“Beans use an immune receptor to call in airstrikes on caterpillars,” reports Ars Technica. “When they’re being eaten, bean plants release chemicals that draw in parasitic wasps.”
To test how important those chemicals are to the survival of bean plants, scientists genetically engineered bean plants to eliminate that immune receptor, creating mutant bean plants. “When caterpillars fed on the mutant beans with inactive inceptin receptors” “they had a field day. Over a five-day feeding period, their growth rate was over 70 percent higher than on the plants with a functional receptor.” Such beans “were unable to summon predatory wasps.”
Researchers have also discovered that a plant virus could be used to save crops from root-eating pests.
Viruses can be useful. Scientists have engineered a virus to steal proteins from the HIV virus, as a way of fighting against AIDS.
Back in 2023, a virus started being used to cure deafness in gene therapy. This year, it was reported that “in a small trial in China, a single-injection gene therapy improved hearing in all ten congenitally deaf participants. One even gained near-normal hearing within just four months.”
ScienceDaily reports:
A new gene therapy is giving people born deaf the chance to hear, often within just weeks. In a small but groundbreaking study, researchers delivered a working copy of a key hearing gene directly into the inner ear using a single injection. All ten patients, ranging from young children to adults, experienced improved hearing, with some showing rapid gains in just one month….
Researchers at Karolinska Institutet, working with hospitals and universities in China, treated ten patients and saw hearing improve in every case….
The trial included ten patients between the ages of 1 and 24 who were treated at five hospitals in China. All had a genetic form of deafness linked to mutations in a gene called OTOF. These mutations prevent the body from producing enough of the protein otoferlin, which is essential for sending sound signals from the inner ear to the brain. To address this, researchers used a synthetic adeno-associated virus (AAV) to deliver a working version of the OTOF gene directly into the inner ear. The treatment was given as a single injection through a membrane at the base of the cochlea known as the round window.
