The GLP aggregated and excerpted this blog/article to reflect the diversity of news, opinion and analysis.
Insect-resistant Genetically Modified (GM) maize will be commercialized in Kenya in 2018, researchers said on [April 24].
African Agricultural Technology Foundation (AATF) Communications and Partnerships Manager Nancy Muchiri told Xinhua in Nairobi on [April 24] that the Biotech maize has successfully undergone the confined field trials (CFT) stage and is awaiting National Performance Trials (NPTs).
“The maize will be commercialized in 2018 after the National Performance Trials (NPTs) tests are successfully conducted over a period of two seasons,” Muchiri said.
The NPTs will be conducted by the Kenya Plant Health Inspectorate Service (KEPHIS).
The aim of the tests is to assess the value for cultivating the new variety of maize and will assess the crop performance against existing varieties in targeted agro-ecological zones.
The research is being conducted jointly by the AATF and the Kenya Agricultural and Livestock Research Organization (KALRO) under the Water Efficient Maize for Africa (WEMA) Project.
. . . .
Muchiri added that the Biotech maize is resistant to the stem-borer insect pest that is responsible for the loss of approximately 400,000 tons of maize annually in Kenya.
She noted that improved maize production will increase Kenya’s food security given that the cereal is the country’s main staple food.
According to AATF, the transgenic insect-pest protected maize hybrids will reduce the amount of insecticides required to apply on the maize.
“This will lower the cost of production of maize resulting in higher income for maize farmers,” she said.
Read full, original post: Insect resistant maize to be commercialized in Kenya in 2018
The GLP aggregated and excerpted this blog/article to reflect the diversity of news, opinion and analysis.
This month, I set out to discover whether what we think of as “Big Ag” is cleaning up its act.
. . . . [W]e’ve also seen increased focus on such practices as no-till farming and cover cropping, which mitigate or even reverse that damage. . . .
. . . .
. . . [W]hat’s interesting about these conservation practices is that they raise the possibility of constructive change in one of the most contentious issues in agriculture: government subsidies.
. . . .
. . . .If conservation practices are to be implemented more broadly, somebody has to pay.
. . . .
. . . .the fact remains that farmers who opt for cover cropping are going to have to pay real money right now (and you could do a similar analysis for other practices). Long-term yield gains and cost savings are excellent, but farm expenses and mortgages and kids’ educations may not be able to wait for them.
The calculation becomes particularly difficult if you don’t own your land. Myers [a University of Missouri agronomist] points out that 39 percent of farmland is rented. “Most farmers are conservation-minded,” he says, “but it’s hard to spend money on land they’re not going to have in a few years.” . . . .
So what do we do about that? The environmental benefits of these conservation practices accrue to all of us. Is it fair to ask farmers to foot the bill alone?
. . . .
. . . . Everyone agrees that conservation is important, that is. It won’t be so easy to find agreement on how to rejigger subsidies to provide incentives for environmentally sustainable farming.
. . . .
Farmers don’t want to be hamstrung or coerced, but they’re interested — and motivated — to work toward the same environmental improvements that taxpayers are entitled to ask for. . . .
The GLP aggregated and excerpted this blog/article to reflect the diversity of news, opinion and analysis.
Dear Mr Matia Kasaija,
We are a group of alumni and students of Biotechnology, Makerere University. We thank the government for investing in us to study advanced courses in science and technology, which will increase the global competitiveness of Uganda. However, we wish to express our concerns regarding the delay in passing the National Biotechnology and Biosafety Bill, 2012.
This Bill seeks to regulate the development and use of modern biotechnology products, including GMOs, in Uganda. . . .
. . . .
Without the National Biotechnology and Biosafety Law, it means research and development in this field is compromised; it is going to lose funding, while GMOs will be allowed to enter the country without any regulation. The number of unemployed youth, especially those trained in this field, is also likely to increase and the country will experience more brain-drain. Young people are likely to look for greener pastures elsewhere, more so in countries that have approved GMOs. At the same time, the government will loss control over the GMOs that enter the country as well as products of other more recent modern biotechnology that need to be regulated. . . .
As the ministry responsible for planning for this country, we request that you support passage of the Biotechnology and Biosafety Bill into law so that we, who have gained the knowledge and skills, can to contribute to using this technology for national development or we provide services in regulating the technology. . . .
Makerere University Biotechnology Students Association, [email protected]
Read full, original post: Letter to Finance minister Kasaija
Anyone who has been to the supermarket recently can attest to the fact that prices of organic foods at the supermarket are generally much higher than conventional (either non-GM or GM) foods, often by as much as 50 percent. Much of this increase comes from the inputs necessary to grow organic foods, including more land to grow crops, labor-intensive processes like tilling and weed removal, and using high volumes of organic-approved pesticides.
But a new player, the non-GMO Project label (not to be confused with the USDA organic label) is also beginning to change the landscape of food pricing—from organic to GMO.
