The release of some 8 million genetically modified mosquitoes in West Bay [Cayman Islands] has had a significant impact in reducing populations of the disease-spreading insects in the targeted area, researchers say.
Preliminary data from the Mosquito Research and Control Unit shows that the genetically modified males are successfully mating with females in the wild.
The MRCU statistics also show a significant reduction in Aedes aegypti eggs found in traps in the targeted zone compared with a non-treatment area.
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Bill Petrie, director of the MRCU, said, “These results certainly give us confidence that this can be successful island wide.”
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In the most recent data, collected over the past two months, the fluorescent marker showed up in 94 percent of larvae collected in the targeted zone, demonstrating they had out-competed males in the wild for mates.
“What this shows us is that the first part of the technique is working. The GM mosquitoes are mating with the wild females with a high degree of success,” [Petrie] said.
The GLP aggregated and excerpted this blog/article to reflect the diversity of news, opinion, and analysis. Read full, original post:GM mosquitoes making an impact in West Bay
Preliminary results are in from NASA’s unprecedented twin study— a detailed probe of the genetic differences between astronaut Scott Kelly, who spent nearly a consecutive year in space, and his identical twin Mark. Measurements taken before, during and after Scott Kelly’s mission reveal changes in gene expression, DNA methylation and other biological markers that are likely to be attributable to his time in orbit.
From the lengths of the twins’ chromosomes to the microbiomes in their guts, “almost everyone is reporting that we see differences”, says Christopher Mason, a geneticist at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York City.
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Studies of the twins’ telomeres, the caps on the ends of their chromosomes, showed that during spaceflight Scott’s telomeres grew to be longer than his brother’s. “That is exactly the opposite of what we thought,” says Susan Bailey, a radiation biologist at Colorado State University in Fort Collins.
Once Scott returned to the ground, the length of his telomeres returned to his pre-flight levels relatively quickly. The scientists are working to figure out what this means, and are running a separate study of telomere length in ten unrelated astronauts that, when completed in 2018, may shed more light on how spaceflight affects telomeres.
In what seems like a scene from the movie Groundhog Day, another rat study has come out of the laboratory of Dr. Giles-Eric Séralini (Read GLP profile here), only in this case, it is Roundup and not GMOs that are under fire. When I read the title of the paper, “Multiomics reveal non-alcoholic fatty liver disease in rats following chronic exposure to an ultra-low dose of Roundup herbicide”, I assumed a new study had been performed by the laboratory showing what this specific title appears to conclude i.e. that rats exposed to low levels of Roundup developed non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. However, when I read further I found that this was a study on tissues from a subset of the same lumpy rats that were involved in the famously retracted (and subsequently republished) paper from 2012 – the rats with horrific tumors (not fatty livers) due to GMOs (not glyphosate) that was breathlessly reported on the Doctor Oz show I participated in, and by media throughout the world.
I think if my work had been roundly criticized by scientific peers for poor experimental design and pathology data inadequacies, and critiqued by a multitude of separate national biosafety committees from Belgium, Brazil, European Union, Canada, France, Germany, Australia/New Zealand, and The High Council on Biotechnology, I would not double down and continue to analyze 5-year old samples from that same experiment. What is weird is that although I vividly remember the images of grotesque tumors on the white Sprague Dawley female rats, (one does not forget those images with a “GMO” label contrasted against the shocking tumors) I did not recall any mention of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. So I went back to the original paper and searched for the term “fatty liver disease”. Nada.
Giles-Eric Séralini
In fact, the only data on livers in that retracted/republished 2012 paper was presented for the male rats. According to the 2012 paper, the males that received the low levels of Roundup (50 ng/L glyphosate equivalent dilution) displayed liver “congestions” and “macroscopic and microscopic necrotic foci”, not fatty liver disease. I asked a Laboratory Animal pathologist at UC Davis who specializes in rodent health to review the data in the paper to determine if it suggested the rats had fatty liver disease. There was no histopathologic evidence of hepatic lipidosis presented in males and no data on female livers was presented at all. Many of the “anatomical pathologies” observed are common aging-related findings and this was not taken into account or discussed. They suggested the term “anatomopathological analysis” was a very irregular term for a veterinary pathologist to use and that the use of hepatodigestive tract and liver as separate categories of pathology incidence were redundant. They kept doggedly going back to the fact that no fatty liver phenotype data were ever presented on female livers so they could make no determination as to whether or which rats were suffering from fatty liver disease.
