Genome-edited(基因编辑) food made with CRISPR-Cas9 technology is being sold on the open market for the first time. Since September, the Sicilian Rouge tomatoes, which are genetically edited to contain high amounts of Y-aminobutyric acid(γ-氨基丁酸)(GABA), have been sold direct to consumers in Japan by Tokyo-based Sanatech Seed. The company claims oral intake of GABA can help support lower blood pressure and promote relaxation.

“In Japan, dietary supplements and foods enriched for GABA are popular among the public, ”says Hiroshi Ezura, chief technology officer at Sanatech. “GABA is a famous health-promoting compound in Japan. It’s like vitamin C,” he says. More than 400 GABA-enriched food and beverage products, such as chocolates, are already on the Japanese market. “That’s why we chose this as our first target for our genome editing technology,” he says.

Sanatech, a startup from the University of Tsukuba, first tested the appetite of consumers in Japan for the genome-edited fruit in May 2021 when it sent free seedling CRISPR-edited tomato plants to about 4,200 home gardeners who had requested them. Encouraged by the positive demand, the company started direct internet sales of fresh tomatoes in September and a month later took orders for seedlings for next growing season. Japan’s regulators approved the tomato in December 2020.

Since its beginning a decade ago, CR1SPR-Cas9 genome editing has become a tool of choice for plant bioengineers. Researchers have successfully used it to develop non-browning mushrooms, drought-tolerant soybeans and a host of other creative traits in plants. Many have received a green light from US regulators. But before Sanatech’s tomato, no CRISPR-edited food crops were known to have been commercialized.

Consumers may find food ingredients made with some of the older DNA editing techniques. Indeed, Calyxt in 2019 commercialized a TALEN-edited soybean oil that is free of trans fats. So it was only a matter of time before a CRISPR-edited crop reached palates.

Zero-emission (排放) large passenger aircraft powered by hydrogen (氢) will be technically available in five years, according to Airbus, but they will not enter service for at least a decade as the price of the fuel needs to come down.

The prediction comes from Glenn Llewellyn, vice-president of zero-emission technology at the European plane-maker. He said that while Airbus planned to demonstrate hydrogen-powered aircraft in 2025, over the next 10 years, hydrogen won’t be more economic than the fossil fuel. “To make real emissions free hydrogen-powered planes, which give out only water and heat, their fuel needs to come from hydrogen produced via renewable sources such as wind and solar,” he added. “Another barrier is building up the ecosystem that hydrogen aircraft will need.”

However, Mr. Llewellyn predicted that there was enough interest to make this happen. In an interview, Mr. Llewellyn said, “We already see massive increases in the amount of renewable energy being produced across the world. Wind energy production has multiplied by two over the last five years and solar energy production has multiplied by four.” He added, “There are a number of independent institutes that have mapped out how hydrogen costs can come down over the next decades. We see a 30% reduction in renewable hydrogen costs in 2030 compared to where it is today, and a 50% reduction in renewable hydrogen costs by 2050. They are exactly the kind of cost figures that are interesting for us, because it makes zero-emission aircraft commercially viable (可行的) in the 2030s.”

Last month UK-based ZeroAvia conducted the world’s first flight of a commercial-grade aircraft powered by hydrogen. A few days before, Airbus announced a series of design proposals for hydrogen-driven aircraft, including a “blended wing” concept that provides greater storage capacity. This design could be key to hydrogen-powered aircraft as the fuel is less energy dense (密度大) than conventional fuel and so requires more space to match performance of existing airplanes.

Computing power of quantum (量子) machines is now still very low. Increasing it is still proving to be a major challenge. Physicists now present a new architecture for a universal (广泛适用的) quantum computer that overcomes such limitations and could be the basis of the next generation of quantum computers soon.

Quantum bits (qubits) (量子比特) in a quantum computer serve as a computing unit and memory at the same time. Because quantum information cannot be copied, it cannot be stored in a memory as in a classical computer. Due to this limitation, all qubits in a quantum computer must be able to interact (相互影响) with each other. This is now still a major challenge for building powerful quantum computers. In 2015, theoretical physicist Wolfgang Lechner, together with his team, solved this difficulty and suggested a new architecture for a quantum computer.

“This architecture was originally designed for making problems best. In the process, we reduced the architecture to a minimum,” recalls Lechner. “It means that not all qubits have to interact with each other anymore.” With his team, he has now found that this parity (奇偶) concept is also suitable for a universal quantum computer.

Parity computers can perform operations between two or more qubits on a single qubit. “Existing quantum computers already perform such operations very well on a small scale,” Michael Fellner from Lechner’s team explains. “However, as the number of qubits increases, it becomes more and more complex to perform these gate operations.” Scientists now show that parity computers can perform quantum Fourier transformations with significantly fewer computation steps and thus more quickly.

The new concept also offers hardware-efficient error correction. Because quantum systems are very sensitive to disturbances, quantum computers must correct errors continuously. Significant resources must be devoted to protecting quantum information, which greatly increases the number of qubits required. “Our model operates with a two-stage error correction. One type of error is prevented by the hardware used,” says Anette Messinger from Lechner’s team, “the other type of error can be detected and corrected via the software. This would allow a next generation of universal quantum computers to be realized with manageable effort.”