Sometimes I kick myself for being too busy to blog something I consider important; with all those jillions of sites out there, someone else is bound to have said what I wanted to say. But it seems I’m in luck. Everyone else seems to be lathered by that long god-bothering piece in the New York Times, so I have the new Terminator almost to myself.
Here’s the story. On 26 February the University of Connecticut’s press office put out a story about a “new tool to protect crops from modified genesâ€. Nice spin! UConn scientist Yi Li had invented a method “for eliminating all the transgenic genes from pollen and seeds if neededâ€. What Li’s group did was to create a new target for a system that recognizes a particular sequence of DNA and snips out the intervening genes. With the new target, they reported, engineered genes were snipped out every single time in more than 25,000 tests. And the tests were done on several different engineered genes. (At least, I think they were; I have not been able to get access to the full published article, yet.) As the scientists wrote in their abstract:
“The ‘GM-gene-deletor’ reported here may be used to produce ‘non-transgenic’ pollen and/or seed from transgenic plants and to provide a bioconfinement tool for transgenic crops and perennials, with special applicability towards vegetatively propagated plants and trees.â€
This could be very big. One of the objections to genetic manipulation of all sorts is that the engineered genes will escape and create superweeds. Li’s technology, he says, effectively removes the engineered genes from pollen and seeds, which would then be no different from unengineered pollen and seeds. No escape. The technique could also be used to excise the offending DNA from other edible products, such as fruits, thus knocking out another of the big objections, the safety of engineered foods.
Obviously one would expect those who object to GM crops to welcome Li’s hello-I-must-be-going genes with open arms. Obviously, one would be wrong. Actually, in the interests of fairness, they don’t seem to have noticed it yet. But I’m willing to bet they won’t welcome it, even though it could possibly answer some of their objections. The new system could even overcome the biggest objection to old-fashioned Terminator technology, that it would make farmers dependent on seed companies for their stocks, but it takes some chutzpah to advance that claim. Here’s the press release:
“With our technology,†says Hui Duan, one of Li’s former doctoral students and a co-author of the published research, “the seeds the farmers save will not have genetically-modified traits. The farmers would need to buy new seeds each year if they want the crops to have genetically-modified traits such as insect resistance or herbicide resistance. But if they did not want to do so or could not afford to do so, they would still be left with viable seeds to replant.â€
Clear? You want what the seed offers, buy it! You don’t, that’s fine, don’t buy it. As with all these spiffy seed company technologies, the whole point is to divorce the seed as product from the seed as means of production. Li’s technology, used this way, like Terminator is just a logical extension of F1 hybrids, which also rob the poor farmer of the ability to sponge forever on the seed company’s investment. Either way, the engineered genes are at least corralled to some extent, maybe more so with Li’s technique than with Terminator.
So I’ll be waiting — in vain, I expect — for the doom-mongers to adopt Li as they should have adopted Terminator before him. And in the meantime, I’ll continue to amuse myself by pointing out this illogicality. I did so on a blog called the Tao of Health, where I asked how biotechnology and genetic engineering “are threatening biodiversity and the world’s seeds†as author Ed Bremson claimed. And while I agree with him that “most biotechnology … is designed to enrich a handful of corporations†I still don’t see the logic of objecting to the corporations’ efforts to meet his objections.
I didn’t bother at Fold/Spindle/Mutilate 2.0, where a long and rambling post raises just about every objection to GM in the forlorn hope that maybe one will stick. If you regard a bit of foreign DNA in genebank corn samples “as the worst case of GMO contamination in crops ever reported in the world,†as author S’ra DeSantis seems to, you would think that anything that could reduce that contamination (beyond, of course, the genebank doing its job right) would be a boon. But no. And those noble campesinos, whose way of life will be destroyed by this “genetic pollution,†how will they continue to develop their beautifully adapted local varieties if the flow of genes among varieties is to be forbidden?
I know I’m banging my head against a brick wall. I know neither side actually gives a flying fuck for real research results or rationality. I know my ravings will not have the slightest influence on anybody. But still, I can’t help it; when I see people on both sides of the house hide their hypocrisy behind a veil of “science†it makes me want to bring a pox down on them all.
I’m back where I always am on these questions: informed choice. And by informed, I don’t mean scientifically informed. I mean given the information to exercise a choice. Labeling remains the answer. Compulsory labeling, with no weasel outs. When the gene jockeys have something they want me (as opposed to a farmer) to pay more for, you can bet they’ll want to tout its benefits. In the meantime, they keep their doings hidden from the ultimate decision-makers, the people who have to swallow the stuff.
Article: Keming Luo, Hui Duan, Degang Zhao, Xuelian Zheng, Wei Deng, Yongqin Chen, C. Neal Stewart Jr, Richard McAvoy, Xiangning Jiang, Yanhong Wu, Aigong He, Yan Pei, Yi Li (2007) ‘GM-gene-deletor’: fused loxP-FRT recognition sequences dramatically improve the efficiency of FLP or CRE recombinase on transgene excision from pollen and seed of tobacco plants. Plant Biotechnology Journal 5 (2), 263–374. doi:10.1111/j.1467-7652.2006.00237.x
Technorati Tags: genetic engineering, science
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Nice post, Jeremy. I am even more pro-choice. The market, not politicians, should decide which stuff gets labeled and which doesn’t. If consumers don’t demand labels, why should we force them down their throats? There are other sources of information besides labels, and labels are not necessarily the most efficient ones. As the anti-GM crowd would say, traditional agriculture has done ok without labels for millennia.
No compulsory labeling, then.
Thanks Marcelino. I know you’re against compulsory labels. I think they are necessary only because I do believe that the sellers into the fabled market have no desire to see their products identified as such, at least for now. Compulsory labelling will give the opponents of GM the opportunity to avoid the stuff if they want to, regardless of what the sellers want. And that will start to put a price on the “value” of GM. At the moment the only choice is organic, which is not the same thing as GM-free.
Thank you Jeremy. If sellers of GM stuff don’t want to be identified as such because they would sell less, then the sellers of non-GM stuff would have all the more incentive to loudly announce through shiny labels that they are GM-free. In this case, the absence of a label would reveal the relevant information for buyers.
You’re right, and organic growers currently try to do that. I’m trying to recall the details of the dairy that tried to advertise its milk as being BST free and got slapped down because all milk is BST free, but cannot now find it. No time to search right now.
Good article Jeremy, but I’m not sure how you reach your conclusion (compulsory labeling) from the information you present.
Skeptico: it’s like this. the arguments that rage back and forth about GM food will not be solved by science or research. People, especially opponents, are expressing their feelings. Compulsory labelling would allow them to act on those feelings, no matter how irrational. And that might send a signal to the market, which could then act on its feelings, and either produce things that final consumers want, or stop producing things that they don’t, or both.
I’m with Jeremy on the labelling issue
Also, there’s a great name for this kind of technology – the Exorcist.
New Scientist covered it back in 2002 (sub required): http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg17523505.700-begone-evil-genes.html
Jeremy:
OK I think I see your point. I just find it hard to accept compulsory labeling when there is no evidence that GM foods are dangerous. It’s a statutory requirement to tell us something has no scientific relevance. There is nothing to stop the non-GM sector from labeling its products “GM-Free†if they want. If the demand is there, surely they’ll start doing that, and then the market can work in the way you suggest?
Just an opinion.