If you want a really interesting read from a group of veterinary pathologists who reviewed the pathology data in the 2012 Séralini study, their review contains the following understated scientific barbs (bold emphasis mine):
The sentence ‘The largest palpable growths (…) were found to be in 95% of cases non-regressive tumors, and were not infectious nodules.’ is very confusing. We hope that differentiating inflammatory from neoplastic lesions was not a challenge for the authors. Another clear example illustrating the lack of accuracy of the results is found in Fig. 3 where microscopic necrotic foci in the liver are grouped with clear-cell focus and basophilic focus with atypia. The first finding refers to a degenerative process whereas the remaining two refer to a proliferative one (Thoolen et al., 2010). Such basic error would be considered as a disqualifying mistake at an examination for pathologists.
Ouch.
They then go on to ask why there was no mention of which pathologist did the analyses, and why the rats were not euthanized earlier:
…as most members of the ESTP [European Society of Toxicologic Pathology] are veterinarians, we were shocked by the photographs of whole body animals bearing very large tumors.When looking at the lesions, we believe those animals should have been euthanized much earlier as imposed by the European legislation on laboratory animal protection.
and then conclude their diatribe with the following:
The ESTP comes to the conclusion that the pathology data presented in this paper are questionable and not correctly interpreted and displayed because they don’t concur with the established protocols for interpreting rodent carcinogenicity studies and their relevance for human risk assessment. The pathology description and conclusion of this study are unprofessional. There are misinterpretations of tumors and related biological processes, misuse of diagnostic terminology; pictures are not informative and presented changes do not correspond to the narrative.
For those who are not immersed in science – these are damning criticisms.
So back to the 2017 study, it cites a 2015 “transcriptomics” study by the same group for the observations on the female livers. In that study livers from 10 control females and the 10 females from the R (A) group from the 2012 study (for those of you paying attention) were analyzed using “transcriptomics”. So I went to read the 2015 paper to see if the Roundup-ingesting females perhaps had some liver data, and again there was no discussion of a fatty liver disease phenotype. There was, however, an interesting discussion of why tissues from the females were used for the analysis in both the 2015 “transcriptomics” and 2017 “multiomics” paper.
In the 2012 study that started it all, apparently:
Most male rats were discovered after death had occurred. This resulted in organ necrosis making them unsuitable for further analysis. We therefore focused our investigation on female animals where freshly dissected tissues from cohorts of 9-10 euthanized and untreated rats were available. Female control and Roundup-treated animals were respectively euthanized at 701 ± 62 and 635 ± 131 days. Anatomopathological analysis of organs from these animals revealed that the liver and kidneys were the most affected organs.
Well, the fact that the males got to a stage of necrosis because no one discovered they were dead seems strange in a study where rats were presumably checked every day as required by every animal care protocol I am familiar with. However, such protocols would also have required the rats to be sacrificed long before the tumors were able to grow to the size that were clearly evident in the photos associated with this study. And the fact that the liver and kidneys were the most affected organs might well have been true for the male rats (and these apparently necrotic tissues were analyzed and reported for these males), but for the female rats, according to the 2012 paper, it was all about the tumors!
Image from Seralini et al. 2012.
That was the whole basis of the sensational 2012 paper that actually resulted in entire African countries rejecting all GMO imports. Reread that previous sentence because it shows the power of this one, poorly-designed study with 120 rats.
So livers were being harvested from these 20 females – several of which were compromised and euthanized “early” (2 from the control group, and 5 from the “treatment” group) at different ages due to the tumor load. Is it not obvious that these additional factors of tumor load and different ages would confound any data collected from their livers?
