Open-Source Technique for GM Crops 140
a_d_white writes "The Biological Innovation for Open Society has developed TransBacter, a new technique for creating genetically modified crops, which is being released as a BioForge project. Their license allows anyone to use and improve the technique as long as improvements are shared with everyone, à la open source. Other techniques for creating genetically modified crops rely on Agrobacterium, but this new method allows using bacteria outside this genus. The New York Times and Wired cover the story. The founding of BIOS was mentioned previously. Although the Nature paper is available from the BIOS website, with their emphasis on the free sharing of ideas it's rather ironic that the technique was not reported in an open-access journal."
GM (Score:1)
Re:GM (Score:2)
It's too bad I don't have mod points today because I really liked the one about the cops.
Right on (Score:4, Funny)
I wonder how many other things would benefit the 'end user' if things were opened. Auto safety for instance.
Re:Right on (Score:2)
Software Principles in Government (Score:2)
Personally, I would say that most of the government is as open source as Linux. In other words, the information is there if you bother to look for it and are willing to go through the trouble of interpretting it. The only part that really isn't open is the closed-door meetings and the like. Aren't there any black-box modules in Linux where you only
Helping all of us... (Score:2)
Funding? (Score:5, Interesting)
If more of these papers are to come out, and I hope they do, the proper funding channels should be lined up since those who fund a research project tend to be very possessive about the results.
Re:Funding? (Score:3, Informative)
This work was supported by grants from the Rockefeller Foundation, Horticulture Australia and Rural Industries R&D Corporation (RIRDC).
Obviously, BioForge doesn't have any significant grant money.
Re:Funding? (Score:2)
Sorry, that came off snippier than I'd intended -- it may not even be 100% true, let alone "obvious".
Re:Funding? (Score:1, Funny)
Re:My own Genetics Lab (Score:2, Funny)
Re:My own Genetics Lab (Score:1)
Until then I mix my own drinks and use organic celery.
Re:My own Genetics Lab (Score:5, Insightful)
No, you're confusing two things.
Selecting individual plants or animals and breeding strains in the hope of exagerrating desirable traits (resistance to disease, early ripening of fruit, etc). is one thing.
This can only happen within a single species, so far as I know. I might be wrong about this. It happens.
If you manage to get a hybrid of two species, the offspring are sterile, so the strain acnnot ontinue beyond a first generation fo offspring (cf. mules).
What is meant by GM, is taking genetic information from one species and inserting it into the genome of another species. This crossing of the species barrier cannot normaly happen, and certainly has not been used by farmers "for centuries".
Now, while it may be laudable to develop a strain of rapeseed that is resistance to a particular disease by inserting a gene from a bacterium, what happens if pollen from a field full of this rapeseed is taken up by bees and some of this is eaten by another bacterium.
This is what the European Commission is wary of. Monsanto et.el. are pushing for short term profits by being first-to-market. Let's face it, the directors are put there to serve shareholders' interests. "Long term" investment for many of those shareholders is maybe ten years.
The commissionars in Brussels are nominated by career politicians and technocrats, whose short term goals are mainly fiscal but whose long term goals are to return to power over again, in alternating periods of government. Now, we're looking at three to five cycles of five to seven years...
The consumer is torn between the desire for ultra-cheap food right now, this instant, and wanting his childrens and maybe unborn grandchildren to be born with the right number of fingers, toes, eyes and ears.
Beef>
Re:My own Genetics Lab (Score:2, Insightful)
Well, not totally... lateral gene transfer (transfer of genes from one speicies to another) has been hapening for millenia - bacteria do it, yeasts do it, and viruses allow higher organisms to do it.
Therefore, anyone who has been making cheese, alcohol, or any fermented food has been engaging in GM for a long time.
Re:My own Genetics Lab (Score:5, Informative)
This is incorrect. Genes hop across species lines all the time. Microorganisms routinely swap, inject and steal genes on an on going basis even across such divisions as eukaryotes vs prokaryotes. Viruses move genes between multicellular species routinely.
