Tuesday, November 21, 2006

Edible cotton breakthrough may help feed the world

Great new creation from my old Ala Mater, Texas A&M at New Scientist.
The cotton plant provides a wonderful fiber for our lives, but it's poisonous seed protein is under utilitzed as cattle feed. Keerti Rathore has manipulated the genome of cotton to remove this poison. Now farmers from developing countries can earn cash for the fiber and use the seed to feed their families.
This is just a hint of the wonderful, fantastic, and dreadful fruits of the new science of the genome. The biotech revolution of the next 20 years will make the computer revolution of the last twenty years look like a child's toy. The revolution is coming, let's prepare for it and not squash its promise of filling the bellies of the world's hungry children.

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