Posts Tagged ‘biodiversity’
How human health depends on biodiversity
By: Lynda Truong
By many measures, the Earth is facing its sixth mass extinction. The fifth mass extinction, a result of a meteorite approximately 10 km in diameter, wiped out the dinosaurs and an estimated 40-75% of species on Earth. This time around, the natural disaster that is threatening life on Earth is us.
In May, the United Nations released a preliminary report on the drastic risk to biodiversity (not to be confused with the recent report on the drastic consequences of climate change). The assessment, which was compiled by the Intergovernmental Science-policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), draws on information from 15,000 scientific and government sources with contributions from 145 global experts. It projects that one million species face risk of extinction. Scientists have estimated that the historical base level rate of extinction is one per million species per year, and more recent studies suggest rates as low as 0.1 per million species per year. At the established base level rates, it would take one to ten million years to see the same magnitude of extinction the planet currently faces. This accelerated rate of extinction can be linked to a variety of man-made causes, including changes in land and sea use, direct exploitation of organisms, climate change, pollution, and the introduction of invasive species.
For some, that may not seem important. If humans are not on the endangered species list, why should it matter? As the IPBES Global Assessment indicates however, healthy ecosystems provide a variety of services, including improving air quality, purifying drinking water, and mitigating floods and erosions. The vast canopies of rainforests worldwide sequester 2.6 billion tons of carbon dioxide a year. Plants and soil microbes found in wetlands can remove toxins from water, including explosive chemicals such as nitroglycerin and trinitrotoluene (TNT). Mangrove forests serve as an important buffer against ocean storm surges for those on land. Nature is a powerful resource, and declines in biodiversity have broad implications for global development and health.
The importance of biodiversity on global health is immediately apparent in middle- and low-income countries, which rely heavily on natural remedies and seasonal harvests for health and nutrition. The loss of entire species of plants can eliminate valuable sources of traditional medicine for indigenous communities. Genetically diverse crops are more resilient to pest and disease, ensuring a stable food supply and bolstering food security. Beyond this, ecosystem disturbances also have complex implications for infectious disease, which are often endemic to developing nations.
However, these effects are also seen in first world countries. A well cited example for the impact of biodiversity loss on infectious disease involves Lyme disease, which is endemic to parts of the United States. The white footed mouse is a common carrier of Lyme disease, and in areas with high densities of these mice, ticks are likely to feed on the mice and subsequently transmit the disease to humans. However, the presence of other mammals that the tick can feed on dilutes the disease reservoir, lowering the likelihood of an outbreak (commonly referred to as the “dilution effect”). While biodiversity has complicated effects on the spread of infectious diseases, drastic changes to ecosystems often provide a breeding ground for disease vectors and lead to increases in transmission.
In addition to the direct effects of declines in biodiversity have on global health, an often-neglected aspect of its importance for health is as a resource for biomedical science. The IPBES assessment reports that 70% of cancer drugs are natural or inspired by natural sources such as traditional medicines. This merely scratches the surface of the influence of nature on modern biomedical research.
Much like the communities that rely on natural products as medicine, many drug compounds produced by pharmaceutical companies are derived from nature. Morphine has been one of the most revolutionary drug compounds in history, effectively treating both acute and chronic pain. The compound was originally isolated from the opium poppy, and its chemical structure has since been modified to reduce negative effects and improve potency. While the current opioid crisis in the United States has highlighted the importance of moderate use, morphine and its analogues are some of the most useful and reliable pain relievers in modern medicine. Similarly, aspirin has been regarded as a wonder drug for its analgesic, anti-inflammatory, and cardioprotective effects. Aspirin is a chemical analogue of salicylic acid, a compound originally isolated from willow tree bark.
Beyond general pain relief, many naturally derived drugs have also been useful for disease treatment. Quinine, the first effective antimalarial drug, was extracted from the bark of cinchona trees, and quinine and its analogues are still used to treat malaria today. Penicillin, serendipitously discovered in a fungus, has been useful for treating bacterial infections and informing modern antibiotic development. These medicines and many more have been crucial to the advancement of human health, yet could have just as easily been lost to extinction.
