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piqer for: Global finds Technology and society
I have worked in both University and Private sector labs and studied biology at UT Austin.
After leaving academic research I helped form Prophase BioStudios and built a laboratory out of a local Hackerspace.
Using the laboratory at Prophase BioStudios I started doing my own independent experiments that led me to create my Biomanufacturing company, Portunus.
My interests are primarily in biotechnology, particularly in the realms of fabrication and human enhancement.
Not Your Mother's Birds And Bee's Talk – Bee-Borne Pesticides
This episode of the Talking Biotech podcast reveals valuable developments in the agricultural technology industry. The company BVT (Bee Vector Techologies) tells the listener about the use of their OMRI-approved treatment to defend crops against fungal infections.
The technology uses a specially designed beehive to expose a bee's hairy legs to a parasitic fungus called clonostachys rosea that can act to out-compete potentially pathogenic fungi in the plants that the bee comes into contact with. The clonostachys is an endophyte that can live in the plant permanently and has no effect on its normal functioning until the plant is either damaged or infected.
BVT's technology is specialized hives designed with a one-way tray full or C.rosea spores that a bee will walk through on its way out of but not into the hive. This ensures that the bee's leg hair will carry the beneficial fungus to the plants that it pollinates without bringing the fungus back to the hive.
