A Team of Israeli Students Just Created Honey Without Bees
The bee-free honey on the left, and the Israeli team that won the iGEM competition.
Can you make honey without honeybees? According to 12 Israeli students who took home a gold medal in the iGEM (International Genetically Engineered Machine) competition with their synthetic honey project, the answer is yes, you can.
The honey industry faces serious environmental challenges, like the mysterious Colony Collapse Disorder.
For the past year, the team from Technion-Israel Institute of Technology has been working on creating sustainable, artificial honey—no bees required. Why? As the team explains in a video on the project's website, "Studies have shown the amazing nutritional values of honey. However, the honey industry harms the environment, and particularly the bees. That's why vegans don't use honey and why our honey will be a great replacement."
Indeed, honey has long been a controversial product in the vegan community. Some say it's stealing an animal's food source (though bees make more honey than they can possibly use). Some avoid eating honey because it is an animal product and bees' natural habitats are disturbed by humans harvesting it. Others feel that because bees aren't directly killed or harmed in the production of honey, it's not actually unethical to eat.
However, there's no doubt that the honey industry faces some serious environmental challenges. Colony Collapse Disorder, a mysterious phenomenon in which worker bees in colonies disappear in large numbers without any real explanation, came to international attention in 2006. Several explanations from poisonous pesticides to immune-suppressing stress to new or emerging diseases have been posited, but no definitive cause has been found.
There's also the problem of human-managed honey farms having a negative impact on the natural honeybee population.
So how can honey be made without honeybees? It's all about bacteria and enzymes.
The way bees make honey is by collecting nectar from flowers, transporting it in their "honey stomach" (which is separate from their food stomach), and bringing it back to the hive, where it gets transferred from bee mouth to bee mouth. That transferal process reduces the moisture content from about 70 percent to 20 percent, and honey is formed.
The product is still currently under development.
The Technion students created a model of a synthetic honey stomach metabolic pathway, in which the bacterium Bacillus subtilis "learns" to produce honey. "The bacteria can independently control the production of enzymes, eventually achieving a product with the same sugar profile as real honey, and the same health benefits," the team explains. Bacillus subtilis, which is found in soil, vegetation, and our own gastrointestinal tracts, has a natural ability to produce catalase, one of the enzymes needed for honey production. The product is still currently under development.
Whether this project results in a real-world jar of honey we'll be able to buy at the grocery store remains to be seen, but imagine how happy the bees—and vegans—would be if it did.
Podcast: The future of brain health with Percy Griffin
Percy Griffin, director of scientific engagement for the Alzheimer’s Association, joins Leaps.org to discuss the present and future of the fight against dementia.
Today's guest is Percy Griffin, director of scientific engagement for the Alzheimer’s Association, a nonprofit that’s focused on speeding up research, finding better ways to detect Alzheimer’s earlier and other approaches for reducing risk. Percy has a doctorate in molecular cell biology from Washington University, he’s led important research on Alzheimer’s, and you can find the link to his full bio in the show notes, below.
Our topic for this conversation is the present and future of the fight against dementia. Billions of dollars have been spent by the National Institutes of Health and biotechs to research new treatments for Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia, but so far there's been little to show for it. Last year, Aduhelm became the first drug to be approved by the FDA for Alzheimer’s in 20 years, but it's received a raft of bad publicity, with red flags about its effectiveness, side effects and cost.
Meanwhile, 6.5 million Americans have Alzheimer's, and this number could increase to 13 million in 2050. Listen to this conversation if you’re concerned about your own brain health, that of family members getting older, or if you’re just concerned about the future of this country with experts predicting the number people over 65 will increase dramatically in the very near future.
Listen to the Episode
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4:40 - We talk about the parts of Percy’s life that led to him to concentrate on working in this important area.
6:20 - He defines Alzheimer's and dementia, and discusses the key elements of communicating science.
10:20 - Percy explains why the Alzheimer’s Association has been supportive of Aduhelm, even as others have been critical.
17:58 - We talk about therapeutics under development, which ones to be excited about, and how they could be tailored to a person's own biology.
24:25 - Percy discusses funding and tradeoffs between investing more money into Alzheimer’s research compared to other intractable diseases like cancer, and new opportunities to accelerate progress, such as ARPA-H, President Biden’s proposed agency to speed up health breakthroughs.
27:24 - We talk about the social determinants of brain health. What are the pros/cons of continuing to spend massive sums of money to develop new drugs like Aduhelm versus refocusing on expanding policies to address social determinants - like better education, nutritious food and safe drinking water - that have enabled some groups more than others to enjoy improved cognition late in life.
34:18 - Percy describes his top lifestyle recommendations for protecting your mind.
37:33 - Is napping bad for the brain?
39:39 - Circadian rhythm and Alzheimer's.
42:34 - What tests can people take to check their brain health today, and which biomarkers are we making progress on?
47:25 - Percy highlights important programs run by the Alzheimer’s Association to support advances.
Show links:
** After this episode was recorded, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services affirmed its decision from last June to limit coverage of Aduhelm. More here.
- Percy Griffin's bio: https://www.alz.org/manh/events/alztalks/upcoming-...
- The Alzheimer's Association's Part the Cloud program: https://alz.org/partthecloud/about-us.asp
- The paradox of dementia rates decreasing: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7455342/
- The argument for focusing more resources on improving institutions and social processes for brain health: https://www.statnews.com/2021/09/23/the-brain-heal...
- Recent research on napping: https://www.ocregister.com/2022/03/25/alzheimers-s...
- The Alzheimer's Association helpline: https://www.alz.org/help-support/resources/helpline
- ALZConnected, a free online community for people affected by dementia https://www.alzconnected.org/
- TrialMatch for people with dementia and healthy volunteers to find clinical trials for Alzheimer's and other dementia: https://www.alz.org/alzheimers-dementia/research_p...
