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Drug Making Genes Added To Corn Jump To Soya
Anonymous Cowdog writes "Google News turned up a scary item today: Apparently, genetically altered corn, designed not to repel pests or withstand bad weather, but rather to grow pharmecuticals (for diabetes and diarrhea) has been accidentally mixed with soy plants in the field, resulting in 500,000 bushels of contaminated soybeans being quarantined by the US FDA. Ooops. Here's the story, and here's another story about the same case. The company who brought us this nice event is called ProdiGene. Looks like they're also working on an edible AIDS vaccine (kinda makes sense, eat Tofu, enjoy free love!) Now, I was thinking, will our government protect us from doom-by-hand-me-down-genes? and on a hunch (honest!) I did this google search for keywords ProdiGene and "george w bush". Result? A not so reassuring article."
See, this is why a lot of people are cautious about genetically altered foods.
The potential hazards combined with the legal tanglements of a company being
able to hold a patent on seeds, so far, hasn't been worth it. Perhaps now, the
na-sayers who derided the decision of the leader of that African country to
refuse genetically altered foodstuffs have some "food for thought". Sorry, pun
intended.
SealBeater
-- Its survival of the fittest...and we got the fucking guns!!!
It sounds like there are whole corn plants in the soybean fields (which presumably the automatic harvesting grabs together), rather than cross-species gene jumping. Still worrying but not unexpected when the US has such a cavalier attitude to segregation of GM/non-GM crops. It might also be worrying if you were allergic to normal corn (if they still grow that in the USA) (and found it in your soy food).
The bio-corn - which is grown to produce trypsin and another compound to treat diarrhea - has not been approved for human or livestock feed.
Trypsin is a primary digestive enzyme in stomachs. I wonder what could possible go wrong with ingesting more trypsin, even if it was from another species. This other compound used to treat diarrhea couldn't be that bad either. I don't see what the real problem here is besides the small potential that someone might be allergic to this protein. I know that the FDA has to be conservative but there is no real need for a scare.
Sorry for replying as an Anonymous Coward
Gene swapping is common among strains of bacteria (and several other microscopic buggers that undergo asexual reproduction), but not in eukaryotic or multicellular critters. Here's a brief discussion of the process
I meant to say, Another example...
I agree that was a crappily put together headline. I thought *genes* had made the jump from corn to soy.
Genes sometimes do make interspecies jumps: at least in the lab, bacteria can transduce genes from one species to another. A bacterial plasmid (small circular piece of DNA) integrated into a host genome can excise a small part of the host's genome, replicate, and reintegrate into another host's genome, even if the second host is of a different species. Plasmid integration is fairly common in plants, and integration of the T-plasmid from B. thuringiensis is the basis for most pest-resistant crops.
Transposons could also potentially transduce genetic materials between species.
My other sig is also a
You think this is bad? Is the thought of a few modified genes leaping into another crop scarry to you? How about the hundreds of thousands of experiments where people modified hundreds, even thousands of genes at once, with no idea of the outcome or its impact on other species?
Well, that's called traditional cross-breeding, and it's been practiced by humans intentionally and unintentionally pretty much since the day when we started building mud huts and stopped following animals around.
The reaction to genetically altered foods in this country (and Europe), espcially the reaction of people of reason, is baffling to me.
When these "big bad" bio companies modify plant genes in an effort to create products, they're doing it with a kind of specificity that was unthinkable 10 years ago. They modify a handful of genes, and they know the exact outcome of that modification.
Is it possible some of these modified genes will "jump" to another plant species? Yes. In fact, it's likely, especially if the plants are grown outdoors rather than in a greenhouse. Is that bad? Maybe. But probably not, and it most cases, it's no more dangerous than the situation created when plants are cross-bred in the "traditional" (read: random) way to produce desireable traits.
Bioengineering faces a lot of hurdles, but one hurdle it should not have to face is educated people rising up in terror against the benefits it could provide.
