10 March 2010

Reference

Research conducted by a collaborative team involving University of California, San Diego who headed the study, and scientists at The Scripps Research Institute, San Diego biofuel company Sapphire Energy and ProtElix, a protein engineering company in Hayward, CA.  The research was published online this week in Plant Biotechnology Journal.

TechNyou note

People often question why researchers genetically modify plants to produde human therapeutic proteins – once they actually become aware that this can occur. It is something they find scary, or cautiously unacceptable.  This media release adds context to the debate for this type of research.  See following quote from media release:

“Currently, human therapeutic proteins are primarily produced from either bacteria or mammalian cell culture.  Complex mammalian proteins and monoclonal antibodies are primarily produced by the culture of transgeneic mammalian cells, while simpler proteins are generally produced by E. coli.

“Due to high capital and media costs, and the inherent complexity of mammalian cell culture, proteins produced by mammalian cell culture are very expensive. Bacterial production is generally more economical in terms of media components, but bacteria are often inefficient at producing properly folded complex proteins, requiring a denaturation and renaturation step that adds significant costs to bacterial protein production.”

Reference

Research is by scientists at the BBSRC Sustainable Bioenergy Centre at the Universities of York and Portsmouth, UK and is published in  the latest issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA (PNAS)

“We emulated photosynthesis for large-scale storage of solar energy,” says MIT chemist, Dan Nocera

Reference

Research was published in Ecotoxicology March 2010

There are many GM pasture crops getting close to commercialization in New Zealand. Some of these crops and certainly the traits being introduced are the same as those almost ready for commercialisation in Australia. And the same questions and issues raised in this paper are applicable to Australia.

Future cow food

As one of the paper’s authors says, the jury is still out when it comes to decision about the use of transgenic forage plants.  The new traits in these forages have the potential to lead to better farm profitability and possibly reduced greenhouse gas emissions per cow.  If they can live up to their promise, will the traits be acceptable to farmers and probably more importantly, the general public – the people who are buying and consuming the food?

Here is the list of traits from the Royal Society paper.  All of these traits are attempting to be introduced into Australia’s pasture crops.

• Drought resistance and improved performance under moisture stress that will increasingly arise from climate change
• Improved balance of soluble carbohydrate and protein levels for increased available energy, higher productivity, and better nitrogen use efficiency
• Higher levels of condensed tannins for the elimination of bloat and optimal protein uptake leading to less nitrogenous waste and possibly less methane production
• Changed lipid content leading to higher available energy and reduced methane production

Other traits under development include:

• Reduced lignin for more digestibility and improved nitrogen efficiency
• Improved efficiency in the plant’s use of water and nutrients
• Encapsulated lipids to increase the level of omega 3 unsaturated fats in the grazing animal, with potential human health benefits
• Improved growth at lower temperatures for increased production outside of the peak growth period

Public acceptability

The issues paper highlights many of the issues raised by farmers and often non-farmers about the acceptability of otherwise of GM forage crops. One of the key points made is that many believe trait evaluation should be carried out on a case-by-case basis.  And in general, in any workshop I have run on this topic, whether it be for high school students or members of a Probus club, they will assess GM crops case-by-case according to the traits the crop has.  In the course of more in-depth discussion about each crop people may change their minds slightly about a crop’s acceptability.  Some will find is more acceptable, others less.  But they rarely judge the technology as a whole and be either totally for or against the technology.

Clean, green….?

One thing that did intrigue me, and I have commented on this previously, was the paper’s statement that social acceptance is driven by personal and national identity. The following is lifted directly from the paper:

“Much of New Zealanders’ personal and national identity, and sense of place is linked to concepts about nature. This is expressed as both the concept of New Zealand’s clean, green image and Maori concepts of whakapapa and mauri. Such values provide a standpoint from which to consider biotechnology and genetic modification and, for many, justify the rejection of field releases of genetically modified organisms.”

I know nothing about the Maori concepts on whakapapa, but I continually see reference to the “clean, green image” of Australia’s agriculture and how GM Crops will destroy this image or reputation. Australians and New Zealanders may truly be concerned about this – and I think a few are – but as far as I am aware, agronomic practices in Australia and New Zealand are no different to anywhere else in the developed world. We still use chemical fertilisers, pesticides, weedicides.  We still clear land to grow stuff, though with a lot more guilt attached to it nowadays. How this is considered clean and green and how other developed countries are doing it less cleaner and greener is beyond me, unless my definition is way off, or my dictionary is out of date.

Anyway, the paper is a neat summary of the science, its potential and the social issues that need to considered when developing transgenic forage crops, and they will be similar, if not the same, things we need to consider here in Australia.

Listen to the authors

To get a better insight, the NZ Science Media centre has gathered a panel of experts who contributed to the paper.  Their transcripts and audio are available at their web site

Jason Major

TechNyou

Reference

Research done at Centre for Infection,  St. George’s University of London. Published in FASEB journal, March 2010

See the first and middle para below:

“Nanoparticles are atmospheric materials so small that they can’t be seen with the naked eye, but they can very visibly affect both weather patterns and human health all over the world – and not in a good way

Persons with breathing problems, such as those who suffer from asthma, emphysema or other lung ailments, can be at risk, he notes. “(he certainly doesn’t note it in the Nature paper…that I could see anyway.

Dangerous extrapolation

I suspect the Texas A&M journalist or communicator is trying to extrapolate or get the scientists to comment on areas outside their areas of expertise to get a better angle (and hence better publicity) for their story. If such claims are going to be made they should at least be backed up with some evidence. Speculating in this way only serves to confuse and mislead.  It certainly doesn’t help the push for a rational and informed debate about nanotechnologies.

If this is picked up by the media, I hope they bother to check the Nature paper first and think critically about the info. What I got from an initial quick read of the paper (and this is not my area of scientific expertise) is that these particles have always been there, the industrial revolution served to exacerbate the issue, but the problem was trying to figure out how they formed and what affect they had on the atmosphere and climate. Despite large knowledge gaps remaining, the science presented in this paper provides clues to how these nanoparticles form, and knowledge that will help improve the modelling that simulates how these particles are formed.

Interesting stuff, but not as sexy as dangerous nanoparticles raining down on us.

Jason

TechNyou