StemCell Therapy

This article originally appeared on Grist

The Impossible Burger has had a charmed honeymoon period. Crowds offoodies surged into fancy eateriesto try it.Environmentalistsandanimal rights activistsswooned. So did investors: Impossible Foodsbrought in $75 millionduring its latest investment round.

Now the backlash is here. The activist organizationsFriends of the Earthand theETC Groupdug up documents which they claim show that Impossible Foods ignored FDA warnings about safety and they handed them over to the New York Times.

Theensuing storydepicted Impossible Foods as a culinary version of Uber disrupting so rapidly that its running headlong into government regulators. In reality, Impossible Foods has behaved like a pedestrian food company, working hand in hand with the FDA and following a well-worn path to comply with an arcane set of rules.

So why isnt this story a nothingburger?

In a word: GMOs. You see, soy leghemoglobin, or SLH, the key ingredient that makes the Impossible Burger uniquely meaty, is churned out by genetically modified yeast. This is a protein produced with genetic engineering; its a new food ingredient, Dana Perls, senior food and technology campaigner at Friends of the Earth, told me when I asked why theyd singled out Impossible Foods.

The company has never exactly hidden the fact that they used genetic engineering, but they havent put it front and center either. You have to dig into theirfrequently asked questionsto catch that detail and thats a recent edit, according to Perls. When I first looked at the Impossible Foods website, maybe back in March, there was no mention of genetic engineering, she said.(An Impossible Foods spokesperson disputed Perlss claim, saying the FAQ has included references to genetic engineering for at least a year, since before the burgers launch in restaurants. But areview of cached webpagessuggests the references were added in June.*)

By tiptoeing around this issue, Impossible Foods set themselves up for a takedown by anti-GMO campaigners. These groups monitor new applications of genetic engineering, watch for potentially incriminating evidence, then work with journalists to publicize it. In 2014, Ecover, a green cleaning company,announced it was using oils made by algae as part of its pledge to remove palm oil a major driver of deforestation from its products. When Friends of the Earth and the ETC Groupfigured out the algae was genetically engineered, they pingedthe same Times writer. Ecover quickly went back to palm oil.

WhenI asked Impossible Foods founder Pat Brownabout the GMO question, he said he didnt think that battle was theirs to fight. After all, the SLH may be produced by transgenic yeast, but it isnt a GMO itself. He also pointed out that this isnt unusual:nearly all cheese contains a GMO-produced enzyme.

But now, Friends of the Earth and the ETC Group have brought their battle to Impossible Foods doorstep. (In ablisteringseriesofresponsesto the New York Times article, the company charged it was chock full of factual errors and misrepresentations and was instigated by an extremist anti-science group.)The FDA documents handed over to the Timesinclude worrying sentences like this one: FDA stated that the current arguments at hand, individually and collectively, were not enough to establish the safety of SLH for consumption.

If FDA officials say your company hasnt done enough to convince them that a new ingredient is safe, arent you supposed to stop selling it?

Not according toa risk expert at Arizona State Universitywho reviewed the documents released by activists. There are no indications that they should have pulled this off the market, Andrew Maynard told me.

Thats just not how the food safety review process works, said Gary Yingling, a former FDA official now helping Impossible Foods navigate the bureaucracy. In the United States, its up to the companies themselves to determine if an ingredient is safe. (Not everyone likes that systemorthinks the FDA is doing enoughto protect public safety, but it is the law.)

Impossible worked with a group of experts at universities who decided in 2014 that their burger was safe. SLH, it turns out, grows naturally in the roots of soy plants, and the proteins in the burger look a lot like animal proteins a good indicator of safety.

Impossible could have stopped there: Companies, however, can ask the government to weigh in on their research. Sometimes, the FDA asks for more information, which is what happened with Impossible Foods. Its not unusual for the FDA to determine it cant establish the safety of a new ingredient its happened more than 100 times, with substances like Ginkgo biloba, gum arabic, and Spirulina. The FDA has called for more information in about one in every seven of the ingredients companies have asked it to review.

In the case of SLH, the FDA suggested more tests, including rat-feeding trials. Impossible Foods has finished these tests, and academics who have studied the new data confirmed that its generally recognized as safe. Next, Impossible Foods will bring the new evidence back to the FDA, Yingling said.

The criticism raised in this case is really criticism of a system that allows companies to decide for themselves if a new ingredient is OK to add to our food.

If a company decides something is safe, they can go ahead and do it, said Maynard, the risk expert. So thats a weakness in the system. On the other hand, you can argue that once you start this process with the FDA, they have smart scientists who ask tough questions. You can see in those documents that the level of due diligence that a company has to go through is really pretty deep. You really want to make sure that you have a system that doesnt inhibit innovation, but captures as much potentially harmful things as possible.

Each new innovation creates the potential for new hazards. We can block some of those hazards by taking precautions. But how high should we put the precautionary bar?

Impossible Burger could indeed pose some unknown hazard. We just have to weigh that against the known hazards of the present foodborne diseases in meat, greenhouse gases from animal production, the development of antibiotic resistant bacteria in farms, and animal suffering. These are problems which Impossible Foods is trying to solve.

There are other companies trying to solve these problems. (Friends of the Earthnotesthat the success of non-animal burgers, like the non-GMO Beyond Burger, demonstrates that plant-based animal substitutes can succeed without resorting to genetic engineering.) But its not yet clear that any of these companies including Impossible Foods will be successful in just generating a profit, let alone in replacing the global meat industry. No one knows which startups will pan out. And well probably need to try and discard lots of new things as we shift to a sustainable path.

Trying new things can be risky. Not trying new things and staying on our current trajectory is even more risky.

*This story has been updated to include a response from Impossible Foods about when references to genetic engineering first appeared in its FAQ, and to add information about the FDAs food safety review process.

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The Impossible Burger wouldn't be possible without genetic engineering - Salon

This article originally appeared on Massive.

Even small changes in temperature can have massive impacts on crop productivity. In the United States, a single degree of warming is expected to decrease corn yield by 10 percent. Worldwide, one degree of warming is expected to decrease crop productivity by 3-7 percent. Making matters worse, at the same time as crop yields are expected to decrease, the global population will continue to rise. If we do nothing to slow the effects of climate change, we risk a global food shortage that will affect us all.

Deep cuts to greenhouse gas emissions could do a lot to stave off disaster. But many researchers predict that even if we stopped all emissions tomorrow, wed still experience some degree of future warming due to past emissions. So, even if we prevent additional damage, well still have to adapt to the changes in climate that are already underway.

If we want to feed our growing population, well have to tackle the problem of adapting agriculture to climate change head-on. Right now, one of our best hopes for adapting to a warming climate is a controversial one: genetically engineering our crops to survive better in higher temperatures.

Genetic engineering, the process of directly modifying an organisms DNA, strikes many people as an arrogant, unsafe intrusion on the natural world. The debate over GMOs (genetically modified organisms) has raged for decades, with opponents arguing that our capacity to tinker with nature has outpaced our understanding of the risks.

Concerns about the safety and ethics of genetic engineering are absolutely valid, but we should also realize that, in some cases, our ethical intuition may lead us astray. If you have ever grown a tomato plant, and you live somewhere other than the Andean region of South America, you have selected a plant with mutations that allow it grow somewhere it wouldnt naturally do so. When we domesticated the tomato plant, we picked out mutant plants that were able to thrive in different areas of the globe. The difference between that process and genetic engineering is that scientists dont have to search for a rare mutant; they can create it themselves.

Speedier adaptation

CRISPR/Cas9 genome editing tools have made modifying DNA much easier. Using CRISPR/Cas9, scientists can create a DNA break in a specific place in the genome. They provide a strand of DNA that has a new sequence and the cell copies from that strand when it repairs the break, creating a genetic change.

Crops made using this technique are not, strictly speaking, GMOs, because they contain no foreign DNA. A wild tomato plant that was modified using CRISPR/Cas9 to be able to grow further north would be indistinguishable from the mutant plants that arose naturally, right down to the molecular level. And yet if engineers use genome editing to make that same change, it strikes many people as dangerous, even though the plants are completely identical.

Our food sources have already benefited from past forays into genetic engineering. Researchers past efforts were focused on creating crops that are resistant to pests and disease. This is an important part of feeding the world we could feed 8.5 percent of all the people on Earth with the crops lost to fungal pathogens alone. Climate change is making this problem worse: as warmer temperatures have spread toward the poles, so has disease.

But disease isnt the sole consequence of climate change: the overall yield of food will likely drop because the areas where crops grow will no longer have the right weather for them to thrive.

Expanding crop-growing regions

One solution to this problem is to move heat-sensitive crops closer to the poles. But its not that simple: the seasonal cue that tells many plants when to flower is day length, and day length depends on latitude. That means you cant take a plant that requires short days, move it further north, and expect it to produce fruit, even if its at the right temperature.

Recently, researchers discovered the gene that represses flowering in tomato plants in response to long days. Its thanks to the variation in this gene that were able to grow tomatoes further from the equator. These researchers used CRISPR to show that disrupting this gene results in plants that flower rapidly, regardless of day length. That means that if we want crops to grow at different latitudes, we wont have to find a rare mutant. By zeroing in on the genes that control day-length-sensitive flowering, we can create those crops within months.

Increasing yields

And when it comes to boosting crop productivity, one option is to create plants that convert sunlight into food more efficiently. Thats the goal of the RIPE(Realizing Increased Photosynthetic Efficiency) project, an international group working to increase crop yield by improving photosynthesis through genetic engineering.

Surprisingly, photosynthesis isnt as efficient as it could be. Plants dont adapt as quickly as they could to transitions between sunlight and shade. When theres too much sunlight, plants protect themselves by releasing excess light as heat. But if a cloud passes in front of the sun, the protective mechanism lingers, which means less photosynthesis and lower yield. By speeding up the process of adaptation, RIPE scientists have shown that they can increase crop yield by 15 percent.