The 2015 paper goes on to show electronic microscope analysis of liver sections from females. But it turns out the photograph of the control female was actually the same photo at a different magnification as that shown for the control male hepatocyte image in the 2012 paper. The authors have since stated that was an honest mistake and have submitted a corrigendum, but go on to suggest that there are differences in the hepatocytes from Roundup-treated rats, specifically showing “a disruption of glycogen dispersion”, a disruption of nucleolar function and an overall decreased level of transcription. How transcription can be determined based on an electron micrograph is unclear. No mention is made of the “fatty liver disease” promised in the 2017 paper’s title.
So let me sum this up for those of you who may be lost. The original, highly-controversial 2012 study was done on 120 rats. The most recent study was performed on the livers of a subset of 10 female control rats and 10 female rats from that same 2012 study that were in “Roundup group (A)” which received 50 ng/L glyphosate equivalent dilution in their water. We do not know their water intake so have no idea of actual dosage of “Roundup”; we have little histological data on female liver samples – let alone a diagnosis of fatty liver disease; we know that the control and “treated” rats were euthanized at a variety of differing ages, and that the majority of these female rats had huge tumors that required several of the rats in both the control and Roundup groups to be euthanized before two years of age. And the livers from these 20 rats were the basis of the most recent “omics” paper. There is a saying in science (and perhaps other disciplines): “garbage in – garbage out”.
So let’s plow on – and read the 2017 paper which concludes that the metabolome and proteome analyses of the livers from the “Roundup-drinking” rats versus the controls “showed a substantial overlap with biomarkers of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease and its progression to steatohepatosis”. Hooray – now THERE is a testable hypothesis – so what ARE the biomarkers of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease? In other words, what proteins and metabolites might you expect to see upregulated (or downregulated) if in fact animals had non-alcoholic fatty liver disease? I have read the paper several times now and seen no reference to a paper that answers that question. So in the absence of knowledge of fatty liver biomarkers, and given the fact no pathology diagnosed “fatty liver disease”, to conclude that “Multiomics reveal non-alcoholic fatty liver disease in rats following chronic exposure to an ultra-low dose of Roundup herbicide” is – to put it kindly – overstating the results of the research and making conclusions beyond that supported by the data.
Interestingly the bioinformatics analysis in this 2017 paper appears to be an improvement on previous works by this group in that the p-values were adjusted to account for the fact there were a high number of metabolites measured (1906 proteins and 673 metabolites), and there was therefore a need to do corrections for multiple comparisons to try to minimize the number of false positives. The authors even include a discussion of the need for corrections for multiple comparisons on page 9, and correctly state that there is a need to do this when measuring hundreds or thousands of observations to reduce the chance of making a type I error (false positive). However, they then lament the fact that there was a lack of statistical significance following the multiple comparison correction for all but three metabolites, due to the small sample size. That is the point! That is why these studies need to have sample size determinations based on the hypothesis being tested.
This study, which was based on the experimental design of a 90 day subchronic toxicity study (OECD, 1998) such that 10 animals were assigned to each group, was critiqued by the German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment (BfR) for small sample size for that very reason:
…subchronic studies show a substantially lower variation of age-related pathological changes between animals within a group while those changes are inevitable in long-term studies. As the published study has confirmed, the two-year duration of the study is of the order of the expected life span in rats including the Sprague Dawley strain that was used in the study. This strain, provided by the breeder Harlan, is known to develop spontaneous tumors, particularly mammary and pituitary tumors, at relatively high rates compared to other strains (Brix et al., 2005; Dinse et al., 2010). Therefore, it can be expected that a significant number of animals develop age-related illnesses or die for diverse reasons already during conduct of the study. The distribution of the cases of death between groups can be random, and a number of 10 animals per sex and group is too low to confirm a trend or an effect. Furthermore, no statements on statistically significant dose-response-relationships can be made. Larger sample sizes, as recommended for carcinogenicity studies in OECD Test Guidelines No. 451 or No. 453, would be required in order to allow precise statements with respect to the findings.
