HP Innovation Journal Issue 09: Spring 2018 | Page 13
G E N E TI C E N G I N E E R I N G I S H E L P I N G CO N T R O L D I S E A S E - C A R RY I N G M O S Q U ITO E S
Oxitec, a British biotechnology
company, is replacing pesticides by
genetically engineering mosquito
populations. Programs have been
completed in the Cayman Islands and
Panama, resulting in 90+% suppres-
sion of disease-carrying mosquitoes.
Replacing Workflows
By 2030, BioConvergence will also
start to replace workflows and busi-
ness models.
Smart cities will leverage bio-
converged technologies for pervasive
sensing, an example of which includes
monitoring the environment for
yeasts, bacteria, and toxins in the air.
Increasing scarcity of rare minerals
will lead to the adoption of metama-
terials—nanocomposite structures
made up of materials, such as metals
or plastics, engineered to exhibit
properties not normally found in
nature. Metamaterials will be engi-
neered, at nano-scale, out of other
locally available elements to have the
properties of the materials they are
replacing. For example, carbon could
be organized to have the characteris-
tics of a contested mineral, like cobalt.
And bioconverged technology could
help to pave the way for manufactur-
ing, construction, and life support of
colonies in space.
Materials and process revolutions
have a long history of pioneering new
resources and driving global produc-
tivity. BioConvergence will help to
power the next revolution by decreas-
ing the amount of energy used in
resource extraction production, thus
reducing our reliance on currently
strained resources, and enabling
increasingly local cradle-to-cradle
ecosystems. This will unlock new
forms of business, propelling break-
through product differentiators to
likely come from nontraditional
suppliers, and vendors changing the
materials and manufacturing ecosys-
tem as we know it.
1. Statkraft 2. Human Brain Facts 3. Michael Brost,
University of Wisconsin-Platteville 4. Modern Meadow
5. Spiber 6. Basilisk
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