Although producing enough food to feed the world is crucial, genetic engineering isnt a cure-all. As long as we fail to confront the problems of war and unequal distribution of wealth, people will starve no matter how much food we produce. But adapting agriculture to climate change is unquestionably part of the equation, and genetic modification allows us to produce those changes quickly, easily, and safely.

Critiques of genetic engineering often focus on the most ethically questionable and unsettling research, but many scientists are doing work that could save the lives of millions. Keeping a closed mind risks demonizing a technology that may help us to survive.

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Climate change will cause food shortages. We should use genetic engineering to prevent them - Salon

There are two ways to upgrade a human - tinker with biology or augment with technology. So when the time comes to upgrade to human 2.0, should we become Bioshock-style splicers or Halo-esque spartans?

This week we look at the science behind a genetic boost.

Science fiction isnt afraid to mess with genetics. Bioshocks ADAM is a syrup of stem cells augmented with plasmids that carry superhuman genetic traits. Preys Neuromod enhances cognitive abilities by splicing alien genetics into viruses delivered directly into the brain through the eyes. And Prototype's Blacklight gets in to cells and tweaks their genetic code, activating and editing dormant sequences.

So how close are we to game-changing genetic upgrades?

(Image: I.C. Baianu et al.)

The genetic revolution started in the 1950s with two wily Cambridge scientists. With data nabbed from colleagues in London, Watson and Crick deciphered the structure of DNA and opened Pandoras box. Since then, the field has moved fast, and it's littered with Nobel Prizes.

By the mid 1970s, scientists had discovered DNA-snipping molecular scissors known as restriction enzymes, and DNA-stitching enzymes called ligases. It became possible to cut and splice the genetic code, stitching components from different organisms to create recombinant DNA.Bacteria were turned into factories, churning out molecules that they were never intended to make, and genetic engineering began in ernest.

(Image: Bethesda)

In the 1980s, everything sped up. Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) was invented, allowing chunks of DNA to be copied millions of times in a matter of hours. And DNA sequencing became automated, enabling the genetic code to be read faster than ever before.

And the next logical step once you can read the genetic code? Read all of it.

In 2003, the Human Genome Project was completed , revealing the recipe for a human in its entirety. All three billion letters and over 20,000 genes. And, what took an international team decades can now be repeated in days.

We've got the manual to make a human being. We have the tools to read, write and edit DNA. Time to get creative.

(Image: Irrational Games/2K Games)

Interested in making fire with your fingers? Bioshock-style plasmids are already here. Every day scientists stuff them with genes and jam them into cells to give them new abilities.

Real-world plasmids are loops of DNA most often found in bacteria, where they carry genes for useful traits like antibiotic resistance. They replicate independently of the main bacterial genetic code and can be swapped between cells like trading cards that upgrade the microbes' abilities.

And, with a molecular toolkit, they can be cut open and edited, carrying thousands of letters of genetic code like miniature trojan horses.

(Image: Minestrone Soup )

Plasmids can force cells to make new molecules or switch the behaviour of their existing genes. Bacteria will make infinite copies of them on demand. And, they can be frozen down and stored for years.

But, they tend stay out of chromosomes, floating about in the cell and never meshing with the host unless some serious selective pressure is applied.

They're good for a temporary upgrade, but maybe not for a permanent human 2.0 changes. Maybe thats why splicers need a constant ADAM or EVE fix to keep their abilities topped up.

(Image: 2K Games)

Looking for something a little more permanent than a plasmid? Augments in Prey are delivered by viruses, a step up in terms of persistence.

Retroviruses (like HIV) stitch their own genetic code into the code of the cells they infect, permanently merging with their host to ensure that their genes remain active generation after generation. Every time the cell copies its own DNA, it copies the viral genes too.

So, scientists stripped them out, snipping away the genes that cause disease and turning them into empty genetic transport vessels.

(Image: Bethesda Softworks)

Like plasmids, these 'viral vectors' can be stuffed with genetic code, but this time theyll stitch the new genes straight into the cell, adding the new trait permanently. This is the tech is used in Prey to deliver alien genetics into human brains.

Trouble is, viruses aren't that picky about where they choose to integrate. And, if they tuck their DNA right in the middle of something important, they can ruin a crucial gene and destroy the cell they've infected. Worse still, inserting into some genes can cause cancer.

Then there's the problem of getting them to infect the right cells. If you want fire at your fingertips, you'd need a virus that knew the difference between a hand and a foot.

Scientists are working on improving the usability of viral vectors, but to achieve true human 2.0 without the unpredictable side effects, we'll probably need a more targeted approach. Enter CRISPR.

(Image: Thomas Splettstoesser)

Bioshock or Prey-style approaches to gene editing work well, but they're fuzzy and they take time. CRISPR delivers precision genetic manipulation, fast.

Here's how it works.

Viruses, known as bacteriophages, inject their genetic code into bacteria, turning the microbes into miniature virus factories. But the bacteria evolved a way to fight back.

When they come under attack, they store strips of viral genetic code in a CRISPR reference library so that they'll have a head start if the virus returns. When it attacks again, they check the library and an enzyme called Cas9 chops out any matching code, stopping the infection in its tracks.

(Image: National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) from Bethesda, MD, USA)

The great thing about CRISPR is that it's programmable. Give Cas9 a 20-letter strip of genetic code to guide it, and it'll chew up any DNA you want. These are quick and cheap to make in the lab, and the sequence can be made to match all kinds of different genes. And, when the cell goes to repair the cut, you can swoop in with any new DNA you want to add.

The technique has the scientific community so excited that it was named 'breakthrough of the year' by Science in 2015. But is the world about to be overrun with splicers?

(Image: Ingrid Moen et al. 2012)

Splicers can make fire with their hands, hurl balls of ice and cling to the ceiling like spiders. Morgan Yu can morph into a cup, superheat plasma and create telekinetic shields. What could we do with CRISPR at our disposal?

So far, scientists have repaired a gene that causes muscular dystrophy in mice, and they're trialling the technique to reprogram immune cells in people with cancer. We're now in a CRISPR arms race as scientists across the world rush to be the first to make a gene editing breakthrough.

(Image: Bethesda)

It's early days, but the tech has a lot of potential. We could edit single letter mistakes in genetic code, switch genes off, turn genes on, make genetic tweaks. Or, best of all, we could borrow genes from other species and smash them into our cells to acquire traits we were never supposed to have, glow in the dark jellyfish genes, anyone?

In 2010, scientists created the first synthetic cell. In 2016, they designed and built a genome. In the future, it's possible that we could design brand new genes of our own.

Let's face it, this is still a dream, but the toolkit to make it happen is there.

We still don't know what all of our DNA is for, let alone what changes we'd need to make to improve it. Good luck finding the right genes to edit if you're looking to make yourself taller, smarter or funnier, let alone inventing one that'll give you wings.

And then there's the issue of inheritance. Editing adult, or 'somatic', cells could change a person Bioshock-style, but editing sperm and eggs, or 'germline' cells, could change a whole species.

At the moment, genetic engineering tech is moving faster than the regulation to control it, and it's got scientists worried. We all saw what happened to Rapture when the brakes were taken off scientific advancement.

Gene editing germline cells is restricted in many countries, including the UK, but in July 2017, Chinese scientists got CRISPR working in human embryos for the first time. It was a huge breakthrough, but out of 86 embryos only 28 were successfully edited, and not all of them ended up with the right gene mod at the end.

Rapture, a city where the artist would not fear the censor, where the scientist would not be bound by petty morality, Where the great would not be constrained by the small! And with the sweat of your brow, Rapture can become your city as well.

Luckily, no-one is trying to take edited human embryos all the way though to birth, yet. But, CRISPR opens a whole can of ethical worms, and if youre in any doubt that human modification is coming, watch this.

Pandora's box is open, and we're betting humans of the future will be genetically augmented, but it isn't the only way our species could upgrade. Come back next week when we'll be looking at tech and what it'd take to join the ranks of Halo's Master Chief or Deus Ex's Adam Jensen.

Originally posted here:
Genetic engineering: upgrading to human 2.0 - T3

Should we welcome human genetic engineering? Tyler Cowen

If you could directly alter your kids genetic profile, what would you want? Its hard to know how the social debate would turn out after years of back and forth, but I was dismayed to read one recent research paper by psychologists Rachel M. Latham and Sophie von Stumm. The descriptive title of that work, based on survey evidence, is Mothers want extraversion over conscientiousness or intelligence for their children. Upon reflection, maybe that isnt so surprising, because parents presumably want children who are fun to spend time with.

Would a more extroverted human race be desirable, all things considered? I genuinely dont know, but at the very least I am concerned. The current mix of human personalities and institutions is a delicate balance which, for all of its flaws, has allowed society to survive and progress. Im not looking to make a big roll of the dice on this one.

Amazon robots bring a brave new world to the warehouse The Financial Times

Another way to look at US wage growth The Financial Times

The robot tax gains another advocate Wired

Kim got the idea of a robot tax from Bill Gates, who mentioned it in an interview in February. Since then, shes been meeting with stakeholdersunions and business types and the likeabout how San Francisco, and California, might explore such a thing.

Among the issues with a robot tax: What is a robot? Even roboticists have a hard time agreeing. Does AI that steals a job count as a robot? (Nope, but youd probably want to tax it like one if youre going to commit to this.) Were still working on what defines a robot and what defines job displacement, Kim says. And so announcing the opening of the campaign committee is going to also allow us to have discussions throughout the state in terms of what the actual measure would look like.

Video: Powerball lotteries and the endowment effect Marginal Revolution

3,700-year-old Babylonian tablet rewrites the history of math The Telegraph

Winner-takes-all effects in autonomous cars Benedict Evans

Transcript: Gary Cohn on tax reform and Charlottesville The Financial Times

FT: So what exactly will you have in the tax bill?

