Jim Watson Comments on GM Crops and Recombinant DNA Technology

 
Watch this clip of Jim Watson commenting on recombinant DNA technology and its uses in making genetically modified plants [Dr. James Watso]. The video is produced by Monsanto so those of you with a bias can easily dismiss it without a second thought.

The rest of you should pause to think about what Watson is saying. He's definitely outspoken but is he right? He says ...

Recombinant DNA is the safest technology I’ve ever heard.

Read Nobel Laureate: Paul Berg for information about Asilomar and the recombinant DNA controversy of the 1970's. Read the comments to that article for other points of view and references to Watson. Hsien Hsien Lei has an opinion and so does Jeremy.

Roundup Ready® Transgenic Plants

By the late 1990's it was apparent that recombinant DNA technology [see Nobel Laureate: Paul Berg] had advanced to the point where it was feasible to consider the production of genetically modified crops. One of the first targets was the creation of plants that were resistant to the herbicide glyphosate or Roundup® [How Roundup® Works].

Surprisingly, in spite of extensive spraying with Roundup® no resistant plant species had been detected. Since the target of glyphosate, EPSP synthase (EC 2.5.1.19), is also present in bacteria, a search for resistant bacteria was undertaken. The idea is that if a glyphosate-resistant enzyme from bacteria could be transferred to plants it might make the plants resistant to the herbicide. Such Roundup Ready® transgenic plants be an enormous advantage for farmers since a crop of, say Roundup Ready® soybean, could be sprayed with Roundup® to kill all weeds without affecting the crop.

Coincidently , it would be of enormous advantage to Monsanto, the manufacturer of Roundup®, especially if they could control the distribution of the genetically modified plants.

The C4 strain of Agrobacterium sp. proved to be just the thing. This is a species of bacteria that was found growing in the waste-fed column at a factory that made glyphosate. The EPSP synthase enzyme from this bacterium (C4 EPSP synthase) was almost completely insensitive to glyphosate.

The C4 EPSP bacterial gene was cloned and inserted into a bacterial plant vector in order to prepare for cloning into plants. The details of one of the Monsanto C4 EPSP cloning vectors are shown in the first patent filed on September 13, 1994 [US Patent 05633435].

This is a modifed bacterial plasmid vector designed to be propagated in E. coli (for cloning and construction) and Agrobacterium tumefaciens (for transforming plants). Ori-322 is an origin of replication from plasmid pBr322. It is used in E. coli to replicate the plasmid. Ori-V is an origin from plasmid RK2, a plasmid that can propagate in a wide variety of gram negative bacteria, including Agrobacterium tumefaciens. Rop is a small gene that encodes a protein requried to maintain plasmid copy number in bacteria.

There are two selectable markers. SPC/STR encodes a protein conferring spectinomycin/streptomycin resistance. The gene is derived from transposon Tn7. AAC(3)-III encodes bacterial gentamycin-3-N-acetyl transferase type III allowing selection for gentamycin resistance in plants. The bacterial AAC(3)-III gene has to be modified in order to allow effient expression in plant cells. A plant promoter (P-35S) is inserted at the 5' end. This promoter is the 35S promoter from cauliflower mosaic virus (CaMV). The 3' end of the gene is modified by inserting the polyadenylation site (NOS 3') from the nopaline synthase gene of the tumor-inducing (Ti) plasmid from Agrobacterium tumefaciens.

Similarly, the bacterial C4 EPSP gene was modified to have a strong plant promoter (P-e35S, related to P-35S) and a polyadenylation site (NOS 3'). One additional modification is necessary because the plant EPSP synthase is in chloroplasts where synthesis of chorimsate takes place. The bacterial gene has to have an N-terminal leader sequence that targets the protein to the chloroplast. This is supplied by CTP2, the chloroplast transit peptide from the Arabidopsis (wall cress) EPSP synthase gene.

