The anti-CRISPR system is used to save viruses

Greenland’s melting and the climate problem: What will we learn if we survive warming up to 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels?

Using climate modelling, the research concludes that Greenland’s melting will accelerate abruptly if the average global temperature crosses a threshold that is no higher than 2.3 °C above pre-industrial levels — and could be much lower. The threshold is likely to be reached in 2023, when the temperature is 1.5 C above pre-industrial levels. The landmark 2015 Paris climate treaty aims to limit warming to 2 °C, and ideally to no more than 1.5 °C. But even if temperatures shoot up by 6 °C or more above pre-industrial levels, humanity will be able reduce much of that ice loss if warming is then throttled back to 1.5 °C within a few centuries, the study shows.

Still, he and others are quick to note that taking action against climate change now will be cheaper and easier than trying to claw back global temperatures later. Bochow says that if we don’t do anything, it’s a bet against time. “It gets only harder the longer we wait.”

The year of 2023 is most likely to be the hottest on record, as June, July, August and September all saw record high global temperatures. Against this backdrop, Bochow and his colleagues wanted to look at what would happen if humanity overshot the 1.5 °C temperature target, even by a lot, and then managed to cool things down again.

A scientist at the Bjerknes Centre for Climate Research in Bergen said that it is a worthwhile tool to explore and that what we are doing so far is not enough.

RNA-based anti-CRISPR systems protect against viruses by mimicking a part of the CRISPR-Cas system

To protect themselves against viral infection, bacteria often use CRISPR-Cas systems to identify and destroy an invading virus’s genetic material. But viruses aren’t helpless and can deploy countermeasures, known as anti-CRISPRs, to neutralise host defences. This week, a team describe a new kind of anti-CRISPR system, based on RNA, which protects viruses by mimicking part of the CRISPR-Cas system. The researchers hope that the discovery could lead to more precise CRISPR-Cas genome editing.

Carved inscriptions suggest a queen named Thyra was the most powerful person in Viking-age Denmark, and the discovery of a puffed-up exoplanet that has just 1.5% the density of Earth.

A massive reproducibility exercise reveals over 200 ecologists get wildly-diverging results from the same data, and how melting simulated lunar-dust with lasers could help pave the Moon.

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