On a more fundamental level, scientific research has benefited from many proteins isolated from nature. Thermophilic polymerases, isolated from a bacterium residing in hot springs, are now an essential component of polymerase chain reactions (PCR) – a common laboratory technique that amplifies segments of DNA. This method is critical in molecular biology labs for basic research, and forensic labs for criminal investigations.Fluorescent proteins, which have been isolated from jelly fish and sea anemone, revolutionized the field of molecular biology by allowing scientists to visualize dynamic cellular components in real time. More recently, CRISPR/Cas systems were discovered in bacteria and have been developed as a gene editing tool capable of easily and precisely modifying genetic sequences. These basic tools have vastly improved the scope of biomedical research, and all of them would have been close to impossible to develop without their natural sources.
In addition to medicines and tools, nature has often informed biomedical research. Denning bears are commonly studied for potential solutions to osteoporosis and renal disease. Their ability to enter a reduced metabolic state where they do not eat, drink, or defecate for months at a time provides valuable insight into how these biological processes may be adapted to benefit human disease and physiology. Even more interestingly, there are a few species of frogs that become nearly frozen solid in winter, and thaw fully recovered in spring. In this frozen state, much of the water in their body turns to ice, their heart stops beating, and they stop breathing. When temperatures rise, they thaw from the inside out and continue life as per usual. Crazy cryonics and immortality aside, the freeze/thaw cycles could inform improved preservation for organ transplants.
Nature is a much better experimentalist than any human, having had billions of years to refine its experiments through the process of evolution and natural selection. Depleting these living resources, which provide invaluable benefits to human health and ecosystems, lacks foresight and is dangerously reckless. The techno-optimist approach of ceaseless development in the blind belief that whatever problem humanity encounters can be solved with research and innovation neglects to account for the dependency of research and innovation on nature. Most biomedical scientists, most physicians, and much of the general public have probably devoted a minimal amount of consideration to the importance of biodiversity. But for the one million species currently at risk, and for the hundreds of million more yet to be discovered, it’s worth a thought.
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Science Policy Around the Web – November 20, 2018
By: Andrew Wright, B.S.
Source: Wikimedia
Habitat Loss Threatens All Our Futures, World Leaders Warned
Recent reports have suggested that humanity has only 12 years to avoid catastrophic environmental collapse due to 1.5⁰C of industrial warming. While solutions to the threat of runaway climate change have been given a new sense of urgency by these findings, there exists a commensurate and oft less visited issue, that of rapid declines in global biological diversity. Driven primarily by agricultural land conversion of terrestrial and marine ecosystems (via forest clearing and river damming, respectively), vertebrate species have declined by 60% on average since 1970 according to the World Wildlife Fund’s most recent Living Planet Report . While this decline appears strongest in South and Central America and in freshwater habitats, the report joins a compendium of literature suggesting holistic declines in biodiversity among birds, insects, fish, and terrestrial vertebrates as part of an ongoing anthropogenic mass extinction event.
To address some of the issue, the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) is currently meeting in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt to discuss progress on the Aichi biodiversity targets for 2020. These targets came out of The Convention on Biological Diversity, a multilateral treaty signed in 1992 focused on preserving biodiversity, sustainable use of biological resources, and equitable sharing of resources. The Aichi biodiversity targets specified that people would be aware of risks to biodiversity, and that biodiversity values would be adopted by public, private, and governmental entities by 2020. Given the rapidity, intensity, and ubiquity of the decline in species, most, if not all, of these targets will likely be missed. As such, the delegates from the 196 signatory nations will also work on creating new biodiversity targets to be finalized at the next CBD meeting in China.
Since a comprehensive solution seems necessary given the increasingly global nature of trade, authors of the new targets hope to garner a greater deal of international attention, and intend to make the case that government commitment to reversing or pausing biodiversity loss should receive equivalent weight as action on climate change.