In other words you need to have bigger sample sizes to perform long term studies because many changes are associated with old age – especially when working with a rat strain that is known to develop spontaneous tumors, particularly female mammary and pituitary tumors!
Frustratingly, when the multiple comparisons removed all but three of the 673 metabolites as being statistically significant due to multiple comparison correction in the 2017 paper, the authors just went ahead and included the 55 that had a significant uncorrected p value(!), because “the non-adjusted statistically significant levels” fit a narrative, and so were revived from the statistical trash can on the basis that “they were found to be non-random and thus biologically meaningful”. This is the very definition of confirmation bias which is what multiple comparison correction and correct experimental design is trying to weed out because scientists are people too, and they are not without their own preconceived notions of how the world works.
More concerning, this 2017 paper is yet another in a string of papers from this group that was accepted in a peer-reviewed journal, in this case Scientific Reports, an online journal from the publishers of Nature. The problems in experimental design, lack of supporting pathology data on the test subjects, and wildly subjective overinterpretation of the results should have been grounds for soundly rejecting this manuscript. We live in an age of the willful neglect of scientific evidence, and the emergence of “alternative facts” and realities. As a scientist it worries me that papers like this are published in apparently respected journals. I remember once hearing a member of the activist industry say that “peer-reviewed journals are the tool of the enemy” suggesting they were the gold standard communication tool for scientists to report inconvenient facts. At the time I did not appreciate the importance of that statement, and concerningly it appears that this in no longer the case. If we can’t trust the peer-review process to ensure the integrity of papers published in scientific journals, what can we trust? This is a problem that should worry the entire scientific community, not only those concerned with the topic of this particular paper.
A version of this article originally appeared on the BioBeef blog as “Another Day, Another Séralini study,” and has been republished here with permission from the author.
Alison Van Eenennaam, Ph.D. is an animal geneticist and Cooperative Extension specialist in the Department of Animal Science at the University of California, Davis. Follow her on Twitter @BioBeef
[Editor’s note: This article is an interview with environmental writer McKay Jenkins about his new book Food Fight: GMOs and the Future of the American Diet.]
The whole GMO issue is one of the most tribal issues I’ve ever written about. You find people with deep prejudices about whether or not you know what you’re talking about. One group thinks GMOs are the best possible way to feed the world and the other group feels it’s the worst thing to enter the food system ever.
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I spoke with world-renowned plant researchers who said that if it turns out some day that GMOs will be part of a grander idea of sustainable agriculture, then there is no reason not to use them. So the GMO question is hot but really, in a way, it’s a distraction from what’s more important: The global food system is so dramatically not sustainable today that we might consider using GMOs as part of a package of making the system itself more sustainable.
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GMOs did not create this problem and are not the most important part of this problem. The question of whether eating a GMO corn chip will cause you cancer is not the right question to ask. The bigger question is what is your relationship to food and the land?
The GLP aggregated and excerpted this blog/article to reflect the diversity of news, opinion, and analysis. Read full, original post: We’re Asking The Wrong Questions About GMOs
Genes are the future of coffee. Not nitro cold brewing or beans pooped out by civets, but genes. And coffee’s gene-fueled future just drew nearer, now that scientists have sequenced the genome of the Coffea arabica coffee plant—the species that makes up the vast majority of global production—and made the data public.
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With this information in hand, producers can begin to more accurately breed coffee varieties, as opposed to traditional selective breeding where you see a trait you like and breed for it. As scientists work their way through the genome, those traits may at some point have a known genetic basis.
And that’s increasingly important given the climate chaos spreading across the world. Global warming isn’t just about a generally warmer earth, but regions enduring dramatically different climates. Coffee will start doing better in some places and worse in others, as erratic temperatures and weather make life difficult for farmers.
“Sequencing the genome will allow geneticists to identify certain genes which indicate a plant’s resistance to a certain pest or determine that particular plants yield, cherry color, growth pattern, and flavor profile,” [says Lindsey Mesta of Good Land Organics.]
