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I work on developing pesticides based on RNA, which should significantly reduce adverse impacts on the environment (including soils) if commercialised and adopt
by gravelc 5y ago
I work on developing pesticides based on RNA, which should significantly reduce adverse impacts on the environment (including soils) if commercialised and adopted. Biodegradable and highly species specific.
https://phys.org/news/2021-01-rnai-based-products-sustainable-alternative-hazardous.html https://phys.org/news/2021-01-rnai-based-products-sustainabl...
Still more development to be done, but there are alternatives to existing synthetic pesticides on the horizon.
- mssundaram 5y agoWhen we first started using pesticides we didn't understand the long term implications. How can you be so confident that you understand the long term implications of an arguably much more complex application (genetic vs chemical)?
- gravelc 5y agoThere could be unintended consequences associated with any crop protection approach - synthetic, organic, whatever. However, the active ingredient, double-stranded RNA, is ubiquitous in nature without obvious adverse impacts. It degrades very readily. It doesn't impact gene expression in mammals, even if completely homologous to a transcript (which is why in contrast to synthetic short interfering RNAs there's no obvious use as a therapeutic). It's an extraordinarily narrow spectrum approach, which is quite different to anything in the past, and why the approach is receiving a lot of interest and investment. There's ongoing synthesis of data on environmental impacts. Have a read: https://www.oecd.org/officialdocuments/publicdisplaydocumentpdf/?cote=env/jm/mono(2020)26&doclanguage=en https://www.oecd.org/officialdocuments/publicdisplaydocument...