Fighting Global Hunger Through Genetics With Chuan He

Big Brains

We’re taking the week off to spend the holidays with our families, but we think this is a perfect moment to re-release one of our most important episodes. As we all dig into our delicious Thanksgiving dinners, we need to remember that not everyone is so lucky. Global hunger is still a massive problem facing our society. By 2050 humanity will have to make 50% more food in order to feed a growing population. That’s a lot, especially since we currently have trouble feeding the current population, and that food production is already responsible for about a third of the greenhouse gases that cause climate change. But Chuan He, a professor of chemistry at the University of Chicago, has discovered a new genetic breakthrough that may just give us a way to address all these problems.