GC: On the personal side, we have protected the three big deductions charitable, mortgage and retirement saving. We want to raise the standard deduction caps and get rid of many of the other personal deductions. We want to get rid of death taxes and estate taxes.

On the business side, we are proposing to get rid of many of the deductions that companies can take right now to lower taxable income. At the moment we start with a high corporate tax rate in America but companies use deductions: what we are trying to do is get everyone to pay at a lower rate. This is a big base-broadening exercise.

Revenue may decline in the medium term but it will then explode for the government. When we grow the economy we will see substantial growth in revenue.

Continued here:
Around the web: Concerns with human genetic engineering, Gary ... - American Enterprise Institute

NEW DELHI: Activists today criticised the biotech regulator GEAC's decision to recommend commercial use of genetically modified mustard in a submission to the environment ministry.

Coalition for a GM-Free India said it is no coincidence that credible committees are asking to stop the introduction of GM crops.

Their comments came a day after a parliamentary panel said that no GM crop should be introduced in India unless the bio-safety and socio-economic desirability is evaluated in a "transparent" process and an accountability regime is put in place.

The department-related parliamentary standing committee on science and technology and environment and forest chaired by Congress leader Renuka Chowdhury made its recommendations in its 301st report on 'GM crop and its impact on environment'.

The panel's comment came in the wake of India's GM crop regulator Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee (GEAC) recently recommending the commercial use of genetically modified mustard in a submission to the environment ministry.

The coalition said the latest report is a reiteration in many ways of what earlier committees like the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Agriculture (2012 and 2013) had said as well as the majority report of the Supreme Court's Technical Expert Committee (2013).

"The fact that certain unacceptable lacunae are being pointed out again and again by neutral, independent committees in the law-making and judicial wings of our democracy clearly shows that there are serious problems with transgenic crops as well as their regulation.

"While the government is claiming that it is yet to take a decision with regard to GM mustard 'environmental release', it is clear that this GM food crop does not stand scrutiny under the parameters recommended by the Parliamentary Committee," the coalition said in a statement.

Some of the findings and consequent recommendations of the committee are a "strong indictment" on the approach of the various concerned ministries including the Ministry of Environment, Health and Agriculture with regard to GM crops, the coalition said.

It said the report also acknowledges the rejection of GM crops by state governments.

"The report clearly exposes how poor and unreliable the Indian regulatory regime is, in addition to exposing the lies of GM proponents including within the government.

"It is worrisome that there are no strong policy shifts happening despite repeated exposures of the failures of the Indian biotech regulation," the coalition said.

The Coalition also demanded an inquiry into the "farcical" recommendation of the GEAC for GM mustard environmental release, to "expose the anti-national elements" therein.

The Coalition said the GEAC should be immediately dissolved and its approvals and clearances annulled.

"The report keeps alive our faith in the Parliamentary processes, and we urge the Supreme Court also to take note of this report," the Coalition said.

Excerpt from:
Activists criticise recommendation on GM mustard by Genetic ... - The New Indian Express

The Impossible Burger has had a charmed honeymoon period. Crowds of foodies surged into fancy eateries to try it. Environmentalists and animal rights activists swooned. So did investors: Impossible Foods brought in $75 million during its latest investment round.

Now the backlash is here. The activist organizations Friends of the Earth and the ETC Group dug up documents which they claim show that Impossible Foods ignored FDA warnings about safety and they handed them over to the New York Times.

The ensuing story depicted Impossible Foods as a culinary version of Uber disrupting so rapidly that its running headlong into government regulators. In reality, Impossible Foods has behaved like a pedestrian food company, working hand in hand with the FDA and following a well-worn path to comply with an arcane set of rules.

So why isnt this story a nothingburger?

In a word: GMOs. You see, soy leghemoglobin, or SLH, the key ingredient that makes the Impossible Burger uniquely meaty, is churned out by genetically modified yeast. This is a protein produced with genetic engineering; its a new food ingredient, Dana Perls, senior food and technology campaigner at Friends of the Earth, told me when I asked why theyd singled out Impossible Foods.

The company has never exactly hidden the fact that they used genetic engineering, but they havent put it front and center either. You have to dig into their frequently asked questions to catch that detail and thats a recent edit, according to Perls. When I first looked at the Impossible Foods website, maybe back in March, there was no mention of genetic engineering, she said.(An Impossible Foods spokesperson disputed Perlss claim, saying the FAQ has included references to genetic engineering for at least a year, since before the burgers launch in restaurants. But areview of cached webpages suggests the references were added in June.*)

By tiptoeing around this issue, Impossible Foods set themselves up for a takedown by anti-GMO campaigners. These groups monitor new applications of genetic engineering, watch for potentially incriminating evidence, then work with journalists to publicize it. In 2014, Ecover, a green cleaning company, announced it was using oils made by algae as part of its pledge to remove palm oil a major driver of deforestation from its products. When Friends of the Earth and the ETC Group figured out the algae was genetically engineered, they pinged the same Times writer. Ecover quickly went back to palm oil.

When I asked Impossible Foods founder Pat Brown about the GMO question, he said he didnt think that battle was theirs to fight. After all, the SLH may be produced by transgenic yeast, but it isnt a GMO itself. He also pointed out that this isnt unusual: nearly all cheese contains a GMO-produced enzyme.

But now, Friends of the Earth and the ETC Group have brought their battle to Impossible Foods doorstep. (In a blistering series of responses to the New York Times article, the company charged it was chock full of factual errors and misrepresentations and was instigated by an extremist anti-science group.) The FDA documents handed over to the Times include worrying sentences like this one: FDA stated that the current arguments at hand, individually and collectively, were not enough to establish the safety of SLH for consumption.

If FDA officials say your company hasnt done enough to convince them that a new ingredient is safe, arent you supposed to stop selling it?

Not according to a risk expert at Arizona State University who reviewed the documents released by activists. There are no indications that they should have pulled this off the market, Andrew Maynard told me.

Thats just not how the food safety review process works, said Gary Yingling, a former FDA official now helping Impossible Foods navigate the bureaucracy. In the United States, its up to the companies themselves to determine if an ingredient is safe. (Not everyone likes that system or thinks the FDA is doing enough to protect public safety, but it is the law.)

Impossible worked with a group of experts at universities who decided in 2014 that their burger was safe. SLH, it turns out, grows naturally in the roots of soy plants, and the proteins in the burger look a lot like animal proteins a good indicator of safety.

Impossible could have stopped there: Companies, however, can ask the government to weigh in on their research. Sometimes, the FDA asks for more information, which is what happened with Impossible Foods. Its not unusual for the FDA to determine it cant establish the safety of a new ingredient its happened more than 100 times, with substances like Ginkgo biloba, gum arabic, and Spirulina. The FDA has called for more information in about one in every seven of the ingredients companies have asked it to review.

In the case of SLH, the FDA suggested more tests, including rat-feeding trials. Impossible Foods has finished these tests, and academics who have studied the new data confirmed that its generally recognized as safe. Next, Impossible Foods will bring the new evidence back to the FDA, Yingling said.

The criticism raised in this case is really criticism of a system that allows companies to decide for themselves if a new ingredient is OK to add to our food.

If a company decides something is safe, they can go ahead and do it, said Maynard, the risk expert. So thats a weakness in the system. On the other hand, you can argue that once you start this process with the FDA, they have smart scientists who ask tough questions. You can see in those documents that the level of due diligence that a company has to go through is really pretty deep. You really want to make sure that you have a system that doesnt inhibit innovation, but captures as much potentially harmful things as possible.

Each new innovation creates the potential for new hazards. We can block some of those hazards by taking precautions. But how high should we put the precautionary bar?

Impossible Burger could indeed pose some unknown hazard. We just have to weigh that against the known hazards of the present foodborne diseases in meat, greenhouse gases from animal production, the development of antibiotic resistant bacteria in farms, and animal suffering. These are problems which Impossible Foods is trying to solve.

There are other companies trying to solve these problems. (Friends of the Earth notes that the success of non-animal burgers, like the non-GMO Beyond Burger, demonstrates that plant-based animal substitutes can succeed without resorting to genetic engineering.) But its not yet clear that any of these companies including Impossible Foods will be successful in just generating a profit, let alone in replacing the global meat industry. No one knows which startups will pan out. And well probably need to try and discard lots of new things as we shift to a sustainable path.

Trying new things can be risky. Not trying new things and staying on our current trajectory is even more risky.

*This story has been updated to include a response from Impossible Foods about when references to genetic engineering first appeared in its FAQ, and to add information about the FDAs food safety review process.

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The Impossible Burger wouldn't be possible without genetic engineering - Grist

This article originally ran on Ensia.

Which is more disruptive to a plant: genetic engineering or conventional breeding?

It often surprises people to learn that GE commonly causes less disruption to plants than conventional techniques of breeding. But equally profound is the realization that the latest GE techniques, coupled with a rapidly expanding ability to analyze massive amounts of genetic material, allow us to make super-modest changes in crop plant genes that will enable farmers to produce more food with fewer adverse environmental impacts. Such super-modest changes are possible with CRISPR-based genome editing, a powerful set of new genetic tools that is leading a revolution in biology.

My interest in GE crops stems from my desire to provide more effective and sustainable plant disease control for farmers worldwide. Diseases often destroy 10 to 15 percent of potential crop production, resulting in global losses of billions of dollars annually. The risk of disease-related losses provides an incentive to farmers to use disease-control products such as pesticides.

One of my strongest areas of expertise is in the use of pesticides for disease control. Pesticides certainly can be useful in farming systems worldwide, but they have significant downsides from a sustainability perspective. Used improperly, they can contaminate foods. They can pose a risk to farm workers. And they must be manufactured, shipped and applied all processes with a measurable environmental footprint. Therefore, I am always seeking to reduce pesticide use by offering farmers more sustainable approaches to disease management.

