TWO INTERESTING NEWS ARTICLES

Linda prepares a (much younger) me for battle with the Cascades

The Economist is a superlative news magazine, but for most of us it can be a bit too much.  If you were to attempt to read its entire weekly print edition with anything like care you would have time for little else – unless you read at 1000 words/minute, which I don’t.  But if you harbor an intense interest in the internal workings of, say, Burkina Faso, you are stuck with the Economist. 

So, last week’s magazine featured two articles of interest here.  The first concerns some problems using the CRISPR gene-editing technique, which I have described previously.  In short, the CRISPR molecule, once unleashed, may whack the stretch of DNA you want whacked, but then go on to whack stuff you do not want whacked.  As you might guess, research is ongoing

https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2018/07/19/the-safety-of-crispr-cas9-gene-editing-is-being-debated.

The second article really belongs with my More Fun with Biology blog.  It describes how some viruses act in concert to outwit the defense mechanisms that some bacteria erect against them.  Just what we need: wolf packs of virus!

https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2018/07/19/viruses-that-attack-bacteria-have-evolved-to-collaborate.

By the way: these links may not work easily.  I think the Internet is suffering from a new-found zeal for privacy.  If they don’t work, try copy-and-paste.