"Although unwanted corn often sprouts in soybean fields, ProdiGene failed to pull out its bio-corn in Nebraska and removed it too late in Iowa, according to the U.S. Agriculture Department. ... As a result, ProdiGene was ordered to destroy 155 acres of corn in Iowa and may have to buy 500,000 bushels of soybeans quarantined in Nebraska because of possible contamination."
And the other one,
"The USDA quarantined the soybeans in Nebraska after discovering the possible contamination during harvest last month. Investigators suspect the contamination occurred when a small amount of ProdiGene's corn plants mixed in with soybeans subsequently grown on the same field and adjacent fields. In Iowa, the company was ordered to destroy 155 acres (63 hectares) of corn in September because windborne pollen from its bio-corn may have contaminated nearby fields."
No gene transfer, no mutations, no animated Frankencorn coming for your children. Just some self-catch corn plants in a soyabean field which were either not removed before harvest (unlikely) or were removed at a time later decided by some dickhead bureaucrat to be the wrong time (very likely).
In Iowa we have a case of definite burocratitis, where one guy officially blessed the planting and another guy said "NONONO!!!" later on, after the corn was in the ground. No evidence of actual contamination in Iowa was found in the articles, just potential for it.
So what we actually have here is the politically motivated attempt by the agriculture bureaucrats to bankrupt a perfectly reasonable company, one which is following all the rules.
So all you Greenie boys and girls need to read the friggin article, and possibly go read up on gene transfer technology.
Cross-pollenization (pollen is effectively a sperm cell) only happens within variants of the same species, or rarely, within the same genus -- frex, cabbage and radishes (IIRC) can be *forcibly* crossed, but the result is *sterile*. And it doesn't normally happen in the wild. It definitely does not happen between species as unlike as grasses and broadleaf plants. If it did, you couldn't have grass, trees, and flowers growing together in your yard!!
If the crop had been seed soybeans (ie. meant for next year's planting, not for eating) and the contaminant had been lima beans (not easily separated from soybeans by seed cleaning processes), the crop would have been "ruined" for planting purposes, because seed is expected to be free of "weeds" (defined as any unwanted plant -- mustard is a "weed" most places). Same principle, but that wouldn't have made good argument-fodder!!
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
The genes did not jump from corn to soybeans.
Genetically-modified corn was planted in a small field. Soybeans were planted in that field the next growing cycle. Volunteer corn from the previous crop sprung up with the soybeans. The company did not weed out the volunteer corn, and at harvest time a small amount of corn was gathered with the soybeans and eventually mixed with 500 tons of soybeans in a silo.
The modified genes being detected are in the corn kernels, not the soybeans.
We must be alert to the danger that public policy could become captive to a scientific-technological elite. - Eisenhower
I grew up on a farm and I know how hard it is to make a profit nowadays. With the price of a new John Deere Combine running around half a million dollars (NOT KIDDING!!), farmers will embrace any new technology that could improve profits (the price of wheat per bushel 3 years ago was less that its worth in the 1950's, NOT KIDDING EITHER!). When Monsanto, among others, started releasing GMO corn and soybeans, those product significantly lowered the cost required to spray and maintain fields for insects and weeds. Instead of spray costing around $75 an acre, it now costs around $20 an acre. Unfortunately, no one wants to buy these anymore because they are "dangerous" or, whatever.
Additionally, for those people who are horrified by the idea of eating GMO's, I'd like to tell you a little secret that has been withheld from you. VIRTUALLY EVERYTHING YOU EAT TODAY HAS BEEN GENETICALLY MODIFIED BY HUMANS. For example, give me one example of a wild cabbage plant, (if you can find this, then you will realize what else was created from its ancestor). Or, since we are on the subject, has anyone seen a real wild corn plant or Soybean plant? The reason we have them today, is because long ago selective breeding made them what they are. The only difference with Genetically Modifying an organism is that it can accomplish a variety of plant in a much smaller amount of time. Additionally, while GMO's synthetically splice new DNA, which in turn creates new organic compounds, selective breeding HAS THE SAME EFFECT ON PLANTS.
anyways, I'm stepping off the soapbox now
Yeah, despite both having n=9 chromosomes, radish and cabbage don't seem to have homologous sets of chromosomes, and so they don't pair up right, resulting in sterile plants. However, you can make a fertile tetraploid.
