NEWS COVERAGE PERIOD FROM JANUARY 18TH TO JANUARY 24TH 2016
CALIFORNIA CALLS IN THE FISH MATCH MAKER
International New York Times, 19, January, 2016
Matt Richtel
On a frigid morning in a small metal-sided building, a team of specialists prepared to orchestrate an elaborate breeding routine. The work would be wet and messy, so they wore waders. Their tools included egg trays and a rubber mallet, which they used to brain a fertile female coho salmon, now hanging dead on a hook.
Diana Chesney, a biologist, studied a piece of paper with a matrix of numbers, each one denoting a male salmon and potential match for the female coho.
“This is the bible,” she said of the matrix. “It’s what Carlos says.”
John Carlos Garza, a geneticist based a day’s drive south in Santa Cruz, has become a key figure in California’s effort to preserve its decimated salmon stocks. Using the latest genetic techniques, he and his team decide which individual fish should be bred together. At several major state conservation hatcheries, like the coho program here at Iron Gate, no two salmon are spawned until after Dr. Garza gives counsel — a “salmon mating service,” he jokingly calls it.
His painstaking work is the latest man-made solution to help fix a man-made problem that is about 150 years old: Dams, logging, mining, farming, fishing and other industries have so fractured and polluted the river system that salmon can no longer migrate and thrive. In fact, today, owing to the battered habitat, virtually all salmon in California are raised in hatcheries.
Traditionally, the practice entailed killing fertile salmon and hand-mixing eggs and male milt, or sperm, then raising the offspring packed in containers or pools. When they were old enough to fend for themselves, they were released to rivers or sometimes trucked or ferried to release points to find the ocean on their own.
This practice gave them a necessary transition before they hit saltwater and a semblance of the quintessential salmon experience of migrating to the sea and back. To that end, they eventually swam back to hatcheries, where they became the next breeders in the cycle.
While hatcheries have helped propagate the species, they have also created new problems. The salmon they produce can be inbred and less hardy through domestication, hurting their chances for surviving and thriving in the wild.
Dr. Garza hopes some high-tech ingenuity can help fix the salmon’s troubles. When the fish return to a hatchery, scientists there separate them into individual tubes, clip their fins, then Fed-Ex the tissue samples to Dr. Garza and his team. They then analyze each salmon’s DNA, and match breeding pairs that have no genetic relationship to each other.
The goal is to avoid breeding siblings or cousins, a break from traditional methods of breeding the biggest fish (thought to be strong) without knowing if the fish were related. At some smaller hatcheries, 50 percent or more of salmon are inbred, Dr. Garza’s work has shown.
“We’re not trying to create the biggest, best, most productive fish,” said Dr. Garza, 51, who runs the molecular ecology and genetic analysis team for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Those traditional methods led to homogeneity rather than the diversity that makes a species more able to survive myriad challenges in nature, including predators and disease.
“We’re trying to mimic what’s going on in nature,” he added.
His tactics, first used a decade ago and now used to breed half a million offspring each year, inspire strong reactions, and hopes, in the passionate community of scientists, environmentalists and commercial fish experts eager to see the species preserved.
Underscoring the value of Dr. Garza’s input, and of the genetic tools, he is one of only a few people who consult with all 11 major hatcheries in California.
“Carlos may hold the keys to the future,” said John McManus, the executive director of the Golden Gate Salmon Association, an advocacy group for commercial and recreational fishermen. Perhaps the technology, Mr. McManus said, can be expanded from a small subset of conservation hatcheries that focus on the most endangered species to the bigger facilities relied upon by the fishing industry and “infuse wildlike diversity back into hatchery production.”
But others question whether the mating service is just another misguided step down a primrose path of human intervention. It is hubris, skeptics say, to think that natural selection can be recreated through technology.
“It’s a question of how much playing God will actually work,” said Peter B. Moyle, a distinguished professor emeritus of biology at the University of California, Davis.
“Anytime you get tech solutions to natural problems,” he added, “it seems to me you wind up in trouble in the long run.”
According to a Garza family story, Carlos was 4 years old when he first said he wanted to be a scientist. But he would face several major detours as a child.
He, his younger sister and his mother lived in a rough Philadelphia neighborhood. Stubborn, angry and without his father around, Carlos battled gang members, and wound up requiring the intervention of social services.
