Seeds of Distrust

Seeds of Distrust: The Story of a GE Cover-up explores the potential release of genetically modified (GM) corn in New Zealand in 2000 and alleged attempts by the government to cover it up. As New Zealand has very strict controls on the presence of GE organisms, the publishing of this book made genetic engineering (GE) a hot topic in the 2002 elections. Although Nicky Hager describes some dubious practices from the Labour government, the story in Seeds of Distrust is let down by a lack of science and ultimately loses sense of all proportion.

In late 2000 the Ministry for Agriculture and Forestry (MAF) and the Environmental Risk Management Authority (ERMA) were notified by seed company Novartis of the possible presence of a transgene in a sweet corn seed shipment. Initially Helen Clark took the position that the planted crops needed to all be pulled out and destroyed. Legislation was quickly rushed through in order to give the relevant government agencies the necessary authority. However, after meeting with representatives from the industry, the government became less convinced of any significant transgene presence and moved to adopt new rules allowing seed shipments containing up to 0.5% trangenes to be labelled GE free. The rational for this is PCR - the technique used to detect transegenes - has a certain lower limit of detection (for practical reasons). Additionally, some doubt was cast on the accuracy of the positive results which could have been due to sample contamination or a PCR artifact. Given the positive tests were less than the newly adopted 0.5% threshold, the government allowed the sweet corn to mature and enter the food chain. The Labour government kept the whole situation relatively low key in order to avoid spooking the public as a royal inquiry into GE was currently underway. This is the basic story that emerged for me after reading the facts presented in Seeds of Distrust - and it is a well documented book - however Hager has a different take.

Hager makes a big deal of the government meeting with industry to talk about the possible release of a GMO. Although I share his unease with the influence of corporations on government, in this case it was Novartis who initial detected possible transgene presence and it was their corn seed shipment which may have been recalled or destroyed, they needed to be involved in the early stages. Hager also focuses on the threshold level being set at 0.5%, he says the practical limits of PCR detection were actually 0.1%. Although, in principle, this meant the government was allowing up to fives times more GMOs into the country than was necessary, the overall level of transgene presence in the shipment of seeds was 0.04 - 0.08% and therefore below either measure. There was one test which reported a 0.5% transgene level but here his lack of science really lets Hager down as the rigour of the test is not defended at all. The story then continues with Hager doing everything he can to spin the downplay of the possible GMO release by the government into a deliberate cover-up of a definite GE food contamination. This is the weakest part of the book and I was not convinced anything particularly sinister was being perpetrated by the New Zealand government.

After reading this book I wanted to find out more about the science of the PCR tests that had gone on during this process. I found this press release by Dr Russell Poulter (now a professor of genetics at Otago University) who explains where the positive results came from. The ‘transgene’ detected was actually the nos terminator which can be associated with the actual transgene but can also be found in the common soil bacteria Agrobacterium. If this was an actual case of transgene presence then a 35S promoter sequence should have also been found by PCR as it is associated with the transgene but is not present in soil bacteria. It wasn’t. Given that Hager notes two of the samples were opened in the field, it seems likely these positive results were from contamination of the sample rather than due to a GMO. Removing these as false positives brings the presence of transgene down to an undetectable amount and eliminates most of the force in Seeds of Distrust.

Overall, Hager has written a book detailing behind-the-scenes decision making when governments behave in a less than exemplary manner. But given that the major premise of his book - GMOs were knowingly released by the government - is not well defended and likely false the whole thing reads like a storm in a teacup. Only worth reading if you are interested in the GMO scandal that hit around the 2002 election.

2/10.

Free GE

A recent story in the Dominion Post (Commercial benefits lacking in GE trials) reveals the genetic engineering trials being carried out by Crown Research institutions have lead to very few commercial gains. Plant and Food and AgResearch have paid over half a million dollars in application fees to ERMA and only one of the trials has resulted in royalty generating IP. To those familiar with New Zealand's restrictive requirements for GE research, this outcome is hardly a surprise.

Despite decades of safe use around the world, GE and GMOs remain contentious issues in New Zealand. The regulatory environment alone makes it difficult to carry out even basic research, let alone the commercial research which scientists are now being criticised for not producing. Anti-GE spokeswoman Claire Bleakley decries that the benefit of GE research being completed in New Zealand is lost to the overseas companies. But if private companies are the only ones paying for the research to be carried out then it makes sense they are the ones who reap the economic benefit. Basic funding for GE research is simply not available in New Zealand, the funding bodies know there is little chance any innovation made will be allowed to be used.