(Jonathan Watts, The Guardian)
The Ethical Quandary of Human Infection Studies
The United States has greatly improved its ability to soundly regulate the ethics of clinical studies since the infamous malfeasance of the Tuskegee syphilis study. Most significantly, the National Research Act of 1974 established the Institutional Review Board to address how to adequately regulate the use of human subjects by adhering to the principles of respect for persons, beneficence, and justice.
The National Research Act provided a substantial step forward and provided a clear requirement for universal informed consent. However, the expansion of clinical studies to new international regions of extreme poverty, due in part to the influx of private money from large charitable organizations, has come with novel ethical considerations. In these newly explored populations where income, education, and literacy levels may be lower, emphasis is now being place on how to recruit volunteers without implicitly taking advantage of their circumstances.
One area of concern is compensation levels. While compensation in a malaria infection study in Kenya was tied to the local minimum wage, the number of volunteers recruited far surpassed expectations. This may have been due to the fact that payment during this study was guaranteed and consistent, in contrast to local work.
Aware of the concern, two of the largest private medical research funding organizations, the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation and the Wellcome Trust have recently instituted ethical guidelines putatively reinforcing the principle of beneficence, placing special emphasis on maximizing benefits over risk. It is an open question whether these protections will be sufficient, but at the very least it is important that rules to be put in place proactively rather than as a reaction.
(Linda Nordling, Undark/Scientific American)
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Science Policy Around the Web – September 28, 2018
By: Patrice J. Persad, Ph.D
source: pixabay
The Environment
Long-banned toxin may wipe out many killer whales
“The past can come back to haunt, or hurt, you,” one adage forewarns. If “the world” replaces “you” in this line, then the saying aptly describes recent findings regarding the enduring effects of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) on marine species, namely killer whales (Orcinus orca), or orcas. In the 1970s, the United States banned PCBs, organic constituents in mediums, such as flame-resistant insulation and hydraulic fluids. According to research studies, these compounds led to immune- and reproductive-compromised conditions, along with cancer, in organisms including humans. However, it took nearly half a century after PCBs went into commercial use for the country to halt using them. Other countries followed suit banning PCBs, with the latest enactment to go into effect at least a decade ago.
From a Science report published last month, we learned one harrowing fact: although most nations eschewed PCBs, the negative impacts on the endangered killer whale populations live on. PCBs take a long time to break down, and, consequently, these pollutants can amass in prey species and the predators that eat them over time. The levels are especially high in the killer whale, an apex predator at the top of the food-chain. PCB concentrations increase exponentially from lower to upper trophic levels through a process known as biomagnification. Killer whales’ prey—ranging from seals, sea lions, penguins, dolphins, sharks, smaller fish, and even whales—accumulate PCBs as they digest the microorganisms that absorb PCBs as a consequence of runoff from industrial plants or insecure dumping sites near water ways.
Dr. Jean-Pierre Desforges and his team, the aforementioned study’s authors, constructed statistical models based on global killer whales’ PCB concentrations in blubber (mg/kg lipid weight) and PCB concentrations corresponding to mortality from immune- and reproductive-related disorders. From surveying 19 killer whale populations around the planet, the research group predicted declines in population sizes stemming from PCB-induced reproductive and immune complications for the next century (100 years). Overall results revealed that health complications arising from PCBs will contribute to the decline of more than half (> 50%) of killer whale populations. For killer whales comprising the highest PCB exposure groups, those living near the United Kingdom, Brazil, Japan, Strait of Gibraltar, and the Northeast Pacific (Bigg’s), Desforges and colleagues predict a “complete collapse.”
Humans, too, are at risk for PCB contamination and subsequent health complications or cancer. A proportion of countries are prominent consumers of dolphins, sharks, other fish species, and whale species—all higher trophic level organisms with elevated PCB concentrations. Garbage and contaminants in the environment, the world, cycle back as garbage and contaminants in wildlife species and people’s bodies.
