Good Day BIO: Invite gene editing to the feast

Ahead of Thanksgiving, we look at how gene editing is improving our feast tomorrow and all year—plus, giving thanks (and resources) for America’s family caregivers. (696 words, 3 minutes, 28 seconds) 

Happy Thanksgiving! Good Day BIO will take a quick break for the holiday. We will resume publication on Monday, November 29. Have a great weekend!

Invite gene editing to the feast

This Thanksgiving, we’re grateful for biotechnology like gene editing—which can help ensure our food supply will remain plentiful and sustainable in the face of climate challenges ahead.

Take the humble, and often overlooked, corn—which can show up on Thanksgiving creamed, in cornbread, or as a key player in succotash. As BIO’s Cornelia Poku explains, corn was one of the first commercially available genetically modified crops. 

The first changes to corn took place about 10,000 years ago, when farmers began cross-breeding the crop to make the kernels stay in the ear. 

Now, gene editing is ensuring it can withstand pests and extreme weather—in a faster, more precise way than traditional breeding techniques. 

Other Thanksgiving standards being improved by gene editing include:

• Sweet potatoes are getting a boost in flavor, resilience, and vitamin A content, which could improve nutrition in economically depressed regions. They’re also being pest-proofed.
• The chestnuts in the stuffing could soon be more plentiful due to a gene-edited variety that resists the blight that almost killed off the American chestnut tree population.
• What’s Thanksgiving without pie? Berries are benefitting from a project involving the USDA, several universities, and agriculture company Pairwise to map the genome of berries. Using this knowledge, researchers are now building better berries.
• We can’t forget the dinner rolls—but bread is off-limits to the 1% of Americans who have celiac disease and therefore cannot tolerate the gluten protein. With CRISPR, researchers are developing gluten-free wheat. 

The last bite: Gene editing has improved rapidly in recent years—and our food supply benefits. The more you know, the more you realize gene editing is not something to worry about, but rather something for which we can be thankful. 

More Reading: This Thanksgiving, celebrate the abundance of good food

More Agriculture and Environment News: 

The New York Times: A tool kit to help scientists find the ultimate chickpea
“A major plant genome sequencing effort may offer a path to breeding more climate-resilient chickpeas, while also revealing clues to the legume’s origins.”

Family caregivers deserve care, too 

November is National Family Caregivers Month, a time to recognize and give thanks for one of the pillars of our health care system.

Patient caregivers, by the numbers: The human resources for caring for patients in the United States include close to 1 million physicians and 4 million registered nurses—backed by more than 53 million family caregivers.

Caregiving affects everyone: “Caregiving remains an activity that occurs among all generations, racial/ethnic groups, income or educational levels, family types, gender identities, and sexual orientations,” according to a study by the National Alliance for Caregiving and AARP.

And it’s generally a family affair: “Most caregivers of adults care for a relative,” says the study. “The data suggest many caregivers may be taking on this role without adequate and affordable services and supports in place.”

Given the important role that they play, caregivers need to be better integrated into U.S. health systems,says a new report released this month by the National Alliance for Caregiving. “[C]aregiving interventions provide a cost savings for health care systems.” 

Caregivers need care, too—but they don’t get enough.The National Family Caregiver Support Program funds local programs—get details at www.caregiver.org. 

Other resources include:

• Eldercare Locator, which gives local sources of assistance.
• Caregiver Action Network, billed as the nation’s leading family caregiver organization.
• eXtension, a USDA website that helps caregivers access information and support services.
• The National Institute on Aging 

Efforts to address the needs of patients must also take their families into consideration. BIO is helping to address the needs of family members as well as patients through resources like the Guiding Principles for Interaction With Patient Advocacy Organizations and the new Clinical Trials Power of Participation website, which helps patients and their families understand and join clinical trials.

More Health Care News:

STAT News: COVID antivirals could be pandemic game-changers. But Americans might struggle to access them
“The companies’ treatments, which haven’t yet received emergency authorization, could make a COVID diagnosis dramatically less threatening. But in practice, before receiving the pills, patients may need to jump through a series of hoops that often prevent Americans from accessing care.”

President Biden’s Wednesday: Reviving a tradition of celebrating Thanksgiving on Nantucket Island that was interrupted by COVID-19 last year.

What’s Happening on Capitol Hill: Recess.