Category Archives: Genetic Engineering

There is a need for political support across the spectrum for promoting safe and responsible genetic engineering research, said M. S. Swaminathan, chairman, M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation.

He was addressing students at the 35 annual convocation of Anna University in the city on Wednesday.

Over one lakh students received their degrees in various specialities..

Mr. Swaminathan said that the present moratorium on field trials with recombinant DNA material was a serious handicap.

Agriculture is a State subject and it is very important that agricultural universities and State departments of agriculture are involved in the design and implementation of field trials. It takes nearly 10 years for a new variety to be ready for recommendation to farmers; therefore, speed is of the essence in organising field trials and gathering reliable data on risks and benefits, he said.

He added that public sector research and development institutions should give high priority to the breeding of varieties which can help farmers minimise climate and market risks.

M. Rajaram, vice-chancellor of Anna University, said in addition to imparting education, the university is sensitive to the welfare of society.

The unmanned aerial vehicle, dhaksha, designed and developed by the university, joined the rescue team at Moulivakkam, he said.

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Promote responsible genetic engg. research

No one has used genetic engineering to do something beneficial for the environment.

Syracuse, N.Y. -- In the first use of genetic engineering to save a species in the wild, SUNY researchers say they have created a new strain of blight-resistant American chestnut that could restore the majestic tree to the American landscape.

After 25 years of research, a pair of professors at SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry say they have used a gene from wheat to create an American chestnut that could withstand the blight that wiped out up to 5 billion of the trees in the United States.

"It is tremendously satisfying to reach this level of success," said ESF professor Chuck Maynard, who worked with fellow professor William Powell to build the blight-resistant tree.

Before the blight nearly wiped out the trees by the 1950s, chestnuts ranged from Florida to Maine and comprised up to 25 percent of Eastern forests. Its rot-resistant wood was an important source of lumber for log cabins and railroad ties for an emerging nation. The nutrient-rich nuts provided food for wildlife and humans; the roasted nuts were so delicious they even inspired a Christmas song.

"The team has accomplished a major goal, the generation of a blight-resistant American chestnut tree," said Dr. Timothy Tschaplinski, a scientist at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, in a statement released by ESF. "The sum total of these efforts is a major step forward for the goal of restoration of American chestnut to the North American landscape."

Genetic engineering has been used to increase production of crops, particularly corn and soybean, and to make medicines such as insulin.

"No one has used genetic engineering to do something beneficial for the environment," Powell said. "This technique can be used for many species of trees that are threatened by disease. It goes beyond the American chestnut."

ESF's American Chestnut Research and Restoration Project has long been one of the leaders in the movement to restore the tree to the landscape.

Developing a blight-resistant chestnut was a long and tedious process. Through trial-and-error, Powell and Maynard tried 30 genes, extracting them and then using bacteria to deliver the genes to individual chestnut cells. Each of those cells had to grow into trees large enough to test for blight resistance. The first attempt took 2.5 years, Powell said.

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Breakthrough at SUNY-ESF: Genetic engineering may save the nearly extinct American chestnut

food cryogenic freezing genetic engineering 1
9 Hikers Killed by Aliens: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FvUlpuaPxk.

By: Full Picture

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food cryogenic freezing genetic engineering 1 - Video

Microfluidics Enables Practical Applications of Genetic Engineering:Synthetic Biology Advances

By: MIT Industrial Liaison Program (ILP)

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Microfluidics Enables Practical Applications of Genetic Engineering:Synthetic Biology Advances - Video

BI280 Chapter 10 Genetic Engineering - Part 2 of 2

By: Heidi Bulfer

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BI280 Chapter 10 Genetic Engineering - Part 2 of 2 - Video

BI280 Chapter 10 Genetic Engineering - Part 1 of 1

By: Heidi Bulfer

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BI280 Chapter 10 Genetic Engineering - Part 1 of 1 - Video

The big agribusiness companies have achieved regulatory capture of government agenciesbut not in the way that many people think. At the urging of industry, since the 1980s federal agencies have over-regulated genetically engineered plants, animals and microorganismsat great cost to U.S.-based R&D and, ultimately, to consumers.

Its no secret that although the Internet has vastly enriched our lives in many respects, it has downsidesless interpersonal interaction, more anonymous snarkiness, online harassment and even cyber-stalking.

The net has also made it difficult to stop or correct the promulgation of misinformation, as I have learned to my dismay: A valid observation I made to a New York Times reporter for a 2001 article on the regulation of genetic engineering has been repeatedly taken out of context and misrepresented by activists. It continues to appear anewstill out of context and misconstrued13 years later.

