Two beagles called Alfie and Bailey lack the main protein that causes allergic reactions to dogs, thanks to CRISPR gene editing. The dogs will be 2 years old in September and show no signs of adverse effects, according to , the company behind them.

“I’ve lived with allergies my whole life. They prevented me and my family from ever having a dog,” says Kindred co-founder Matt Walker. “And my wife, Maggie, has always wanted a dog.” Walker previously worked as a researcher studying neuron development in worms by using CRISPR gene editing to disable specific genes. He realised it might be possible to use the technique to prevent dogs causing allergies, and founded Kindred in 2020.

How were Alfie and Bailey created?

Previous studies have found that the main allergen that triggers reactions to dogs is a protein called Can f 1. It is secreted by the tongue and by glands in the skin, so it is present both in the fur of dogs and in their saliva.

The Kindred team took skin cells from a female beagle and used the gene-editing tool CRISPR Cas9 to mutate the Can f 1 gene – the result was an extra DNA letter at the start of the gene that shifts the way the recipe for making the Can f 1 protein is read by cells, turning it into gibberish. Once the team members had confirmed they had made the desired change without introducing unwanted mutations, they cloned the cells. Altogether, the team transferred 25 embryos to a surrogate, of which two implanted and developed to term.

Does removing this protein really prevent allergies?

Bailey is Walker’s pet dog, and he says he has no reaction to her at all. She was cavorting in the background when New Scientist spoke to him. Kindred has also showing that Can f 1 is undetectable in Alfie and Bailey, and that there are no allergic reactions to samples from them in skin-prick tests, whereas samples from normal dogs do provoke a reaction.

However, Can f 1 isn’t the only protein in dogs that can trigger allergic reactions – there are also so-called minor allergens, such as Can f 2. “If we do find that there’s a substantial population that is still responding to the dogs, then that is something we could address,” says Walker.

And could the process be harmful to dogs?

We don’t know for sure what the function of Can f 1 is, but Walker says he was confident from experiments on mice that there would be no serious consequences from deleting it. So far, both dogs appear normal and healthy, he says. “Of course, that’s something that we’re monitoring very closely, and will continue to monitor over the animals’ lives.”

Isn’t it already possible to buy “hypoallergenic” dogs?

Some breeds, such as poodles and goldendoodles, are said to be less likely to trigger allergic reactions, but Walker says he responds just as much to the goldendoodle his parents bought after he left home as he does to any other dog. In the paper, his team shows that Can f 1 is detectable in both breeds, and that samples from them trigger reactions in skin-prick tests.

This is in line with independent evidence. The American Academy of Asthma, Allergy and Immunology says some “hypoallergenic” breeds .��

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When will these dogs be commercially available?

Not for some time. Kindred first needs regulatory approval from the US Food and Drug Administration. If it gets that, it then needs to create lots more of these dogs. For each dog breed, the company will have to create a genetically diverse set of “founder” dogs that can then be bred normally. Walker couldn’t say how many founder dogs would be required per breed.

Is it ethical to genetically engineer dogs just to prevent allergies?

“We aren’t using gene editing for novelty or some cosmetic reason,” says Walker. “Allergies are a real health problem. They affect a significant portion of the population, and lead to serious conditions such as asthma triggering asthmatic attacks.”

By contrast, conventional dog breeding is often done purely for the sake of appearance, and can introduce mutations that cause serious harm, such as those found in breeds like pugs .��Nevertheless, Kindred is altering dogs for the benefit of humans rather than the benefit of the animals themselves. In response to this, Walker says people discovering they are allergic to dogs is a leading reason for animals having to be rehomed.��

Is Kindred planning to gene-edit cats, too, to prevent allergies?

“Right now, we’re focused exclusively on dogs,” Walker says. The main allergen in cats, called fel d 1, is encoded by two genes rather than one, so getting rid of the protein is more complex. Another company called InBio announced plans to create cats free of fel d 1 in 2022.