The shuttle plasmid is built in E. coli then purified plasmid DNA is used to transform Agrobacterium tumefaciens. This bacterium infects plants and injects DNA from a Ti-like plasmid into plant cells where it enters the nucleus and becomes incorporated into the plant chromsomes. Under normal circumstances Agrobacterium tumefaciens causes gall tumors in plants but in this case the recombinat DNA is transferred and no tumors are formed. The transformation is mediated by cutting the plasmid at the RIGHT BORDER to produce a linear DNA molecule. Defective Ti plasmids in the bacterial cell are required to promote the transfer of the recombinant DNA.

The interesting feature of this transformation is that it is mediated by the bacteria. All you need to do is expose the plant cells to the bacteria under the right conditions and your gene of interest will end up in a plant chromsome.

The complete process begins with the isolation of small bits of plant tissue. They are grown on nutrient plates before being exposed to the bacteria carying the recombinant DNA plasmid.

Transformed cells will start to grow and they can eventually be isolated and transferred to a liquid that promotes shoot growth. After a few weeks you end up with an entire plant carrying the recombinant DNA. This plant is then propagated to produce thousands of genetically modified plants and seeds.

Roundup Ready® soybean was the first crop plant produced by Monsanto. Today, 90% of the soybean crop in the USA consists of Roundup Ready® plants. You can't buy soybean products that don't come from genetically modified plants.

Two thirds of the cotton and a quarter of the corn crop are Roundup Ready® plants. There is some resistance to growing Roundup Ready® wheat.

Stealing Plants from the UBC Botanical Garden

 
This is a photograph of Fritillaria imperialis 'Rubra' from the Botany Photo of th Day blog at the University of British Columbia Botanical Gardens. Apparently the photo was taken some time ago because the curators now say that the gardens has only a single plant of this species. Or rather, had a single plant.

Last week it was stolen from the Botanical Gardens. Read the website for an impassioned defense of public gardens and why stealing plants is an ethical violation of a public trust.

There are three things that really disgust me about these thefts: the privatization of a public shared good, the potential impact on research projects in the garden and the loss of public investment. You'll have to excuse my language as I'm not fluent in the words to best express some of these concepts, but I'll explain as best I can.

Alcoholics Anonymous: 12 Steps

 
This month's reader's Digest has a couple of articles on Alcoholics Anonymous. The gist of the articles is that the famous 12 steps really don't work all that well. Apparently, there's no data to support the claim that Alcoholics Anonymous is successful at getting people to stop drinking.

I had no idea what these 12 steps were until they were published in the articles I read yesterday. For those of you who don't know, here they are [Alcoholics Anonymous]. I'm not surprised that this isn't a magic bullet but I am surprised at how religious AA must be. They must think that most alcoholics are Christians.

THE TWELVE STEPS
OF ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS

1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol ﾗ that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5. Admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all.
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God, as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

Some People Defend Lying for Jesus

 
Judging by the number of different opinions on the Marcus Ross case, there appear to be a variety of standards for the Ph.D. degree at different universities. Several bloggers think that it's okay to lie in your thesis about which scientific facts you accept and which ones you reject.

The University of Toronto has a Code of Behaviour on Academic Matters that specifies how students and teachers are supposed to behave in an academic environment. Here's part of the preamble,

What distinguishes the University from other centres of research is the central place which the relationship between teaching and learning holds. It is by virtue of this relationship that the University fulfils an essential part of its traditional mandate from society, and, indeed, from history: to be an expression of, and by so doing to encourage, a habit of mind which is discriminating at the same time as it remains curious, which is at once equitable and audacious, valuing openness, honesty and courtesy before any private interest.

This mandate is more than a mere pious hope. It represents a condition necessary for free enquiry, which is the University's life blood. Its fulfilment depends upon the well being of that relationship whose parties define one another's roles as teacher and student, based upon differences in expertise, knowledge and experience, though bonded by respect, by a common passion for truth and by mutual responsibility to those principles and ideals that continue to characterize the University.