It has always amused me that people fear GM when for the last 100 years the standard breeding method for food crops has been to force mutate them with radiation and mutagenic chemicals. Such practices mutate thousands of unknown mutated genes for every beneficial gene they produce. Nobody ever checked if if 1/10 or 1 percent of the general population was allergic to a protein in a mutated food plant.
At least with GM, we know what we changed and where and when we changed it. With forced mutation and natural gene swapping we have no idea.
You're missing the point on the allergy worry. (Score:2)
You're missing the point on the concern about allergies.
It's not that a new allergen might be created. Nearly ANYTHING can be allergenic - either directly or in complex with something else in the body. New compounds are being "invented" by mutation all the time. Forcing some mutations int
Re:You're missing the point on the allergy worry. (Score:2)
Re:My own Genetics Lab (Score:4, Informative)
Not so true for plants. Often the diploid offspring are infertile, but conversion to tetraploid form can restore fertility. (This is true for lilium species, at least. For mammals(at least), getting converted to tetraploid form is a bad idea.)
In addition, plant tissue culture makes the issue of fertility somewhat less of an issue, again depending on the plant. Much of the tree-borne fruit that you see in any store (apples, oranges, peaches, I think bananas), was propagated asexually (grafted onto root stock).
The scale of "conventional" techniques for improving species (e.g., plant 10 acres of pink lilies, keep the 100 best stems, crossbreed, repeat for 10 generations) is sufficiently large that I would not bet too much money that accidental gene transfer/modification (by viruses/bacteria/background radiation) isn't occurring anyway. I don't think anyone ever did any formal safety tests on the first navel orange; they saw that it was seedless and tasty enough, and propagated it all over the place.
Re:My own Genetics Lab (Score:2)
Nope, you have it confused.
"The consumer is torn between the desire for ultra-cheap food right now, this instant, and wanting his childrens and maybe unborn grandchildren to be born with the right number of fingers, toes, eyes and ears."
This shows it. While there may be consumers like this out there, they're idiots. It's based upon the nonsense that the food you eat will do those things to you.
Re:My own Genetics Lab (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:My own Genetics Lab (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course, it all depends on what this new feature is, but in my opinion, 99% of the modifications we wish to make to a specific crop are beneficial only to us and not to the crop itself (read: its survival in the wild).
For instance, consider a tomato plant that has been modified to grow tomatoes that are twice as big and that can
You forgot Pollen (Score:2)
The tomato plants don't have to be able to reproduce themselves in order to spread their genetic code -- all they need to do is release pollen.
And studies have shown that cross-pollination wi
Re:My own Genetics Lab (Score:2)
3) Move cautiously in a new technology, and always for the right reasons.
From what I've learned so far in my life, preventing a problem is generally cheaper than solving it once it's happened.
We already have indicators that GM is problematic: some species of insect have died eating GM crops; there has been cross-pollination with other crops, sometimes with unexpected results; GM crops have in some cases shown to be of lower quality than normal crops.
With the prolific use of Roundup, there are
FYI (Score:5, Insightful)
More precisely, "à la the GPL". I know everyone here has "GM plants", Monsanto, terminator seeds and the RIAA muddled together into a single ball of confusion but it's not like public domain vectors haven't been available for, what, 20 years?
At any rate, it's a nice piece of work. The submitter can sneer at them for their choice of journal, but I'd take the Nature paper if I were them.
Re:FYI (Score:1, Informative)
'la' already means 'the'.
Re:FYI (Score:2)
Yes, I realize this is the level of comprehension with which most people here are happy. But I figure there are people out there who are interested in a broader picture of biological research than what they get from the legal and political issues that get all the attention here, and that's whom I was addressing.
RE: Nature (Score:1)
Re:FYI (Score:3, Interesting)
I guess BIOS i
Re:FYI (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, that's my point -- the novelty here (besides the method itself, which is impressive and new) is the use of open-source terminology, not the free (by Stallman-approved usage of "free") availability of a molecular biology tool. The emphasis on IP issues here has given most of the readers a wildly skewed impression that public domain methods, tools and data
Bad license (Score:4, Interesting)
This is foolish. They should have released it under a free license for anyone except those who deny the same right to use their bio-patents. Otherwise certain scums [slashdot.org] are able to use this technique while not being forced to change their behaviour, hurting the industry, hurting the farmers, hurting the scientific progress, with no consequences. A perfect license should be useful for cross-licensing with proprietary patents portfolios but sadly this one while being certainly great in spirit is just too weak in its current form to achieve this goal. In the real world of patent sharks we need to fight a little bit harder.
