Scientists Modify Organism With Artificial Amino Acid

IndigoDarkwolf writes "The Beeb reports that biologists Sebastian Greiss and Jason Chin have genetically modified a multicellular organism (Caenorhabditis elegans, a tiny worm) to combine an amino acid not found in nature into a custom-built protein. The protein created by their genetically-modified worm contained a dye which glows when exposed to UV light. While previous work showed that genetic modification could incorporate non-natural amino acids into custom proteins for single-celled organisms, this is the first time an entire animal has been modified."

Comments

Adruino Worm anyone?

[Anonymous Coward]

So... bets on how many years until we have enthusiast programmable critters? :)

Re:Adruino Worm anyone?

[interkin3tic]

They did reprogram the worms. No doubt people have done DIY genetics with these worms before too. It's not as easy as genetic splicing with yeast or ecoli, but enthusiasts could definitely make their own transgenic worms in their garage. If you buy or make your own PCR machine, that's probably the biggest barrier right there.

Re:Adruino Worm anyone?

[Samantha Wright]

Actually, it's a little trickier than that. Worms have to be microinjected. But that hasn't stopped people from trying to make worm engineering widely accessible. This is the seminal work on the topic, I believe.

Re:Adruino Worm anyone?

[EnderDom]

PCR machine's not much use without a polymerase. That's where having some e.coli with Taq expression construct comes in. But of course were I to take it out of the lab: I'd be arrested and the media might get hold of it and GM media shitstorm (with lashings of Pop Sci-Fi references) would ensue. Sometimes I am super tempted though. Would be cool to be able to run PCRs in my bedroom.

Prior art?

[Narcocide]

How is this different from those glowing Chineese pigs or those neon tetras with unnatural colors that are illegal in California?

Re:Prior art?

[Anonymous Cowar]

How is this different from those glowing Chineese pigs or those neon tetras with unnatural colors that are illegal in California?

Those involved taking a gene that created a naturally created protein using naturally occurring amino acids and then injected them, frankenstein style into another animal. These take an artificially modified gene that uses an artificial amino acid to create worms that glow. Did you read TFS?

Re:Prior art?

[EdZ]

Those spliced in existing genetic code. This involves code containing amino acids that are not found in nature.
Car analogy: Swapping the suspension from another car onto your own vs. machining your own suspension from scratch to a design not used on any other car.

Re:Prior art?

[interkin3tic]

The breakthrough here is not artificial biological fluorescence, which has been around for a long time. The breakthrough is also not that this is a fluorescent amino acid (as opposed to full proteins made up of many amino acids, like GFP, which is again what you're talking about), evidently those have been demonstrated for a few years. This is tricking an organism into -using- an artificial amino acid, a fluorescent one.

Being able to incorporate fluorescent amino acids into a protein -looks- pretty striking, but people have been able to get cells to attach a fluorescent protein onto other proteins for years. The fluorescence here was just an easy assay to tell if they had gotten the c elegans to use a different, entirely artificial building block. Fluorescent amino acids may turn out to be the biggest use for this discovery, but the real story here is that we have a new tool, not that the tool can be used to make organisms glow.

Re:Prior art?

[Narcocide]

I read it but I failed to comprehend it. Thank you for helping. (thanks to the other posts below helping clarify this for me as well)

Re:Prior art?

[NoMaster]

It's the "amino acid not found in nature" that's the story here, not the "dye which glows when exposed to UV light".

They've modified the DNA of a multi-celluar organism to produce a non-natural amino acid. It's been done before, yes, but only in single-celled organisms. The sequence is

1) Take a fluorescing protein
2) Modify the protein so it only glows when contains_custom_amino_acid == TRUE.
3) Insert protein sequence in DNA
4) PROFIT!

The glowing pigs, cats, dogs, and fish omit step #2.

Re:Prior art?

[AdmiralXyz]

The glowing Chinese pigs are using proteins and amino acids that already exist: we found the proteins in an existing animal, probably some deep-sea fish, then took the DNA responsible for the creation for those proteins, and spliced it into the genome of the pigs. Here, they decided on what protein they wanted ahead of time, with plain old chemistry, then crafted a custom DNA sequence for the purpose of creating that protein (apparently creating never-before-used amino acids in the process). Existing protein/DNA transplanted into new animal vs. new protein/DNA built from the ground up.

Here, let me karma whore and try my hand at one o' them car analogies: the first example is like taking the radio out of your truck and putting it in your Volvo, whereas the second example is designing an entirely new kind of playback machine, with the right interface and wires, then wiring it up to the Volvo.

Re:Prior art?

[geekoid]

Please read the book before referencing Frankenstein, you sound like an idiot.

Re:Prior art?

[RockDoctor]

Spoilsport! Do you want to undermine the whole of Slashdot by insisting that people actually know what they're talking about?

I'm a little uneasy about this

[e9th]

I don't mean like haha, "I, for one, welcome our new C. elegans overlords" or tagging the story with whatcouldpossiblygowrong. I mean The Stand. Could somebody with a reasonable knowledge of GM organisms please offer some reassurance that this technique couldn't backfire in some disastrous way?

Re:I'm a little uneasy about this

[e9th]

If I could answer you specifically, I probably wouldn't have asked in the first place. My degree is in CS. It just seems that modifying multicellular organisms with non-natural amino acids might create a whole new class of threat. Say, a hardy, prolific insect with an insatiable appetite for all cereal grasses. Could there be naturally mutated single celled organism that would do the same? I suppose, but now the possibilities are growing.

Re:I'm a little uneasy about this

[Kittenman]

I sort of agree with the AC - everything can backfire in some disastrous way. My daughter's piano teacher fell down some steps and bruised her arm. I got a splinter in my finger putting logs into the woodburner. Question is, is the risk worth it?