This Code is concerned, then, with the responsibilities of faculty members and students, not as they belong to administrative or professional or social groups, but as they cooperate in all phases of the teaching and learning relationship.

Such cooperation is threatened when teacher or student forsakes respect for the other—and for others involved in learning—in favour of self-interest, when truth becomes a hostage of expediency. On behalf of teacher and student and in fulfilment of its own principles and ideals, the University has a responsibility to ensure that academic achievement is not obscured or undermined by cheating or misrepresentation, that the evaluative process meets the highest standards of fairness and honesty, and that malevolent or even mischievous disruption is not allowed to threaten the educational process.

Call me old-fashioned, but I believe in those values. I believe that truth and honesty are essential requirements in a university environment. I believe that freedom of enquiry is threatened when a student misrepresents the truth and makes it hostage to expediency. I believe that students who violate the fundamentals of a university should not graduate, especially with the highest degree that the university can offer (Ph.D.).

Jason Rosenhouse put up a message on EVOLUION BLOG [Why is This in the New York Times?]. Jason says,

This is a complete non-story. By all accounts Ross produced competent scientific work. That he was effectively an actor playing a character reflects very badly on him, but does not reflect badly on URI. If he chooses to use his degree to lend credibility to asinine religious ideas that's his business. The rest of us will have to settle for bashing him for the things he now does. It's not the job of URI, or any other university, to pass judgment on the religious views of others.

It's not the job of a university to discriminate on the basis of religious beliefs. However, it is the job of a university to uphold minimal standards of honesty and accuracy. Ross misrepresents his position when he writes about 65 million year old fossils in his thesis. He doesn't believe that any of those fossils are more than a few thousand years old. He can't honestly discuss explanations for the extinction of marine reptiles at the end of the Cretaceous without revealing that he rejects any explanation that dates this event to the ancient past.

But apparently that's exactly what he didn't do. He misrepresented his true scientific opinion in his thesis. He did this deliberately because he knew that telling the truth in his thesis would probably mean it would be rejected.

John Pieret says,

Some people have questioned whether such a person is engaging either in a mammoth mental disconnect or deliberate deception and, in turn, whether he should be awarded the Ph.D. I think that that is a dangerously slippery slope to climb onto, given the relative risk posed.

The difference between "mammoth mental disconnect" and "deliberate deception" isn't as great as you might imagine. It only requires that before deceiving others you take the time to deceive yourself. In either case the candidate is guilty of stupidity for not accepting the scientific evidence and deception for hiding it. Universities should not award Ph.D.'s to students who are either stupid or intellectually dishonest; and they should definitely not award advanced degrees to students who are both.

This is a slippery slope. It's only asking for trouble when we excuse stupidity and dishonesty because it's part of a religious belief. You don't deserve a free pass through a university just because you get your ignorance from the Bible. Religious students should be subjected to the same rigorous standards as all other students.

No atheist student would get a Ph.D. in paleontology if he rejected all the evidence for an ancient Earth and claimed that our planet was built by aliens 10,000 years ago, and all species were created in just a few days. Such a student would be laughed out of the Ph.D. oral exam—if he ever got to it.

A Code of Ethics for Scientists

There's an article on today's ScienceDaily website about a code of ethics for scientists [Scientists Should Adopt Codes Of Ethics, Scientist-bioethicist Says]. The ScienceDaily article is based on a press release from Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center. The press release highlights a paper by Nancy L. Jones. Jones has some experience in "ethics" according to the press release.

Jones, an adjunct associate professor at Wake Forest University School of Medicine, is an American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) science and technology policy fellow at the National Institutes of Health. She is a fellow at the Center for Bioethics and Human Dignity and is a recent member of the Secretary’s Advisory Committee on Human Research Protection of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

With credentials like that, you'd think she would know something about science and ethics.

