Energy & Science
Researchers See a New Path to Curbing Methane in Rice
A new way to analyze how microbes live creates opportunity for breakthroughs in health and agriculture
Farmhands sow rice saplings at a flooded paddy field in Karnal district, Haryana, India.
Photographer: Prashanth Vishwanathan/BloombergThis article is for subscribers only.
A cup of tea in 2006 changed genetic engineering forever.
Jill Banfield, a University of California at Berkeley ecosystem scientist and 1999 MacArthur Foundation fellow, had become curious in 2006 about mysterious repeating DNA sequences that were common in microbes that live in some of the planet’s most extreme environments, such as deep-sea heat vents, acid mines and geysers. She just needed a biochemist to help explain what the sequences known as Crispr/Cas9 were, and ideally somebody local.