IMHO, yes.

Re:I'm a little uneasy about this

[Iron (III) Chloride]

I don't mean like haha, "I, for one, welcome our new C. elegans overlords" or tagging the story with whatcouldpossiblygowrong. I mean The Stand. Could somebody with a reasonable knowledge of GM organisms please offer some reassurance that this technique couldn't backfire in some disastrous way?

IAABIT (I am a biologist in training) and based on my knowledge, there's honestly nothing to worry about for this, because it is fundamentally a chemical change. You're gaining the ability to use amino acids other than the 20 that naturally exist, but at that low of a level all that you're gaining is more biochemical versatility. You're going to have to go much higher in terms of complexity and organization before you get something that could potentially pose a danger or what not.

It's sort of like changing one of the instructions in the instruction set of your CPU - would you be worried about malware at that point? I wouldn't say so. It's at the much higher levels that you would start to become worried when these fundamental chemical units (or instructions) start getting combined in novel ways that are potentially dangerous that you would really begin to worry about things. A simple categorical change in amino acid may or may not alter the large-scale properties of macromolecules which are responsible for the majority of biological function. This advance will simply give us the ability to have a greater range of freedom on which to conduct genetic engineering by opening up the possibility of using non-natural amino acids (and "natural" just means one of the 20 amino acids who happen to have been adopted for use by the first biological life forms) - it doesn't really say what the end phenotype will be because that depends on the way the amino acid is used.

Hope that made sense.

Re:I'm a little uneasy about this

[interkin3tic]

I mean The Stand. Could somebody with a reasonable knowledge of GM organisms please offer some reassurance that this technique couldn't backfire in some disastrous way?

Well, c.elegans doesn't cause disease, they eat bacteria. They are also far, far, far too macroscopic to be airborne even if they were to suddenly take a liking to human flesh.

As far as assurances that this technique couldn't backfire, there are nearly infinite ways that absolutely anything could backfire if you don't look at probability. Turning on your car could backfire in that the engine might explode due to a defect, could explode due to some quirk of quantum physics, could produce through the burning of hydrocarbons a new microorganism that would cause the end of the world. All fairly unlikely.

The best way to reassure you might be that biologists have, for years, been fooling around with the genetics of C. elegans. A lot. During a lab rotation a few years ago, I introduced an HIV protein into worms. Thus far I have not died a horrible death. One common technique to look for genes involves soaking the worms in mutagens. The goal being to get a worm with a mutation in one of its genes, for every single gene in the worm genome. That's a lot of completely random genetic fiddling. We're not juggling with vials of ebola here. With this specific case, this is an artificial amino acid. If the worm got out, it wouldn't find any of that amino acid, it would just be a normal worm basically.

With GMO, the most down-to-earth concern is that the mutations will get out into the population. That's not really a concern with these worms. They evolve so quickly that the lab strains are probably obsolete, having been used since the 50s or so, and they really don't affect us eating bacteria as they do. Weeds becoming resistant to roundup are exponentially more of a concern than genetically modified c.elegans.

Re:I'm a little uneasy about this

[structural_biologist]

Well, let's say these engineered worms escape into the environment. 1) the paper does not show whether the changes they made to the worm's genome are heritable, so the worm's offspring might not be able to incorporate the unnatural amino acids and the trait might go away after the escaped engineered worms die. Even if the trait is heritable, the paper suggests that the gene cassette they engineered into the worm gets lost from the genome over time, so after a few generations, the trait would likely be lost. 2) these worms do not have the ability to synthesize the unnatural amino acids on their own. They incorporate the unnatural amino acids into their proteins only when the researchers feed the worms large amounts of the unnatural amino acid. Without a source of unnatural amino acids, they are just slightly broken versions of a normal C. elegans worm.

Does this make you feel any better?

Re:I'm a little uneasy about this

[c0lo]

IANAB.
Suppose an alga with a gene containing an "unnatural" aminoacid escapes the enclosure and start multiplying (thus producing more of that unnatural aminoacid). What would happen to organisms that feed on that algae? Or just... I don't know... inhale it in the act of respiration?

Re:I'm a little uneasy about this

[c0lo]

TFA - with my emphasis

But Dr Chin says any artificial amino acid could be chosen to produce specific new properties. Dr de Bono suggests the approach could now be used to introduce into organisms designer proteins that could be controlled by light.

On the "bright side" - some designer CART-s activated by shining a laser inside the ear?

Re:I'm a little uneasy about this

[FreakyGreenLeaky]

Your post reminds me of the DoomSayers wailing about the imminent demise of humanity when the tech for test-tube babies was being developed way back when.

I'm not saying don't be concerned about disasters, but geez, there are other things to worry about in this sad world of ours.

Does this http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2011/antiviral-0810.html also fill you with dread?

Re:I'm a little uneasy about this

[tibit]

Nothing much. I'm recalling from HS biology a good 15 years ago, but here's what I remember: In case of animals with intestines, the amino acids would likely be transported into the absorptive cells in the lining of small intestine. I don't think that the transport mechanism is very selective. Once there, they get reexported into the bloodstream. Assuming that the presence of that new amino acid doesn't somehow destroy the absorptive cells in your gut, you're OK up to this point.

Then the amino acids can be used for various things. They could be used for energy (as a last resort), but some particular ones are useless for that -- I have no idea whether the artificial one would be good for that. They could be used for building proteins, but since the feeding organism doesn't have any code to produce proteins that use such amino acids, they'd be perhaps useless here. Some amino acids can be synthesized inside of a cell, and some can't, and those latter ones are called essential amino acids and must come from the diet. The new amino acids would be useless in that respect -- they'd certainly be nonessential, and would remain so. I.e. there's no way I could think of that would "poison" an organism and make an amino acid essential that wasn't so before -- it couldn't make an animal chemically dependent on it, at least not in the metabolic sense. Perhaps there'd be some neural mechanisms that could be triggered, but that's a whole different ballgame.