Cross-pollination, certainly not in the field, just isn't going to happen between corn and soy. The reasons are almost too many to list...wrong number of chromosomes, lack of homology between chromosomes, mistiming of flowering, various forms of genetic incompatibility, etc. You might be able to coax some sort of a sad deformed thing out of protoplast fusion or some such thing, but I'd be against it, and even if you could, you'd be lucky if you could get it to live at all outside of a lab.
First there weren't any genes jumping. The farmer raised the pharmaceutical corn last year for Prodigene. This year he planted soybeans into the field. Some of the corn seed from last year grew in the field this year as a weed. The farmers call it volunteer corn. The farmer received warnings from Prodigene's representative and the government that the volunteer corn must be eradicated. The last warning was less than a week before harvest. By the time the government checked back and learned the farmer wasn't in compliance the soybeans were at the elevator. The 500 bushels (3000 lbs) of soybeans were contaminated with 60 grams of corn stalks. Unfortunately they got mixed into a 500,000 bushel bin at the elevator. What we learned is that the government (believe it or not) actually did a good job of protecting our interests. Prodigene will buy the soybeans and they will be destroyed. Current use of biotech corn has reduced farmers use of insecticides by million of pounds. Pharmaceutical corn has the potential to greatly lower drug costs for seniors. Here's a URL from the Omaha Herald Here and another from the BIO organization Here Man Holmes
While it's becoming clear that the headline is misleading and that we're actually talking about harvested crop mixing and not gene jumping, jumping is still a problem. I don't know about intra-species jumping, but two corn fields seperated by miles of Illinois flatland can definetly cross polinate. There are supposed to be "buffer zones" of soybeans or other plants around "special" corn, but those only work about 90% of the time. There is a definte chance for long distance cross-polination.
THIS SPACE FOR RENT
OK, Just to clear this up a little bit.
/. editors put in a little addendum correcting the article submission a bit on that score. Its not that there's not legitimate cause for concern, but lets make sure that we've got the right concerns before we go off half-cocked. /.ers rightly complain about FUD coming from Wintel supporters. We should be equally careful not to spread unwarranted FUD regarding other subjects.
Cross-pollenation occurs between plants of the same species. Cross-pollentation is where the pollen of two different corn plants of two different lineages are intentionally introduced to each other. This is the same idea as people marrying somebody from the next town over, rather than their cousin.
The pollen of a corn plant, cannot, under any circumstances, land on a soybean flower and create a seed. Two different species cannot create viable offspring unless they are very closely related (where they produce a cross-species hybrid, such as a mule), and even then these offspring are always infertile.
Genetic Modification still has to follow the laws of biology. No matter what the source of the genes, you can't just put two species in close proximity and have genes cross from one to the other. You really do have to have all that spiffy lab equipment and clever people with test-tubes and droppers and microscopes and so forth.
The genes of the corn plants did not contaminate the soy.
So what's the fuss about? Well, those corn plants were producing diabetes and diahorrea drugs. These drugs are probably not something that you really want healthy people taking, as it could possibly have adverse effects. The soy was planted in feilds that contained the GM corn previously. A few of the seeds left over from the previous planting sprouted when the soy was planted. Now it is entirely possible that these corn plants could still be producing these drugs. This is relatively harmless in the wild where they won't be coming into contact with people, but when they're growing in the middle of food-plants, its possible the soy could absorb some of the drugs, simply due to their proximity. This is a legitimate concern, not becuase of some possible 'genetic contamination', but the more mundane but infinitely more plausible pharmecuetical contamination. You won't get soybeans that produce the chemicals themselves, but they might pick up the chemicals from the nearby corn.