It often surprises people to learn that GE commonly causes less disruption to plants than conventional techniques of breeding.

What follows are examples of how minimal GE changes can be applied to make farming more environmentally friendly by protecting crops from disease. They represent just a small sampling of the broad landscape of opportunities for enhancing food security and agricultural sustainability that innovations in molecular biology offer today.

Genetically altering crops the way these examples demonstrate creates no cause for concern for plants or people. Mutations occur naturally every time a plant makes a seed; in fact, they are the very foundation of evolution. All of the food we eat has all kinds of mutations, and eating plants with mutations does not cause mutations in us.

A striking example of how a tiny genetic change can make a big difference to plant health is the strategy of "knocking out" a plant gene that microorganisms can benefit from. Invading microorganisms sometimes hijack certain plant molecules to help themselves infect the plant. A gene that produces such a plant molecule is known as a susceptibility gene.

We can use CRISPR-based genome editing to create a "targeted mutation" in a susceptibility gene. A change of as little as a single nucleotide in the plants genetic material the smallest genetic change possible can confer disease resistance in a way that is absolutely indistinguishable from natural mutations that can happen spontaneously. Yet if the target gene and mutation site are carefully selected, a one-nucleotide mutation may be enough to achieve an important outcome.

A substantial body of research shows proof-of-concept that a knockout of a susceptibility gene can increase resistance in plants to a wide variety of disease-causing microorganisms. An example that caught my attention pertained to powdery mildew of wheat, because fungicides (pesticides that control fungi) are commonly used against this disease. While this particular genetic knockout is not yet commercialized, I personally would rather eat wheat products from varieties that control disease through genetics than from crops treated with fungicides.

Plant viruses are often difficult to control in susceptible crop varieties. Conventional breeding can help make plants resistant to viruses, but sometimes it is not successful.

Early approaches to engineering virus resistance in plants involved inserting a gene from the virus into the plants genetic material. For example, plant-infecting viruses are surrounded by a protective layer of protein, called the "coat protein." The gene for the coat protein of a virus called papaya ring spot virus was inserted into papaya. Through a process called RNAi, this empowers the plant to inactivate the virus when it invades. GE papaya has been a spectacular success, in large part saving the Hawaiian papaya industry.

Mutations occur naturally every time a plant makes a seed; in fact, they are the very foundation of evolution.

Through time, researchers discovered that even just a very small fragment from one viral gene can stimulate RNAi-based resistance if precisely placed within a specific location in the plants DNA. Even better, they found we can "stack" resistance genes engineered with extremely modest changes in order to create a plant highly resistant to multiple viruses. This is important because, in the field, crops are often exposed to infection by several viruses.

Does eating this tiny bit of a viral gene sequence concern me? Absolutely not, for many reasons, including:

Microorganisms often can overcome plants biochemical defenses by producing molecules called effectors that interfere with those defenses. Plants respond by evolving proteins to recognize and disable these effector molecules. These recognition proteins are called "R" proteins ("R" standing for "resistance"). Their job is to recognize the invading effector molecule and trigger additional defenses. A third interesting approach, then, to help plants resist an invading microorganism is to engineer an R protein so that it recognizes effector molecules other than the one it evolved to detect. We can then use CRISPR to supply a plant with the very small amount of DNA needed to empower it to make this protein.

This approach, like susceptibility knockouts, is quite feasible, based on published research. Commercial implementation will require some willing private- or public-sector entity to do the development work and to face the very substantial and costly challenges of the regulatory process.

The three examples here show that extremely modest engineered changes in plant genetics can result in very important benefits. All three examples involve engineered changes that trigger the natural defenses of the plant. No novel defense mechanisms were introduced in these research projects, a fact that may appeal to some consumers. The wise use of the advanced GE methods illustrated here, as well as others described elsewhere, has the potential to increase the sustainability of our food production systems, particularly given the well-established safety of GE crops and their products for consumption.

Visit link:
When genetic engineering is the environmentally friendly choice - GreenBiz

The idea of transplanting organs from pigs into humans has been around for a long time. And for a long time, xenotransplantsor putting organs from one species into anotherhas come up against two seemingly insurmountable problems.

The first problem is fairly intuitive: Pig organs provoke a massive and destructive immune response in humansfar more so than an organ from another person. The second problem is less obvious: Pig genomes are rife with DNA sequences of viruses that can infect human cells. In the 1990s, the pharmaceutical giant Novartis planned to throw as much $1 billion at animal-to-human transplant research, only to shutter its research unit after several years of failed experiments.

Quite suddenly, however, solving these two problems has become much easier and much faster thanks to the gene-editing technology CRISPR. With CRISPR, scientists can knock out the pig genes that trigger the human immune response. And they can inactivate the virusescalled porcine endogenous retroviruses, or PERVsthat lurk in the pig genome.

On Thursday, scientists working for a startup called eGenesis reported the birth of 37 PERV-free baby pigs in China, 15 of them still surviving. The black-and-white piglets are now several months old, and they belong to a breed of miniature pigs that will grow no bigger than 150 poundswith organs just the right size for transplant into adult humans.

eGenesis spun out of the lab of the Harvard geneticist George Church, who previously reported inactivating 62 copies of PERV from pig cells in 2015. But the jump from specialized pig cells that grow well in labs to living PERV-free piglets wasnt easy.

We didnt even know we could have viable pigs, says Luhan Yang, a former graduate student in Churchs lab and co-founder of eGenesis. When her team first tried to edit all 62 copies in pig cells that they wanted to turn into embryos, the cells died. They were more sensitive than the specialized cell lines. Eventually Yang and her team figured out a chemical cocktail that could keep these cells alive through the gene-editing process. This technique could be useful in large-scale gene-editing projects unrelated to xenotransplants, too.

When Yang and her team first inactivated PERV from cells in a lab, my colleague Ed Yong suggested that the work was an example of CRISPRs power rather than a huge breakthrough in pig-to-human transplants, given the challenges of immune compatibility. And true, Yang and Church come at this research as CRISPR pioneers, but not experts in transplantation. At a gathering of organ-transplantation researchers last Friday, Church said that his team had identified about 45 genes to make pig organs more compatible with humans, though he was open to more suggestions. I would bet we are not as sophisticated as we should be because weve only been recently invited [to meetings like this], he said. Its an active area of research for eGenesis, though Yang declined to disclose what the company has accomplished so far.

Its great genetic-engineering work. Its an accomplishment to inactivate that many genes, says Joseph Tector, a xenotransplant researcher at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

Researchers like Tector, who is also a transplant surgeon, have been chipping away at the problem of immune incompatibility for years, though. CRISPR has sped up that research, too. The first pig gene implicated in the human immune response is alpha-gal. Making a pig that lacked alpha-gal via older genetic-engineering methods took three years. Now from concept to pig on the ground, its probably six months, says Tector.

Using CRISPR, his team has created a triple-knockout pig that lacks alpha-gal as well as two other genes involved in molecules that that provoke the human immune systems immediate hyperacute rejection of pig organs. For about 30 percent of people, the organs from these triple-knockout pigs should not cause hyperacute rejection. Tector thinks the patients who receive these pig organs could then be treated with the same immunosuppressant drugs that recipients take after an ordinary human-to-human transplant.

Tector and David Cooper, another transplant pioneer, were both recently recruited to the University of Alabama at Birmingham for a xenotransplant program funded by United Therapeutics, a Maryland biotech company that wants to manufacture transplantable organs.

Cooper has transplanted kidneys from pigs engineered by United Therapeutics to have six mutations, which lasted over 200 days in baboons. The result is promising enough that he says human trials could begin soon. These pigs were not created using CRISPR and they are not PERV-free, though recent research has suggested that PERV may not be that harmful to humans. It will be up to the FDA to decide whether pig organs with PERV are safe enough to transplant into people.

If it happens, routine pig-to-human transplants could truly transform healthcare beyond simply increasing the supply. Organs would go from a product of chancesomeone young and healthy dying, unexpectedlyto the product of a standardized manufacturing process. Its going to make such a huge difference that I dont think its possible to conceive of it, says Cooper. Organ transplants would no longer have to be emergency surgeries, requiring planes to deliver organs and surgical teams to scramble at any hour. Organs from pigs can be harvested on a schedule, and surgeries planned for exact times during the day. A patient that comes in with kidney failure could get a kidney the next dayeliminating the need for large dialysis centers. Hospital ICU beds will no longer be taken up by patients waiting for a heart transplant.

With the ability to engineer a donor pig, pig organs can go beyond simply matching a human organ. For example, Cooper says, you could engineer organs to protect themselves from the immune system in the long term, perhaps by making their own localized dose of immunosuppressant drugs.

'Big Pork' Wants to Get In on Organ Transplants

At last Fridays summit, Church speculated about making organs resistant to tumors or viruses. When an audience member asked about the possibility of genetically enhancing pig organs to work as well as Michael Phelpss lungs or Usain Bolts heart, he responded, We not only can but should enhance pig organs, even if were opposed to enhancing human beings ... They will go through safety and efficacy testing, but part of efficacy is making sure theyre robust and maybe they have to be as robust as Michael Phelps in order to do the job.

Xenotransplantation will raise ethical questions, of course, and genetically enhancing pigs might come uncomfortably close to the plot of Okja. These enhancements are hard to fathom for now because scientist dont yet know what genes to alter if they wanted to make, for example, super lungs. Its taken decades of research to pinpoint the handful of genes that could make pig organs simply compatible with humans. But the technical ability to make any editsor even dozens of edits at oncewith CRISPR is already here.