Non-GMO versus Organic
The Non-GMO Project, is a non-profit that is based in Bellingham, Washington. It requires submitters to demonstrate how their food is produced without genetic modification—which is easy for, say, salt, which has no genes or genetic material to speak of but harder for living organisms like corn. The non-GMO Project has a tolerance level of GM of less than 0.9 percent (the same as European Union countries). This is rather different from the USDA’s National Organic Program, which doesn’t have as strict a threshold for GM, and also requires submitters to show that they aren’t using prohibited pesticides or fertilizers, and are using other techniques approved for organic farming. So, a product could be non-GMO, but not be organic.
Most shoppers (about 67 percent, according to a recent survey by the NPD group) say they aren’t willing to pay more for non-GMO food, about 11 percent of those surveyed said they would be willing to pay more. In a country as large as the United States, that 11 percent may be enough to profit from. For example, a search of avocado oils from AvoHaus showed a 250 ml bottle of organic non-GMO Project certified avocado oil was $15, while a conventional extra-virgin avocado oil bottle of the same size was $12.50. An 8 oz bottle of Non-GMO Project avocado oil was selling for $12.75, while a conventional bottle of avocado oil was selling for $7.35 for 17 oz—interestingly there are no GMO avocados.
Switching to macaroni and cheese, Andy Schaul, global insights manager at Monsanto, Tweeted a picture of a 6 oz box of organic mac and cheese for $2.49, next to a 5 oz box of an organic non-GMO version of the same product that cost $3.35. For other retailers, however, the price of non-GMO (but not organic) might be cheaper than organic versions.
While prices—especially retail prices—can come from a lot of sources (transportation and processing costs, marketing activity, regional differences in price and cost), the price premium of this new product helps illustrate how costs of crop development move from farm to table, no matter how the crop was farmed. Depending on general crop prices and efforts by certain manufacturers to cash on in current farm economics, the non-GMO label could outstrip “organic” on costs to consumers.
In some ways, Non-GMO already is outstripping organic. From 2013 to 2015, Non-GMO sales rose 70 percent every year, totaling about $13 billion in sales for 2015. Meanwhile, food that has the USDA Organic seal (and thus is 95 percent or more organic) totaled $11 billion by November 2015.
Farming price pressures
Farmers are becoming more attracted to non-GMO crops, even more than organic. A large reason for this is price. While inputs for organic and non-GMO maybe higher, the prices for certain crops (like corn, soy and wheat) are very, very low. These low prices, the result of improved agricultural practices (including genetic modification, reduced pesticide use and advanced machinery) are making farmers look for alternatives that pay them more per unit of crop.
Terry Daynard, a Guelph, Ontario, farmer and former associate dean at the University of Guelph, wrote in his blog that last year, he received $11 per bushel of soybean, compared to $10 per bushel in 1983. But in constant (1983) dollars, that means last year he only got $5 per bushel. “If I’d grown organic soybeans in 2015, I would have received about 2.5 times that or normal soybeans and my cost of production would have been equally high.”
A number of other farmers in Canada and the US Midwest have moved away from biotech seeds, mainly because of price. Prices for corn and soybeans have fallen 50 percent for corn and 35 percent for soybeans over the past two years, which has forced a number of growers to look to organics and non-GMO varieties for higher profits.
John Ruelle, senior vice president of SunOpta, a Toronto, Ontario-based firm that is the first to get USDA certification for operating GMO-free, says that Non-GMO has a distinct price advantage over organics, at least in the short run:
We didn’t have a ton of interest from growers to grow specialty crops when corn was at $8 a bushel. To be a certified organic producer you have to go through three crop cycles in order to get the land certified. You can do non-GMO next year.
With low food prices, the difference between $3, $8 and even $11 a bushel isn’t going to affect consumers, especially affluent ones. But, as Terry Daynard pointed out, “many Canadians aren’t affluent,” which is true in every other country on the planet. “If government and food industry actions reduce availability of lower-cost foods, many low-income families will suffer. That’s unfortunate and perhaps unethical, too.”
Andrew Porterfield is a writer, editor and communications consultant for academic institutions, companies and non-profits in the life sciences. He is based in Camarillo, California. Follow @AMPorterfield on Twitter.
Procreating with other species: Birds do it. Bees do it. Even bears do it. But did humans ever do it?
In nature there is a plethora of examples of this happening. Recent analyses have found that all across the eastern United States, coyotes and wolves have been crossing species barriers to make viable offspring. Polar bears and grizzly bears are doing it too, in northwestern Canada too.
In describing the ‘pizzly bear’ (or grolar bear if you like), Brendan Kelly, chief scientist and director of conservation research at the Monterey Bay Aquarium, told the Pacific Standard:
[Darwin] was, and rightfully so, focused on the creation of new species, but sometimes after a period of separation, species that were beginning to diverge come back together and fuse and return to being one species.
Speaking of Darwin, many of the finches in the Galapagos he famously described are the product of interbreeding too. As are many primates, such as baboons and gibbons. According to Rebecca Ackermann, an archaeologist at the University of Cape Town in South Africa, “seven to 10% of all primate species hybridize, which is common considering a lot don’t ever come into contact with each other.”