The reason that the food manufacturers are upset about using food-plants for pharmaceuticals is that you don't want people eating corn that's been producing diabetes drugs. Eating a tortilla which messes with your insulin levels would be a Bad Thing. There's no reason these drugs couldn't be produced in, say, millet, which nobody on this continent eats as a food. Therefore, nobody accidentally takes drug-millet and makes cornbread from it, becuase nobody eats it anyway. You still wouldn't want to grow soy in that field the next season, though, for the reasons put forth above.
I'd kinda like to see the
if ($it != $onething) {$it = $another;}
Perhaps these "lot of people" should find themselves ANY evidence of a gene crossing plant species.
This is allready proofed since 20 years.
Plant genes hop. This is well known in biology, only the genetic engineers do not know it. Or claim so.
Even among animals or humans, genes hop. They get spread via virii.
Plants however are very tricky, they are able to incorporate new mutated genes from neighbouriung plants of the same breed without the need of using a virus as transportation.
That means: a old tree is able to profit from younger trees around him wich mutate due to "strange conditions" by picking up the mutated genes those plants release.
The transportation mechanism is unknonw to me (did not read those papers). But I remember to have read that some 15 years ago when I still was at school. This was BEFORE that whole gen manipulation in food plants was an issue.
It should not be that hard to make a search for the PHDs involved about that research.
E.g. this german language page I found via google:
http://www.unifr.ch/biochem/BIOTECH/BIO_
It references a lot of scientific articels, in german, french and italian, as well as in spanish. Somve cover the migration of genes viapolinisation and others by "jumping". Its a real old fact that a field of plants will conterminate each sommer about 1% of ALL surrounding plants regardless of species with new genes.
It seems that the "newness" of the genes are a motivation to "try them out" by the contaminated plants. At least: they do not incorporate "standard" genes of neighbours, but somehow they have a record wich genes are new and might be worth a try.
angel'o'sphere
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
You can do a number if interesting things. Trees that produce more than one kind of fruit. Potato plants that sprout tomatoes. Curious cacti.
The technique has more than novelty value. In the late nineteenth century, a louse (phylloxera) was inadvertantly imported to Europe, and it loved to feast on the roots of the wine grape plant (vitis vinifera). We wouldn't have wines from France, or Germany, or Italy, if the viticulturalists of the day hadn't grafted some of the vinifera stalks on to roots of more phylloxera-resistant species. That's right--your glass of Pinot Noir is Frankenfood.
Grafting can go awry, however. There was an incident in Tennessee a number of years ago involving a farmer who wanted his tomatoes to better cope with early fall frosts. He grafted a tomato vine to a local weed. Voila--tomatoes later in the season. His neighbour thought it was a great idea and performed the same trick. Unfortunately, when he shared the fruits of his labour with his family, they all ended up in the emergency ward with high fevers and hallucinations.
It turns out that the plant to which both farmers had grafted their tomatoes was jimsonweed (datura stramonium) which produces psychoactive chemicals in its leaves. Because of different pruning practices, the second farmer's tomatoes contained a much higher concentration of the active ingredient, leading to the poisoning. For more details, consult The Medical Detectives, Berton Roueche, Plume, 1991).
Despite the risks of unpredicted reactions (even after centuries of use), grafting is an accepted and essential part of modern agriculture. We don't have angry demonstrators storming our grocery stores demanding the removal of foods and wine because grafting has been around so long. There may be small risks associated with GM foods--but because of intense public scrutiny, GM foods will be better characterized and more frequently tested than anything else on your plate.
Manufacturers will shy away from introducing obvious potential allergens (peanut proteins and the like, for example) to products for human consumption. Most GM crops are designed to be infertile anyway, severely limiting their spread.
Tempest in a teapot, people. Move along. The ethical sense of agribusiness can be questioned, but not their greed. Simply put, they're going to be damned careful about doing anything that might expose them to ruinously costly lawsuits.
~Idarubicin