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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."
The headline on this story seems misleading - the genes did not jump to soybeans from the corn, the genetically-modified corn was accidentally added to some unmodified soybeans.
AFAIK, genes don't have the ability to do an inter-species jump like that...
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Whatever happened to 'amber mutations' for this sort of genetically engineered 'drugs factory'? An amber mutation is one which will not kill the plant/animal with it, provided it gets some substance not commonly available in the environment. But if the susbtance is not provided then the organism simply dies.
It was originally used with lab and sealed-vat based organisms to protect against accidental releases, but it could easilly be applied to farm based plants. Since the kind of farming that uses genetically modified organisms also tends to use a significant quantity of pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizers it would be simple to add one more non-toxic chemical to the mix, without which the plants would simply die (or fail to reproduce). You could then deal with any problems by withdrawing the supplement, and any escapees would quickly die. There would still be a slight risk of genetic 'contamination' of nearby crops, but it would be much lower than at present.
If I were a cynical type I would suspect that biotechnology companies are counting on accidental contamination to make it impossible to ever go back to a 'GMO free' state, thus safeguarding their business. Another (cynical) alternative is that to build in a safeguard is tantamount to admitting that you *need* a safeguard, which would adversly affect their sales.
Sometimes it's hard not to be a cynic.
That "leader" of that African country didn't refuse the food aid because it was genetically altered. It was refused because he is using food as a weapon to starve out his opponents.
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Just do a google search on "Zimbabwe Food"
http://www.africaonline.com/site/Articles/1,3,5
http://www.alertnet.org/thefacts/reliefres
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20020605-23
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/21594
From the first URL.
"The Zimbabwe government has told some non-governmental organisations involved in food distribution to stop operations. Aid workers have been told they could be arrested if they continue to distribute food without being registered with the government."
Maybe I'm dense, but I don't understand the huge fear about genetically altered food. Sure it would be bad if say, a large number of plants were altered to take in oxygen and release CO2, but why can't I eat such a plant? It's not like my body is going to absorb their DNA, actually my enzymes and acids will break the food down and absorb the nutrients, then get rid of the waste. As long as a company can show that any genetic alterations do not make the plant produce poisons, what's the big deal? I've been wondering this for a while, and help would be appreciated.
Read farther down in the posts. Some leftover GM corn kernels were allowed to mature in fields which had been replanted with non-GM soybeans. The resulting harvest had soybean seeds mixed with a tiny amount of GM corn kernels.
The soybeans did not acquire genetic material from the corn.
It is my (possibly flawed) understanding that such a transfer might, might, conceivably (we're talking one in several million odds or so) happen with a viral vector, but such a virus would be considerably more likely to glom onto a completely different corn gene and transpose it. Even if the modified gene did jump, the virus carying the gene would have to infect one of the soybean's sex cells to be present in the end food product, or to be passed on.
Get off my virtual lawn, you damned virtual kids!
Wake up. Most plants and animals associated with agriculture are
- not native to the region in which they are grown
- heavily inbred and hardly recognizable
- displacing the "natural" biota
- a huge source of pesticides, fertilizers, and waste products
- heavily dependent on fossil fuel
Modified crops can and will turn sunlight into complex molecules for industry and medicine. There is already an addressed need to monitor our food supply for chemicals and pathogens. So new tests and controls are now necessary. So what?First entomology, then virology, and finally bioinformatics systems. Bugs follow me wherever I go.
The headline isn't just misleading, it's just plain wrong. The story is less than an hour old and there are already a fistful of comments pointing this out.
If any of the editors are reading this thread, the headline needs to be corrected!
BTW, I reread the summary a few times, and it seems that the person who submitted the story got it right. The poster makes no mention of any sort of horizontal gene transfer between the corn and soy, but only claims the crops were "accidentally mixed", which is what happened. It's Hemos who fscked this one up.
1. Their common ancestor had this piece of DNA. This is not improbable, but we are talking about pieces of DNA that aren't expressed (that's what introns are), so there is little or no evolutionary pressure on them, so one must explain why the closer relatives dumped them.
2. They same piece of DNA evolved independently in both species. Not very probable, see 1 - no pressure on introns, so convergence not very probable.
3. Horizontal gene transfer occured.
4. The phylogenetical tree is wrong. Well, it seems that however we arrange the tree, some introns do stick out.
Of course, this is not an established scientific proof, but it seems that scientists find more and more of evidence supporting point 3. By the way, crossbreeding is not the only possibility of HGT - viruses are capable of transferring genetic material (at least their own) between organisms, so they may be responsible for HGT. Again, google for 'introns' 'horizontal gene transfer'.
PS. Feel free to point out oversimplifications in the above post.