Here is the portion of the original article that is often quoted on anti-genetic engineering websites (such as here and here):

Even longtime Washington hands said that the control this nascent [agbiotech] industry exerted over its own regulatory destinythrough the Environmental Protection Agency, the Agriculture Department and ultimately the Food and Drug Administrationwas astonishing. In this area, the U.S. government agencies have done exactly what big agribusiness has asked them to do and told them to do, said Dr. Henry Miller, a senior research fellow at the Hoover Institution, who was responsible for biotechnology issues at the Food and Drug Administration from 1979 to 1994.

Sounds like a Eureka! moment, right? A former senior regulatorrevealing an egregious example of what economists call regulatory captureagencies that were created to act in the public interest instead advancing the interests of the industry or sector they oversee by implementing too-lenient regulation. (Economics Nobel Laureate George Stigler developed this concept.) Thats what activistsand even somejournalists who failed to do their homeworkwould have you believe.

That excerpt has been misrepresented to imply that companies applying the molecular techniques of genetic engineering to agriculture (the exemplar of which was, and is, Monsanto) wanted, and got, less regulatory scrutiny than was warranted, possibly putting consumers and the environment at risk.

Actually, my statement was intended to convey exactly the opposite, as was clear from verbiage in the article that preceded the passage quoted above:

Although the Reagan administration had been championing deregulation across multiple industries, Monsanto had a different idea: the company wanted its new technology, genetically modified food, to be governed by rules issued in Washingtonand wanted the White House to champion the idea. There were no products at the time, Leonard Guarraia, a former Monsanto executive who attended the [Vice President George H.W.] Bush meeting, recalled in a recent interview. But we bugged him for regulation. We told him that we have to be regulated.

The genetically improved varieties that had been crafted for centuries with older, less precise, less predictable techniques of genetic modification neither needed nor received any government review or imprimatur for field trials or commercialization. Butfor its new varieties crafted with state-of-the art molecular techniques, the big agribusiness companies wanted sui generis regulatory requirements that would be far in excess of what scientific considerations and the principles of sound regulation dictated. And as the Times article related, [T]he White House complied, working behind the scenes to help Monsantolong a political power with deep connections in Washingtonget the regulations that it wanted.

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Lies, Damn Lies And Genetic Engineering

Supporters of efforts to label GMOs in foods turn out at a rally in Denverin 2013. A ballot measure that would such labels failed to pass by a wide margin Tuesday. Luke Runyon/KUNC/Harvest Public Media hide caption

Supporters of efforts to label GMOs in foods turn out at a rally in Denverin 2013. A ballot measure that would such labels failed to pass by a wide margin Tuesday.

An effort to label genetically modified foods in Colorado failed to garner enough support Tuesday. It's the latest of several state-based GMO labeling ballot measures to fail. UPDATE: A similar measure in Oregon was also defeated by a narrow margin.

Voters in Colorado resoundingly rejected the labeling of foods that contain the derivatives of genetically modified - or GMO crops, with 66 percent voting against, versus 34 percent in favor.

In Oregon the outcome was closer, with fewer than 51 percent voting against the measure. Political ad spending in Oregon was more competitive than in Colorado, where labeling opponents outspent proponents by millions of dollars.

Meanwhile, a proposal in Maui County, Hawaii, skipped the labeling debate altogether. Voters there narrowly approved a moratorium on GMO crop cultivation. The state has been a battleground between biotech firms and food activists. Some Hawaiian farmers grow a variety of papaya genetically engineered to resist a plant virus.

Polling prior to the GMO labeling vote in Colorado was scarce. Polls found Colorado's measure faced an uphill battle in the final weeks before the election. A Suffolk University poll found only 29 percent of registered voters favored the measure, while 49 percent were likely to vote against it. A Denver Post poll was even more damning. According to that poll, 59 percent were opposed to GMO labeling in Colorado, 34 percent in favor.

Colorado's Proposition 105 would've required food companies to label packaged foods with the text "produced with genetic engineering." Oregon's Measure 92 says food labels would need to include the words "genetically engineered." Many processed foods contain soybean oil, corn syrup, refined sugar and cottonseed oil. Those oils and syrups are often derived from GMO crops that farmers have adopted over the last 18 years. Few whole foods, like the ones you see in the produce aisle, are genetically engineered, though some GE varieties of sweet corn, squash and papaya are approved for sale in the U.S.

The failed measures in Colorado and Oregon follow a nationwide trend. Similar ballot questions in California and Washington state were rejected in 2012 and 2013, respectively. This summer, Vermont's governor signed the nation's first GMO labeling requirement into law. It's supposed to take effect in 2016, but a coalition of biotech firms and farmer groups have filed suit to prevent that from happening.

