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More than 1,600 people worldwide have been infected with Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, or MERS, and complications from it have resulted in nearly 600 deaths. But in the three years since scientists identified the disease, they haven't been able to discover a way to treat or prevent infection. Now a team of international researchers has used genetically modified cows to create antibodies that combat the disease, which could mean that a vaccine might soon be possible. The research was published today in Science Translational Medicine.

Federal regulators on Thursday approved a genetically engineered salmon as fit for consumption, making it the first genetically altered animal to be cleared for American supermarkets and dinner tables. The approval by the Food and Drug Administration caps a long struggle for AquaBounty Technologies, a small company that first approached the F.D.A. about approval in the 1990s. The agency made its initial determination that the fish would be safe to eat and for the environment more than five years ago.

A kind of salmon that's been genetically modified so that it grows faster may be on the way to a supermarket near you. The Food and Drug Administration approved the fish on Thursday - a decision that environmental and food-safety groups are vowing to fight. This new kind of fast-growing salmon was actually created 25 years ago by Massachusetts-based AquaBounty Technologies. A new gene was inserted into fertilized salmon eggs - it boosted production of a fish growth hormone. The result: a fish that grows twice as fast as its conventional, farm-raised counterpart.

One concern repeatedly raised by critics who don't want the FDA to give the transgenic fish the green light: What would happen if these fish got out of the land-based facilities where they're grown and escaped into the wild? Would genetically modified salmon push out their wild counterparts or permanently alter habitat? In a review paper published this month in the journal BioScience, scientists tackle that very question. Robert H. Devlin, a scientist at Fisheries and Oceans Canada, led a team that reviewed more than 80 studies analyzing growth, behavior and other trait differences between genetically modified and unaltered fish. The scientists used this to predict what might happen if fish with modified traits were unleashed in nature.

Officials in Panama have ruled that AquaBounty Technologies' has been operating in violation of environmental regulations as it experiments with genetically engineered (GE) salmon in that country. In a decision that could challenge the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) ongoing safety assessment of AquaBounty's GE salmon, Panamanian officials fined the company $9500. Food & Water Watch, Center for Food Safety and Friends of the Earth called on the FDA today to terminate its regulatory review and deny AquaBounty's pending regulatory application to sell the company's GE fish in the United States.

The protagonist of this two-day flipped case study, "Maria," has two problems. She doesn't like it when the apple slices in her lunch turn brown, and she needs to find a project for her biology class that includes molecular biology, preferably one that incorporates plants. Students are enlisted to help Maria understand Arctic Apples™, which don't turn brown because they have been genetically modified to suppress the expression of polyphenol oxidase via RNAi. The case also explores the health, environmental, and safety aspects of growing and eating plants that have been genetically modified to use RNAi. The case applies the central dogma of biology to the creation of genetically modified foods and RNAi and includes a discussion of whether genetically modified foods should be labeled. Several videos are included with the case, including one created by the author specifically for the case. The case is appropriate for use in an introductory level biology or survey level biochemistry course.

Séguin, a research scientist in forest genomics with the Canadian Forest Service, inserted bacterial DNA into spruces that effectively made them immune to spruce budworm, a pest that can chew needles off tens of millions of hectares of trees in a single outbreak. While there is controversy over genetic engineering, some scientists say it could also help fight climate change by creating trees that grow bigger, faster, resist disease and can even turn carbon into a stable white powder that falls to the ground - in other words, trees that would be better at pulling carbon from the atmosphere.