More:
Genetically Engineering Pigs to Grow Organs for People - The Atlantic

The DNA of early human embryos carrying a sequence leading to hypertrophic cardiomyopathya potentially deadly heart defecthas been edited to ensure they would carry a healthy DNA sequence if brought to term. The Nature paper announcing this has reenergized a terrific national and international debate over whether permanent changes in DNA that can be passed from one generation to another should be made. Bioethicists are asking, Should we genetically engineer children? while some potential parents are almost certainly asking, When will this technique be available?

The Should questions bioethicists are asking are probably not relevant. The only question whose answer ultimately matters is: Can techniques like CRISP-R be used to genetically engineer children safely? Because a variety of forces guarantee that if they can be, they will be.

The key questions reliable practitioners must answer are: Can we prove it works? Then: Can it be used safely?. If yes on these questions, then we will see: Who is marketing this technique to potential parents? Finally, we will learn: Where was it done, who did it, and who paid for its use?

We are closer than ever before to using CRISP-R to replace dangerous DNA sequences with those that wont keep a baby from being healthy. Fortunately, this Nature paper leaves many questions Unanswered because the embryos were not allowed to come to term.

Most importantly, we still dont know Could the embryos have developed into viable babies? Just as in 2015 when researchers at Sun Yat-Sen University in China didnt implant engineered embryos into a womans womb, the scientists who published in Nature recently didnt feel ready (and didnt have permission) to try this potentially enormous step. As experiments proceed, this question will, at some point, be answered.

It will be answered because there is an enormous, proven market for techniques that can be used to ensure that a baby will be born without DNA sequences that can lead to genetically-mediated conditions; many of which are devastating as we have been tragically reminded of late.

Under the best circumstances, in-vitro fertilization leads to a live birth less than half of the time. As a result, whoever tries to see if an embryo that has had targeted DNA repaired using CRISP-R will doubtless prepare a lot of embryos for implanting in quite a few women. When those women are asked to carry these embryos to term we will not know about it. We will probably not find out if none of the embryos come to term successfully.

We *will* know about this procedure if even one baby comes to term and is born with the targeted genetic sequence corrected as intended. Until now, (and maybe even with our new knowledge), any baby brought to term after CRISP-R was used to edit and replace unhealthy DNA would have almost certainly had other DNA damaged in the editing process. This near-certainty and other concerns have held people back from trying to genetically engineer an embryo that they would then bring to term. They could not, until recently, have confidence that only the sequence being targeted has been affected. With this new Nature report, this, at least, is changing.

The results of these newly reported experiments are many steps closer to usability than the Chinese experiments reported in 2015. This is the nature of scientific experimentation, particularly when there is demand for the capability or knowledge being developed.

People try something. It either works or it doesnt. Sometimes when it doesnt work, we learn enough to adjust and try again. If it does work, it often doesnt function exactly the way we expected. Either way, people keep trying until either the technique is perfected or it ultimately proves to be unusable.

This Nature paper is an example of trying something and doing a better job than the first attempt. It does not represent a provably safe and reliable technique . Yet. If market driven research works as it often does, people will work hard to publish data (hopefully from reliable experimental work) suggesting they have a safe and effective technique. Doing so will let them tell some desperate set of wealthy prospective parents: We should be able to use this technique with an acceptable chance of giving you a healthy baby.

Princetons Lee Silver predicted parents desire for gene editing in his Remaking Eden, a book published in 1997. He argued this because people fear sickness or disability and feel strong personal, economic and social pressures to have healthy, beautiful children who should become healthy attractive adults.

People already spend a great deal on molecular techniques like pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD). PGD is regularly used to reduce couples risk of having babies with known (or potential), chromosomal abnormalities and/or single gene mutations that can lead to thousands of DNA-mediated conditions.

As I showed in my Genetics dissertation published from Yale in 2004, different countries respond differently to controversial science like this. Similarly, different individuals responses are equally diverse. One poll indicates nearly half of Americans would use gene editing technology to prevent possible DNA-mediated conditions in their children. Policy makers who object to the technology therefore have a problem: if they succeed in blocking it somewhere, research and real world experience indicate other governments may well permit its use. If this happens, these techniques will be available to anyone wealthy and desperate enough to find providers with the marketingand hopefully scientificskill needed to sell people on trying them.

This gene editing controversy is a reminder that we are losing the capacity to effectively ask, Should we? As our knowledge of science grows, becomes more globalized, and is increasingly easy to acquire for people with different morals, needs and wants, we must soon be ready to ask, Can we? and ultimately, Will someone? Their answers will give us the best chance to ensure any babies that may come from any technique described as genetic engineering are born healthy, happy, and able to thrive.

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It's Time to Stop Asking Whether Human Genetic Engineering Should Happen and Start Planning to Manage it Safely - HuffPost

Genetic engineering has the potential to change the way we live. The science behind the agricultural, medical, and environmental achievements is spectacular, but this excitement is tempered by concern for the unknown effects of tampering with nature. How should we use genetic engineering?

DNA is the root of all inheritance and the key to understanding the basics of all biological inheritance and genetics.

The possibilities of this genetic engineering are endless, and everyone from medicine to industry is scrambling to adopt it and adapt it to their specific needs.

Genetic engineering changes or manipulates genes in order to achieve specific results, and there are many ways to "engineer" genetic material including fixing defective genes, replacing missing genes, copying or cloning genes, or combining genes.

How is genetic engineering used in food production? What political, environmental, and production obstacles could arise in the effort to label genetically engineered foods? What food traits would you like to see genetically engineered?

How could GE help in meeting growing demand for food around the world?

How can GE be used with animals? What are the benefits and risks of using genetic engineering with livestock or with endangered or extinct animals?

How does cloning work? What situations might be viewed as ethical uses of human cloning? Unethical?

What are the potential consequences, positive and negative, of discovery in the genetic engineering field? Who should be involved in determining the ethical limitations of the uses of genetic engineering?

Produced from 2001 through 2004, Iowa Public Television's Explore More online and broadcast series engages students in problems they can relate to, provides compelling content for investigation and gives students opportunities to form their own points of viewon contemporary issues.

Although the full website has been retired, this archive provides links to project videos and related resources. Please contact us if you have questions or comments about Explore More.

Originally posted here:
Genetic Engineering | IPTV

Thisarticleoriginally appeared at Ensia and has been republished here with permission.

Which is more disruptive to a plant: genetic engineering or conventional breeding?

It often surprises people to learn that GE commonly causes less disruption to plants than conventional techniques of breeding. But equally profound is the realization that the latest GE techniques, coupled with a rapidly expanding ability to analyze massive amounts of genetic material, allow us to make super-modest changes in crop plant genes that will enable farmers to produce more food with fewer adverse environmental impacts. Such super-modest changes are possible with CRISPR-based genome editing, a powerful set of new genetic tools that is leading a revolution in biology.

My interest in GE crops stems from my desire to provide more effective and sustainable plant disease control for farmers worldwide. Diseases often destroy 10 to 15 percent of potential crop production, resulting in global losses of billions of dollars annually. The risk of disease-related losses provides an incentive to farmers to use disease-control products such as pesticides. One of my strongest areas of expertise is in the use of pesticides for disease control. Pesticides certainly can be useful in farming systems worldwide, but they have significant downsides from a sustainability perspective. Used improperly, they can contaminate foods. They can pose a risk to farm workers. And they must be manufactured, shipped and applied all processes with a measurable environmental footprint. Therefore, I am always seeking to reduce pesticide use by offering farmers more sustainable approaches to disease management.

What follows are examples of how minimal GE changes can be applied to make farming more environmentally friendly by protecting crops from disease. They represent just a small sampling of the broad landscape of opportunities for enhancing food security and agricultural sustainability that innovations in molecular biology offer today.

Genetically altering crops the way these examples demonstrate creates no cause for concern for plants or people. Mutations occur naturally every time a plant makes a seed; in fact, they are the very foundation of evolution. All of the food we eat has all kinds of mutations, and eating plants with mutations does not cause mutations in us.

Knocking Out Susceptibility

A striking example of how a tiny genetic change can make a big difference to plant health is the strategy of knocking out a plant gene that microorganisms can benefit from. Invading microorganisms sometimes hijack certain plant molecules to help themselves infect the plant. A gene that produces such a plant molecule is known as a susceptibility gene.

We can use CRISPR-based genome editing to create a targeted mutation in a susceptibility gene. A change of as little as a single nucleotide in the plants genetic material the smallest genetic change possible can confer disease resistance in a way that is absolutely indistinguishable from natural mutations that can happen spontaneously. Yet if the target gene and mutation site are carefully selected, a one-nucleotide mutation may be enough to achieve an important outcome.

There is a substantial body of research showing proof-of-concept that a knockout of a susceptibility gene can increase resistance in plants to a very wide variety of disease-causing microorganisms. An example that caught my attention pertained to powdery mildew of wheat, because fungicides (pesticides that control fungi) are commonly used against this disease. While this particular genetic knockout is not yet commercialized, I personally would rather eat wheat products from varieties that control disease through genetics than from crops treated with fungicides.

The Power of Viral Snippets

Plant viruses are often difficult to control in susceptible crop varieties. Conventional breeding can help make plants resistant to viruses, but sometimes it is not successful.

Early approaches to engineering virus resistance in plants involved inserting a gene from the virus into the plants genetic material. For example, plant-infecting viruses are surrounded by a protective layer of protein, called the coat protein. The gene for the coat protein of a virus called papaya ring spot virus was inserted into papaya. Through a process called RNAi, this empowers the plant to inactivate the virus when it invades. GE papaya has been a spectacular success, in large part saving the Hawaiian papaya industry.

Through time, researchers discovered that even just a very small fragment from one viral gene can stimulate RNAi-based resistance if precisely placed within a specific location in the plants DNA. Even better, they found we can stack resistance genes engineered with extremely modest changes in order to create a plant highly resistant to multiple viruses. This is important because, in the field, crops are often exposed to infection by several viruses.

