Aug 25 - Ostrich Forecast
It's Yeast Week!
We're expecting another hot week, and no lack of humidity—ideal conditions, if you're yeast. Which is good news for my newly-renamed sourdough starter, Bready Mercury (well done, Amanda), and it's also good news for bees.
There are many causes for the recent collapse of honeybee colonies, but the main one may be malnutrition. Bees eat pollen, mostly, and their typical sources of pollen are in short supply. Beekeepers have tried making up the difference with artificial pollen, but this hasn't been wildly successful, as it lacks some important nutrients.
Enter a team of scientists led by the University of Oxford, who identified six sterol compounds found in pollen, that seem to be important for beeproduction. Naturally, they fired up their CRISPR-Cas9 machine to engineer some sterol-making yeast. They fed the yeast to a group of hungry hives, and the yeast group reared 15 times more larva than the control colonies.
On balance, I'd rather have a world replete with wildflowers, but this seems like a welcome step.
So, for Yeast Week, what will your batch of Yarrowia lipolytica be engineered to excrete? Caffeine? Confidence? Willpower? Purpose? CO2? Casino chips? Give it some thought, and get splicing!