First, the overreaching agency claims it has the authority to regulate genetically improved livestock as a “new animal drug.” As the agency points out all new animal drugs are “deemed unsafe” unless it has approved a new animal drug application. Treating each version of new improved livestock as a drug is really bad news for developers and consumers, since it takes years for a new drug to get through the FDA process at an average cost of more than $1 billion.
The new FDA proposal is also ridiculously bad science….Researchers have pleaded for years that regulation, if needed, be based on whether the end product poses novel risks, not on the method by which it is created. Under the new idiotic FDA guidance, any intentional change to a single-nucleotide base pair would make the entire animal a regulated drug. Let’s put this into perspective. DNA, the chemicals that make up genes, are safe to eat….In fact, by one estimate you eat more than 100 trillion genes that are in your food every day. Eating the DNA that specifies the production of snake venom is no more dangerous than eating any other DNA….
Launching what it called a campaign for accuracy in public health research, the American Chemistry Council, which represents U.S. chemical companies, said the International Agency for Research on Cancer’s (IARC) evaluations “have a significant impact on U.S. public policy” and should be based on “transparent, thorough assessment of the best available science”.
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As part of its work on cancer research, IARC publishes evaluations – known as monographs – on whether certain chemicals, lifestyles and activities may cause cancer … IARC has repeatedly defended its work as scientifically sound and says its monographs are “widely respected for their scientific rigor, standardized and transparent process and … freedom from conflicts of interest”.
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The WHO agency is also embroiled in a row with Congress, the U.S. National Institutes of Health and the European Food Safety Authority over its review of the weedkiller glyphosate.
IARC classifies glyphosate, a key ingredient of Monsanto Co’s herbicide Roundup, as “probably carcinogenic”, but that assessment is at odds with many government regulators, including those in the United States, Europe, Canada, Japan and New Zealand, who say it is unlikely to pose a cancer risk to humans.
Following court rulings that overturned GMO/pesticide laws passed by three Hawaii counties — the Kauai County Council formally rescinded its law [Jan. 25, 2017] — activists have turned to the state Legislature, where their anti-GMO agenda is now cloaked in the rhetoric of pesticide reforms.
Anti-GMO activists have relied upon sympathizers like Sen. Josh Green, who is eying a gubernatorial run, Rep. Chris Lee, and Sen. Russell Ruderman, who appears untroubled by the conflict of interest inherent in his ownership of organic grocery stores, to introduce more than a dozen bills related to pesticides.
In keeping with the activists’ anti-GMO/anti-ag mantra, these bills target farmers. Pest control and termite treatment companies, which apply more restricted use pesticides than any other group in the state are given a free pass.
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SB 19, which requires any person growing a crop to provide a detailed public disclosure of all pesticide use, would hit small farmers especially hard.
Other bills banning the use of chlorpyrifos and requiring a stringent permit to use neonicotinoid insecticide or coated seeds directly target the seed industry, which comprises the most valuable and viable sector of Hawaii agriculture.
Another bill calls for giving each county the authority to enact pesticide laws more stringent than those imposed by the state and federal government, which could result in a tremendous financial burden on local taxpayers.
The GLP aggregated and excerpted this blog/article to reflect the diversity of news, opinion, and analysis. Read full, original post: Musings: Cloaking the Rhetoric
Environmental groups sued the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on January 27th in attempt to force the agency to take another look at the conditional use permit approved for the herbicide dicamba as it relates to Monsanto’s Xtend soybean and cotton traits, according to a petition for review filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco.
[Monsanto’s Roundup Ready Xtend Crop System includes tolerance to glyphosate and dicamba in crops including soybeans.]
In November 2016, the EPA registered the first dicamba-based herbicide to use with the Xtend trait. XtendiMax with VaporGrip, a DGA salt-based formulation the contains an additive that Monsanto has said helps reduce volatility compared to previous DGA formulations by 90%. In December 2016, EPA registered BASF’s Engenia, a new BAPMA-salt low-volatility formulation.