About my only worry is that the new amino acid would inhibit some of the pathways that are needed to maintain normal operation of the feeder organism's cells. So it may have a toxic effect.

Since I have pretty much no clue what I'm talking about, if someone else could chime in, I'm all ears.

Re:I'm a little uneasy about this

[geekoid]

It can't backfire in a disastrous 'the stand' way.

You want specifics? can't really do that in a /. post. so read up o the science. The actual science, not random returns from a google search.

Re:I'm a little uneasy about this

[RockDoctor]

Suppose an alga with a gene containing an "unnatural" aminoacid escapes the enclosure and start multiplying (thus producing more of that unnatural aminoacid).

Woah there!

Your second phrase requires an organism significantly different to the one described in your first phrase.

Specifically you are assuming that the use of a novel amino acid (or any other particular molecule) necessarily implies that that organism has the entire set of biochemical pathways and control genetics to manufacture that molecule from scratch.

Since you're talking about an engineered organism, then it takes deliberate and quite substantial effort to fit those new biochemical pathways into your organism.

I'm trying to think of a car analogy.
OK, here's one.
It's a century ago ; you have a steam-powered car that burns a slurry of coal dust (from the county next door) in vegetable oil (from the farmer over the hill). It works ; it does things ; great ; fine ; marvellous. Now you engineer a change and add an engine that has combustion take place in the expansion cylinders of your steam engine, and need no external boiler. BUT, it requires a processed consumable which has to be imported from a mistrustful monarchy on the other side of the world.
You then make all sorts of incremental changes to your vehicle with an "internal combustion engine", but you still have no mechanism in your usage environment for manufacturing the essential new fuel. The fuel has become an external dependency.

Substitute C.elegans for the steam car ; the new amino acid for the petroleum ... and your new organism has a problem analogous to developing the entire hydrocarbon industry, from seismic prospecting to an infrastructure for distributing the processed chemical. And it's got to do this in the teeth of intense competition from it's immediate neighbours. (Remember Darwin's point that your closest competitors are most likely to be your closest relatives, because both their needs and their capabilities are most similar to yours.)

An alternative viewpoint ... say the design of the new bio-laser powered shark derived with this wonderful new amino acid technology does contain all the biochemistry necessary to manufacture the amino acids ... but it requires molybdenum in gram/day quantities. Great ; you again have hard-to-get round dependencies built into your new organism. Pat on the back!

(I was toying with pink flamingos as an analogy. They get their pink colour from crustacean shell pigments manufactured by their food (shrimps). Feed them on budgie food and they could be perfectly healthy, but not pink.)

FYI : molybdenum is a bioactive metal, and might actually be an essential human nutrient. It's no great problem to fall into these dependencies accidentally.

Does This Present a Dilemma?

[ideonexus]

So far in the Genetically Modified Foods debate, I've been arguing that, since the genes spliced into GMOs are genes that already exist in nature, GMOs really aren't the nightmarish cancer-causing foodstuffs people make them out to be and that GM foods are the only way we're going to support a population of 7 billion people on this planet just as nitrogen-fixing fertilizer caused a green revolution that allows us to support our current population size.

So what happens when we start splicing genes into organisms that don't exist in nature? When companies start wanting to work this stuff into our food, and the FDA and courts roll over to allow it unquestioningly, then I think I might start to side with the anti GM Food people. This could be a second green revolution, but with America gutting its science programs, there will be no one to make sure this stuff doesn't have horrible health repercussions.

Re:Does This Present a Dilemma?

[wierd_w]

On the other hand, creating engineered novel protiens and biomechanics could open the doors to a whole range of "Very very cool" things.

Take for instance, slime molds modified to produce long chain carbon nanofiber as they crawl along, or plants able to extract energy from a wider frequency band than is currently possible with photosynthesis (Or even to do so more efficiently.)

Simply because the substance is artifically engineered does not necessarily mean it is going to cause problems. (and if it does, it will just spark a flash of evolutionary progression in impacted species, much like antibiotics have done for microbes.)

I can see this being used in foodstuffs, especially where Monsanto is involved, but where I see this really shining is in materials science. Microbes are the most efficient nano-machines in existence. Being able to custom program them to make novel substances and materials is a fundemental leap on technology.

Re:Does This Present a Dilemma?

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

So far in the Genetically Modified Foods debate, I've been arguing that, since the genes spliced into GMOs are genes that already exist in nature, GMOs really aren't the nightmarish cancer-causing foodstuffs people make them out to be

The problem with that line of reasoning is that we've had hundreds of thousands of years to figure out what plants are safe to eat. When you mix-and-match genes, be they totally artificial or transplants from other species, you don't know what the outcome will be. It's entirely possible that this brand new combination will produce un-expected side-effects.

Obvious side-effects like producing massive quantities of arsenic will get noticed before it ever leaves the lab. But something more subtle that doesn't manifest in any symptoms until ten years later and then only in certain people, perhaps those with a certain type of allergy, could easily become wide-spread in our food supply, affecting millions of people long after it was too late to do anything about it.

Just because its "natural" doesn't mean it's safe.

Re:Does This Present a Dilemma?