Life did not improve much when he was 13 and the family moved to San Diego. Carlos was kicked out of middle school for insolence and then dropped out of high school because of a lack of interest, clashed with his family and left home when he was 15. His sister, Mariel Garza, now an editorial writer for The Los Angeles Times, thought “he’d be a bum of some variety,” she said with a laugh, knowing he is anything but.
Reviving his childhood dream of becoming a scientist, he attended community college, then the University of California, San Diego, where he graduated magna cum laude. He began researching monkeys in Thailand in 1990 — “the dawn of molecular genetics,” he said.
He earned his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, in integrative biology. When he took a job at NOAA studying fish in 1999, he remembered his Berkeley classmates being surprised he chose a job so practical, so applied, as some scientists who favor theoretical work say with derision.
Dr. Garza did not care much about fish. “Maybe to eat,” he said. But he did like solving real-world problems, even one involving the debate about salmon. “It’s not for the faint of heart,” he said, adding: “I grew up in that kind of environment.”
Dr. Garza summarized the disagreement as one between what he called purists and pragmatists. Purists want to see the tiny remaining population of wild fish segregated from hatchery fish so that a native group can thrive; pragmatists believe such segregation is impossible because of habitat loss and the fact that hatcheries have already created genetic commingling. Once the hatchery fish are released, the pragmatists say, you cannot control where they swim, making segregation unrealistic.
The West Coast hatcheries, and the debates they inspire, date to the early 1870s. In 1875, Spencer Fullerton Baird, the first leader of the United States Commission of Fish and Fisheries, wrote to the authorities in Oregon, telling them that the way to preserve salmon was through hatcheries, said Jim Lichatowich, a salmon biologist and historian. At the time, the challenge to the salmon population was twofold: mining destroyed many rivers and the fish were a popular source of protein for pioneers.
“Buy into these hatcheries and you will make salmon so abundant you won’t need to regulate the harvest,” Mr. Baird wrote in the letter, according to Mr. Lichatowich’s description of its key message.
Was that prediction accurate? “Not by a long shot,” the historian said.
Early hatcheries collected eggs from riverbeds, hatched them and released months-old fry. “They did that until, in some cases, the stream ran out of fish, and then moved on,” Mr. Lichatowich said.
In some cases, fish were released hundreds of miles from their native streams. The fry lived in pools — early farms — over which a dead cow’s head was hung. Maggots would collect to devour the carcass, fall into the water and become salmon food. It was the beginning of another self-defeating act: It taught hatchery fish to wait for food to drop from the sky, and short-circuited instincts that the shadows from above might be predators. Finally, in other cases, fish were picked at random to spawn, their eggs and sperm mixed in dishes, which led to inbreeding.
As damming and other water diversions reduced the natural habitat, the hatcheries became indispensable. Today, in California, they produce 50 million offspring a year. Even so, the state has less than 10 percent of its historic population of natural salmon, leaving 32 different kinds of salmon and trout in the state as endangered, threatened or at risk, Dr. Moyle said.
But in 2012, Dr. Garza and other scientists wrote a critical report about how hatcheries had done as much harm as good.
Among its key recommendations: Fish should no longer be inbred, a particular problem for the most endangered species because dwindling populations leave few mating choices (and a higher prospect of inbreeding).
“It’s an extinction vortex,” Dr. Garza said, “where inbreeding accelerates the process of decline.”
The story of F12, a female coho, shows the frantic intervention in the life of an endangered salmon.
It began on Nov. 23 when she swam into the trap at the Iron Gate hatchery. Her luck at having made it that far cannot be overstated. Each year, around 75,000 juvenile coho are released from the hatchery, which is at the base of a dam on the Klamath River. On their swim to the ocean and back, the coho face predatory birds, dry stream beds and disease. Most years, around 900 return in the coho salmon run. This year, fewer than 100 did.
By the time F12 reached the trap, her time was running out. Female salmon, once they are ripe to spawn, typically drop their eggs in the gravel, then die within days. On the Monday morning when F12 was plucked from the trap, Ms. Chesney, the biologist, worked quickly. She clipped F12’s fin with scissors, put the sample into a manila coin envelope and, along with clips from eight other fish, Fed-Exed it to Santa Cruz.
In the meantime, F12 was placed in a white tube and left in a round pool. The tube separated her from other fish, each in its own tube, so they would not become mixed up with one another when it was time to breed.