Interbreeding is a very common event in nature but have humans ever partaken in it? Modern claims of a successful mating between a human with a chimpanzee have been debunked, but it turns out Homosapiens haven’t always kept it within our species. In the last five years, DNA analyses of ancient remains have found evidence of significant interbreeding between humans and our ancient relatives written into our genomes. And the result of these events has made a lasting impression on humans today.
According to most fossil and DNA evidence, modern humans first appeared in Africa at some time between 200,000 and 100,000 years ago, with members of one branch leaving the continent about 60,000-70,000 years ago (although this has been contested by some recent findings). When they emerged they came into contact with several similar hominids like Homo errectus and Neanderthals and how they interacted with these organisms has been the subject of much debate.
In 2010, the first bit of evidence that these extinct species had interbreed with Homo Sapiens came when scientists first sequenced the genome of a Neanderthal. This landmark study, a result of an international project called the Neanderthal Genome Project, revealed that at some point 80,000 to 50,000 years ago Neanderthals and humans had indeed mated. According to the initial study this left a mark on modern humans: approximately 4 percent of the DNA of non-Africans living today coming from Neanderthals. This number has been confirmed several times including ina February 2016 study in Scienceperformed by a large team of American scientists.
Denisovan tooth
But it’s not just Neanderthals; genetic analysis says that an ancient species of humans called Denisovans mated with early Homo sapiens too. Currently, very little is known about this early species because to date just three fossils have ever been found: two teeth and one finger. But despite this dearth of physical evidence, DNA evidence has revealed quite a bit about their impact and interactions on humans.
Denisovans, who are named for the cave in Siberia where the fossils were discovered, are distinct from Neanderthals and Homo sapiens. They were a genetically diverse species, exhibiting about as much diversity as modern Europeans, and were much more diverse than Neanderthals. A recent analysis showed that like Neanderthals, Denisovans left a significant mark on the DNA of modern humans. But unlike the Neanderthals, Denisovan’s DNA only appear to be present in one population: Melanesians.
Melanesians are a cultural group that occupy the Oceanic island countries of Vanuatu, Solomon Islands, Fiji, and Papua New Guinea, as well as New Caledonia, West Papua and the Maluku Islands. Modern Melanesians have roughly 4 percent of their DNA from Denisovans, and have 2-3 percent of their DNA from Neanderthals. What is particularly interesting is the incredible distance between where Denisovan bones were found, Sibera, and the area where modern Melanesians are found today, Oceania. This means that in just 40,000 years, Denisovan DNA traveled over 2,000 miles.
Starting to learn context
Not too long ago, the field of ancient DNA was bogged down by serious limitations, in particular worries about contamination from modern DNA. But the last few years have seen a dramatic increase in the reliability of data, primarily because of giant leaps forward in technology, like next generation sequencing. This, along with an increasing genetic database of sequences of both modern and ancient humans, have allowed researchers to go beyond looking for the presence of genes, and begin learning the story of their presence.
Denisovan DNA is found in genes which are involved with blood sugar levels, fat metabolism and the immune system. Interbreeding with Neanderthal’s has also affected genes involved with the immune system, and in particular the HLA family of genes that are important in tissue-matching for organ donation. Science writer Ricki Lewis, at DNA Science told PLoS Biology that the absence of extinct human’s DNA in some specific regions of modern human’s genome raises interesting questions:
Even more intriguing is that an 11 million DNA base stretch on chromosome 7 devoid of archaic sequences harbors the FOXP2 gene associated with our ability to speak and use language, and also contains genes whose variants have been associated with autism.
Commenting to GLP sister site, Genetic Expert News Service (GENeS) about the February 2016 study in Science on the Neanderthal genome, Rasmus Nielsen, a professor in the department of integrative biology at University of California, Berkeley, explained that if the genetic impact of these ancient species is detectable, it is probable doing something:
If 2-3% of your DNA is from Neanderthals, 2-3% of the genetic variation explaining your phenotypes you would also expect to come from Neanderthals. So this study is not particularly surprising. It would be very odd if we had all this Neanderthal DNA and it didn’t, on average, have some effect on observable traits.
So what are those effects? This study analyzed genetic records of 28,000 Americans of European descent and compared them to known Neanderthal sequences. The researchers found that certain variants from Neanderthal DNA found in modern humans were linked to depression and addiction, as well as a condition actinic keratoses, urinary-system symptoms and a tendency for excessive blood clotting.
While it may be tempting to blame addiction and depression on our ancestors’ flings with Neanderthals, many researchers urge caution about these results. Dr. Nielsen:
The effect they report is a very small proportion of the genetic variance. It’s a few percent in a huge sample size of 28,000 people. Because we’re talking about genetic variation here the effect is not in one direction – so the study doesn’t show that you’re more (or less) likely to become ill because of Neanderthal DNA.