[WillDraven]

Boo fucking Hoo. Some people might possibly have health problems we can't foresee in ten years is your reasoning to stop the advancement of biology and nutrition science? I am so sick of the whole "we can't do anything that might possibly be dangerous" attitude. Shit Happens. People Die. Live with it (or don't, if you're one of the unlucky few). If you want to live in an absolutely safe environment your local mental institution has a nice padded cell for you. Out here in the real world us human beings have to take risks to get anywhere in life.

Re:Does This Present a Dilemma?

[Okian Warrior]

Yes, it's a dilemma.

On the one hand, GM foods might pose a risk somewhere in the future, but lots of really smart people have been trying to quantify and identify what these risks might be, to no effect.

On the other hand, people are starving *now*. I'm all for safety, but can we eat first?

People are scared because in the past we've made mistakes. For example, DDT accumulates, and causes problems higher up in the food chain. On the other hand, DDT was not fatal, it was not an extinction-level event, we noticed the risks and stopped.

It's the future, we've learned a great deal, and we're being more careful. It's much less *likely* that we'll be making these types of mistakes overall. Mistakes will still be made, but that's inevitable whatever we do. When it happens, we'll identify the causes, change the conditions and move on.

I'm willing to allow the possibility that a percentage of the world's poor will have some as-yet-undiscovered problem (which may be an inconvenience or may be life-threatening) in exchange for reducing the immediate suffering of massive populations of people *now*.

It's a typical risk/reward tradeoff, something we make every day, such as driving a car. Take the path where the benefits outweigh the risks.

Re:Does This Present a Dilemma?

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Boo fucking Hoo. Some people might possibly have health problems we can't foresee in ten years is your reasoning to stop the advancement of biology and nutrition science

So, let me get this straight. A million people die of cancer 15 years down the road because of an unintended side-effect of say, GMO corn, and you think that's no big deal?

Out here in the real world us human beings have to take risks to get anywhere in life.

Yeah, why don't we do away with the FDA completely? Just put anything and everything on the market and let people decide on their own, amiright?

Re:Does This Present a Dilemma?

[physicsphairy]

Today's genes 'that don't exist in nature' are tomorrow's genes that do. Organisms naturally acquire new genes and new gene combinations; hence, evolution. I don't see why we would trust random cosmic radiation with unknowable mutagenic capacity more than we would trust the carefully tested and purposeful work of dedicated scientists. Nor is it really relevant to its biological effects whether a new protein comes from a lab or a paramecium--it's going to be equally alien to our anatomy either way.

All in all, you should probably be less concerned about the weirder stuff. The bigger and weirder the protein, the less likely it is to interfere with normal cellular processes.

Re:Does This Present a Dilemma?

[bane2571]

?So, let me get this straight. A million people die of cancer 15 years down the road because of an unintended side-effect of say, GMO corn, and you think that's no big deal?

Evert time I clap, a child dies from starvation[/bono], GMO crops have the potential to greatly increase food yields. I'd say the gain far outweighs the risk. That is only with the known benefits. That is the beauty of science, keep moving and you discover NEW good things to balance any new bad things. Stop moving and the best you can say is you only need to suffer known bad things.

Re:Does This Present a Dilemma?

[cpricejones]

As the article notes, this has been done with all sorts of amino acids in E. coli. In fact, "amber suppression" is a fairly common way to introduce any amino acid you want into your protein. Commonly they are uniquely reactive amino acids for labeling a protein site-specifically for experiments to gain insight into the protein's function. (I'm actually doing this in my lab to look at the function of an HIV protein.)

With E. coli, introducing the extra amino acid doesn't usually confer an advantage because 1) the extra amino acid cannot be synthesized by E. coli, 2) even if you give E. coli the pathway to make that amino acid, proteins wont really need the extra amino acid (there is no selective advantage). This is a much bigger change than just introducing a gene into an organism—it's giving the organism an extra amino acid. 3) Organisms like methanogenic bacteria, which naturally encode an extra amino acid pyrrolysine, have this extra amino acid because their energy source relies upon (i.e., methane fixation, a rather difficult chemical reaction, requiring an electrophile).

So I would argue that this type of technology is rather safe. The organism would have to make a pretty huge leap to actually use the amino acid for a different purpose.

Re:Does This Present a Dilemma?

[reasterling]

I once heard, though I personaly can't verify, that we don't have a food production problem, but rather a distribution and economic problem.

Re:Does This Present a Dilemma?

[donscarletti]

Humans have been making mistakes for millenia: leaded petrol, tobacco, untreated industrial emissions, bloodletting, routine X-ray overdoses, CFCs, MRSA, feral cats/pigs/ferrets, dropping Agent Orange on forests, RMS Titanic, etc. We're stronger than ever for it. You know what? I'm happy I'm not in a forest fighting bears, a farm tilling soil, a factory shovelling coal or any of the horrific lives that shortsighted morons at the time felt were good enough. I dearly hope my great great great grandchildren will be happy they don't live the shitty existence we have now. If some mad scientist accidently kills a few thousand people here or there to get there, so be it.

Re:Does This Present a Dilemma?

[interkin3tic]

That's been more true of most of recorded history than it is true now. When farmers were cultivating maize centuries ago, blindly mixing genes, they weren't optimizing for least carcinogenic or best for health. They were, in fact, mixing and matching without knowing what the outcome was going to be.

GMOs, on the other hand, are tested for health effects when they're made.

Furthermore, when you modify a strain of crops, you only are trying to modify it a little. When you use artificial selection to change your crops, you're usually changing quite a bit to get the desired outcome. The end result is that genetically modified crops have been found to be much more similar to their parent strain than "natural" strains are to each other. Source.

Re:Does This Present a Dilemma?

