, especially in the he/ she form.

If I were you, I wouldn't mention it.
If she was prime minister, she would invest more money in schools.
He would travel more if he was younger.

Do this exercise to test your grammar again.

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Look at these examples to see how zero, first and second conditionals are used. If you freeze water, it becomes solid. If it rains tomorrow, I'll take the car. If I lived closer to the cinema, I would go more often. Try this exercise to test your grammar.

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hypothétique 2

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Look at these examples to see how third and mixed conditionals are used.

We would have walked to the top of the mountain if the weather hadn't been so bad.
If we'd moved to Scotland when I was a child, I would have a Scottish accent now.
If she was really my friend, she wouldn't have lied to me.

Try this exercise to test your grammar.

Read the explanation to learn more.

Grammar explanation

Do you know how to use third and mixed conditionals?

Third conditionals and mixed conditionals

Conditionals describe the result of a certain condition. The if clause tells you the condition ( If I hadn't been ill) and the main clause tells you the result ( I would have gone to the party). The order of the clauses does not change the meaning.

If I hadn't been ill, I would have gone to the party.
I would have gone to the party if I hadn't been ill.

Conditional sentences are often divided into different types.

Third conditional

The third conditional is used to imagine a different past. We imagine a change in a past situation and the different result of that change.

If I had understood the instructions properly, I would have passed the exam.
We wouldn't have got lost if my phone hadn't run out of battery.

In third conditional sentences, the structure is usually: If + past perfect >> would have + past participle.

Mixed conditionals

We can use mixed conditionals when we imagine a past change with a result in the present or a present change with a result in the past.

1. Past/Present

Here's a sentence imagining how a change in a past situation would have a result in the present.

If I hadn't got the job in Tokyo, I wouldn't be with my current partner.

So the structure is: If + past perfect >> would + infinitive.

2. Present/Past

Here's a sentence imagining how a different situation in the present would mean that the past was different as well.

It's really important. If it wasn't, I wouldn't have called you on your holiday.

And the structure is: If + past simple >> would have + past participle.

Do this exercise to test your grammar again.

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Look at these examples to see how third and mixed conditionals are used. We would have walked to the top of the mountain if the weather hadn't been so bad. If we'd moved to Scotland when I was a child, I would have a Scottish accent now.

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up to 1.09mn

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