Sriram Sankararaman, a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, echoed a similar sentiment in comments to GENeS, while also adding a note about the complexity of many human traits:
It would be incorrect to conclude from this study that Neanderthal DNA alone is behind risk of depression, or any of the other traits looked at in the study. Many of the traits which the authors looked at are complex so they are influenced by lots of different genes, each of which has a fairly small effect individually.
So while it’s still very uncertain what the effect is on modern humans, the evidence that early humans ‘co-mingled’ with other similar species is quite clear. It may feel uncomfortable to think of humans mating with other species, but the ubiquity of this behavior in nature only further reminds us that humans are part of the natural world and that classification tools and terms like ‘species’ are human constructs that are violated all the time in the wild.
Nicholas Staropoli is the associate director of GLP and director of the Epigenetics Literacy Project. He has an M.A. in biology from DePaul University and a B.S. in biomedical sciences from Marist College. Follow him on twitter @NickfrmBoston.
The GLP aggregated and excerpted this blog/article to reflect the diversity of news, opinion and analysis.
For many years, neuroscientists believed they had identified a specific pattern of brain activity acting as a kind of “signature” for pain in the brain. Recently this so-called “pain matrix” has been called into question, and a new study by British researchers may have shattered the myth once and for all.
The pain matrix is actually a cluster of regions in the brain that prior imaging studies indicated are involved in processing pain perception, including the posterior insula and the anterior cingulate cortex. This has been so broadly accepted that the signature pattern has been used to declare that emotional pain (like social rejection) and physical pain are the same thing, as far as the brain is concerned. The argument goes that something like a bad romantic breakup has the same effect on brain activity as spilling a hot cup of coffee on your shirt.
More recent studies have cast doubt on those conclusions, however. And now researchers at the University of Reading and University College London have concluded that this cluster of regions in brain is not specific to pain. It also responds to loud noises, bright lights, a strong non-painful touch (like a firm handshake), and yes, social rejection. They describe their findings in a new paper published in JAMA Neurology.
The GLP aggregated and excerpted this blog/article to reflect the diversity of news, opinion and analysis.
. . .Which of the following would you regard as genetic modification?
A: Adding a gene from another organism
B: Inducing mutations with radiation or toxic chemicals
C: Making a single precise change to an organism’s genome
For me, the answer is D: All of the above. For the European Commission, though, the answer is “A – yes, B – no, and C – well, we can’t make up our minds.”
This position has never made any sense and now, with the CRISPR gene-editing revolution, it appears even more ludicrous.
. . . .
. . . [G]ene editing works by exploiting natural recombination. . . the simplest form merely involves cutting DNA at a specific site. When the cell repairs the damage, it often adds or deletes a few DNA letters. Exactly the same kind of mutations occur naturally. . .
. . . .Modern breeders . . . zap plants with radiation or DNA-damaging chemicals, and then screen thousands of cells to find one with the desired change. The EU has specifically ruled that mutagenesis as this is known (option B above) does not count as genetic modification. . . .
The EU. . .has yet to decide whether simple gene editing (option C above) counts as genetic modification. Rationally, it makes no sense to subject gene-edited organisms to far greater scrutiny than the products of mutagenesis when the end result can be identical. If anything, mutagenesis is riskier because it is far less precise.
. . . .
. . .[W]e need to move to a system that focuses not on how new strains of plants and animals are created but whether they have been changed in a way that could harm people or damage the environment. . . .
The GLP aggregated and excerpted this blog/article to reflect the diversity of news, opinion and analysis.
[Editor’s note: The following is an introduction to a lesson plan on genetic engineering in animals based on New York Times content from the Times’ Learning Network website]
Within the past few years scientists have revolutionized genetic engineering techniques so that now, with relative ease, they can precisely edit the genetic coding of animals more-or-less on demand. What once took decades or longer through selective breeding is now nearly instantaneous. Researchers have already produced salmon that grow faster and beef cattle with larger muscles (and therefore more meat).
The rapidly advancing field has implications not just for food production, but for slowing the spread of deadly diseases, like malaria, and protecting endangered species in the wild. But, has the sudden arrival of gene-edited animals overtaken the public discussion of their risks and benefits?
In this lesson, students will learn about the process of gene editing and consider the ethical questions inherent in tinkering with animal DNA. Then, they will debate two very different case studies of animals already engineered: fast-growing salmon and offspring-free mosquitoes. In the Going Further section, we provide resources for investigating the gene-editing process in more detail and considering the benefits and risks of additional genetic engineering applications, including editing human DNA.
The GLP aggregated and excerpted this blog/article to reflect the diversity of news, opinion and analysis.
Fat thighs. Hairy arms. Muffin tops. Breasts that are too big or not big enough. To the long list of body parts that adolescent girls worry about and want to tinker with, the Internet age has added a new one: the vulva.