[Walkingshark]

Well, considering the green revolution and GMO foods have already given us the soy and corn based diet that is slowly fattening us up and then killing us (due to all the diseases related to either obesity or increased inflammation), I kind of feel like maybe we're already in deep enough shit. Fucking around with our food at a fundamental chemical level seems like a whole new level of wtf. Then again, people gotta eat. I don't know what the solution is, other than buy less useless shit from Wal Mart and spend more money buying higher quality food.

Re:Does This Present a Dilemma?

[rossdee]

We save energy by not needing the little light in the fridge.

Re:Does This Present a Dilemma?

[WillDraven]

I'm not saying we shouldn't try to avoid it. By all means run the models and animal trials and don't approve anything for human trials that looks like it could kill tons of people. All I'm saying is if the science of today says it's safe, we should give it a chance. Especially if it's the sort of thing that's going to SAVE millions from starvation, but even if it's not! Accidents work both ways you know. Those guys goofing off making glowing pets might be the ones to stumble on a cure for those cancers you seem to be so worried about. You can't shut down a whole line of research just because your gut tells you it could be dangerous.

We should be encouraging creative thinking and new areas of development. We should also be encouraging basic rigor and safety protocols, of course, punishing those who act irresponsibly. But we can't punish those who honestly tried to safely make the world a better, more interesting, more awesome place, and ran into some unforeseeable consequences.

Imagine if Fleming had developed penicillin, started the antibiotic revolution saving countless lives, and then we discovered 20 years later that it caused anyone who had taken it to drop dead suddenly years down the line. Should we have lynched him for giving those people who probably would have died of infection 20 more years of happy healthy life? When the science of the day had NO WAY of knowing that would happen?

  Should we test every new drug and GMO food by giving it to a small sample of people and locking them in a bubble for the rest of their natural life to control the experiment and make sure nothing bad happens to them, just on the off chance it could kill millions even though there is no known mechanism for it to do that? Even when NOT releasing it means millions of people will definitely die from starvation or disease?

My point is, sometimes, shit happens. Yes we should try to avoid it where possible, but not to the extent that we never learn anything new, such as WHY shit happens and how to prevent it.

Re:Does This Present a Dilemma?

[olau]

"or plants able to extract energy from a wider frequency band than is currently possible with photosynthesis (Or even to do so more efficiently.)"

This sounds a bit bonkers, not entirely, but still. Presumably, if a wider frequency band was beneficial for growth, plants would have evolved that trait many million years ago?

Re:Does This Present a Dilemma?

[tibit]

I'd worry about the opposite effect of America gutting the science programs: that you have uneducated masses of pitchfork-wielding idiots who live in the 21st century and have about as much knowledge about the world as the medieval peasants had. And they go to the polls and vote.

Re:Does This Present a Dilemma?

[tibit]

Rimshot!

Re:Does This Present a Dilemma?

[geekoid]

Basically your fear starts where you knowledge drops off.

Any horrible repercussion will need to be so dramatic, it will be noticeable wright away.

"The technique, they say, could give biologists "atom-by-atom control" over the molecules in living organisms.

That means control and testing will be easier and and better.

Re:Does This Present a Dilemma?

[geekoid]

In nature , plants and animals mix and match gene all the fucking time, and with no controls.

Now we can make changes with laser like precision, with controls and knowledge. That is better.
Tomorrow, nature could make a breed of carrot that sin't good to eat. In fact, it happens often, but they are weeded out through cultivation.

Just because it's man made, doesn't make it "unsafe"

Re:Does This Present a Dilemma?

[geekoid]

SO it's OK to let million of people die today for some highly improbably risk?

"Yeah, why don't we do away with the FDA completely? Just put anything and everything on the market and let people decide on their own, amiright?"

See, right there. Clearly you have no argument and are working with pure ignorant emotions. DO you know why I'm not worried? Controls, knowledge, benefits.
Yeah, take all the controls away then I would be concerned. But that's not what happens.

"...should demean themselves as good citizens."

Logical fallacies to not make for a good online citizen.

Re:Does This Present a Dilemma?

[geekoid]

"DDT accumulates, and causes problems higher up in the food chain."
haha, there isn't any evidence of this, and the statements made in 'silent spring' were completely made up. As in they had NO scientific baking simply Speculation.

The thinning shell argument was a great case of confusing correlation with causation. I could just as easily say the thinning was cause bad leaded fuel. actually that's more plausible, but still its just speculation. That said 'Silent Spring' never argues for the ban of DDT, just its moderation. Not the environmental advocacy groups have ever been one for facts.

Banning normal controlled use of DDT was a horrible mistake. There are million of dead people because of it.

Re:Does This Present a Dilemma?

[geekoid]

"given us the soy and corn based diet that is slowly fattening us up and then killing u"
no it's not, stop being stupid.

Corn and soy is fine. Putting to many calories in your mouth is the problem.

" Fucking around with our food at a fundamental chemical level seems like a whole new level of wtf."
No it's not. If you think what we do is crazy, you should study on what nature does. It's mixing and maxing cross species gene all the fucking time.

But no, be alarmist and ignorant.

Re:Does This Present a Dilemma?

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

DO you know why I'm not worried? Controls,

What controls? Like the 90 days of testing Monsanto did on their gmo corn? Or the zero days of testing that the FDA requires for new gmo foods? Or the lone(!) human feeding study of gmo foods? Or how about the zero epidemiological studies of general gmo food consumption?

I got into this argument for one reason -- to show that the "it's natural so it must be safe" argument doesn't stand up to scrutiny. But after seeing the massive fanboism here you all have caused me to do just the barest minimum of research on your claims and what I found has convinced me that this GMO stuff is seriously under-tested. That's pretty fucked up for something that over 90% of the US population unwittingly consumes on a regular basis.

Re:Does This Present a Dilemma?