(Elizabeth Pennisi, Science)
Wildlife Conservation
Discovery of vibrant deep-sea life prompts new worries over seabed mining
September’s Deep-Sea Biology Symposium, highlighted the biotic treasure trove that the underwater Clarion-Clipperton Zone (CCZ). The CCZ, a six million km2 plot of sea floor in the Pacific Ocean, which harbors a series of ecosystems—thriving “Atlantises.” As testament to its biodiversity, Dr. Craig Smith’s team uncovered 154 marine worm species (most unknown), gummy squirrels (wispy-looking sea cucumbers), and squid-like worms. Another biologist, Dr. Adrian Glover, ran into rare, miniscule invertebrates (including Porifera), and xenophyophores (organisms whose running moniker may well be “slimeballs”). Dr. Diva Amon, at the symposium, discussed images of whale skull fossils adorned with metal remnants; these fossils may be 1 – 16 million years old and represent six different whale species. The noted metal on the skull fossils hint that these mammals may consume trace metals to upkeep buoyancy mechanisms.
Although researchers are steadily unearthing the eastern CCZ’s biological secrets many companies wish perform massive mining of the zone’s seabeds for economic profit, which are thought to contain precious metal elements (manganese and cobalt). The International Seabed Authority (ISA), the regulatory entity whose jurisdiction is underwater mining, allowed 29 companies 17 years ago to investigate mining in seabeds—17 of which are part of the CCZ. The year 2020 is the anticipated deadline for the ISA to issue definite regulations on global sea mining. Even though companies must conduct evaluations on the environmental impact mining might have on deep-sea life, outside scientists are relentless in advocating for the establishment of wildlife preserves in the eastern CCZ.
With the life and fossil record that have and are yet to be surveyed, the eastern CCZ presents an opportunity for nations, researchers, and companies to work together. Dr. Amon champions policies directing companies to disclose fossil discoveries in mining sites for future scientific analyses with proposed candidate United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). Meanwhile, Dr. Smith is coaxing the ISA to promote monitoring of pollutants, which can have unforeseen ecological impacts, in open waters above CCZ areas that companies are testing mining or planning to mine.
(Amy Maxmen, Nature News)
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Science Policy Around the Web – March 06, 2017
By: Liu-Ya Tang, PhD
Source: pixabay
Technology and Health
Is That Smartphone Making Your Teenager’s Shyness Worse?
The development of new technologies, especially computers and smartphones, has greatly changed people’s lifestyles. People can telework without going to offices, and shop online without wandering in stores. While this has brought about convenience, it has also generated many adverse effects. People tend to spend more time with their devices than with their peers. Parents of shy teenagers ask, “Is that smartphone making my teenager’s shyness worse?”
Professor Joe Moran, in his article in the Washington Post, says that the parents’ concern is reasonable. The Stanford Shyness Survey, which was started by Professor Philip Zimbardo in the 1970s, found that “the number of people who said they were shy had risen from 40 percent to 60 percent” in about 20 years. He attributed this to new technology like email, cell phones and even ATMs. He even described such phenomena of non-communication as the arrival of “a new ice age”.
Contrary to Professor Zimbardo’s claims, other findings showed that the new technology provided a different social method. As an example, teenagers often use texting to express their love without running into awkward situations. Texting actually gives them time and space to digest and ponder a response. Further, Professor Moran said that the claim of Professor Zimardo was made before the rise of social networks; shy teenagers can share their personal life online even if they don’t talk in public. He also talks about the paradox of shyness, where shyness is caused by “our strange capacity for self-attention”, while “we are also social animals that crave the support and approval of the tribe.” Therefore, new technologies are not making the shyness worse, in contrast social networks and smartphones can help shy teenagers find new ways to express that contradiction. (Joe Moran, Washington Post)
Genomics
Biologists Propose to Sequence the DNA of All Life on Earth
You may think that it is impossible to sequence the DNA of all life on Earth, but at a meeting organized by the Smithsonian Initiative on Biodiversity Genomics and the Shenzhen, China-based sequencing powerhouse BGI, researchers announced their intent to start the Earth BioGenome Project (EBP). The news was reported in Science. There are other ongoing big sequencing projects such as the UK Biobank, which aims to sequence the genomes of 500,000 individuals.