F12’s fin clip arrived at 10:30 the next morning at the Southwest Fisheries Science Center in Santa Cruz. Dr. Garza’s team quickly processed the clip, given F12’s ticking clock. When fin clips arrive, Dr. Garza said, “it pre-empts everything else.”
In a lab with some $2 million of equipment, Libby Gilbert-Horvath, a geneticist, put F12’s clip into a solution to break the sample into molecular parts, like proteins and nucleic acids. Then, F12’s molecules were processed by a machine that filters DNA. Next, a technique called enzymatic amplification made millions of copies of F12’s DNA to allow further study.
The next morning, Ms. Gilbert-Horvath used technology that allows fluids to be studied at a nano scale; in this case, it let the team identify markers at 96 of F12’s individual gene sites. This technique, which Dr. Garza developed, allows individual fish to be DNA fingerprinted. Finally, F12’s DNA was compared with that of the Iron Gate males to see which made the best breeding partners.
At 5:07 p.m. on Nov. 25, the results were emailed to the hatchery. Because of the Thanksgiving holiday, the breeding did not happen until Monday, Nov. 30. It was, in Ms. Chesney’s words, “not romantic.”
F12’s tube was pulled onto a stainless steel table. Ms. Chesney studied the mating matrix from Santa Cruz while hatchery staff members waited for directions.
“Who’s my home boy?” asked Bobby Cook, a staff member, wondering which males would be spawned with F12.
Unfortunately, several top choices had died in their tubes over the long weekend. The team was nervous. “We just hope they’re alive. This is the scary part,” Ms. Chesney said.
Two matrix-approved males, named 28MN and 17MJ, were alive. Each was pulled from its tube and smacked twice on the head with the
It was time to breed F12, who now hung by her gills, dead, on a hook. Mr. Cook stuck a needle into her side. This device forced air through F12’s body and caused bright orange roe to spill from her vents, about 1,500 eggs. Mr. Cook divided them into two trays. Another staff member picked up each dead male and squeezed milt into the eggs. The dead fish were tossed on a conveyor belt for further study.
“It’s a slaughterhouse,” said Morgan Knechtle, the lead biologist at Iron Gate, though he said the genetic sequencing tools provided a sharp contrast. “In many places in the world, this level of technology is not provided to humans.”
It was a bittersweet day for the team. The good news was that it had spawned four females, but, unfortunately, no new salmon returned to the trap.
“That’s a run, folks,” Mr. Cook said as the trap came up empty.
But Mr. Knechtle said he thought it would have been worse without the salmon matchmaker, maybe only 50 coho over all, rather than the 100 they had seen.
Dr. Garza said he saw a bright future for this process. He wants to use genetic tools at large hatcheries — not to dictate every mating but to get DNA fingerprints and then track every hatchery fish from birth to death. That way, he said, the hatcheries could deduce which spawning and management techniques led to healthier fish.
Others agreed that there was no choice but to put these powerful technologies to work. (They are also used in Idaho, Maine and Washington.)
“I know it’s disheartening to people who want this kind of pure fish that exists without us getting in the way of it doing its thing,” said Jeanette Howard, the associate director of science for the Nature Conservancy of California. “But we’re too far away from that.”
“It’s the best chance for saving this species,” she added of Dr. Garza’s method. “He’s created a great scientific enterprise.”
But Dr. Moyle, from the University of California, Davis, said that while he marveled at the technology, he feared that this may be another technological fix that could create its own unforeseen problems.
“We think we can do better than Mother Nature,” Dr. Moyle said. “You wind up getting hooked on that system.”
DIRECTIVES: FISHING SECTOR TO BE PROMOTED IN PUNJAB
The Express Tribune, January 20th, 2016.
LAHORE: Director General Fisheries Punjab D. Muhammad Ayub said that a comprehensive plan had been chalked out to meet the growing demand of fish seed in the province and for promoting this sector. Presiding over a departmental meeting here on Tuesday, he said that Rs165.592 million would be spent over making hatcheries in D.G Khan while a large hatchery in Lahore and five new nurseries in various districts of the province were being made at the cost of Rs467 million. The DG said the main objective of the project was to deliver better fish seed and extension services to the fish farmers for the promotion of fisheries sector. Ayub added that for the growth of fish farming, besides cage culture and race way Culture, bio floc technology, pro biotics technology and genetically modified organism was being used worldwide
http://tribune.com.pk/story/1030680/directives-fishing-sector-to-be-promoted-in-punjab/.