[interkin3tic]

The problem with your analysis is that you've picked an arbitrary criteria - the quantity of different metabolites. That criteria says nothing about the quality of the metabolites.

I'm not an expert, but I think it does actually. The lecture on the subject that I saw, the conclusion was that aside from the metabolite or metabolites that were intentionally changed with the genetic modifications, the GMO potatoes were nearly identical to the potato lines they were derived from. Between "natural" strains, on the other hand, there were hundreds or thousands of differences.

I see no reason to assume that the small number of metabolites changed with GMO would be the toxic ones. Seems like you're more likely to get a toxic enrichment with the natural crossing, since so many more genes are blindly changed. At least that's my hypothesis unless you know of a specific reason why tropane alkaloids would be enriched in GMOs and then not tested for.

Re:Does This Present a Dilemma?

[wierd_w]

Evolution favors local optima, not general optima.

Photosynthetic lifeforms use either anthrocyanins, or chlorophylls. (Or both)

Each reacts to a different band of energy. Chloropyll reacts predominantly to yellow and red light, but totally ignores other kinds of light, like UV, or blue light. (Chlorophyll does faintly flouresce under uv light, but does not use it for photosynthesis).

Making plantlife that can absorb even just the whole of the visible spectrun (which would make them black instead of green) would mean a great deal for renewable fuel production. Being able to harvest very high energy photons, like UV even more so. (While UV light constitutes less than 3% of our solar spectrum, the individual photons themselves pack considerably more energy. That is why UV is ionizing radiation.)

Properly used, "black algae" would greatly increase the energy production capability of biofuels per square meter space used.

Nature did not produce such a thing because nature only finds 'good enough' solutions. The algae we have gets enough energy to thrive, and is not under any pressure to become more efficient.

Re:Does This Present a Dilemma?

[HiThere]

I *am* opposed ot GM foods, but largely because of patent law. Most of the technical problems encountered so have easy technical solutions. Legal problems are something else. The laws might have been specially designed to allow corporations to commit any evil they choose and escape from paying for the damage caused. This coupled with patent laws causes me to be strongly opposed to GM foods, and to many other GM products.

Re:Does This Present a Dilemma?

[HiThere]

It's not even that unexpectable. When plants & animals have their genomes streamlined, and are designed to grow faster, one thing that's often removed is some of the vitamins traditionally made by the plant. This is often well known. (E.g., there are reports that the GM salmon being proposed are skimpy in some of the omega oils. Vital? No. Important? Yes.) But a real problem is that often a complete analysis isn't done, and we don't yet know what is needed to keep people healthy.

Now this wouldn't necessarily be all that bad, but the corporations have lobbied to get requirements that GM foods be so labeled forbidden. So you can't necessarily tell what you're getting. And this is already the current state. If GM foods become more prevalent, one can expect it to become more extensive. After all, it is to the benefit of those who control wealth and power.

As a result of this (and of patent law) I am generally opposed to GM foods. The technical capability is there to produce wonders, but those who control the decisions seem to generally have other interests in mind.

Re:Does This Present a Dilemma?

[HiThere]

This is, at least often, the problem. OTOH, it's also occasionally true that there *IS* a shortfall in production. But it's not generally clear that GMO foods would solve the problem.

E.G.: In northern India the farmers are depleting the water table faster that it is replenished. If they grew wheat instead of rice this would be less of a problem, as wheat requires a lot less water. What's actually being done is improvements in techniques for monitoring soil moisture, so they won't water quite as much.

Still, "Golden rice" is a good answer to a real problem. If it weren't for the legal complications I'd consider GMO foods to be a reasonable bet. As it is, however, they look like a tool whose main effect will be to concentrate wealth and power in the hands of people who historically have shown little or no interest in bettering the human condition. (This doesn't inherently mean that they're opposed to it, merely that they don't count it on their balance sheets at all.)

Re:Does This Present a Dilemma?

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

I see no reason to assume that the small number of metabolites changed with GMO would be the toxic ones.

No more reason to assume that the small number of metabolites changed would not be the toxic ones. The fact is that a criteria that is just simply counting the changes does not say anything one way or the other about the nature of the changes. Its like saying this bucket of oranges is identical to that bucket of avocados because the number of fruits in each is the same.

Re:Does This Present a Dilemma?

[interkin3tic]

You're missing my point: MORE METABOLITES ARE CHANGED WITH NATURAL METHODS. GMOs involve targeted modifications. Instead of 12 metabolites changed with GMO, artificial selection (practiced by farmers since prehistoric times) produces hundreds or thousands of changed metabolites.

To go with your comparison, it's like a bucket of ten oranges and a bucket of 400 apples. Each fruit independently has a very slight chance of being poisoned. You're saying "Don't eat the bucket of oranges, they could be poisoned. Eat the apples."

Re:Does This Present a Dilemma?

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

You're missing my point: MORE METABOLITES ARE CHANGED WITH NATURAL METHODS.

No, I got it the first time. You believe that all metabolites are of equal risk, so the more difference there is, the higher the risk. Is that a fair restatement of your premise?

Re:Does This Present a Dilemma?

[interkin3tic]

Sure, though I think that neither one carries much risk, given that testing has been done in both cases.

Re:Does This Present a Dilemma?

[mattack2]

What if the evolution had found a local maxima in terms of frequency band usage? If changing a _whole bunch_ of genes at a time caused the ability to "extract energy from a wider frequency band than is currently possible with photosynthesis", but only changing one or a few at a time was worse than the existing plants?

Re:Does This Present a Dilemma?

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Sure,

Good now you understand that I totally understood your argument from post 1.