The significance of the EBP will greatly help “understand how life evolves”, says Oliver Ryder, a conservation biologist at the San Diego Zoo Institute for Conservation Research in California. Though the EBP researchers are still working on many details, they propose to carry out this project in three steps. Firstly, they plan to sequence the genome of a member of each eukaryotic family (about 9000 in all) in great detail as reference genomes. Secondly, they would sequence species from each of the 150,000 to 200,000 genera to a lesser degree. Finally, the sequencing task will be expanded to the 1.5 million remaining known eukaryotic species with a lower resolution, which can be improved if needed. As suggested by EBP researchers, the eukaryotic work might be completed in a decade.
There are many challenges to starting this project. One significant challenge is sampling, which requires international efforts from developing countries, particularly those with high biodiversity. The Global Genome Biodiversity Network could supply much of the DNA needed, as it is compiling lists and images of specimens at museums and other biorepositories around the world. As not all DNA samples in museum specimens are good enough for high-quality genomes, getting samples from the wild would be the biggest challenge and the highest cost. The EBP researchers also need to develop standards to ensure high-quality genome sequences and to record associated information for each species sequenced. (Elizabeth Pennisi, ScienceInsider)
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Science Policy Around the Web – January 17, 2017
By: Kseniya Golovnina, PhD
Source: Wikimedia Commons, by Copyright (c) 2004 Richard Ling, under Creative Commons
Biodiversity
The Mysterious World of Antarctica is More than Penguins
On December 21, 2016 the Australian Antarctic Division (AAD) released a video, which was made under the sea ice in O’Brien Bay, south of Casey research station in East Antarctica. This was the last part of the Australian Antarctic program, led by Dr. Johnny Stark, with the aim to observe the effect of climate change and ocean acidification due to increased carbon dioxide emissions on the Southern Ocean seafloor communities.
AAD biologist Dr. Glenn Johnstone and his team launched a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) through the small hole drilled in the ice and captured a rare glimpse of wonderful colorful Antarctic underwater world. They discovered a flourishing community of sea life below the massive ice sheet, at 30 meters below the surface, where the water temperature is −1.5°C year round, and the sea is covered by ice that is 1.5 meters thick for more than 10 months of the year. The video surprisingly revealed “a habitat that is productive, colorful, dynamic and full of a wide variety of biodiversity, including sponges, sea spiders, urchins, sea cucumbers and sea stars.”
About 30% of the carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere is absorbed by the ocean and increases its acidity. According to NASA Earth Observatory, increased acidity will increase the ocean’s ability to absorb carbon dioxide, making the carbonate shells of marine organisms such as corals thinner and more fragile. Higher water temperatures would also decrease the abundance of phytoplanktons, which play an important role in the carbon cycle absorbing excess carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. The increased carbon dioxide in the ocean might facilitate the growth of a few species of phyplanktons that take carbon dioxide directly from the water, but overall excess carbon would be detrimental to most ocean species.
Scientists are only now beginning to understand the complex underwater Antarctic ecosystem. Antarctica may be one of the first places where the detrimental effects of ocean acidification are seen, says Dr. Stark. These studies could be a good future indicator of the effects of climate change and ocean acidification on ocean ecosystems. (Australian Antarctic Division)
Food Policy
One or Two Tablespoons of Nutella?
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has closed collecting public comments about a regulatory change that would cut Nutella’s labeled serving size by half. More than 650 comments were collected. “One tablespoon or two tablespoons?” – The Washington Post explains the difference. The issue was about the appropriate reference amount customarily consumed (RACC) and product category. Nutella is classified as a dessert topping, with a RACC of two tablespoons. The serving size typically indicates how much Americans consume at a time and not how much they should, to make it easy for people to compare different products.
