What??? As anyone whith any knowledge of ecology and evolution will tell you, you don't have to go round transforming individual plants and or insects to fill a given population with a novel gene. If the gene is sufficiently beneficial to the organism, it will spread through the population very rapidly. Furthermore, speed is not too much of an issue. If the gene escapes across speicies there is no way of 'putting the genie back in the bottle'. There are ways of lowering the incidence of gene leakage. If you put the gene close to the centromere of a chromosome, crossover frequency is reduced and thus the gene is kept in the correct environment and under the correct controllers and promoters. Also the gene can be kept away from mobile regions of DNA that can lead to gene leakage and also be kept away from the regions of DNA that can make it susceptible to moving to another plant by means of viruses or bacteria (e.g. A. tumeficans - a bug that causes tumours in plants by inserting its dna into the plants dna). Unfortunately, scientists haven't perfected targetting techniques yet - it's all random. So you can get a plant with a gene that is ok to 'good' insects in generation one(but kills the 'bad' insects, then ten generations down the line, a crossover event has taken place that places the gene under different controller sequences and suddenly its concentrations are 100x higher and the ladybird population is vanishing. If the biotech companies weren't in such a hurry to make money on their patents, then the correct research could be done and the dangers vastly reduced. Basic rule of plant biotech: If its being done by a multinational, worry because its unlikely to be beneficial to the consumer and will be rushed to market with too few tests and shoddy work. Be afraid.
Most biochemists/genetecists etc would agree on one point - the media keep getting it badly wrong Two extremes seem to exist - the Wired 'anything goes' type attitude and the 'playing God' attitude. The problems are far more complex than they tend to be painted. So here's my tuppence worth: 1) there are definitely tangible benefits to GM foods. Whilst there has been little success with oral vaccines, imagine for a moment a banana that could planted, harvested and eaten to vaccinate against malaria. technically difficult, though not unfeasible; maybe not for malaria, but certainly for some dieases. Of course, the liklyhood of such a strain being developed and given freely to third world countries seems remote at the moment, given the state of modern biotech. Which brings me to my second point...
2) There are risks from gene leakage, as Steve Jones (the scientist in question) points out. There are also risks that stem from the current state of the art and inherent imprecisions in the current methodology. Ask any genetics specialist how they achieve precise targetted gene insertions in eukaryotes - they'll laugh at you (not v good at at the moment). So the question arises: do the benefits outweigh the risks? In the case of the RoundUp-resistant (pesitcide resistant) plants developed by Monsanto and rushed to market - no. In our hypothetical banana case - yes.
Anyway, this is getting too long. Will post and rant more later.
Slashdot Mirror
What???
As anyone whith any knowledge of ecology and evolution will tell you, you don't have to go round transforming individual plants and or insects to fill a given population with a novel gene. If the gene is sufficiently beneficial to the organism, it will spread through the population very rapidly. Furthermore, speed is not too much of an issue. If the gene escapes across speicies there is no way of 'putting the genie back in the bottle'. There are ways of lowering the incidence of gene leakage. If you put the gene close to the centromere of a chromosome, crossover frequency is reduced and thus the gene is kept in the correct environment and under the correct controllers and promoters. Also the gene can be kept away from mobile regions of DNA that can lead to gene leakage and also be kept away from the regions of DNA that can make it susceptible to moving to another plant by means of viruses or bacteria (e.g. A. tumeficans - a bug that causes tumours in plants by inserting its dna into the plants dna). Unfortunately, scientists haven't perfected targetting techniques yet - it's all random. So you can get a plant with a gene that is ok to 'good' insects in generation one(but kills the 'bad' insects, then ten generations down the line, a crossover event has taken place that places the gene under different controller sequences and suddenly its concentrations are 100x higher and the ladybird population is vanishing. If the biotech companies weren't in such a hurry to make money on their patents, then the correct research could be done and the dangers vastly reduced.
Basic rule of plant biotech:
If its being done by a multinational, worry because its unlikely to be beneficial to the consumer and will be rushed to market with too few tests and shoddy work. Be afraid.
Most biochemists/genetecists etc would agree on one point - the media keep getting it badly wrong
Two extremes seem to exist - the Wired 'anything goes' type attitude and the 'playing God' attitude. The problems are far more complex than they tend to be painted. So here's my tuppence worth:
1) there are definitely tangible benefits to GM foods. Whilst there has been little success with oral vaccines, imagine for a moment a banana that could planted, harvested and eaten to vaccinate against malaria. technically difficult, though not unfeasible; maybe not for malaria, but certainly for some dieases. Of course, the liklyhood of such a strain being developed and given freely to third world countries seems remote at the moment, given the state of modern biotech. Which brings me to my second point...
2) There are risks from gene leakage, as Steve Jones (the scientist in question) points out. There are also risks that stem from the current state of the art and inherent imprecisions in the current methodology. Ask any genetics specialist how they achieve precise targetted gene insertions in eukaryotes - they'll laugh at you (not v good at at the moment). So the question arises: do the benefits outweigh the risks?
In the case of the RoundUp-resistant (pesitcide resistant) plants developed by Monsanto and rushed to market - no.
In our hypothetical banana case - yes.
Anyway, this is getting too long.
Will post and rant more later.