Your call to harmonize rules for genetically modified (GM) animals and plants (Nature546, 327–328; 2017) echoes scientists' pleas to modernize the 1986 Coordinated Framework for the Regulation of Biotechnology. The framework grants jurisdiction over biotechnology products to US federal agencies, including the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Yet urging researchers to scrutinize definitions and look for legal loopholes is impracticable. Increasing public education and engagement of the scientific issues concerning GM food should be researchers' main focus.

The importance of public engagement was illustrated decades ago with the use of recombinant bovine growth hormone in dairy cattle. The practice sparked widespread speculation about its safety and prompted the FDA's unprecedented decision to publish health and safety data ahead of formal approval, in efforts to allay public concerns (J. C. Juskevich and C. G. Guyer Science 249, 875–884; 1990). The decision applied only to that case, but may become relevant in the future.

Policymakers should consider the growth-hormone case when outlining new boundaries for data disclosure and regulatory exemptions applicable to gene-edited products. Regulations must take into account the interests of GM-product developers to ensure that public disclosures do not undermine intellectual-property rights (see also go.nature.com/2tcoezq).

Last week, the USDA published a series of questions seeking input to establish a National Bioengineered Food Disclosure Standard, as mandated by amendments to the Agricultural Marketing Act of 1946 that went into effect in July 2016.

The National Bioengineered Food Disclosure Standard Act requires the Secretary of the Department of Agriculture to establish disclosure standards for bioengineered food. The Act preempts state-based labeling laws for genetically modified organisms (GMOs), such as those adopted in Vermont last year. 

The USDA is considering public input on the disclosure standards until July 17, 2017. Two key issues are under consideration. The first is whether certain genetic modifications should be treated as though they are found in nature — for example, a mutation that naturally confers disease resistance in a crop. The second concerns what types of breeding techniques should be classified as conventional breeding — among "conventional breeding" techniques are hybridization and the use of chemicals or radiation to introduce random genetic mutations.

These seemingly mundane questions strike at the heart of GMO controversies and implicate the use of breakthrough CRISPR gene editing technologies. Gene editing allows novel and precise genetic modifications to be introduced into crops and animals intended for human consumption. The answers to the USDA's questions are significant because the Disclosure Standard Act exempts from mandatory disclosure genetic modifications obtained without recombinant DNA (rDNA) techniques that can otherwise be found in nature. 

Having grown up in Massachusetts, I love the idea of warmer winters. A winter where I will not have a $150 heating bill? A winter where I will not need to shovel for hours when it snows?

While warmer winters are convenient for my poor circulation and wallet, they are less convenient for other animals, like seals and polar bears. These animals live on Arctic ice, and if temperatures are high in the winter, their icy homes will melt.

You’re considering new LEDs for your vertical farms. What colors should you get? Would you be better off with classic red and blue light or broad-spectrum, white light? It mainly comes down to whether green light is useful to plants, how much it costs, and how we perceive it.

To answer this question, we need to better understand light and how plants use it.

Awesome’…’Jargon’…’Awesome’!

A couple of weekends ago, I held signs with these words to provide feedback for my peers as they practiced their one-minute ‘elevator’ speeches about their research. As one of forty graduate students who participated in the two-day science communication conference called ComSciCon PNW, I left feeling truly empowered to increase the role of science in public discourse.

A naturally occurring gene in house mice may help eliminate their invasive cousins that live on islands.

Figuring out why certain soils keep plant parasites at bay could be a boon for agriculture around the globe

Modern life is messing with our clocks

How will I die?

This is a question most of us have thought about. Have you ever wondered what is it about our bodies that “makes us die”? What is it in our bodies that tells our cells “that’s it folks”? Is it something that happens over time or is it just as simple as flipping a switch?

A surprising new finding was released recently that reports an entirely novel route of transmission for a well-known global health threat: tuberculosis (TB). As is often the case with scientific research, a line of seemingly straightforward inquiry yielded an unexpected discovery – in this case, researchers have identified a link between TB transmission and anal secretions of mongooses. Yep, you heard it here first.

Think of your favorite animal. Perhaps Harry Potter’s snowy owl comes to mind.  Or, maybe the lion, king of the jungle? If we were to take our thought experiment under water, you might think of the massive whale shark, or the majestic sea turtle. Perhaps not. But I bet I can guess what wouldn’t come to mind. Freshwater fish rarely, if ever, have the celebrity status of these other animals. Yet, they can be just as fascinating.

Mayo Clinic, along with researchers at Harvard University, Temple University, Tufts University, and Boston Children’s Hospital are collaborating on a project to discover new therapeutic responses to infection.

Let’s use our words to talk about words - how does our brain process language? Join us this week as Alie dives into some of what we know about the neuroscience of language, and some of what we don’t know, too! 

They're infected with the virus, but it causes them no harm—and the same goes for more than 60 other pathogens they transmit to humans, often with lethal effect

You may have heard the news that you should be seriously worried about eating Oreos...because, they're as addictive as cocaine. In this video, I try to show you what the study that inspired the news did and what is reasonable to conclude from the data. 

Research shows that more facts don't necessarily lead to changed minds, but my colleagues have a hard time accepting it

Science has an inside secret: we fail all the time.

At first glance, metaphor and science might seem to inhabit opposite ends of the things-we-learn-in-school continuum. We usually learn about metaphor through lessons on works like Langston Hughes’s Life ain’t been no crystal stair, and we associate science with topics like crystallization, the process of transferring a liquid to a solid. But metaphor is a mischief that doesn’t like to stay confined to the language arts classroom. It lurks in political discourse (the wealth gap), in music (you ain’t nothin’ but a hound dog), and – you guessed it – in education.