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“[F]armers need new tools for weed control, and the EPA approved XtendiMax with VaporGrip technology for in-crop use after more than seven years of exhaustive scientific review and evaluation,” Monsanto spokesperson Charla Lord said in an email to DTN. “Dicamba-based herbicides have a 40-year history of safe use and we are confident the government’s exhaustive assessment will prevail.”
Center for Food Safety senior attorney George Kimbrell said in a statement EPA’s approval of dicamba means “federal regulators have abandoned the interests of farmers, the environment, and public health. We won’t allow our food to be dragged backward into a pesticide-soaked nightmare — not without a hell of a fight.”
The GLP aggregated and excerpted this blog/article to reflect the diversity of news, opinion, and analysis. Read full, original post: Lawsuit Targets Dicamba
[When Omar Abdul-Rahman, a clinical geneticist at the University of Mississippi Medical Center, had to provide a diagnosis for a young boy with distinct facial features and intellectual disabilities, he] turned to a new tool in a geneticist’s arsenal, an app based on facial recognition software that helps identify genetic conditions based on facial features. The app suggested, with a high degree of certainty, a condition he had considered [and a test] confirmed that the boy had Mowat-Wilson syndrome….
Face2Gene, the tool Abdul-Rahman used, was created by the Boston startup, FDNA. The company uses facial recognition software to aid clinical diagnoses of thousands of genetic conditions, such as Sotos syndrome, Kabuki syndrome, and Down syndrome.
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[T]here are more than 7,000 other genetic conditions that aren’t always so easy [to diagnose]. The founders of FDNA…thought it might be possible to use similar techniques to match facial characteristics to genetic conditions.
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Face2Gene’s user pool has grown quickly since the app was released in 2014—more than 65 percent of clinical geneticists worldwide use it—and as it grows, the tool becomes more robust.
When a geneticist confirms the diagnosis of an uploaded photo, the app incorporates that in its database, creating a sort of crowdsourced loop. Credit: Smithsonian.
Stem cell technology has produced some very exciting advances in medicine recently. Now a recent study from Penn State details how researchers coaxed ordinary skin cells to grow into heart cells.
Because experimenting with embryonic stem cells comes with ethical problems, researchers have learned how to induce skin cells to differentiate into other cells the way stem cells do. Researchers at Penn State were able to use induced pluripotent stem cells…to become epicardium cells—those that cover the outer layer of the human heart.
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“[W]e did a comparison between our cells and the real human cells, and found they were very much like each other,” says [Xiaojun Lance Lian, lead author and assistant professor of biomedical engineering and biology at Penn State].
Another exciting breakthrough came when the team learned to create reporter cells, which [glowed green when] they showed up in the petri dish….
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Together, these advances bode well for clinical applications of stem cell therapy after heart attacks.
[The DNA test] Fertilome was launched in January 2017 after being in the works for eight years. The company behind it, New York-based Celmatix, says it’s the first comprehensive test that screens for risk factors associated with female fertility.
Typically, age is the main factor that doctors consider when thinking about a woman’s fertility…[But] genetics could be linked to risk factors for endometriosis, polycystic ovarian syndrome, and primary ovarian insufficiency that can be a precursor to early menopause.
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Celmatix CEO Piraye Yurttas Beim [stated] that there are two different situations in which she’s hoping the Fertilome test will be useful:
For couples looking for clarity on why they’re having trouble conceiving
For women who are considering freezing their eggs so they can have a baby when they’re ready
For that second group, the genetics test could be a big help in determining who might actually benefit from the procedure. That could keep people from paying for the procedure who might not end up needing it because they end up conceiving on their own, a frequent result for egg freezing.
[Q]uestions about precision oncology vex doctors, scientists, health insurance companies, and the more than 1.6 million Americans who will receive a cancer diagnosis this year. How many patients might benefit from DNA sequencing of their tumors? Who will have access to this medical approach, which is exceptionally expensive? How much is society willing to pay for the small subset of patients who might benefit?