NEWS COVERAGE PERIOD FROM DECEMBER 28TH TO JANUARY 3RD2015
WE CAN NOW EDIT LIFE SO LET’S USE THE POWER WISELY
The News , Money Matters, 28th December, 2015
Biotechnology is on the brink of the biggest scientific advance since researchers discovered in the 1970s how to insert DNA into living cells. Fast and accurate new “gene editing”, which cuts and pastes DNA at exactly the right place in the target genome, is about to replace the slower hit-and-miss methods of genetic engineering used for the past 40 years.
Laboratories around the world are adopting gene editing, particularly a technique called Crispr (pronounced ‘crisper’), which will accelerate the genetic manipulation of microbes, plants, animals – and people. While scientists are talking excitedly about the great promise and potential risks of gene editing, these have not yet received the attention they deserve from the public or policymakers.
Most concern focuses on human gene editing. Crispr offers a relatively simple means, accessible to any fertility lab with a supply of eggs, sperm or embryos, to engineer the human germline – make irreversible changes that are passed on to future generations.
This is fundamentally different to “gene therapy”, currently in clinical trials, which treats genetic diseases by adding DNA to patients’ affected cells but does not transmit changes to their offspring.
Keen to address the ethical concerns, national scientific academies convened an international summit on human gene editing in Washington this month. They concluded with understandable caution that the risks of unpredictable consequences are so great that no one should consider initiating a pregnancy with a gene-edited embryo for the time being, though research should continue and clinical applications might be appropriate in future if safety and efficacy can be proved.
While scientific self-regulation of this sort is welcome, the time has come for public bodies, regulators and funding agencies to become more actively involved. The Chinese Academy of Sciences, a participant in Washington meeting, has an important role to play.
Researchers in China are adopting gene editing with particular enthusiasm; early this year a team there undertook the only recorded experiment to alter the genes of a human embryo (albeit a non-viable one).
As usual when discussing technologies that pose risks while promising great benefits, the best balance between restriction and encouragement is hard to assess. Some have suggested at least a temporary halt to any gene editing research with human embryos but this would have an excessively chilling effect on science. More important is strict enforcement of a moratorium on clinical use of germline editing.
Although human DNA is the most contentious target for editing, the technology will open new avenues and accelerate research in every field of genetic manipulation. Farmers, for instance, will be able to grow an expanded range of genetically modified crops; some plants will have their own genes tweaked rather than foreign genes added, which should make them more acceptable to consumer activists. Gene editing will open a wider horizon for GM animals, which have made minimal impact on agriculture and elsewhere.
An enticing prospect for fighting mosquito-borne diseases, such as malaria, is to spread a synthetic gene that confers resistance to infection through the wild insect population. Scientists recently demonstrated an antimalarial “gene drive” in GM mosquitoes but stringent testing will be required before it can be let loose in the wild. With good management and public support, gene editing could lead biotechnology into a golden age.
http://www.thenews.com.pk/magazine/money-matters/84548-We-can-now-edit-life-so-lets-use-the-power-wisely
YOUR CELLS. THEIR RESEARCH. YOUR PERMISSION?
The International New York Times, December 30, 2015
REBECCA SKLOOT
JEFFREY GRAY, a professor at Des Moines University, recently instructed a room full of medical students to take out their phones. Unlock them, he said.Now pass them to the person behind you. They looked at him like, Are you nuts? They wanted to know, Why? What will they look at? How will they use that information?
“In other words, they wanted to be informed, and they wanted to give consent,” Dr. Gray said later. Now imagine those phones are cells in your body containing all the genetic information that makes you you, he told the students. Do you want scientists to pass them around and use them in research without your consent? Because right now, they can.
This often surprises people: Tissues from millions of Americans are used in research without their knowledge. These “clinical biospecimens” are leftovers from blood tests, biopsies and surgeries. If your identity is removed, scientists don’t have to ask your permission to use them. How people feel about this varies depending on everything from their relationship to their DNA to how they define life and death. Many bioethicists aren’t bothered by the research being done with those samples — without it we wouldn’t have some of our most important medical advances. What concerns them is that people don’t know they’re participating, or have a choice. This may be about to change.
