Looks like we’re taking more than our share of the vegetables: human activities eat up nearly a quarter of the planet’s plant growth. A study of human impact on ecosystems found that we consume 23.8% of Earth’s land-based net primary production. Agriculture makes up more than half the consumption. The rest is other forms of land use and human-caused fires. This is an unprecedented dominance of the biosphere by a single species, and shows how risky large-scale biofuels production could be for the ecosystem.

J. Craig Venter of human genome mapping fame has pulled off a major feat: the first genome transplant operation, albeit in a humble bacteria. Researchers at Venter’s private research institute transplanted all the DNA from one bacteria into another bacteria, which converted the recipient cells into replicas of the donor cells. The move is a step toward creating synthetic bacteria and viruses that could be used to make drugs and biofuels and clean up pollution. Here’s Scientific American’s write up.