Large predators can make people safer by reducing the number of road accidents involving collisions with deer. A study in Washington state has shown that the presence of cougars led to a 76 per cent reduction in the number of such accidents.

“I think that this road-safety benefit could be playing out in many other places,” says of the non-profit Conservation Science Partners. “That’s just one of several ecosystem services that these large carnivores provide.”

A 2021 study in Wisconsin found that the return of wolves to a county , providing economic benefits 63 times greater than the costs of wolves killing livestock. These reductions were due to changes in deer behaviour, as well as deer numbers falling due to predation by wolves, the study concluded.

Now Suraci and his colleagues have looked at what’s happening on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington state, where there’s a stable population of cougars – also known as pumas – and deer. “We worked with Native American communities, who are running their own wildlife monitoring programs,” he says.

More than 500 camera traps have been set up as part of these programs, and nearly 60 cougars were collared. This allowed the researchers to see where and when deer and cougars were present. Their analysis shows that deer avoid road edges and the margins of towns and cities when cougars are present, making them less likely to be hit by cars or trucks.

“Those habitat edges are the best hunting habitat for pumas. They can hide in the forest and attack a deer foraging along the roadside,” says Suraci. “So what we think is happening is that deer are moving away from these more fragmented, edgy areas with higher road density where the pumas are present.”

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When cougars were present, deer were also less active at night and more active during the day. This is likely a response to the fact that cougars hunt mainly at night, and may also have contributed to the reduction in accidents.

This is an example of a “landscape of fear” in action, says at Western University in Canada. “This is an excellent paper. It provides many compelling lines of evidence that paint a clear picture – that large carnivores benefit society. The authors beautifully demonstrate that the mere presence of large carnivores can reduce vehicle collisions with deer.”

“That is good news all around,” she says. “As though that weren’t enough, cougars also provide this service completely free of charge.”

Suraci also thinks this will be generally true for large predators. Discussions about the reintroduction of large predators tend to focus on the negative aspects, such as the killing of livestock, he says. But many benefits often aren’t obvious.

For instance, large predators may also reduce the damage deer do to crops and gardens, and the spread of diseases .

Don’t treat your pets for parasites such as ticks and fleas unless they actually need treating. We can’t be sure that these treatments are safe for you and your family, and there is growing evidence that they pose a danger to wildlife.

So says a by the Environment and Climate Change Committee of the UK’s House of Lords. It is calling for the sale of these treatments to be restricted, so people can only buy them after consultation with a vet, pharmacist or qualified pet shop staff.

The main issue is that there is no rigorous assessment of pet treatments before they are approved, the report says. It has simply been assumed by national and international regulators that they are safe, but this assumption is turning out to be wrong.

In particular, at least two potent pesticides found in tick and flea treatments are getting into UK rivers at levels high enough to affect wildlife. These pesticides can break down into other substances that are even more harmful.

“There is also worryingly insufficient evidence to assess whether or not [pet parasite medicines] are harmful to human health,” says the report.

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It also says regulators aren’t sufficiently independent. Both UK and international regulators “appear to be too influenced by and beholden to the views of the industry”, it states.

While the report focuses on the UK, the same tick and flea treatments are sold in many countries. “This is a worldwide issue,” says at Imperial College London, one of the experts who gave evidence to the committee.

“There’s been a historical assumption that any veterinary medicine used in non-food animals – cats and dogs, companion animals – is associated with negligible environmental risk,” she says. “Effectively, they have no meaningful environmental risk assessment.”

But recent research shows they do pose a risk, says Perkins. “It’s really opened up a Pandora’s box, because we have dozens of these products that have been approved based on this assumption that we now know is not scientifically valid.”

For instance, two common pesticides found in products such as spot-on flea treatments are fipronil, a broad-spectrum insecticide, and imidacloprid, a neonicotinoid. “They’re incredibly potent at extremely low levels,” says Perkins.