The United States government recently proposed sweeping revisions to the Federal Policy for Protection of Human Subjects, or theCommon Rule, which governs research on humans, tissues and genetic material. These changes will determine the content of consent forms for clinical trials, if and how your medical and genetic information can be used, how your privacy will be protected, and more. The most controversial change would require scientists to get consent for research on all biospecimens, even anonymous ones.
What’s riding on this? Maybe the future of human health. We’re in the era of precision medicine, which relies on genetic and other personal information to develop individualized treatments. Those advances depend on scientists working with vast amounts of human tissue and DNA. Dr. Francis S. Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, believes involving donors in this process gives scientists more useful information, and can be life-changing for donors.
In announcing plans for the $215 million Precision Medicine Initiative, which he sees as a model for other future research, Dr. Collins said, “Participants will be partners in research, not subjects.” But people can be partners only if they know they’re participating.
The original Common Rule was written decades before anyone imagined what we can now learn from biospecimens. Case in point: The Common Rule doesn’t require consent for “non-identifiable” samples, but scientists have proven it’s possible to “re-identify” anonymous samples using DNA and publicly available information.
Nothing prohibits this. There is widespread agreement that current regulations are outdated, but little consensus on a fix. Much debate centers on what the public may or may not want done with their tissues, and whether that should even be a factor in policy making. What’s missing is the actual public.
The proposed changes are open for public comment on a government website through Jan. 6, but so far most comments are coming from scientists, research institutions, bioethicists and industry groups who strongly oppose the new consent requirements. Many favor the status quo; others want changes, but disagree with the ones proposed. Some question whether people even care what happens to a vial of blood or bits of a tumor after they leave the doctor. But trust me, they care.
People have told me by the thousands, and numerous public opinion studies find the same: They want to know if their biospecimens are used in research, and they want to be asked first. Most will probably say yes, because they understand it’s important. They just don’t want to find out later. That damages their trust in science and doctors. It makes them wonder, what else are you hiding from me?
People tell me this because I wrote a book about Henrietta Lacks, a black tobacco farmer whose cancer cells, taken without her knowledge in 1951, are still alive in laboratories worldwide. Those cells, code-named HeLa, were the first such cells grown and one of the most important advances in medicine.
But they came with troubling consequences: Her children were later used in research, their medical information was published, and the HeLa genome — including personal information about Mrs. Lacks and potentially her descendants — was sequenced and posted online. All without the family’s knowledge.
Mrs. Lacks’s story is unusual because she lost her anonymity. But I’ve talked to other still-anonymous donors with strikingly similar experiences. Like the Lacks family, they’re proud they helped science. They believe tissue research is important, but they wish they’d been asked permission from the start, to avoid difficulties that followed: the shock of learning they were part of research, debates over who controlled samples, questions over profits.
I’ve also heard from scientists and medical professionals who believe this transparency is overdue. And patients who want to control their tissues to, say, ensure their samples are used to study only their specific rare disease.
So far, few of these people are part of the discussion. The Common Rule changes, like most such proposals, haven’t been widely publicized, and they’re laid out in a thick document even experts find confusing. But the Department of Health and Human Services has posted a brief summary and several explanatory videos. With few exceptions — like a public health emergency — the revised rule would require informed consent for research on all biospecimens, but not all genetic information inside them.
How detailed that consent will be is up to researchers, but it can’t be less than “broad consent.” In a widely criticized move, the consent form template that would generally be required for “broad consent” hasn’t been released yet. Much of the debate has focused on what that form might look like, whether it can qualify as informed consent, and how much of a burden it might be.
That form would disclose any potential for commercial profit and whether donors would be compensated. Once you gave consent, those samples could be used in research indefinitely, and new samples could be collected for 10 years.
Research on your stored samples generally would not require further consent or ethical review, unless a scientist wanted to share results with you from research done on your samples (a setup some critics see as a decrease in protection, and a disincentive to sharing information with donors). These requirements would apply only to future samples, not the millions already stored. And this could all change depending in part on public input.
Many commenters so far argue that these changes will lead to what they call “administrative burden” and decreased tissue access that will bring science to “a halt.” Some propose an opt-out system, making participation the default. Much concern centers on time, funding and how to track samples and consent.
But some stems from misunderstanding. For example: Numerous comments from scientists say things like, “I CANNOT imagine needing to do this every time I request a sample from the blood bank.” But nothing would change for that scientist — existing anonymous samples wouldn’t require consent, and new ones would have been banked with consent. Many biobanks already use similar systems voluntarily. The only universal agreement seems to be on the need to educate the public about tissue research.