Does eating this tiny bit of a viral gene sequence concern me? Absolutely not, for many reasons, including:

Tweaking Sentry Molecules

Microorganisms can often overcome plants biochemical defenses by producing molecules called effectors that interfere with those defenses. Plants respond by evolving proteins to recognize and disable these effector molecules. These recognition proteins are called R proteins (R standing for resistance). Their job is to recognize the invading effector molecule and trigger additional defenses. A third interesting approach, then, to help plants resist an invading microorganism is to engineer an R protein so that it recognizes effector molecules other than the one it evolved to detect. We can then use CRISPR to supply a plant with the very small amount of DNA needed to empower it to make this protein.

This approach, like susceptibility knockouts, is quite feasible, based on published research. Commercial implementation will require some willing private- or public-sector entity to do the development work and to face the very substantial and costly challenges of the regulatory process.

Engineered for Sustainability

The three examples here show that extremely modest engineered changes in plant genetics can result in very important benefits. All three examples involve engineered changes that trigger the natural defenses of the plant. No novel defense mechanisms were introduced in these research projects, a fact that may appeal to some consumers. The wise use of the advanced GE methods illustrated here, as well as others described elsewhere, has the potential to increase the sustainability of our food production systems, particularly given the well-established safety of GE crops and their products for consumption.

See the rest here:
When genetic engineering is the environmentally friendly choice - Genetic Literacy Project

Seen any clone armies in your backyard lately? Probably not. This might surprise you if you are old enough to remember the ethical panic that greeted the birth of Dolly the sheep, the first mammal cloned from an adult cell, in Scotland 21 years ago.

The cloned creature set off a crazy overreaction, with fears of clone armies, re-creating the dead, and a host of other horrors, monsters, abuses and terrors none of which has come to pass. That is why it is so important, amid all the moral hand-wringing about what could happen as human genetic engineering emerges, to keep our ethical eye on the right ball. Freaking out over impending superbabies and mutant humans with the powers of comic book characters is not what is needed.

An international team of scientists, led by researchers at the Oregon Health and Science University, has used genetic engineering on human sperm and a pre-embryo. The group is doing basic research to figure out if new forms of genetic engineering might be able to prevent or repair terrible hereditary diseases.

How close are they to making freakish superpeople using their technology? About as close as we are to traveling intergalactically using current rocket technology.

So what should we be worrying about as this rudimentary but promising technique tries to get off the launch pad?

First and foremost, oversight of what is going on. Congress, in its infinite wisdom, has banned federal funding for genetic engineering of sperm, eggs, pre-embryos or embryos. That means everything goes on in the private or philanthropic world here or overseas, without much guidance. We need clear rules with teeth to keep anyone from trying to go too fast or deciding to try to cure anything in an embryo intended to become an actual human being without rock-solid safety data.

Second, we need to determine who should own the techniques for genetic engineering. Important patent fights are underway among the technology's inventors. That means people smell lots of money. And that means it is time to talk about who gets to own what and charge what, lest we reinvent the world of the $250,000 drug in this area of medicine.

Finally, human genetic engineering needs to be monitored closely: all experiments registered, all data reported on a public database and all outcomes good and bad made available to all scientists and anyone else tracking this area of research. Secrecy is the worst enemy that human genetic engineering could possibly have.

Let your great-great-grandkids fret about whether they want to try to make a perfect baby. Today we need to worry about who will own genetic engineering technology, how we can oversee what is being done with it and how safe it needs to be before it is used to try to prevent or fix a disease.

That is plenty to worry about.

Arthur L. Caplan is head of the division of medical ethics at the New York University School of Medicine.

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Don't fear the rise of superbabies. Worry about who will own genetic engineering technology. - Chicago Tribune

The approach is generic enough that you could theoretically apply it to other flowering plants. Blue roses, anyone? There are broader possibilities, too. While the exact techniques clearly won't translate to other lifeforms, this might hint at what's required to produce blue eyes or feathers. And these color changes would be useful for more than just cosmetics. Pollinating insects tend to prefer blue, so this could help spread plant life that has trouble competing in a given habitat.

Just don't count on picking up a blue bouquet. You need a permit to sell any genetically modified organism in the US, and there's a real concern that these gene-modified flowers might spread and create havoc in local ecosystems. The research team hopes to make tweaked chrysanthemums that don't breed, but that also means you're unlikely to see them widely distributed even if they do move beyond the lab. Any public availability would likely hinge on a careful understanding of the flowers' long-term impact.

Read more:
Genetic engineering creates an unnaturally blue flower - Engadget

Human genetic engineering is moving forward exponentially and we are still not having any meaningful societal, regulatory, or legislative conversations about whether, how, and to what extent we should permit the human genome to be altered in ways that flow down the generations.

But dont worry. The scientists assure us, when that can be done, there will (somehow) beSTRICT OVERSIGHT From the AP story:

And lots more research is needed to tell if its really safe, added Britains Lovell-Badge. He and Kahn were part of a National Academy of Sciences report earlier this year that said if germline editing ever were allowed, it should be only for serious diseases with no good alternatives and done with strict oversight.

Please!No more! When I laugh this hard it makes mystomach hurt.

Heres the problem: Strict guidelines rarely are strict and the almost never permanently protect. Theyare ignored, unenforced, or stretched over time until they, essentially, cease to exist.

Thats awful with actions such as euthanasia. But wecant let that kind of pretense rule the day withtechnologies that could prove to be among themost powerful and potentially destructive inventions in human history. Indeed, other than nuclear weapons, I cant think of a technology with more destructive potential.

Strict oversight will have to include legal limitations and clear boundaries, enforced bystiff criminalpenalties, civil remedies, and international protocols.

They wont be easy to craft and it will take significant time to work through all of the scientific and ethical conundrums.

But we havent made a beginning. If we wait until what may be able to be done actually can be done, it will be too late.

Wheres the leadership? All we have now is drift.

View original post here:
Genetic Engineering with 'Strict Guidelines?' Ha! - National Review

Edited human embryos. Image: OHSYU

This week, news of a major scientific breakthrough brought a debate over genetically engineering humans front and center. For the first time ever, scientists genetically engineered a human embryo on American soil in order to remove a disease-causing mutation. It was the fourth time ever that such a feat has been published on, and with the most success to date. It may still be a long way off, but it seems likely that one day we will indeed have to grapple with the sticky, complicated philosophical mess of whether, and in which cases, genetically engineering a human being is morally permissible.

On the heels of this news, on Thursday a group of 11 genetics groups released policy recommendations for whats known as germline editingor altering the human genome in such a way that those changes could be passed down to future generations. The statement, from groups including the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, said that doctors should not yet entertain implanting an altered embryo in a human womb, a step which would be against the law in the United States. But they also argued that there is no reason not to use public money to fund basic research on human germline editing, contrary to a National Institutes of Health policy that has banned funding research involving editing human embryo DNA.

Currently, there is no reason to prohibit in vitro germline genome editing on human embryos and gametes, with appropriate oversight and consent from donors, to facilitate research on the possible future clinical applications of gene editing, they wrote. There should be no prohibition on making public funds available to support this research.

Safety, ethical concerns and the impact germline editing might have on societal inequality, they wrote, would all have to be worked out before such technology is ready for the clinic.

Genetic disease, once a universal common denominator, could instead become an artifact of class, geographic location, and culture, they wrote. In turn, reduced incidence and reduced sense of shared risk could affect the resources available to individuals and families dealing with genetic conditions.

If and when embryo editing is ready for primetime, the group concluded that there would need to be a good medical reason to use such technology, as well as a transparent public debate. Some have questioned the medical necessity of embryo editing, arguing that genetic screening combined with in vitro fertilization could allow doctors to simply pick disease-free eggs to implant, achieving the same results via a method that is less morally-fraught.

In February, the National Academy of Sciences released a 261-page report that also gave a cautious green light to human gene-editing, endorsing the practice for purposes of curing disease and for basic research, but determining that uses such as creating designer babies are unethical. Other nations, like China and the UK, have forged ahead with human embryo editing for basic research, though there have been no published accounts of research past the first few days of early embryo development.

Given the way the culture, religion and regional custom impact attitudes toward genetically-engineering human life, its safe to say that this debate will not be an easy one to settle. As the policy recommendations point out, views on the matter vary drastically not just across the US, but around the world, and yet one nation making the decision to go ahead with implanting edited embryos will create a world in which that technology exists for everyone.

In the meantime, though, there are still more than a few kinks to work out in the science before were faced with these questions in the real world.

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Experts Call on US to Start Funding Scientists to Genetically Engineer Human Embryos - Gizmodo

A coral reef takes thousands of years to build, yet can vanish in an instant.

The culprit is usuallycoral bleaching, a disease exacerbated by warming watersthat today threatens reefs around the globe. The worst recorded bleaching eventstruck the South Pacific between 2014 and 2016, when rising ocean temperatures followed by a sudden influx of warm El Nio waters traumatizedthe Great Barrier Reef.In just one seasonbleaching decimated nearly a quarter of thevast ecosystem, which once sprawled nearly 150,000 square miles through the Coral Sea.

As awful as it was, that bleaching event was a wake-up call, says Rachel Levin, a molecular biologist who recently proposed a bold technique to save these key ecosystems. Her idea, published in the journal Frontiers in Microbiology, is simple:Rather than finding healthy symbiontsto repopulate bleached coral in nature, engineer them in the lab instead.Given that this would requiretampering with nature in a significant way, the proposal is likely to stir controversial waters.

But Levin argues that with time running out for reefs worldwide, the potential value could wellbe worth the risk.

Levin studied cancer pharmacology as an undergraduate, but became fascinated by the threats facing aquatic life while dabbling in marine science courses. She was struck by the fact that, unlike in human disease research, there were far fewer researchers fighting to restore ocean health. After she graduated, she moved from California to Sydney, Australia to pursue a Ph.D. at the Center for Marine Bio-Innovation in the University of New South Wales, with the hope of applying her expertise in human disease research to corals.