If New Zealand wants its scientific organisations to produce applied science using GE technology then it must:
1) relax the regulatory environment so that research time and money is not being consumed navigating expensive legislation
2) fund GE projects so the IP is not captured by overseas companies
3) open the New Zealand market to GMOs so that the benefits of this technology can be accrued here

There is very little risk and huge benefits to allowing GE research to be conducted more freely. The longer New Zealand clings to the anti-GE label, the more we miss out on the exciting commercial opportunities. Rather than be GE-free, let's free GE!

Humans evolve too

Altitude sickness is caused as a decrease in air pressure affects the body's ability to take up oxygen (although the exact causes are not completely understood). The effects are more severe in those unacclimatised to high-altitude conditions. People who have lived all their lives in such conditions are, understandable, less affected. Mountaineers can also spend time at a high-altitude base camp to acclimatise before making the final assent.

Those who live in the mountainous regions of Earth, generation after generation, have the possibility of adapting to the conditions on a more permanent, genetic bases. Altitude sickness can be debilitating and is occasionally fatal so mutations that allow more effective delivery of oxygen will be favoured. Researchers have now found evidence of such mutations in the high-altitude populations of Tibet.

By taking genetic samples of about 30 villagers and subjecting them to single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) analysis looking for single base changes in crucial genes. By comparing these SNPs to those from a nearby, low-altitude village 10 candidate genes were identified - including two related to haemoglobin. More work needs to be done to understand how (or if) these gene mutations contribute to survival at high-altitudes but it is certainly suggestive evidence that humans evolve too.


Genetic Evidence for High-Altitude Adaptation in Tibet Tatum. S. Simonson, Yingzhong Yang, Chad D. Huff, Haixia Yun, Ga Qin, David J. Witherspoon, et al. Science, 13 May 2010 DOI: 10.1126/science.1189406

Neanderthal genes in human genome

DNA sequencing of Neanderthal genome has provided evidence that Neanderthals and humans may have interbred. The 40,000 year old DNA was was decoded by Svante Pääbo, a palaeogeneticist at the Max Planck Institute in Leipzig, Germany. The researchers manged to decode about two thirds of the genome in duplicate.

The team also compared the Neanderthal DNA to genomes form various human populations including French, Chinese, Papua New Guinean, and San. They found fragments of Neanderthal DNA in all modern human populations except those descended from African populations. As Neanderthals only lived in Europe and the Middle East this finding suggests that Neanderthals and human interbred some 45,000 years in the past.

Although none of the Neanderthal DNA contributed to expressed genes in modern humans comparison of the two Homo genomes with those of chimpanzees may reveal uniquely human traits that arose after the human/Neanderthal split and provided an evolutionary advantage to early humans. This was a crucial time in the evolution of humans and any discoveries in this area will be fascinating.

So with everyone of European, Asian, American, or Polynesian descent having 1-4% Neanderthal DNA in their genomes, this means that Africans are now the most racially 'pure' population. I wonder what white supremacists would have to say about that?



Richard E. Green, Johannes Krause, Adrian W. Briggs, Tomislav Maricic, Udo Stenzel, Martin Kircher, et al. A Draft Sequence of the Neandertal Genome. Science, 2010; 328 (5979): 710-722 DOI: 10.1126/science.1188021

Jumping genes

The transfer of genetic material is well known to occur in a vertical orientation. Parents pass their genes on to their children, and their children pass those genes on to the next generation. This fact allows scientists to analyse particular genes and to use the pattern of inheritance to build the tree of life.

It is also well known that the bacteria at the base of this tree form more of a fuzzy bush. This is because bacteria are much more promiscuous than their mammalian counter-parts. While invertebrates stick exclusively to members of their own tribe, bacteria are happy to have sex with a completely different species and will even engage in necrophilia if the occasion arises. This swapping of genes between species is called horizontal gene transfer and was thought to be the purview of bacteria (and some fungi) only.

But now scientists have discovered that transposons (jumping genes) can be transmitted from parasite to host - at least in some special cases. The parasite in this case is the blood-sucking triatomine, a parasite which regularly bites humans and can carry Chagas disease. Researchers found the invertebrate had transposon DNA which was also found in some vertebrate hosts, namely the opossum and the squirrel monkey (but not humans - yet). These jumping genes were 98% identical between the different hosts.

Although this is a clearly a rare and special case, it does demonstrate that genetic transfer between different species is possible. This finding increases the risk associated with genetic engineering and emphasises that once a gene is released into the ecosystem total control of the set of instructions cannot be guaranteed. On the other hand, what scientists do when genes are artificially transferred from one species to another is not much different to this newly discovered natural process. Perhaps this finding may help to ease the environmentalists' fear that genetic engineering is bringing Dr Frankenstein's monster to life.


Clément Gilbert, Sarah Schaack, John K. Pace II, Paul J. Brindley, Cédric Feschotte. A role for host-parasite interactions in the horizontal transfer of transposons across phyla. Nature, 2010; 464