Re:Bad license (Score:1)
IMO, this is the wrong attitude towards this license. Do you honestly expect a commercial enterprise to turn over its entire internally funded portfolio of bio-patents to their competitors in order to use any technology that has been developed under an open source license like BIOS? It is naieve to believe that such a license would be widely adopted.
This would be
Re:Bad license (Score:2)
Basically, parent was saying that the license should be like the GPL -- you can't use the information and then make it into something proprietary. Otherwise, Monsanto could take the knowledge offered for free and then make a killing selling the GMOs to farmers.
There's no question that Monsanto has a right to protect its own bio-patents. But maybe then Monsanto shouldn't be allowed
Re:Bad license (Score:2)
Re:Bad license (Score:4, Insightful)
Look at the case of Percy Schmeiser [percyschmeiser.com], a Canadian farmer whose canola crop was contaminated with Monsanto's Round-Up Ready Canola.
This is a wide-spread problem that is pitting the small farmer against corporate giants. Look at this article from The Des Moines Register [iastate.edu].
Re:Bad license (Score:2)
compromise license (Score:2)
In free software, we have a long tradition of actors who are half-in, half-out of our community. We benefit from their involvement in some projects, where they are equal participants, even as we may disapprove of their other activities. It gives them the possibility to contribute without making an all-or-nothing committment. In practice, it works out well. IBM,
Open Source + BIOS? (Score:4, Funny)
still can't do it (Score:2)
It's still easier to soak seeds in a mutagenic formula, plant them and look for interesting traits later, then clone and reproduce.
Re:still can't do it (Score:2)
Re:still can't do it (Score:2)
Some of that stuff will kill most of your seeds too.
As with all carcinogens, always use lab safety, protective & handling measures.
Re:still can't do it (Score:1)
As you say, that sort of stuff is extremely nasty -- transposon-based mutagenesis is much safer (albeit more complicated and equipment-intensive).
Re:still can't do it (Score:1)
Not necessarily - As an undergrad I've done multiple gene cloning experiments as part of a lab - and more advanced cloning while interning in a research lab. The actual process of cutting and splicing genes has largely been refined by biotech supply companies so that it comes in a kit with easy to follow directions and pre-mixed solutions. All you _really_ need would be an incubator, some medium to grow your cells, a kit that is relatively (couple hundred bucks
Great for the third world, if only... (Score:2, Insightful)
GM crops have tremendous potential in regions such as Africa, where also, unfortunately, the governments are too afraid to use GM strains because they risk their agricultural exports with the hysterically-anti-GM nations (because of the fear of cross-polination).
These developing countries can't even compete fairly with unmodified crops because of the unfair subsidies Western governments give their own farmers. Imagine that--taxing your highly advanced indus
Re:Great for the third world, if only... (Score:2)
You think using GM crops is going to make those unfair subsidies go away?
We already produce more food than we can consume, we don't need GM crops. Governments, (at the behest of big business) are attempting to convince us that we do, but very few consumers are comvinced. If the consumer is given the choice between GM food and non-GM food, which do they buy?
Re:Great for the third world, if only... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Great for the third world, if only... (Score:1)
(sodamnredundant)
Me. You. Our neighbors. Any other questions? Don't try to blame the politicians. We put them there. We can take them out.
(/sodamnredundant)
Re:Great for the third world, if only... (Score:3, Insightful)
eing able to support all (or most) of your own population on in country grown food allows for a much higher level of national security and self sufficiency. If all your food is grown outside of the country, that become a threat to national security no matter what country you are.
Re:Great for the third world, if only... (Score:2)
Two reaons:
1. Stability. You do not want to depend on food coming in from places that are infamous for civil disorder. To a certain extent, this also influences food prices as well.
2. Security. The last thing in the world you want is to have _someone else_ control your country's food supply, at least if you can help it.