Jones appears to be concerned about issues such as cloning, stem cells, and gene transfer. It's not clear to me that there are real ethical issues associated with those topics but one thing is very clear—she's focusing on the uses of science (technology) and not on pure science.

Jones wants all scientists to sign a code of ethics to regulate and control their behavior. What kind of a code is she talking about? The only example in the press release is,

“A code of ethics should provide guidance for which knowledge should be sought, define the ethical means of acquiring knowledge, emphasize thoughtful examination of potential consequences, both good and bad, and help society prescribe responsible use of the knowledge,” writes Jones.

Her prototype code compares the norms of life sciences to the Hippocratic tradition. In part, it reads, “In granting the privilege of freedom of inquiry, society implicitly assumes that scientists act with integrity on behalf of the interests of all people. Scientists and the scientific community should accept the responsibility for the consequences of their work by guiding society in the developing of safeguards necessary to judiciously anticipate and minimize harm.”

I have a problem with this. Let's unpack the mix and address each of the four parts separately.

1. Provide guidance for which knowledge should be sought.

What does this mean? What kind of "guidance" would be part of a universal code of scientific ethics? Would I have to limit my search for knowledge to that which is acceptable to a researcher at a Baptist Medical School? I'm never going to sign a "code of ethics" that restricts my ability to pursue knowledge.

2. Define the ethical means of acquiring knowledge.

This sounds okay, although I wonder how it's going to work in practice. I doubt that anyone has a scientific ethical problem with most of the work done by astronomers, physicists, geologists, chemists, and botanists. Am I correct in assuming that Jones is worried about medical researchers and is transferring her specific concerns to all scientists? Is she talking about animal research or clinical trials? Would those be the only things that require defining or is there an ethical way of using a telescope?

3. Emphasize thoughtful examination of potential consequences, both good and bad.

This is the tough one. I know it seems reasonable for scientists to consider the consequences of their quest for knowledge but, in practice, it's not that easy. In my most pessimistic moods I can imagine all kinds of evil things that might be done with the knowledge that biochemists have gained over the past few decades. What should I do about that? Should we force our colleagues to stop doing research whenever we can imagine a dire consequence? Of course not.

Does that mean we should never consider the consequences; no, it doesn't. But keep in mind that scientists have been badly burned whenever they have publicly stepped into this morass. It was scientists who raised the issue of possible consequences of genetic engineering. Even though the scientists decided that the possible risks were minimal, the lawyers soon took over and we were stuck with silly laws that impeded research for a decade. Many of us remember that fiasco.

The responsibility for the misuse of scientific knowledge lies with those who misuse it and not with those who discovered the knowledge in the first place. You can't inhibit the search for knowledge on the grounds that it might be abused by someone in the future. That's why this part of the code of ethics is naive, irresponsible, and ultimately counter-productive. It attempts to put the blame on science when it's technology that's at fault.

4. Help society prescribe responsible use of the knowledge.

This is a legitimate role for scientists as long as they are explaining science. I don't have a problem with scientists describing stem cell research, for example. They can explain how it's done and explain the probabilities of success and the consequences of failure. They can describe how the new-found knowledge might help patients with various diseases and injuries. In other words, scientists can be a valuable source of knowledge.

But are scientists any better than the average citizen at "prescribing responsible use of knowledge" in the sense that Jones implies? I don't think so. Almost all American scientists would advocate funding stem cell research. Are they being ethical? What about those religious scientists who say that stem cell research is unethical? If both types of scientist signed the same code of ethics then what does it mean to say that scientists should "help society prescribe responsible use of knowledge"? What about those stem cell researchers who choose to stay out of the public limelight and get on with curing Alzheimer's? Are they unethical because they remain silent?

As you can see, science ethics is a complicated problem. Any attempt to regulate scientists based on some individual's definition of ethics is doomed to failure. I can't wait to see what Janet Stemwedel has to say about this.