In medicine, it often takes the threat of a serious disease for researchers to try a new and controversial treatment (i.e. merging two womens healthy eggs with one mans sperm to make a three-parent baby).The same holds in environmental scienceto an extent.Like a terrible disease [in] humans, when people realize how dire the situation is becoming researchers start trying to propose much more, Levin says.When it comes to saving the environment, however, there are fewer advocates willing to implementrisky, groundbreaking techniques.

When it comes to reefscrucial marine regions that harbor an astonishing amount of diversity as well as protect land massesfrom storm surges, floods and erosionthat hesitation could be fatal.

Coral bleachingis often presented as the death of coral, which is a little misleading. Actually, its the breakdown of the symbiotic union that enables a coral to thrive. The coral animal itself is like a building developer who constructs the scaffolding of a high rise apartment complex. The developer rents out each of the billions of rooms to single-celled, photosynthetic microbes called Symbiodinium.

But in this case, in exchange for a safe place to live, Symbiodinium makes food for the coral using photosynthesis. A bleached coral, by contrast, is like a deserted building. With no tenants to make their meals, the coral eventually dies.

Though bleaching can be deadly, its actually a clever evolutionary strategy of the coral. The Symbiodinium are expected to uphold their end of the bargain. But when the water gets too warm, they stop photosynthesizing. When that food goes scarce, the coral sends an eviction notice. Its like having a bad tenantyoure going to get rid of what you have and see if you can find better, Levin says.

But as the oceans continue to warm, its harder and harder to find good tenants. That means evictions can be risky. In a warming ocean, the coral animal might die before it can find any better rentersa scenario that has decimated reef ecosystems around the planet.

Levin wanted to solve this problem,by creatinga straightforward recipe for building a super-symbiont that could repopulate bleached corals and help them to persist through climate changeessentially, the perfect tenants. But she had to start small. At the time, there were so many holes and gaps that prevented us from going forward, she says. All I wanted to do was show that we could genetically engineer [Symbiodinium].

Even that would prove to be a tall order. The first challenge was that, despite being a single-celled organism, Symbiodinium has an unwieldy genome. Usually symbiotic organisms have streamlined genomes, since they rely on their hosts for most of their needs. Yet while other species have genomes of around 2 million base pairs, Symbiodiniums genome is 3 orders of magnitude larger.

Theyre humongous, Levin says. In fact, the entire human genome is only slightly less than 3 times as big as Symbiodiniums.

Even after advances in DNA sequencing made deciphering these genomes possible, scientists still had no idea what 80 percent of the genes were for. We needed to backtrack and piece together which gene was doing what in this organism, Levin says. A member of a group of phytoplankton called dinoflagellates, Symbiodinium are incredibly diverse. Levin turned her attention to two key Symbiodinium strains she could grow in her lab.

The first strain, like most Symbiodinium, was vulnerable to the high temperatures that cause coral bleaching. Turn up the heat dial a few notches, and this critter was toast. But the other strain, which had been isolated from the rare corals that live in the warmest environments,seemed to be impervious to heat. If she could figure out how these two strains wielded their genes during bleaching conditions, then she might find the genetic keys to engineering a new super-strain.

When Levin turned up the heat, she saw that the hardySymbiodinium escalated its production of antioxidants and heat shock proteins, which help repair cellular damage caused by heat. Unsurprisingly, the normal Symbiodinium didnt. Levin then turned her attention to figuring out a way to insert more copies of these crucial heat tolerating genes into the weaker Symbiodinium, thereby creating a strain adapted to live with corals from temperate regionsbut with the tools to survive warming oceans.

Getting new DNA into a dinoflagellate cell is no easy task. While tiny, these cells are protected by armored plates, two cell membranes, and a cell wall. You can get through if you push hard enough, Levin says. But then again, you might end up killing the cells. So Levin solicited help from an unlikely collaborator: a virus. After all, viruses have evolved to be able to put their genes into their hosts genomethats how they survive and reproduce, she says.

Levin isolated a virus that infected Symbiodinium, and molecularly altered it it so that it no longer killed the cells. Instead, she engineered it to be a benign delivery system for those heat tolerating genes. In her paper, Levin argues that the viruss payload could use CRISPR, the breakthrough gene editing technique that relies on a natural process used by bacteria, to cut and paste those extra genes into a region of the Symbiodiniums genome where they would be highly expressed.

It sounds straightforward enough. But messing with a living ecosystem is never simple, says says Dustin Kemp, professor of biology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham who studies the ecological impacts of climate change on coral reefs. Im very much in favor of these solutions to conserve and genetically help, says Kemp. But rebuilding reefs that have taken thousands of years to form is going to be a very daunting task.

Considering the staggering diversity of the Symbiodinium strains that live within just one coral species, even if there was a robust system for genetic modification, Kemp wonders if it would ever be possible to engineer enough different super-Symbiodinium to restore that diversity. If you clear cut an old growth forest and then go out and plant a few pine trees, is that really saving or rebuilding the forest? asks Kemp, who was not involved with the study.

But Kemp agrees that reefs are dying at an alarming rate, too fast for the natural evolution of Symbiodinium to keep up. If corals were rapidly evolving to handle [warming waters], youd think we would have seen it by now, he says.

Thomas Mock, a marine microbiologist at the University of East Anglia in the UKand a pioneer in genetically modifying phytoplankton, also points out that dinoflagellate biology is still largely enshrouded in mystery. To me this is messing around, he says. But this is how it starts usually. Provocative argument is always goodits very very challenging, but lets get started somewhere and see what we can achieve. Recently, CSIRO, the Australian governments science division, has announced that it will fund laboratories to continue researching genetic modifications in coral symbionts.

When it comes to human healthfor instance, protecting humans from devastating diseases like malaria or Zikascientists have been willing to try more drastic techniques, such as releasing mosquitoes genetically programmed to pass on lethal genes. The genetic modifications needed to save corals, Levin argues, would not be nearly as extreme. She adds that much more controlled lab testing is required before genetically modified Symbiodinium could be released into the environment to repopulate dying corals reefs.

When were talking genetically engineered, were not significantly altering these species, she says. Were not making hugely mutant things. All were trying to do is give them an extra copy of a gene they already have to help them out ... were not trying to be crazy scientists.

Read more from the original source:
A Blueprint for Genetically Engineering a Super Coral - Smithsonian

Adult diamondback moth. Photo by Lyle Buss

The diamondback moth (DBM) is a pest of epic proportions to farmers worldwide. Growers of cabbage and collard crops know this all too well. Controlling the notorious DBM has become more difficult in recent times with incidence of pesticide resistance increasing. With that, the search for viable management continues to expand. For the last two years, Cornell scientists have been working with British-based biotech company Oxitec and testing its self-limiting gene capabilities on DBM in a protected environment. The team at Cornell has been waiting for a go-aheadfrom USDA to take the experiment out from behind closed doors and into one if its cabbage fields in Upstate New York. It looks like the wait is over.

USDAs Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) has officially announced the availability of a final environmental assessment and finding of no significant impact and will concurrently issue a permit for the field release of a genetically engineered DBM.

The pest moths are genetically engineered for repressible female lethality and to express red fluorescence as a marker. The purpose of the field release is to assess the feasibility and efficacy of these moths in reducing populations of DBM. Based on the finding of no significant impact, APHIS has determined that an environmental impact statement need not be prepared.

Notice of these actions will be published in theFederal Register.

The Northeast Organic Farming Association of New York (NOFA-NY) has since released a statement denouncing USDAs decision. A portion of the statement reads as follows: NOFA-NY considers the release of a novel genetically engineered organism to be a major activity with potentially significant and heretofore unknown health and environmental effects, said NOFA-NY Policy Advisor Liana Hoodes. It is now up to New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) to ensure the safety of its citizens before granting the necessary state permit. We call on the NYS DEC to require a full environmental impact statement and public hearings during a complete review under State Environmental Quality Review Act.

More here:
Can Genetic Engineering Put an End to Diamondback Moth Plague ... - Growing Produce

CHINA, July 12, 2017 - Purple rice developed by Chinese scientists. A new genetic engineering technique developed by Chinese scientists has been used to develop purple rice packed with antioxidant-boosting pigments called anthocyanins.

A study published in Molecular Plantshows how the scientists created the technique, which is capable of delivering many genes at once, and used it to make rice endosperm seed tissue that provides nutrients to the developing plant embryo. Although anthocyanins are naturally abundant in some black and red rice varieties, they are absent in polished rice grains because the husk, bran, and germ have been removed, leaving only the endosperm.

Previous attempts to engineer anthocyanin production in rice have failed because the underlying biosynthesis pathway is highly complex, and it has been difficult to efficiently transfer many genes into plants. Genetic engineering approaches have previously been used to develop rice enriched in beta-carotene and folate, but not anthocyanins.

We have developed a highly efficient, easy-to-use transgene stacking system called TransGene Stacking II that enables the assembly of a large number of genes in single vectors for plant transformation, says senior study author Yao-Guang Liu of the South China Agricultural University. We envisage that this vector system will have many potential applications in this era of synthetic biology and metabolic engineering. The researchers plan to evaluate the safety of purple endosperm rice as biofortified food and will try to engineer the biosynthesis of anthocyanins in other crops to produce more purple endosperm cereals.

Continued here:
Purple rice developed by Chinese scientists - Agri-Pulse

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On a hill above the cold waters around Prince Edward Island, technicians painstakingly create fertilized Atlantic salmon eggs that include growth-enhancing DNA from two other fish species. The eggs will be shipped to tanks in the high rainforest of Panama, where they will produce fish that mature far more quickly than normal farmed salmon.