Re:Great for the third world, if only... (Score:1)
2. Security.
3. Food raised with human waste. Cheaper isn't always better when you get Cholera.
4. You get to pretend you are helping out farming families, when 80% of the subsidies go to big corporations (read, pollitical donors) like Monsanto and ADM.
Re:Great for the third world, if only... (Score:3, Interesting)
As much as the potato in Ireland.
Of course the Famine was a result of using an imported genetic mono-crop, but I also thinking of the change, across Europe, that the introduction of potato from the Americas after 1492 created. It allowed the production of a lot of food in a small area and was army/pillage/tax resistant. A mixed result; that extra food allowed a population increase available for colonizing abroad, but helped make areas like the B
Re:Great for the third world, if only... (Score:2)
The mono-crop allowed the blight,
Re:Great for the third world, if only... (Score:2, Insightful)
Let me first start by pointing out that BOTH the US and the EU subsidize their agricultural sector. This is indeed highly unfair to the Third World countries, has been recognized as such a while back by the WTO and those subsidies are in the process of being phased out.
In any event, there is a key difference: the EU subsidizes its citizen farmers, while the US subsidizes agribusiness corporations (which have taken over the "traditional American farmer families" a looooooo
Re:Great for the third world, if only... (Score:1)
I realize you aren't here so you may have no way of knowing this, but all our (USA) food doesn't come from big agribusiness corporations. Many people don't like the cardboard taste of corporate food or want their food organically grown. There are many small time farmers, like me, who produ
Re:Great for the third world, if only... (Score:3, Interesting)
Just what the third world countries need is to become dependent upon GM crops, and then, ten-years from now have Monsanto decide to enforce all its patents.
Just like with software, third world countries are best sticking to public-domain agriculture.
Re:Great for the third world, if only... (Score:1)
Of all the products I purchase food is the ONLY one that actually becomes part of my body, so excuse me if I'm a bit fussy over what goes in.
Some stuff is so vital and important, that the maxim 'if it aint broke dont fix it' really makes sense.
I just don't trust mankind to mess with the food supply at this level. Its not a risk worth taking, especially as its politics and trade tarrifs making people starve, NOT a lack of food.
Re:Great for the third world--If they owned it! (Score:1)
I'm expecting this to happen to Afghanistan as well. They are thinking ahead to control of food and water in the third world, rather than just money. Iraq is important for its water suppl
Re:Great for the third world, if only... (Score:2)
I've since changed my mind, and am now anti-GM. Seeing the actions of the GM companies with patents, and forcing people to buy seed year after year with terminator genes has made me realise that big companies are pushing GM purely for their profit, not the benefit of customers.
I think africa w
Re:Great for the third world, if only... (Score:1)
GM crops have tremendous potential in regions such as Africa...
What complete nonsense. GM crops are not proven safe. Furthermore any and ALL food distribution problems are political in nature(war, greed, etc.). GM crops are totally unnecessary. Plain old cooperation amongst humans are all that's needed, but greed is more convenient. Genetic modification is about money and profit. It has nothing to do with feeding starving people. If you want to modify your p
Re:Great for the third world, if only... (Score:1)
*at least; I can only speak of apple trees because I have purchased some small trees that are accompanied by warnings not to asexually propagate (graft) them
**Well, they could be lying, I suppose...
Re:Great for the third world, if only... (Score:1)
Re:Perhaps a more fitting tribute? (Score:1)
Do you blame the Global Warming on Ford? Nobody does. Did he play a key role in it? Well, noone can deny that (thought some might argue about it for long if they bothered).
What is dangerous is greed and foolishness. Like Monsanto rushing out to use a largely uncontrolled new technology on a cornerstone of life on Earth to make money for their share holders. And the people who keep whining about
There is no food shortage (Score:2)
GM crops have tremendous potential in regions such as Africa
Let's not fall for the myth that there is a world food shortage. Crisis, yes; shortage, no. There's actually plenty of food to feed everyone and more, the problem is in distribution and the international markets (note for example, that even at the height of the famine in 1984, Ethiopia was still a net agricultural exporter; 'course you can't feed your population on coffee beans). You're absolutely right that Western governments have rigged
Possible dangers? (Score:2)
I remember that a farmer was successfully sued for having GM crops on his farm which were patented by a corporation. It turns out he didn't purposefully plant that strain of crop; wind currents allowed the GM strain to migrate to his farm, where it then began establ
Re:Possible dangers? (Score:2)
I don't think we already kill it. The farmer I mentioned went bankrupt because he had no way of identifying, or removing, the GM strain of crop from his field.