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Ever since the Human Genome Project, scientists have dreamed of using precise, personal molecular information to guide the diagnosis and treatment of human disease…Unfortunately, biological complexity still far exceeds medical knowledge.
Cancer treatment is a bright spot in this disappointing story, however. Tumors typically do display genetic aberrations that offer potential targets for drugs.
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“Realistically, for a lot of patients, [precision oncology] is not going to be helpful to them,” says [Michael Kolodziej, national director of managed care strategy for Flatiron Health]. “For others, it might be the single most important thing you could do. And I can’t tell one from the other right now.”
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Most of the mutations found in cancers are exceedingly rare, and the medical significance of many of them is murky. Some mutations are treatable; others are not, or at least not yet.
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Barbara Conley, at NCI, believes that some of the skepticism about precision oncology is warranted. “I think we will eventually figure it out,” she says. “But it’s not a slam dunk.” [David Hyman, an oncologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center] doesn’t disagree. But he points out that as more tumors get sequenced, and more targeted drugs are developed and tested, precision oncology is rapidly improving. A patient in the right place at the right time might find that a mutation that is not “therapeutically relevant” one day is treatable the next.
The GLP aggregated and excerpted this blog/article to reflect the diversity of news, opinion, and analysis. Read full, original post:The Cancer Lottery
Researchers at the European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI) have shown that the health of individual mice is influenced by the genetic makeup of their partners. Their findings…indicate that research into genetics and disease should include the genotypes of both individuals and their partners.
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Most traits are genetically controlled to some extent, for example one’s sleep preferences have a genetic component. But nothing happens in isolation, so if your partner is a night owl and keeps you awake later than you’d like, their genotypes might be partly to blame.
“People influence your behavior, health and well-being, and you influence theirs – this much we know already. What’s been missing is recognition that there is a genetic basis for this,” explains Amelie Baud of EMBL-EBI, who led the study.
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[Researchers] found that social genetic effects explained up to 29% of phenotypic variance in the traits measured. The traits most affected were wound healing, anxiety, immune function, and body weight. In some cases, the contribution of social genetic effects exceeded that of direct genetic effects.
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“Although today’s study was carried out in mice living together, it provides food for thought about how individuals can be influenced by the genetic makeup of the people in their lives…,” says Oliver Stegle of EMBL-EBI.
The GLP aggregated and excerpted this blog/article to reflect the diversity of news, opinion, and analysis. Read full, original post:Genetic makeup of ‘roommate’ impacts health
Pig embryos that had been injected with human stem cells when they were only a few days old began to grow organs containing human cells, an advance that promises — or threatens — to bring closer the routine production of creatures that are part human and part something else.
These human-pig “chimeras” were not allowed to develop past the fetal stage, but the experiment suggests such creations could eventually be used to grow fullyhuman organs for transplant, easing the fatal shortage of organs: 120,000 people in the United States are waiting for lifesaving transplants, but every day two dozen die before they get them.
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The creation of “intermediate forms” of life is thought by some critics to “denigrate human dignity and blur the line between what is human and what is not, especially if you believe that we were created in the image of God,” said bioethicist and legal scholar Hank Greely of Stanford.
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If the marriage of stem cells and CRISPR follows a path [similar to Dolly the sheep], it might not be long before pigs have enough Homo sapiens in them not only to grow human hearts, lungs, livers, and kidneys for transplant but also to model human diseases more closely than current lab animals do and to test experimental drugs.
California can require Monsanto [and other manufacturers of glyphosate] to label its popular weed-killer Roundup as a possible cancer threat despite an insistence from the chemical giant that it poses no risk to people, a judge tentatively ruled January 27.
California would be the first state to order such labeling if it carries out the proposal.
Monsanto had sued the nation’s leading agricultural state, saying California officials illegally based their decision for carrying the warnings on an international health organization based in France.