So many teenagers are seeking cosmetic surgery to trim or shape the external genitalia that the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists issued guidance from its Committee on Adolescent Health Care to doctors, urging them to teach and to reassure patients, suggest alternatives to surgery that may alleviate discomfort, and screen them for a psychiatric disorder that causes obsession about perceived physical defects.
As for why there has been an increase in demand for the surgery among teenagers, physicians are “sort of baffled,” said Dr. Julie Strickland, the chairwoman of A.C.O.G.’s committee on adolescent health care
For adults, the procedure is marketed as “vaginal rejuvenation,” tightening the inner and outer muscles of the vagina, as well as often shaping the labia; it is geared to older women and women who have given birth. But gynecologists who care for teenage girls say they receive requests every week from patients who want surgery to trim their labia minora, mostly for cosmetic reasons, but occasionally for functional reasons, such as to relieve discomfort.
The guideline does not rule out surgery on the labia, or labiaplasty for teens, but says it is rarely appropriate. “It should not be entertained until growth and development is complete,” Dr. Strickland said.
The headlines are breathless: “Gene-edited CRISPR mushroom escapes US regulation: A fungus engineered with the CRISPR–Cas9 technique can be cultivated and sold without further oversight.” So Nature magazine announced a recent decision by the biotechnology products regulatory division of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The herd followed suit.
The Twitterverse predictably erupted with lamentations and alarums, predictions of doom, and condemnations of the “outdated” regulatory system under which this miscarriage was promulgated. TheWashington Postdeclaimed, “A new fungus shows just how murky our understanding of the technology – and our policy surrounding it – remains.” The reporter may be confused, but neither our understanding of the technology nor the relevant policy is at all “murky.” The idea that an innovation solving a problem might not present sufficient hazard to justify a requirement for pre-market approval seems unimaginable to some. It is clearly time to revisit the raison d’etre of government regulation.
The entire point of regulation is to mitigate hazard and manage risk. The definition of risk is exposure to a hazard. If there is no hazard, if danger is lacking, trivial, impossible to imagine, there can be no risk, and government regulation cannot be justified.
So what, exactly, is the hazard presented by this CRISPR-tweaked mushroom that threatens equine equanimity?
The innovators describe their “Frankenfungi” as a “transgene free, anti-browning white button mushroom (Agaricus bisporus).” They have improved it for human use by using CRISPR/Cas9 techniques to produce several “small deletions (1-14bp) in a specific polyphenol oxidase [PPO] gene.” The deletions disable the function of the enzyme polyphenol oxidase (PPO), which causes browning in some fruits when they are exposed to air, but otherwise lacks any indispensable role in plant metabolism. The main impact of the presence of this enzyme, from the human point of view, is to exacerbate food waste. There are no data to suggest its absence leads to any significant consequence beyond reducing spoilage. Though widely found in plants, it is not ubiquitous, and its metabolic functions are duplicated by a plethora of functionally similar proteins that obviously take up whatever metabolic slack may result from its removal. It seems to be a molecular analogue of male nipples but without the ornamental value.
The innovators responsible for this nifty idea, which actually delivers a solution to the problem du jour, food waste, wisely thought to consult with U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) before moving further towards the market. They availed themselves of a bona fide innovation in regulatory policy for which USDA deserves praise: the “Am I regulated?” service. Innovators unsure whether their idea would require extensive regulatory review can ask the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) if their product would fall under the onerous and expensive regulations inexplicably aimed at plant seeds improved through some biotechnology methods, or be exempted from such due to the lack of any demonstrated potential for hazard, as are all varieties derived from “conventional” breeding (which means, essentially, techniques used before 1996…). So they sent APHIS an inquiry. APHIS considered their query and provided a rational response which stated that absent any imaginable hypothesis through which this cultivated mushroom might present a hazard, APHIS decided further regulatory scrutiny could not be justified. So let us review: Mushroom developers submitted an idea to the scrutiny of regulatory authorities who, unable to imagine any hazard, real or conjured, responded they could conceive of no additional information which, if scrutinized, would decrease a risk that looked like zero in the first place. Is this what a reasonable person would understand to fit the description of an “escape from regulation”?
There is actually nothing really new here. We have seen products like this before. Folks may remember the Arctic® Apple, a PPO null variety developed by Okanagan Specialty Fruits, a small entrepreneurial company in Canada, to eliminate browning of cut fruit and thus reduce food waste and encourage more fruit consumption by finicky toddlers. Most folks will not have encountered the Arctic® Apple yet (soon, soon…), but is there anybody who is not familiar with sultanas, the ubiquitous golden raisin? Turns out a natural mutation in grapes inactivated the PPO gene by a much clumsier and less precise method than was used to improve the apple and the mushroom. In addition to shutting down the PPO gene/enzyme, this entailed a host of cascading effects including the production of novel protein that completely escaped any scrutiny for toxicity or allergenicity. Nevertheless, this novel product “escaped” regulation entirely and has become omnipresent in markets around the world since its introduction. In 1962.
