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

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?

[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?

[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: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: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: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.