Here’s some of what the people revising the Common Rule would like to hear from the public: Should scientists have to ask permission to use all leftover clinical samples? Would you say yes? Is broad general consent enough, or do you want options for more control? Why? Should this apply to both tissues and genetic information, anonymous or not? And what if this slowed scientific progress?
People’s answers depend on many personal factors. Some believe their souls live on in the disembodied cells. Others feel anonymous biospecimens are of no consequence to the person they came from, so it’s unethical not to use them to advance science, especially since everyone hopes to benefit from such research when they’re sick. Some worry that genetic information will be linked to them, their families or their cultural group in harmful or discriminatory ways — particularly minorities.
I know many out there feel strongly about all of this. They have until Jan. 6 to tell the people making the rules.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/30/opinion/your-cells-their-research-your-permission.html?_r=0
NEWS COVERAGE PERIOD DECEMBER 21ST TO DECEMBER 27TH, 2015
TELL CONSUMERS WHAT THEY ARE EATING
International New york times, December 2nd, 2015.
In approving genetically engineered salmon as safe to eat and safe for the environment, the Food and Drug Administration rejected petitions from environmental and food safety groups asking that companies selling this salmon be required to label it as genetically engineered. Congress should overturn that decision. Consumers deserve to know what they are eating.
The salmon, made by AquaBounty Technologies of Maynard, Mass., has genes inserted that allow it to grow to market size twice as fast as wild salmon. The F.D.A.’s approval permits the engineered salmon to be raised only in land-based hatchery tanks in two facilities — one in Canada, where genes are injected into the eggs of Atlantic salmon, and a facility in Panama, where the fish are grown to market size. Each site has physical
barriers to prevent the escape of eggs and fish.
The salmon will be made sterile so that should they escape, they will be unable to breed with other salmon or establish populations in the open sea. Still, such safeguards may not be 100 percent foolproof. The F.D.A. and the Canadian and Panamanian governments will conduct inspections to make sure the safeguards are working. A major concern is what might happen if the technology spreads to larger-scale commercial operations around the world that might have weaker confinement barriers. At least one consumer group has announced plans to sue the F.D.A. to overturn its approval of the engineered salmon.
It will take about two years for these salmon to reach market size, and the Panama facility can produce about 100 tons of fish a year, a tiny amount compared with more than 200,000 tons of Atlantic salmon imported each year. Some leading grocery chains, responding to consumer concerns, have said they won’t sell the genetically engineered salmon.
The F.D.A. said there is no reason to mandate labeling because there is no material difference between engineered and natural fish on qualities like nutritional content. But the value of that information should be left to consumers to decide.
Vermont enacted a law last year that will require labeling of genetically engineered foods starting next July unless a suit filed in June 2014 by four industry trade groups derails it. Other states with strong consumer movements may try to follow.
The House passed a bill on July 23, 2015, that would pre-empt states from requiring such labeling, and industry groups are pressing the Senate to attach similar language as a rider to an omnibus spending bill. The Senate should rebuff that tactic and allow states to adopt mandatory labeling laws if they wish.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/01/opinion/tell-consumers-what-they-are-eating.html?_r=0
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/01/opinion/tell-consumers-what-they-are-eating.html?_r=0
International New York Times,23 December, 2015
Wade, Nicholas
Biologists in the United States and Europe are developing a revolutionary genetic technique that promises to provide an unprecedented degree of control over insect-borne diseases and crop pests.
The technique involves a mechanism called a gene drive system, which propels a gene of choice throughout a population. No gene drives have yet been tested in the wild, but in laboratory organisms like the fruit fly they have converted almost the entire population to carry the favored version of a gene.
Gene drives “could potentially prevent the spread of disease, support agriculture by reversing pesticide and herbicide resistance in insects and weeds, and control damaging invasive species,” a group of Harvard biologists wrote last year in the journal.
A much discussed application of gene drives would help rid the world of pest-borne diseases like malaria, dengue fever and Lyme disease.
A gene drive designed to render a population extinct is known as a crash drive. A crash drive being developed for mosquitoes consists of a gene engineered into the Y chromosome that shreds the X chromosome in the cells that make the mosquito’s sperm, thus ensuring that all progeny are male.