The same kind of “loss of function” varieties are found “naturally” in some lines of wheat (itself a completely human-made product of hybridization by humans). Wheat breeders have painstakingly hybridized the trait (over 15+ years) into commercially desirable strains that are now grown, exported, and consumed widely around the world. All these innovations are forms of genetic modification every bit as unnatural as anything done with today’s methods, but entirely uncontroversial. Hmmm…
Let us look closer at some of the regulatory details. APHIS specifically found the mushroom to be outside the purview of the regulations at 7 CFR 340 under which APHIS acts to prevent or manage risks to U.S. agriculture from “plant pests” or “weeds.” The definition of a “weed” is pretty easy—it’s a plant growing where a human doesn’t want it. A plant pest is not quite so clear cut, but it is clearly defined in the Plant Protection Act (PPA) as:
…any living stage of any of the following that can directly or indirectly injure, cause damage to, or cause disease in any plant or plant product:
(A) A protozoan.
(B) A nonhuman animal.
(C) A parasitic plant.
(D) A bacterium.
(E) A fungus.
(F) A virus or viroid.
(G) An infectious agent or other pathogen.
(H) Any article similar to or allied with any of the articles specified in the preceding subparagraphs.
Some criticize this “plant pest” approach because it is not aimed specifically at, for example, products of recombinant DNA technologies or more recently developed tools like zinc finger nucleases, TALENs, or CRISPR-Cas9, as was the mushroom. They ignore that the breadth and flexibility of the language in the PPA give USDA enormous power to deal with genuine hazards, they dismiss U.S. regulations as “cobbled together” without actually coming to grips with the rationale or reviewing the years of consideration and thousands of pages of analysis it’s based on, and seem therefore doomed unproductively to repeat elements of the history from which they have apparently learned nothing. They have strong opinions about things of which they actually seem to know very little. Furthermore, they forget that regardless of what USDA does with this mushroom, it remains entirely subject to FDA authorities which require all food placed on the market to be safe. That requirement is inescapable.
But numerous authoritative bodies have pointed out consistently over the past three decades that there are no unique hazards from these seed improvement technologies, and any hazards they may present are familiar from experience with older techniques and can be managed with known tools (containment and/or isolation, extirpation, etc.). The Plant Protection Act prudently focuses not on process, but on an items qualities and characteristics, the phenotype of the innovation at issue. This is a regulatory trigger that actually makes sense, bears a tangible relationship to risk, and can be defended on the basis of data and experience.
The Centers for Disease Control publish a document titled Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report in which they identify the causes and tally the toll of sickness and death that befall those living in the United States. One will search its extensive archives in vain for data to show “plant breeding” as a factor on this landscape. Fevered headlines may attract eyeballs, but at the cost of raising unjustified fears, misleading readers, and undermining sound public policy. Such outcomes do not advance the public good.
Mary Shelley wrote “Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus” in 1818. She intended it as a parable of virtue misunderstood, a warning against the ill consequences and injustice of noble scientific endeavors unjustly feared and maligned by mobs. Two centuries later it remains sadly au courant.
This article originally appeared on Innovation Files here and was reposted with permission of the author.
Val Giddings is senior fellow at The Information and Technologies Innovation Center. He previously served as vice president for Food & Agriculture of the Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO) and at the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment and as expert consultant to the United Nations Environment Programme, the World Bank, USDA, USAID, and companies, organizations and governments around the world. Follow him on twitter @prometheusgreen.
The GLP aggregated and excerpted this blog/article to reflect the diversity of news, opinion and analysis.
Cardinal John Njue asked Kenyans to reject the vaccine and GMOs and said that certain powers with a hidden agenda were behind the two controversial issues. Njue said protecting people’s health should always be a priority and warned people on the next vaccination phase. “We all know the dangers and the damages of both the vaccine and GMOs. Let no one lie to Kenyans. Let us be careful with our own destiny and security of our people,” he said. . . .
“I ask you to keep away from the vaccine and please heed our warning. We are what we eat, if you eat rubbish you become rubbish, let’s also keep off GMOs,” the Cardinal said. Addressing residents of Limuru during the first Arch-Diocese of Nairobi Farmers Day, Njue said the church is promoting organic farming for healthy food, business and safe environment by using available resources and promoting natural farming. “We are advised to avoid excessive use of chemicals and fertilisers, which poison the environment. We should aim to gain healthy environmental conditions,” he said. Njue called on Kenyans to produce crops sustainably by improving soil fertility by using waste that can be recycled. He termed organic farming as a call to get “back to nature”, which would provide food that is safe and of high nutrition for the health of both producers and consumers without damaging the environment.
The GLP aggregated and excerpted this blog/article to reflect the diversity of news, opinion and analysis.
Scientists funded by the Simons Foundation Research Initiative announced the launch of an online project that aims to gather DNA and other information from 50,000 people with autism and their family members.
Although the cause of the social communication disorder is unknown and believed to be a mix of environmental and genetic factors, scientists have identified some 50 to 70 genes that may play a role in the condition. Some estimate that a total of 350 or more could be involved.