Groups opposed to GMO labeling poured big money into efforts to quash the ballot measures, spending more than $15 million in Colorado alone. In Oregon, opponents of labeling raised more than $18 million, making the ballot measure the most expensive issue campaign in the state's history. Most of that money came from large seed corporations like Monsanto and DuPont Pioneer, and from processed food companies like Pepsi, Land O' Lakes and Smucker's. All of that outside money opened labeling opponents up to criticism of being tied to corporate interests.

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Colorado, Oregon Reject GMO Labeling

Election judges check signatures on ballots at the Denver Election Headquarters in downtown Denver, November 04, 2014. Closes races in Colorado are drawing a last minute rush to vote on election day. (RJ Sangosti, The Denver Post)

Voters dished up rejection for Proposition 105, labeling of genetically modified foods, with 35 percent of votes counted.

The measure would have required labels for GMOs foods produced with genetic engineering or containing genetically modified ingredients. More than 68 percent of voters said no to labeling.

Most processed foods sold in America include GMO ingredients such as corn syrup, corn oil, soybean crops and sugar.

Supporters of GMO labeling, such as Right to Know Colorado, Whole Foods and Natural Grocers, said it would give consumers a choice about what they serve their families.

It's a label, not a ban, alerting people to an unnatural manipulation of food, they argued.

Opponents of Prop 105 said the measure would create new costs and red tape for farmers, food manufacturers and grocery stores and consequently would run up grocery bills and cost taxpayers millions for the government oversight.

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Colorado Prop 105: GMO food fight won by opponents of labeling

Genetically engineering tumors in mice, a technique that has dominated cancer research for decades, may not replicate important features of cancers caused by exposure to environmental carcinogens, according to a new study led by UC San Francisco scientists. In addition to pointing the way to better understanding of environmental causes of cancer, the findings may help explain why many patients do not benefit from, or develop resistance to, targeted drug therapies.

In the new research, reported November 2, 2014 in the advance online edition of Nature, a team led by UCSF graduate student Peter M.K. Westcott found that chemically induced lung tumors in mice carry hundreds of point mutationsdeleterious alterations of single letters in the genomethat are not present in tumors induced by genetic engineering. The researchers demonstrated that chemically induced tumors display a starkly different mutational landscape even when chemicals cause a tumor-initiating mutation that is identical to that created by direct genetic manipulation.

Since the 1980s, when genetic engineering came along, the mouse model community has been working on genetically engineered canceryou put a gene in or take a gene out, and you get a tumor, said Allan Balmain, PhD, the Barbara Bass Bakar Distinguished Professor in Cancer Genetics at UCSF and senior author of the study. But its only now that were beginning to analyze what has happened between that first engineered change and the ultimate development of an aggressive tumor.

The new work made use of next-generation sequencing (NGS) technology, which allows researchers to analyze the genomic sequence of tumors or of normal tissue letter-by-letter. For the Nature study, the group used a form of NGS known as whole-exome sequencing, which comprehensively analyzes the portion of the genome that contains the code for producing proteins.

The findings dovetail well with those from NGS-based studies of human tumors, such as The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) initiative spearheaded by the National Cancer Institute and National Human Genome Research Institute, which have revealed mutational signatures, some of which can be definitively tied to environmental exposures. For example, distinctive patterns of point mutations are now known to differentiate lung cancer in smokers from that affecting non-smokers.

The results are also consistent with observations that tumors arising in human organs that are most directly exposed to environmental carcinogensthe skin, gastrointestinal system, and lungsare more prone to point mutations than more protected organs such as the brain, breast, and prostate gland.

We humans smoke cigarettes, drink alcohol, and spend too much time in the sun, all of which cause us to accumulate point mutations that are major determinants of the behavior of tumors, especially of how a tumor responds to therapy, said Balmain, co-leader of the Cancer Genetics Program at UCSFs Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center. All this heterogeneity is being missed with genetically engineered tumors, because they dont reflect these environmental effects.

But only a very small number of the 25 mutational signatures revealed by NGS in human tumors so far have been convincingly tied to environmental exposures, Balmain said, so there is much to learn. Other very unusual, very specific signatures have been seen in human studies that remain obscure. Theyre like a smoking gunwe know theyre caused by something environmental, but were not sure what.

To date most epidemiological research on environmental causes of cancer has relied on patients and families to recall and document dietary habits, alcohol and tobacco use, or occupational exposures, and the rise of NGS offers an opportunity to approach these questions more rigorously, said Balmain.

To that end, Balmains research group is embarking on a collaboration with the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, which maintains a collection of thousands of mouse and rat tumors caused by exposure to suspected human carcinogens. Through NGS analyses of that collection, the research team hopes to find mutational signatures that can be correlated with those seen in human cancer.

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Environmental Carcinogens Leave Distinctive Genetic Imprints in Tumors