Both pesticides used to be used on farms until they were banned a few years ago. But they have continued to be found in rivers. In fact, with the development of more sensitive tests, they are turning up “pretty much everywhere in waterways”, says Perkins.

Initially, it was thought this was a legacy of their use by farmers, but work by Perkins and others suggests parasite medications are now the main source of these pesticides in waterways. In many cases, levels are high enough to harm invertebrates such as mayflies, dragonflies and caddisflies, with knock-on effects on the fish and birds that feed on them.

We don’t know how big a problem this is, says the report. “The true scale of environmental harm resulting from pet parasite medications is not known.”

How are the pesticides getting into rivers? Once they are applied to pets, they end up all over the home, says Perkins. When people bathe their pets or wash pet bedding, they can end up in wastewater.

Product packaging currently recommends that dogs are not bathed for four days after treatment, but this needs to be extended to 28 days, the report recommends.

Another major source of the pesticides in water is hand-washing, says Perkins. “We detected [pesticides] in the wash-off even before we asked people to stroke their pets, so they’re just constantly on the hands of pet owners.”

Products containing fipronil and imidacloprid are now being replaced by ones containing isoxazolines, typically sold in the form of chewable tablets. Isoxazolines are less water-soluble but can bind to sediments and accumulate in soils and sewage sludge. They might be ending up in fields when sewage sludge is sprayed as fertiliser and harming pollinators.

“There has not been much work done to date to assess this,” says the report.

Shed dog fur is yet another way these chemicals can end up in the environment. The report says contaminated fur has been found in bird nests.

In light of these findings, the use of pet parasite medications should be minimised until there is independent research clarifying their risks, says the report. At present, manufacturers of parasite treatments are promoting the idea that routine treatment for parasites is required, and encouraging pet owners to get them via monthly subscriptions. “However, the benefits of routine, and certainly monthly, pet parasite medicine usage are not supported by scientific evidence.”

It is an excellent report, says Perkins, but she hoped it would go further and recommend making these products prescription-only. Some wildlife groups, meanwhile, want .

Yet another reason for restricting their use is to slow the development of resistance, says Perkins. She sees a lot of animals treated with old spot-on treatments containing fipronil that still have fleas. “We need effective parasite treatments, and we need to make sure we preserve their efficacy,” she says.

To the many problems caused by wildfires, add reduced solar generation and more use of fossil fuels as a result. A study of the 2023 Canadian wildfires has concluded that drifting smoke caused a 3 per cent drop in solar power generation in both Europe and North America, costing nearly $2 billion.

“It’s clear that we are facing a situation where this is going to keep happening,” says Iulian-Alin Roșu at the Technical University of Crete in Greece. “It seems like every year from now on, we are going to have some relatively significant Canadian wildfire events.”

Smoke from large wildfires in Canada can spread across much of the northern hemisphere, reducing how much sunshine reaches the ground. Last year, Roșu reported that so much smoke was released during the massive 2023 wildfires in Canada that it reduced summer temperatures across the hemisphere by nearly 1°C – which still wasn’t enough to stop 2023 being the hottest year on record, now surpassed by 2024.

He recently discussed his findings with fire expert at the University of East Anglia in the UK. “We were looking at pollution maps and Matthew, out of nowhere, says, well, hang on a second, I wonder what this does to solar power production,” says Roșu.

So Roșu, Jones and their colleagues got data on solar generation in North America and Europe and plugged it into the climate model Roșu used for his 2025 study. Their study takes into account the fact that the cooling effect of smoke slightly compensates for less sunshine by increasing the efficiency of solar panels – by 20 per cent in Europe, for instance.

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Based on electricity prices at the time, the team calculates that North America – mainly the US – lost $711 million, while Europe lost almost $1.17 billion, with Germany being hit hardest. The reason why Europe lost more is largely that electricity prices are higher there, says Roșu, plus most solar generation in the US is in southern and western states that were less affected by smoke.