The long-term study involves researchers from more than 21 medical institutions, including Boston Children’s Hospital, the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, the Kennedy Krieger Institute and Weill Cornell Medicine.
Autism diagnoses have risen in the United States at a high pace, and a survey this year estimated that one out of 45 children ages 3 to 17 have the condition. The issue has strained state and federal resources for special needs and created whole industries of companies catering to interventions and therapies.
Joseph Piven, who is co-leading the team at UNC-Chapel Hill, said the initiative would help accelerate an era of personalized medicine for people with the condition. He said the data from the study could be used to “guide targeted treatment research based on a patient’s genetic analysis.”
The GLP aggregated and excerpted this blog/article to reflect the diversity of news, opinion and analysis.
In the face of scientific dogma that faults the population decline of monarch butterflies on a lack of milkweed, herbicides and genetically modified crops, a new Cornell University study casts wider blame: sparse autumnal nectar sources, weather and habitat fragmentation.
“. . . [W]e have pieced together the monarch life cycle to make inferences about what is impacting the butterflies,” said Anurag Agrawal, Cornell University professor of ecology and evolutionary biology and senior author on the new paper, to be published April 25 in the journal Oikos.
. . . .The study finds that a “lack of milkweed, the only host plant for monarch butterfly caterpillars, is unlikely to be driving the monarch’s population decline, as the problem appears to occur after they take flight in the fall,” said Agrawal.
. . . .
. . . .Yes, said Agrawal: “The consistent decline at the overwintering sites in Mexico is cause for concern. Nonetheless, the population is six times what it was two years ago, when it was at its all-time low.” Agrawal credits the population rebound to improved weather and release from the severe drought in Texas.
Agrawal said that a persistent decline caused by lack of nectar sources or other threats such as habitat loss or insecticide use can conspire with large annual population fluctuations – mostly due to weather – and may eventually push monarchs to dangerously low numbers.
“Given the intense interest in monarch conservation, the blame being put on herbicide use and the national dialog about potentially listing monarchs under the endangered species act, we have to get the science right,” said Agrawal.
The GLP aggregated and excerpted this blog/article to reflect the diversity of news, opinion and analysis.
Microbiologist Jonathan Eisen has a knack for really annoying his fellow scientists.
He calls them out for overhyping their findings, or for inviting too few women to speak on panels, or for choosing to publish research in prestigious journals available only to subscribers instead of open-access publications. His crusading spirit knows no boundaries: Eisen once bestowed a “Genomic Jerk” award on himself for getting his facts wrong in a blog post.
All this, plus a playful social media presence, has earned Eisen a reputation as one of the most influential life science researchers on Twitter.
But what he really wants is to use that megaphone to help people understand bugs.
From an office crammed with lemur skulls, tubeworm shells, and dusty boxes of dead butterflies, Eisen aims to promote public understanding of the microbiome, the vast assortment of microbes that live in and all around us. Bacteria, he points out, are ubiquitous — in people’s guts, on their skin, and in every environment. They can cause infections and disease, but they are also essential to health and life.
On one side, there is widespread germophobia — the fear that “there are germs everywhere, microbes on McDonald’s play structures, and we’re all going to die,” he said. “On the other hand,” he said, “we have the other end of the spectrum, which I call microbiomania — [the belief] that all microbes are good and will magically cure all your ailments.”
The GLP aggregated and excerpted this blog/article to reflect the diversity of news, opinion and analysis.
They’ve made it far in life, 80 years and counting. Yet they’re conspicuously free of the afflictions that often crop up in old age: diabetes, heart disease, cancer, dementia. They are a rare breed, the “Wellderly.”
That’s the name researchers have given a group of older adults who could unlock the genetic secrets not just to a long life, but a healthy one.
“Longevity is somewhat man-made because you can now do so much for a person — you can put them on life support and live forever,” Eric Topol, who oversees the Wellderly study as director of the Scripps Translational Science Institute in La Jolla, California, told BuzzFeed News. “Short of that, you can certainly treat cancers and heart disease and neurodegenerative diseases, and keep people alive but not healthy.”
What his team wants to understand is why some elderly people have managed to avoid developing any chronic conditions. “For all these years of genomics, we’ve been focusing on diseases,” Topol said. “There just hasn’t been enough work on the health span” — that is, the number of years a person maintains good health.
The first study out of the Wellderly project, published in the journal Cell, suggests that healthy aging and longevity, while related, also have distinct genetic differences.
The GLP aggregated and excerpted this blog/article to reflect the diversity of news, opinion and analysis.
Scientists at the University of Massachusetts Medical School (UMMS) say they have identified a new molecular pathway critical for maintaining the smooth muscle tone that allows the passage of materials through the digestive system. This finding, based on studying calcium ion-controlled pathways in mice, may lead to new treatments for a host of digestive disorders, ranging from common gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) to swallowing disorders, incontinence, and pancreatitis.
The team’s study (“The Molecular Basis of the Genesis of Basal Tone in Internal Anal Sphincter”) was published in Nature Communications.
