The European Commission is organising the high-level conference “Modern Biotechnologies in Agriculture – Paving the way for responsible innovation”. This one-day event takes place in the Charlemagne Building today, from 9.30 to 18.00. The aim is to stimulate an informed and open debate among all stakeholders on how the EU can benefit from modern biotechnologies and innovation in the food and agricultural sector while maintaining high safety standards. The participants are prominent European policy makers, relevant industry stakeholders, representatives of civil society, scientists, and government experts. Webstreaming is available. For further information, see the conference website.
They are the first human embryos edited in Europe and reported in scientific literature. The key difference with experiments already carried out in China and US is that the research published by 
Biodiversity is a wonderful interplay between genetics and evolution, and butterflies are a fascinating example with their variety of patterns and colors. Understanding how the same gene networks engender visual effects so diverse in thousands of Lepidoptera species is a longtime ambition for many entomologists and evolutionary biologists. The good news is that scientists nowadays have a straightforward technique working with organisms that were difficult to manipulate with conventional biotech tools. Obviously, we are talking about CRISPR. Two papers published in PNAS last week describe how genome editing was used to alter the genetic palette of colors in butterflies and how their wings changed as a result. We’ve asked the entomologist Alessio Vovlas, from the Polyxena association, to comment these stunning experiments. 
Spring in Japan is pink as cherry blossoms, but summer turns violet as the flowers of a climbing plant frequently grown in the gardens of the Rising Sun. It is a kind of morning glory, of the Ipomoea nil species, locally known as Asagao. This plant had its 
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It’s mid-August, but CRISPR never goes on vacation. Not to be missed this week is the 
CRISPeR FRENZY 