Unless the drive itself is damaged through mutation, the number of females would be expected to dwindle each generation until the population collapses.
Biologists led by Andrea Crisanti and Tony Nolan at Imperial College London reported this month in the journal Nature Biotechnology their development of mosquitoes with gene drives that disrupt three different genes for female fertility, each of which acts at a different stage of egg formation.
Because the female mosquitoes are infertile only when a copy is inherited from both parents, the gene drives would be thoroughly disseminated through a population before taking their toll. They could “suppress mosquito populations to levels that do not support malaria transmission,” the authors wrote.
The mosquitoes are not yet ready for release. Because natural selection will heavily favor any wild mosquitoes that acquire resistance to the gene drives, the researchers need to prevent such resistance from arising.
One approach would be to target two or three sites in the same fertility gene, giving natural selection a much higher barrier to overcome.
Another approach is to endow mosquitoes with genes that make them resistant to the malaria parasite. Last month, biologists at the Irvine and San Diego campuses of the University of California reported introducing a gene drive with a cargo of malaria- resistance genes into mosquitoes.
Such genes, if successfully propelled throughout a wild mosquito population, would render a region free of the malarial parasite, which could no longer spread via mosquito bites.
In agriculture, biologists envisage gene drive systems that could destroy or modify insect pests, and reverse genetic resistance to pesticides in species that had acquired it. Gene drives may also be used to squelch populations of harmful invasive species like rats.
Gene drives have two major technical limitations. They will work only in sexually reproducing species, which effectively rules out bacteria. Second, they spread only in species that reproduce quickly, meaning they would be of no practical use in elephants or people.
Because no gene drive organisms have yet been released, biologists cannot yet assess how well they will work, and what degree of risk they may pose.
The issue of risk, rather than effectiveness, has dominated discussion for the last several months.
Biologists are eager to see the benefits of the technology realized, and wish to avoid any consequences that might erode public confidence or get gene drive systems off on the wrong foot, as has happened with genetically modified foods.
https://www.questia.com/newspaper/1P2-39107506/scientists-build-the-imperfect-pest-gene-drives
NEWS COVERAGE PERIOD NOVEMBER 30TH TO DECEMBER 06TH, 2015
TELL CONSUMERS WHAT THEY ARE EATING
International New york times, December 2nd, 2015.
In approving genetically engineered salmon as safe to eat and safe for the environment, the Food and Drug Administration rejected petitions rom environmental and food safety groups asking that companies selling this salmon be required to label it as genetically engineered. Congress should overturn that decision. Consumers deserve to know what they are eating.
The salmon, made by AquaBounty Technologies of Maynard, Mass., has genes inserted that allow it to grow to market size twice as fast as wild salmon. The F.D.A.’s approval permits the engineered salmon to be raised only in land-based hatchery tanks in two facilities — one in Canada, where genes are injected into the eggs of Atlantic salmon, and a facility in Panama, where the fish are grown to market size. Each site has physical barriers to prevent the escape of eggs and fish.
The salmon will be made sterile so that should they escape, they will be unable to breed with other salmon or establish populations in the open sea. Still, such safeguards may not be 100 percent foolproof. The F.D.A. and the Canadian and Panamanian governments will conduct inspections to make sure the safeguards are working. A major concern is what might happen if the technology spreads to larger-scale commercial operations around the world that might have weaker confinement barriers. At least one consumer group has announced plans to sue the F.D.A. to overturn its approval of the engineered salmon.
It will take about two years for these salmon to reach market size, and the Panama facility can produce about 100 tons of fish a year, a tiny amount compared with more than 200,000 tons of Atlantic salmon imported each year. Some leading grocery chains, responding to consumer concerns, have said they won’t sell the genetically engineered salmon.
The F.D.A. said there is no reason to mandate labeling because there is no material difference between engineered and natural fish on qualities like nutritional content. But the value of that information should be left to consumers to decide.
Vermont enacted a law last year that will require labeling of genetically engineered foods starting next July unless a suit filed in June 2014 by four industry trade groups derails it. Other states with strong consumer movements may try to follow.
The House passed a bill on July 23, 2015, that would pre-empt states from requiring such labeling, and industry groups are pressing the Senate to attach similar language as a rider to an omnibus spending bill. The Senate should rebuff that tactic and allow states to adopt mandatory labeling laws if they wish.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/01/opinion/tell-consumers-what-they-are-eating.html?_r=0