You are wrong. Quality is what matters, not quantity. See my original example where the levels of single metabolite out of a thousand is all it takes to kill you. In other words, focusing on the numbers doesn't prove anything either way.

I think that neither one carries much risk, given that testing has been done in both cases.

I suggest you look into the kind of testing that gets done for GMO crops. All the GMO fanboism in this thread caused me to go looking. So far, what I've found is that testing is minimal. It looks like Monsanto's testing of their GMO corn (which is in practically every American's diet and has been for about a decade now) seems to be nothing more than limited animal testing for no more than 90 days. Furthermore there have been exactly zero epidemiological studies of the effects of GMO corn (or any other GMO foodstuffs) on the population in general and actual human feeding trials of any GMO products have been extremely limited, so far I've only found one.

Apparently the FDA recently created new GMO testing requirements, at least for actual animals like salmon, I don't know about crops and I'd be surprised if stuff already on the market wasn't grandfathered -- known carcinogenic pesticides on the market back in 1972 were grandfathered when DDT was banned. But even these new testing requirements seem to be pretty lax, but I have yet to find the exact requirements to say for sure.

Re:Does This Present a Dilemma?

[interkin3tic]

You understand the core of the argument, but we seem to be disagreeing about the implications of it. I'm saying that the small number of metabolites changed with GMO means there are fewer chances that one is toxic.

It only takes one to kill you, sure, but traditionally farmers change thousands of them at a time. Now we're only changing a few of them. Fewer chances that a carcinogenic one is going to be increased. How is that less safe?

Re:Does This Present a Dilemma?

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

It only takes one to kill you, sure, but traditionally farmers change thousands of them at a time. Now we're only changing a few of them. Fewer chances that a carcinogenic one is going to be increased. How is that less safe?

For one thing they were cross-breeding plants that were generally both human edible to begin with. The GMO guys are deliberately splicing together food crops with genes from non-food crops.

For another thing, traditionally farmers did their own crops, so one deadly mutant wasn't going to end up in the daily meals of hundreds of millions of people - good cross-breeds would still take decades to be widely adopted by other farmers as the new breed proved it self.

Re:Does This Present a Dilemma?

[Walkingshark]

So, just to be sure I understand, your argument is "nuh uh!"
Well shit, I'm convinced. Thanks for setting me straight.

Re:Does This Present a Dilemma?

[HiThere]

I've heard marvelous things about golden rice. The others I don't know about. I'd like to taste a "rainbow papaya". I have my doubts that it's taste would be up to that of a ripe Hawaiian papaya, but as I no longer live in Hawaii, I no longer taste those anyway. (The stuff you can buy in the stores here doesn't even seem to be the same fruit. And I mean the ones imported from Hawaii. The Mexican papaya are clearly quite different, but, if they were picked ripe, they might actually turn out to be edible. As it is, frozen papaya chunks are closer than any fresh fruit I can buy. Sorry for the digression.)

The Honeysweet plum sounds interesting, but as I said, I don't know anything about it. The biocassava sounds useful rather than interesting. (I'm not a big tapioca fan, but I know that in many places cassava is a staple starch.)

But: Who holds the patents? Are the farmers allowed to harvest the seed for replanting? Those are the first two questions I look at.

Re:Does This Present a Dilemma?

[ChromeAeonium]

I'd like to taste a "rainbow papaya".

If you've eaten papaya from Hawaii anytime in the last decade or so you already have. Having never been to Hawaii I don't know how the taste of a shipped papaya compares to a fresh one but I doubt any difference can be attributed to the transgene...variety, freshness, time harvested, ect sure, but not the single extra protein, a viral coat protein likely to be present in higher quantity in non-GMO varieties.

Who holds the patents? Are the farmers allowed to harvest the seed for replanting?

I'm guessing the University of Hawaii, and IIRC, you can save the seeds of the Rainbow papaya. Golden Rice too, when it's approved, although you might have to pay a licensing fee if you're in a developed country. It really isn't that big of an issue there though. Obviously in developing countries where seed sources might be too expensive or just not there that's an issue, but farmers, in general, haven't saved seed for decades, preferring the superior vigor of hybrid seed (hybrids and GMOs are of course different things, but since most GMOs are hybrids, lots of people confuse the genetic instability and unsuitability for replanting of hybrid seed with the licensing agreements of corporate made GMO seed), so that really isn't as big of a deal as it's made out to be.

What's with the glowing?

[Opportunist]

Seriously. Every time I hear about genes being crammed into some other species or amino acids being pushed where they "don't belong", something starts glowing. What's the deal with glowies, did they play too much WoW and now thing only if it glows it's epic or what?

Re:What's with the glowing?

[Taty'sEyes]

Haven't you watched a single b-horror flick - monsters glow! But seriously, I think it is so they can be quickly identified within a population... icbwt

Re:What's with the glowing?

[Iron (III) Chloride]

Basically this. Glowing is one of the most easily measurable markers, without the need for any fancy tools or followup experimental procedures other than perhaps your fluorescent microscope (the other would probably be viability, but that kills the organism which you may not actually want). There's a reason green fluorescent protein won the chem Nobel prize a few years back.

Re:What's with the glowing?

[maxume]

They want a demonstration of their result that has visual impact.

Re:What's with the glowing?

[structural_biologist]

In the case of this study, the researchers are tricking the worm to incorporate an unnatural amino acid in the place of a stop codon (TAG to be specific). The researchers created an reporter gene that codes for a red fluorescent protein (mCherry) after a TAG stop codon. If the worm is not able to incorporate the unnatural amino acid, the cell will stop producing the protein once it encounters the TAG stop codon and not produce the red fluorescent part of the reporter gene. Successful incorporation of the unnatural amino acid, however, allows the cell to bypass the TAG stop codon and produce the red fluorescent part of the reporter gene. So, even though the unnatural amino acid is not directly producing the fluorescence, seeing the worms glowing red means that the worm's cells were able to incorporate the unnatural amino acid successfully.