“We are excited about the potential to target identified genes to treat disorders such as reflux and incontinence,” said Ronghua ZhuGe, PhD, associate professor of microbiology and physiological systems and a senior author of the study. “Knowing how these muscles stay contracted for such long periods of time will allow us to develop potential new treatments for these diseases. The next step is to see whether this molecular mechanism in mice also operates in humans.”
The human body, and those of other mammals, contains a number of ring-shaped structures made of smooth muscle encircling openings in hollow organs such as the intestines and bladder that are called sphincters. Smooth muscle is controlled involuntarily, unlike the muscles we use to walk, for example, so that we don’t need to consciously move digested food from stomach to small intestine.
That’s what happened earlier this year when it issued its “preliminary assessment” of imidacloprid, the first commercially available, widely used neonicotinoid pesticide (“neonic,” for short).
Neonics—90% of which are applied as seed-treatments. . .—are taken up into the plant so that they target only the pests that feed on the crop, minimizing exposure to humans, animals, and beneficial insects. . . .
. . . .
Uncharacteristically, EPA’s imidacloprid assessment reached conclusions that were good news for farmers and the agriculture sector—and devastating to many activists. . . .
Three significant conclusions in the EPA’s assessment will be a boon to America’s farmers. First, it exonerated imidacloprid seed treatments from posing a risk to honeybees. The tiny residues detectable in the pollen and nectar that are found in treated crops are too small to do significant harm to the bees. . . .
Second, the EPA determined that there was a “No Observable Adverse Effects Level” (NOAEL) for honeybee exposure to imidacloprid of 25 parts per billion (ppb). . . . This finding is significant because neonic residue levels in nectar and pollen for imidacloprid seed-treated crops typically fall in single digits of ppb. . . .
Third, the EPA’s assessment found that neonic residue levels in corn, the largest U.S. crop and biggest neonic user, posed no problem for bees. . . .
But the EPA’s assessment wasn’t so favorable (or accurate) for two other crops. . . . In reaching its conclusions about cotton and citrus—two crops for which neonics are considered essential—the EPA ignored persuasive scientific evidence to the contrary.
The GLP aggregated and excerpted this blog/article to reflect the diversity of news, opinion and analysis.
After years of fierce debate in China about whether to allow widespread growing of genetically modified (GM) food crops, a strong signal emerged in 2013 that the leadership wanted to push ahead. It was given in a speech on agricultural policy by President Xi Jinping. . . . He said that guaranteeing China’s “food security” was still a serious worry. Hinting at what he saw as a possible remedy, he said China must “occupy the commanding heights of transgenic technology” and not yield that ground to “big foreign firms”.
[Twenty years ago] Europeans, . . . had to beg regulators for permission to experiment with a few hundred square metres of GM plants, their Chinese counterparts were conducting trials across tens of thousands of hectares.
Could the lowly dandelion solve a crisis? If Key Gene CEO Dr. Arjen van Tunen and his fellow scientists are correct, this yard pest may be the basis of sustainable and highly profitable rubber production. A growing middle class worldwide has produced a need for high-quality rubber, mostly for tires. Rubber tree (the genus Havea) plantations in Southeast Asia are threatened by climate change, disease, and sustainable harvesting is costly and labor intensive. However, the dandelion produces latex, just not in huge amounts.
KeyGene has identified a high production version in Kazakhstan and combined its genetics with those of the larger, common dandelion. The result is a plant that could revolutionize the rubber industry and provide a new high-value, easy-to-grow crop for farmers. Environmental impacts are also discussed. In the process, the scientists at KeyGene also identified genes related to apomixis, the ability to produce seeds without fertilization, essentially clones of the parent. Understanding these genes could dramatically change agriculture, as any plant could potentially be made to produce clonal seeds from the mother plant.
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In the second part of the podcast, correspondent Vern Blazek–a pseudonym for Kevin Folta–talks to University of Florida geneticist Curt Hannah, who answers a listener question about corn varieties and just how much genetic variation there is in modern modern hybrids.
Plus some thoughts by Flota on the Borlaug CAST Agriculture Communications Award
The 
Terry Daynard, a Guelph, Ontario, farmer and former associate dean at the University of Guelph, wrote 
Melanesians are a cultural group that occupy the Oceanic island countries of Vanuatu, Solomon Islands, Fiji, and Papua New Guinea, as well as New Caledonia, West Papua and the Maluku Islands. Modern Melanesians have roughly 4 percent of their DNA from Denisovans, and have 2-3 percent of their DNA from Neanderthals. What is particularly interesting is the incredible distance between where Denisovan bones were found, Sibera, and the area where modern Melanesians are found today, Oceania. This means that in just 40,000 years, Denisovan DNA traveled over 2,000 miles.
Denisovan DNA is found in genes which are involved with blood sugar levels, fat metabolism and the immune system. Interbreeding with Neanderthal’s has also affected genes involved with the 
The innovators 