The impact of the smoke was greater than the researchers expected, he says. “A whole bunch of solar power was not being produced, and that led to increased CO2 emissions, because obviously the rest of the energy industry had to compensate.”

“There needs to be more understanding of the fact that fire can affect pretty much everything: pollution, health, weather and even solar power,” he adds.

With smoke from Canada reaching Europe again this year, the same thing is happening again. “I have seen some relatively worrying data for this year as well,” says Roșu. But with the season still ongoing, he says it’s too early to compare with 2023.

��’m terrified by how fast weather extremes are ramping up as the world heats up, and there’s much, much worse to come unless we leave fossil fuels in the ground. The only way to do that is to end our dependency on oil and gas – and all the fuss about whether the UK will allow more drilling in the North Sea is a distraction from this.

Some people talk about the UK government’s current policy of not approving more licences for exploration in the North Sea as if it will reduce the amount of oil and gas that is burned, and thus help limit how much more carbon dioxide ends up in the atmosphere. But it won’t. All it will do is change where the oil and gas that gets burned comes from.

What does matter is burning less fossil fuel. That means things such as getting more electricity from renewable sources, and more vehicles and heat pumps running on that electricity.

So I won’t be judging the climate credentials of the UK’s new prime minister, Andy Burnham, on whether or not his government decides to in the North Sea. It’s what is done to further reduce our use of fossil fuels that’s crucial in climate terms. And here Burnham has already made a good start by cutting the value-added tax (VAT) on electricity, which will make .

��’m not saying bans on drilling are a complete waste of time – they have a part to play in protecting vulnerable environments, such as the Amazon rainforest. But I don’t see how they will ever help limit emissions.

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At this point, you might be thinking, “but if enough countries ban drilling, it will make a difference”. There are already nearly 60 restrictions on fossil fuel production in 25 countries, . But many of these are regional restrictions to protect places such as the Arctic, or bans on production methods such as fracking. And 15 have already been repealed. No major producers are planning to completely stop producing oil and gas, and the known reserves of fossil fuels are way more than enough to trash the climate. The bottom line is that some countries will keep on churning out fossil fuels as long as they can sell them, so the key is to reduce demand, not supply.

That said, most of the arguments used by supporters of further North Sea gas and oil exploration . For starters, more drilling is not going to bring down energy prices in the UK. North Sea oil and gas is sold at global market prices, and there’s not enough oil or gas left in the North Sea to make a dent in those prices.

Going all out on renewables, by contrast, would break , and help bring down energy bills. This is what is Spain .

Another dubious claim is that more drilling is going to make oodles of money for the UK. But production in the North Sea already has to be supported by tax breaks and subsidies, and is declining year on year. of the oil and gas has already been extracted, so further drilling will, at most, slow the rate of decline. And what remains is harder to get out, so costs are higher. If the wars pushing up oil prices come to an end, it might not even be profitable – until recently, the world was building up .

Then there’s the exaggerated claim that North Sea gas is “four times cleaner” than imported liquid natural gas, or LNG. The emissions associated with producing LNG are around four times higher than those for North Sea gas, because of the energy required to liquefy it. But what matters are the total emissions, including those from burning the gas, and on this count .

LNG now accounts for . If that could be reduced by more North Sea gas production, there should be a little less CO2 emitted. It would also mean less money going to countries that obstruct climate action – the UK now gets 37 per cent of its gas from the US, for instance.

But the UK also gets gas from Norway via pipelines, and the production emissions of this are even lower than those of North Sea gas. So in climate terms, buying more Norwegian pipeline gas would be better than increasing North Sea production.

Overall, then, what happens in the North Sea just doesn’t matter much in the grand scheme of things – more drilling is neither a climate catastrophe, nor an economic panacea. Instead, the UK and other countries need to focus on what really matters – much more drastic action to replace fossil fuels or discourage their use. You only need to look at to see why it’s so vital.