Re:What's with the glowing?

[Gaygirlie]

Tbh, I'd LOVE to have the ability to glow in the dark or in UV light. Damn, that'd be cool :D

Re:What's with the glowing?

[Opportunist]

Ugh... now I have that mental image of a gay porn looking like a scene from Star Wars stuck in my head.

So this is where the zombie virus comes from

[HangingChad]

I was wondering how the virus was going to get developed. Now we know.

Re:So this is where the zombie virus comes from

[geekoid]

Good news! When the come and eat your brain you will experience no loss what so ever.

Am I the only one....

[Anonymous Coward]

...who read 'orgasm' instead of 'organism'?

Re:Am I the only one....

[Cute Fuzzy Bunny]

Came here to say this.

So you're not the only one. There are at least two sick bastages.

Re:Am I the only one....

[Nidi62]

Yeah, that's what I thought as well. So you arent alone

Re:Does This Present a Dilemma? (Why yes it does.)

[conspirator23]

(and if it does, it will just spark a flash of evolutionary progression in impacted species, much like antibiotics have done for microbes.)

This seems like a good time to point out that one way of "sparking" evolutionary progression is killing off 95% of a population. Given the likelihood of homo sapiens counting among the "impacted species," I'd have to ask you if you like your odds?

Glowing for tracing

[damn_registrars]

Seriously. Every time I hear about genes being crammed into some other species or amino acids being pushed where they "don't belong", something starts glowing. What's the deal with glowies, did they play too much WoW and now thing only if it glows it's epic or what?

Glowing is a way for scientists to monitor gene expression. You can't really watch it on its own, so you incorporate the gene you are working with with a fluorescent protein. Then the gene you are interested in will be expressed with the fluorescent protein, allowing you to see when and where your gene is being expressed.

That also gives you a way to monitor the noise of the system; if you are trying to deploy something with good control but your critter glows green all the time, you need to adjust something.

And in case you weren't already familiar with it, the protein of choice for most of the "glowies" you describe is Green Fluorescent Protein (GFP) - a protein that is made naturally by some jellyfish. Some clever individuals isolated and manipulated it a while ago for biochemical work.

Re:Just say NO to GMO

[Gadget_Guy]

Chemistry is clean, is nice, will offer us so many modern conveniences! Now, decades later, our best minds are all saying, "Wow, we didn't think of that."

What crap. Whilst there may be side effects of long term build up of chemicals that are discovered after they are in use, it does not mean that we should forsake all chemicals "just in case". And it is not as if scientists do not put a lot of effort into determining the safety of chemicals. They will never have a 100% success rate, but benefits do outweigh the risks.

Cancer and heart disease of the big killers now, and not just of old people, but children too. Life expectancy for adults has not gone up drastically in the last two centuries, and most of that is due to sanitation and hygiene.

Cancer and heart disease were big killers in the past too, but we didn't understand them. A lot of things killed us in the past that we could not identify. That is why we needed to make up gods to attribute the causes. Just because we now have a better understanding of what is killing us, doesn't mean that these things didn't kill us in the past.

And where do you get the idea that life expectancy has not gone up? That is demonstrably wrong. Here are the stats from my neck of the woods. I would say that better nutrition and medicine plays a bigger part in this increase than sanitation and hygiene as you suggest. You know, the stuff that science gave us.

And all this is despite the extra chemicals, radiation, and automobiles that this century has brought us.

Re:Does This Present a Dilemma? (Why yes it does.)

[Creedo]

This seems like a good time to point out that one way of "sparking" evolutionary progression is killing off 95% of a population. Given the likelihood of homo sapiens counting among the "impacted species," I'd have to ask you if you like your odds?

The odds of us going extinct is 100%. The only question is how and when. The odds of some GM food introducing a fatal bit of DNA into the wild and causing our deaths is negligible at best. We are far more likely to kill ourselves simply by continuing our current consumption rates and mining out vital ecosystems.

HIV Research

[nbetcher]

Does this discovery have any affect on HIV research?

Re:HIV Research

[cpricejones]

Not really. It could allow future use of amber suppression in higher eukaryotes, esp those that are models for HIV / SIV study (primates, mice, cats/FIV). That is still far off.

Re:justin bieber is a scientist?

[MichaelKristopeitMom]

Mike, please get your ass to bed before I have to ground you from your computer for another week. Cower in my shadow some more, feeb. You're completely pathetic.

And somebody please call Fox Mulder!

[Reservoir Penguin]

This has project Purity Control written all over it.

Patents anyone?

[Errol backfiring]

It was a hard enough fight to keep genes un-patentable, and in some parts of the world that fight was even lost. What is the impact of non-natural genes in patentability? Is the fight open again?

Re:Just say NO to GMO

[Viol8]

"but benefits do outweigh the risks."

The benefits to whom? The animals who's sexuallity is being modified by oestrogen mimicing pthalate additives in plastic? What advantages are they getting from it exactly?

Yes, lets create proteins that won't break down

[Viol8]

..because no bacteria will be able to process the new amino acid. I'm sure if these build up in the enviroment there couldn't possibly be any problems. Oh no.

how long before

[hesaigo999ca]

How long before we get that cool black goo from spiderman 3?
I could use some of that!

Proof of creation

[xmorg]

Proof that it is possible for a higher life form to create/edit/delete a lessor life form.
Also proof of synthetic humanoids in the future.

Re:Proof of creation

[geekoid]

Troll.