Its manufacturer, Ferrero, has asked that Nutella be reclassified as a jam or put in a different product category. This would cut the serving size that Nutella displays on its labels to one tablespoon, which would also decrease the sugar and calorie counts. It is already the second request from Nutella’s company since 2014. As they said to the Washington Post “it was simply seeking clarity as it and other companies prepare their new Nutrition Facts labels, slated for release in 2018”. However, critics of Nutella’s FDA petition including Lindsay Moyer, a senior nutritionist at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, warn people about the marketing ploy to trick people into thinking that it has less calories. If Nutella’s serving size is changed to one tablespoon, it could advertise a mere 100 calories per serving — versus roughly 188 calories for two tablespoons of peanut butter, or 196 calories for almond.
At the same time the question of one or two tablespoons seems not so relevant if one takes a look at the company’s website, where they say “you could circle the world with the amount of Nutella produced every year”. U.S. sales of Nutella are up 39% — from $161.4 million to $224.3 million — in the past five years in comparison with 5% for other nut butters. (Caitlin Dewey, The Washington Post)
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Science Policy Around the Web – June 7, 2016
By: Thaddeus Davenport, Ph.D.
“Amazon Manaus forest” by Phil P Harris. – Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 2.5 via Wikimedia Commons.
Conservation Policy
A collaboration between science and religion for ecological conservation
Science has the potential to solve many of the world’s problems, but it may be overly optimistic to think that science alone can cure the world of all that ails it. Climate change and loss of biodiversity threaten humans in a way that we have yet to fully comprehend, and yet these problems emerged not as a result of some mysterious force, but rather because of simple human choices – the collective action (and inaction) of humans over the course of many years. This suggests that the solution to these most grand challenges does not only require scientific breakthroughs. Instead, the solution presents itself to us with a disappointing and somewhat undesirable simplicity: a problem created by humans might also be solved by human cooperation, responsibility, and ownership of our world and our problems. Indeed to tackle the world’s most complex challenges, science and society will need to work together.
Christine A. Scheller reported in March that the American Academy for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) annual meeting featured a dialogue on science, ethics, and religion (DoSER) discussion, which addressed the potential opportunities for collaboration between conservation scientists and religious communities in stemming the loss of biodiversity. The speakers included conservation biologist, Karen Lips, wildlife ecologist, Peyton West, and theologian, William Brown. Lips, the director of the Graduate Program in Sustainable Development and Conservation Biology at the University of Maryland, College Park discussed the decline of amphibious species and noted that while scientists may understand the causes of the problem and potential solutions, the efficacy of any conservation effort will require participation and engagement of those communities where species are going extinct. Similarly, West, the Executive Director of the Frankfurt Zoological Society-U.S. described the important and unique role of religious leaders in shaping the beliefs and behavior of their followers and highlighted the efforts of Catholic, Buddhist, and Islamic leaders to discourage ivory trafficking. Finally, Brown, a Columbia Theological Seminary Professor of the Old Testament observed that nature is represented in the Bible as the dominion of man – a perspective that has been historically “unhelpful” in encouraging conservation. He ended more positively, however, noting that “[m]uch of scripture affirms God’s love for all creation and acknowledges humanity’s vital connection with the nonhuman animal world.”
Science and religion are arguably the two most powerful thought systems in our global society. There is enormous potential to transform our world for the better if we can align the goals of each system toward creating a more just, balanced, healthy world and to identify opportunities for collaboration to achieve these goals. The DoSER program is an exciting forum in which these collaborations may take root. (Christine A. Scheller, AAAS)
Human Genetics
Why try to build a human genome from scratch?
Last week, a group of scientists released a report in the journal Science outlining their goals of building a complete human genome from scratch. This goal was initially discussed in a closed-door meeting, which drew criticism from those concerned about the ethics of such a proposition. The recent report is the product of that meeting and is intended to achieve transparency and to initiate an open discussion on the value, as well as the ethical and practical considerations of such a goal.