Monsanto attorney Trenton Norris argued in court that the labels would have immediate financial consequences for the company. He said many consumers would see the labels and stop buying Roundup.
“It will absolutely be used in ways that will harm Monsanto,” he said.
After the hearing, the firm said in a statement that it will challenge the tentative ruling.
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Shortly afterward, the most populated U.S. state took its first step in 2015 to require the warning labels.
St. Louis-based Monsanto contends that California is delegating its authority to an unelected foreign body with no accountability to U.S. or state officials in violation of the California Constitution.
The GLP aggregated and excerpted this blog/article to reflect the diversity of news, opinion, and analysis. Read full, original post: California clears hurdle for cancer warning label on Roundup
Editor’s note: The piece below was written by Wayne Parrot, professor of crop science at the University of Georgia, and Val Giddings, senior fellow at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation.
We write to offer a dissenting opinion to that in a Forbesop-ed, “GMOs Have Had A Good But Teachable Moments Lie Ahead”. In contrast to this rosy take, we believe the food industry (in the broad sense) continues to fail to appreciate the nature of the opposition to GMOs …. [Clayton’s] op-ed said 2016 was a good year because Congress passed a law preempting states from meddling with mandatory food labeling for genetically modified foods; the New York Times “corrected” itself by printing a “pro” article following a “con” article on the subject; the National Academy of Sciences came out with (yet another) favorable report reaffirming safety of genetically modified foods; the press has been generally positive about CRISPR; and President Obama said that policies must “follow the science.”
But … Congress did not need to pass a labeling bill, a redundant move precipitated by anti-GMO lobbyists having pushed through a clearly unconstitutional law in Vermont. The New York Times’ editors disregarded an avalanche of expert criticism and responded by raising the status of the “con” article to an editor’s pick. The National Academy report wrongly stated there is a lack of yield benefits from using GMO seeds, a claim contradicted by the papers it cited. And President Obama’s defense of GMOs was tepid at best, while his administration overall had a poor record when it comes to following the science on GMOs.
For years, Chile has had a curious double standard when it comes to genetically modified organisms. The country is a global powerhouse in the production of GM seeds — but makes them strictly off-limits to domestic farmers. Throw any in the ground for the local market, and the crop cops may slap you with a fine … Now the head-spinning policies could be coming under new pressure from the most punishing drought in Chilean history.
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The agency that oversees farming decided in 2001 to allow the cultivation of transgenic seeds if they’re destined for export. By the end of 2015, there were more than 9,000 hectares (about 22,200 acres) of GM seed-producing plants in Chile, sprouting products for companies including Bayer and Dow Chemical Co. The country is the fifth-largest producer of transgenic seeds in the world and the biggest exporter in the southern hemisphere.
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A bill that would allow all farmers to sow transgenic seeds for domestic use has been languishing in Congress for 10 years. “Politicians here are afraid of having their names tied to a technology that some groups have been unfairly demonizing,” said Daniel Norero, a Chilean biochemistry fellow at Cornell University and a member of Cornell’s Alliance for Science….
Editor’s Note: This article was written by Matthew Wallenstein, an associate professor at Colorado State University and director of its Innovation Center for Sustainable Agriculture.
Microbes can unlock phosphorus and other micronutrients so that plants can use them … They do this by releasing specialized molecules that break the bonds between phosphorus and soil particles. To get this technology into the hands of farmers who can use it, we launched a startup company called Growcentia and started selling our first product, which is called Mammoth P.
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Growcentia focuses on soil microbes that increase nutrient efficiency and uptake, but microbes can also enhance agriculture in many other ways. Some companies are focused on commercializing microbes that have been shown to suppress plant responses to drought, which ironically tricks them into continuing to grow through dry conditions. Other companies are developing microbial products that protect plants from disease and pests. Microbes can even influence the timing of flowering. The possibilities are endless.
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We can examine their genes through sequencing or their function using high-throughput screening methods to find microbes with particular attributes. We also can genetically engineer microbes to produce new strains with the characteristics we want. Or we can even synthesize entirely new species from scratch.