More than 20 years after first seeking approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, AquaBounty Technologies of Maynard, Massachusetts, plans to bring these "AquAdvantage" fish to the U.S. and Canadian markets next year. And in the small town of Albany, Indiana, workers will soon begin converting a land-based aquaculture facility to produce about 1,300 U.S. tons of these salmon annually, in the first U.S. facility to generate GE animals for human consumption.

The company also plans to open a second aquaculture facility at Prince Edward Island if it can rise above its latest round of legal battles and persuade grocery stores and restaurants to snap up the genetically engineered fish. Before the FDA cleared the salmon for consumption in 2015, in its first approval of GE animal protein as human food, it received 1.8 million messages opposing these fish. Perhaps more substantively, many outside researchers remain concerned about AquaBounty's plans.

Safety and nutrition

Aquaculture specialists generally aren't skeptical about whether the fish will be healthy to eat, although that's one issue hinted at in a lawsuit multiple organizations, including Friends of the Earth, have filed against the FDA. Dana Perls, senior food and technology campaigner with Friends of the Earth in Berkeley, California, says the FDA didn't fully examine questions about eating the salmon initially raised by Health Canada, that country's public health department including susceptibility to disease and potential allergic reactions.

"This is a poorly studied, risky, and unlabeled genetically engineered fish," she says, adding that more than 80 U.S. grocery chains have committed not to buy it. However, Health Canada eventually concluded that fillets derived from AquAdvantage salmon "are as safe and nutritious as fillets from current available farmed Atlantic salmon," and approved the fish for consumption in 2016.

"There's no reason to suspect these fish from a food safety perspective," says Cyr Couturier, chair of aquaculture programs at Memorial University's Marine Institute in St. John's, Newfoundland. "They have no unnatural products that humans wouldn't otherwise consume."

Similar transgenic salmon created by a decades-long Fisheries and Oceans Canada research program tested well within normal salmon variations, adds Robert Devlin, engineering research scientist at the agency in North Vancouver, British Columbia. But critics do raise two other main concerns about AquaBounty's quest: the economic sustainability of the land-based approach, and the environmental risk to ecosystems if the fish escape.

Fish on land

AquaBounty will raise its GE fish in land-based recirculating aquaculture systems, known as RAS basically huge aquaria designed to minimize water use, maximize resources and accommodate high stocking densities. "While farming salmon in sea cages is less expensive and less technologically complex than a land-based farm," the company's website points out, "sea cages are susceptible to a number of hazards such as violent storms, predators, harmful algal blooms, jellyfish attacks, fish escapes, and the transmission of pathogens and parasites from wild fish populations."

Given the potential opportunity to achieve greater production control and avoid some of the environmental concerns of sea farms, many RAS projects have launched around the world in the past decade. However, most of these projects are small, and many have failed or are struggling.

The big problem is cost. RAS facilities need much more capital than ocean farms with similar production rates, and they're expensive to operate.

"Land-based systems use a lot of freshwater, even though it's recirculated, and a lot of electricity," notes Couturier. Such systems "operate at an economic disadvantage because much of their cost goes toward creating growing conditions occurring naturally within the ocean," summed up one 2014 report that found producing Atlantic salmon in Nova Scotia would not be economically feasible.

AquaBounty, which is buying its Indiana plant from a collapsed RAS venture, expects to beat these odds mainly because its GE salmon reach market size in about half the time of normal farmed salmon in 1618 months rather than 2836 months, the company says. Ravenous as they are, with their growth hormones continually wired on, the fish still require about a quarter less feed than normal fish. (Although farmed salmon are very efficient at converting food to flesh a pound of feed converts close to a pound of flesh feed remains a major expense.)

The company also says that salmon in its RAS facilities won't need vaccines or antibiotics because it will tightly control conditions. However, "they will have some disease issues of course, as will any animal that's reared in high densities," Couturier predicts.

If AquaBounty can compete on cost, there will be some justification for promoting its product as "the world's most sustainable salmon." In addition to requiring less feed, growing fish in Indiana or Prince Edward Island can slash the high carbon costs of flying fish from Norway or Chile, two leading suppliers of farmed salmon in the U.S.

Still, says Couturier, "I wish them all the best, but I think it will be a small-scale niche for at least a decade."

Losing GE fish

Many aquaculture scientists remain uneasy about the environmental risk to wild ecosystems if transgenic fish slip out of their farms. Although other agencies will presumably be involved in assessing risk as the projects advance, "the FDA has no in-house capacity to evaluate or understand the ecological consequences of transgenics in an aquatic ecosystem," says Conner Bailey, professor emeritus of rural sociology at Auburn University in Alabama. "And once you get anything into an aquatic ecosystem, it's really hard to control."

AquaBounty's protection scheme begins with multiple levels of physical barriers in its RAS facilities. Additionally, the salmon are all female and "triploid" (their DNA is in three rather than two sets of chromosomes) so they can't reproduce. However, scientists say neither of these measures can be 100 percent effective at preventing transgenic fish from escaping, disrupting local ecosystems, and potentially breeding in the wild.

More generally, while AquaBounty is committed to land-based systems, there are concerns that it's also creating far more GE eggs than it needs for its own production. Other industry groups, such as the Atlantic Salmon Federation, worry that other producers AquaBounty sells to might not be so careful, or that other companies around the world might move ahead with similar projects but without the same precautions. And all bets on risk are off if GE fish are raised in the ocean, where fish routinely escape, sometimes in large numbers.

Devlin's group has extensively modeled the results of accidental releases, studying groups of transgenic and non-transgenic fish in "naturalized" aquatic test beds that are exposed to variations in conditions, such as food supply. Transgenic fish often behave quite differently, and the results have varied from peaceful coexistence to one experiment in which fully transgenic fish killed off all their competitors.

"In the multitude of different environments that exist in nature, the uncertainty is too great to make a reliable prediction of what the impact would be," he says.

GE or selective breeding?

Does the fast growth of AquAdvantage salmon justify taking on these unknown risks? Scientists point out that today's selective breeding research programs, built on genomics and other tools of modern biology, also have turbocharged fish development. "Some strains of rainbow trout, which have been selected for fast growth for 150 years, grow incredibly fast compared to wild-type fish," Devlin says. In fact, he says, his lab work across various species suggests that "the absolute fastest growth you can achieve either by domestication or by transgenesis seems to be very similar."

"Today's farmed salmon have had more than 10 generations of selection applied to them, and they are growing at more than double the rate compared to the 1970s," says Bjarne Gjerde, senior scientist at Nofima in Troms, Norway.

Farmed fish also must excel in many traits besides growth, such as disease resistance and food quality, he emphasizes. "Most of the traits we are breeding for are governed by many, many genes with small effects," he says. "That's a real challenge if you just want to take short cuts with genetic engineering."

When and if AquaBounty rises above all its challenges into a groundbreaking success in North America, the firm will send a signal around the world to unleash efforts for commercializing GE fish, observers say. Friends of the Earth's Perls remains hopeful that legal barriers and consumer boycotts will stop AquaBounty in its tracks. If not, "GE salmon could set a precedent to the approval of other GE animals in the pipeline, from fish to chickens, pigs, and cows," she says. "It is critical that we don't approve other GE animals without robust regulations and full environmental reviews to ensure that we're prioritizing human and environmental safety over profit."

"Fish are probably where transgenic animals will emerge, because it's much cheaper to maintain a herd of catfish or salmon than cattle or sheep or pigs," says Bailey.

This story was first published by Ensia, an environmental news magazine from the University of Minnesota.

This article originally appeared at PRI's The World.

Read this article:
Genetically engineered salmon is coming to America - The Week Magazine

In BriefThe age of gene editing and creation will be upon us in the next few decades, with the first lifeform having already been printed. Stanford University questions the ethics of prospective students by asking a question we should all be thinking about.

When bioengineering students sit down to take their final exams for Stanford University,they are faced with a moral dilemma, as well as a series of grueling technical questions that are designed to sort the intellectual wheat from the less competent chaff:

If you and your future partner are planning to have kids, would you start saving money for college tuition, or for printing the genome of your offspring?

The question is a follow up to At what point will the cost of printing DNA to create a human equal the cost of teaching a student in Stanford? Both questions refer to the very real possibility that it may soon be in the realm of affordability to print off whatever stretch of DNA you so desire, using genetic sequencing and a machine capable of synthesizing the four building blocks of DNA A, C, G, and T into whatever order you desire.

The answer to the time question, by the way, is 19 years, given that the cost of tuition at Stanford remains at $50,000 and the price of genetic printing continues the 200-fold decrease that has occurred over the last 14 years. Precursory work has already been performed; a team lead by Craig Venter created the simplest life form ever known last year.

Stanfords moral question, though, is a little trickier. The question is part of a larger conundrum concerning humans interfering with their own biology; since the technology is developing so quickly, the issue is no longer whether we can or cant,but whether we should or shouldnt. The debate has two prongs: gene editing and life printing.

With the explosion of CRISPR technology many studies are due to start this year the ability to edit our genetic makeup will arrive soon. But how much should we manipulate our own genes? Should the technology be a reparative one, reserved for making sick humans healthy again, or should it be used to augment our current physical restrictions, making us bigger, faster, stronger, and smarter?

The question of printing life is similar in some respects; rather than altering organisms to have the desired genetic characteristics, we could print and culture them instead billions have already been invested. However, there is theadditional issue of playing God by sidestepping the methods of our reproduction that have existed since the beginning of life. Even if the ethical issue of creation was answered adequately, there are the further questions ofwho has the right to design life, what the regulations would be, and the potential restrictions on the technology based on cost; if its too pricey, gene editing could be reserved only for the rich.

It is vital to discuss the ethics of gene editing in order to ensure that the technology is not abused in the future. Stanfords question is praiseworthy because it makes todays students, who will most likely be spearheading the technologys developments, think about the consequences of their work.

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Stanford's Final Exams Pose Question About the Ethics of Genetic Engineering - Futurism