The proposed initiative is named “HGP-write” for human genome project – write, to differentiate it from the first, highly fruitful stage of reading the sequence of the human genome (HGP-read), which was completed in 2004. Perhaps in response to their initial criticism, the authors begin the report by acknowledging the ethical questions that will arise over the course of the project and emphasize that they hope to ensure responsible innovation by allocating a portion of research funding to facilitate “inclusive decision-making”. These will likely be valuable discussions with the potential to yield regulatory decisions that should be relevant for emerging gene-editing technologies, such as CRISPR, as well.
The authors go on to say that just as HGP-read produced a significant decrease in the cost of DNA sequencing, one of the goals of HGP-write is to develop technology that will make synthesizing large pieces of DNA faster and cheaper – they cite an optimistic goal of decreasing “the costs of engineering and testing large (0.1 to 100 billion base pairs) genomes in cell lines by over 1000-fold within ten years.”
But how would this technology be applied? The authors provide a number of examples, notably focused on the cell and organ level, including: to facilitate the growth of transplantable human organs in other animals and to engineer cell lines or organoids for cost-efficient vaccine and pharmaceutical development, among others. Additionally, the authors note that this ambitious project would begin by synthesizing small pilot genomes and DNA fragments, and that even these small-scale projects would be of substantial value, for example to synthesize an entire gene locus including associated noncoding DNA may provide insight into the regulatory role of noncoding DNA in gene expression and disease. The project is expected to begin this year with an initial investment of $100 million from a variety of public and private sources, and the authors estimate that in the end the project will cost less than the $3 billion spent during HGP-read.
Without a doubt, there is much good that could come from HGP-write – the ethical debate, the technological advances, a better understanding of the so-called “junk” DNA that makes up the majority of the human genome, and the applications of synthesized genomes. It is an exciting proposition that should be approached carefully and inclusively.
Peer Review Process
Confronting Bias in Peer Review
Humans are unavoidably flawed, and one of our greatest flaws is that each of us carries subtle biases – preconceptions about the world that shape our view and simplify our interaction with an unimaginably complex world. The essential role of peer-review in the scientific endeavor is founded on the assumption that our peers are able to think and make objective assessments of the value and quality of our work, without bias. In a system of thinking and observation that depends entirely on objective, measurable truths, there should be no value placed on who made the observation. Unfortunately, science and decisions about publishing and funding scientific research are exclusively human activities, and thus they are subject to the irrational biases that are so characteristically human.
No one – not even a scientist – is free of bias, and a recent AAAS-sponsored forum sought to highlight the presence of bias in scientific peer-review. Ginger Pinholster wrote about this forum on intrinsic bias in a Science magazine article from May 27th. Pinholster reports that multiple speakers observed that bias in scientific peer-review is not only a problem of fairness. Geraldine Richmond, the AAAS Board Chair, noted that “unconscious assumptions about gender, ethnicity, disabilities, nationality, and institutions clearly limit the science and technology talent pool and undermine scientific innovation.”
Editors from the New England Journal of Medicine and the American Chemical Society pointed out a US-centric bias in peer-review. Gender bias was discussed as well by Suzanne C. Iacono, head of the Office of Integrative Activities at the National Science Foundation (NSF). Though success rates in grant funding from NSF were similar for men and women in 2014, women submitted only one quarter of the total grant applications. Iacono also noted that success rates for NSF applications submitted by African-American scientists were lower than the overall success rate of submitted applications (18% vs 24%), but more worrisome is the fact that only 2% of the submitted applications were submitted by African-American scientists. Similarly Richard Nakamura, director of the Center for Scientific Review at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) cited that African-American scientists have a success rate of funding from NIH that is approximately half that of white applicants.
While a number of potential interventions to minimize bias were discussed, including double-blind peer-review, it is clear from the relatively small number of funding applications from women and African-Americans that larger structural changes must occur to support and retain women and minority scientists early in their scientific development. The interest of AAAS in studying and addressing problems of bias in scientific peer-review is commendable. Understanding the problem is an important first step and finding a solution will require practice in self-awareness, as well as cooperation between high schools, universities, and finally funding and publishing agencies. (Ginger Pinholster, Science)
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Science Policy For All 