Employers can create a culture of “Excellence From Anywhere” to reduce the risk of inequality among office-centric, hybrid, and fully remote employees.
COVID-19 prompted numerous companies to reconsider their approach to the future of work. Many leaders felt reluctant about maintaining hybrid and remote work options after vaccines became widely available. Yet the emergence of dangerous COVID variants such as Omicron has shown the folly of this mindset.
To mitigate the risks of new variants and other public health threats, as well as to satisfy the desires of a large majority of employees who express a strong desire in multiple surveys for a flexible hybrid or fully remote schedule, leaders are increasingly accepting that hybrid and remote options represent the future of work. No wonder that a February 2022 survey by the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond showed that more and more firms are offering hybrid and fully-remote work options. The firms expect to have more remote workers next year and more geographically-distributed workers.
Although hybrid and remote work mitigates public health risks, it poses another set of health concerns relevant to employee wellbeing, due to the threat of proximity bias. This term refers to the negative impact on work culture from the prospect of inequality among office-centric, hybrid, and fully remote employees.
The difference in time spent in the office leads to concerns ranging from decreased career mobility for those who spend less facetime with their supervisor to resentment building up against the staff who have the most flexibility in where to work. In fact, a January 2022 survey by the company Slack of over 10,000 knowledge workers and their leaders shows that proximity bias is the top concern – expressed by 41% of executives - about hybrid and remote work.
To address this problem requires using best practices based on cognitive science for creating a culture of “Excellence From Anywhere.” This solution is based on guidance that I developed for leaders at 17 pioneering organizations for a company culture fit for the future of work.
Protect from proximity bias via the "Excellence From Anywhere" strategy
So why haven’t firms addressed the obvious problem of proximity bias? Any reasonable external observer could predict the issues arising from differences of time spent in the office.
Unfortunately, leaders often fail to see the clear threat in front of their nose. You might have heard of black swans: low-probability, high-impact threats. Well, the opposite kind of threats are called gray rhinos: obvious dangers that we fail to see because of our mental blindspots. The scientific name for these blindspots is cognitive biases, which cause leaders to resist best practices in transitioning to a hybrid-first model.
The core idea is to get all of your workforce to pull together to achieve business outcomes: the location doesn’t matter.
Leaders can address this by focusing on a shared culture of “Excellence From Anywhere.” This term refers to a flexible organizational culture that takes into account the nature of an employee's work and promotes evaluating employees based on task completion, allowing remote work whenever possible.
Addressing Resentments Due to Proximity Bias
The “Excellence From Anywhere” strategy addresses concerns about treatment of remote workers by focusing on deliverables, regardless of where you work. Doing so also involves adopting best practices for hybrid and remote collaboration and innovation.
By valuing deliverables, collaboration, and innovation through a focus on a shared work culture of “Excellence From Anywhere,” you can instill in your employees a focus on deliverables. The core idea is to get all of your workforce to pull together to achieve business outcomes: the location doesn’t matter.
This work culture addresses concerns about fairness by reframing the conversation to focus on accomplishing shared goals, rather than the method of doing so. After all, no one wants their colleagues to have to commute out of spite.
This technique appeals to the tribal aspect of our brains. We are evolutionarily adapted to living in small tribal groups of 50-150 people. Spending different amounts of time in the office splits apart the work tribe into different tribes. However, cultivating a shared focus on business outcomes helps mitigate such divisions and create a greater sense of unity, alleviating frustrations and resentments. Doing so helps improve employee emotional wellbeing and facilitates good collaboration.
Solving the facetime concerns of proximity bias
But what about facetime with the boss? To address this problem necessitates shifting from the traditional, high-stakes, large-scale quarterly or even annual performance evaluations to much more frequent weekly or biweekly, low-stakes, brief performance evaluation through one-on-one in-person or videoconference check-ins.
Supervisees agree with their supervisor on three to five weekly or biweekly performance goals. Then, 72 hours before their check-in meeting, they send a brief report, under a page, to their boss of how they did on these goals, what challenges they faced and how they overcame them, a quantitative self-evaluation, and proposed goals for next week. Twenty-four hours before the meeting, the supervisor responds in a paragraph-long response with their initial impressions of the report.
It’s hard to tell how much any employee should worry about not being able to chat by the watercooler with their boss: knowing exactly where they stand is the key concern for employees, and they can take proactive action if they see their standing suffer.
At the one-on-one, the supervisor reinforces positive aspects of performance and coaches the supervisee on how to solve challenges better, agrees or revises the goals for next time, and affirms or revises the performance evaluation. That performance evaluation gets fed into a constant performance and promotion review system, which can replace or complement a more thorough annual evaluation.
This type of brief and frequent performance evaluation meeting ensures that the employee’s work is integrated with efforts by the supervisor’s other employees, thereby ensuring more unity in achieving business outcomes. It also mitigates concerns about facetime, since all get at least some personalized attention from their team leader. But more importantly, it addresses the underlying concerns about career mobility by giving all staff a clear indication of where they stand at all times. After all, it’s hard to tell how much any employee should worry about not being able to chat by the watercooler with their boss: knowing exactly where they stand is the key concern for employees, and they can take proactive action if they see their standing suffer.
Such best practices help integrate employees into a work culture fit for the future of work while fostering good relationships with managers. Research shows supervisor-supervisee relationships are the most critical ones for employee wellbeing, engagement, and retention.
Conclusion
You don’t have to be the CEO to implement these techniques. Lower-level leaders of small rank-and-file teams can implement these shifts within their own teams, adapting their culture and performance evaluations. And if you are a staff member rather than a leader, send this article to your supervisor and other employees at your company: start a conversation about the benefits of addressing proximity bias using such research-based best practices.