It's also important to remember that it will only spread if it reproduces more effectively than it's competition.
Not true. It will spread in any of the following conditions:
Witch dunking (Score:3, Funny)
The farmer I mentioned went bankrupt because he had no way of identifying, or removing, the GM strain of crop from his field.
Note that there is a very simple way for Monsanto to identify whether (in this case) there are Roundup-Ready (in this case) crops present - they simply fly over and spray the field with roundup. If the crops die, then the farmer is innocent. If the crops don't die, then the farmer gets sued. Much like the medieval method for identifying witches.
Re:Possible dangers? (Score:2)
Natural selection is a simple thing. It all really comes down to reproduction.
You're simplifying natural selection by reducing the entire phenomenon down to its fulcrum point, reproduction. The many causes and effects, and permutatio
Terrorism (Score:1, Interesting)
oh boy (Score:4, Funny)
Whoops! (Score:3, Funny)
Neat, solution for Monsanto (Score:4, Funny)
Round up ready cocaine. (Score:2)
After all Cocaine wants to be free too.
Re:Round up ready cocaine. (Score:1)
I particularly like the final sentence [wired.com]:
Biodiversity (Score:1, Interesting)
Introducing GM plants to an area can be compared to introducing alien species to a place where they do not
Re:Biodiversity (Score:1, Insightful)
Shoot, lets just all go back to living in caves...
In fact, I propose that we should just GIVE UP trying to solve any hard problem... Nature already does it better in most cases anyway, right?
Re:Biodiversity (Score:1)
Re:Biodiversity (Score:2)
For a while, people thought antibiotics were the solution to everything.
So, they were used all the time.
Now, there are tons and tons of resistent bacteria.
If the use of antibiotics had been more controlled and cautious, this might not have happened.
Noone is saying that GM doesn't have a place in our future. Just that there are dangers associated with it, and that we need to take these dangers seriously.
Consider Thalidomide [wikipedia.org].
In fact, I propose that we should just GIVE UP trying to sol
Re:Biodiversity (Score:2, Interesting)
The end result is a crop that may not produce the best yield under perfect conditions, but it is so resistant to disease and weather that it ALWAYS produces something. It's basically the opposite of these engineered, single-strai
Genomic Pollution (Score:2)
Dear GMO haters, screw you. (Score:1)
It also touches on some surrounding GMO issues, but it really sums up my position on the matter.
---------
As far as GM crops go, there is no stopping scientific progress.
Instead, we should be dealing with how we are going to deal with
possible consequences. If that professor had instead made a research
project out of preserving the DNA of "irreplaceable native Mexica
Re:Dear GMO haters, screw you. (Score:1)
That aside, I respect your position and your opinion. Its pretty cool, you have your opinions and I have mine.
I have the opinion that I don't want to eat GMOs, nor do I want to feed them to my family. I recognize that one of the realiti
Re:Dear GMO haters, screw you. (Score:1)
Why do you think -- no, *believe* -- that it will save us?
Look at the current, desperate state of modern medicine. Every medicine is almost at least as harmful as helpful. Check the failures, the side effects discovered too late, the whole rush to push out the product to make profit.
This is the same with the GMO stuff as well. They are doing everything to please their sponsors and deliver the products. The only difference is, you can
Re:Dear GMO haters, screw you. (Score:1)
I do think it has the power to save us from various current and future problems.
The current state of medicine has helped COUNTLESS more people than it has hurt. Yes, we will look back on it someday the way we look back at medieval barbers. Does that mean we should halt all current efforts?
As I said in my post, you can't stop progress. We should be planning on how to deal with the ramifications, not hoping that it doesn't
Re:Dear GMO haters, screw you. (Score:1)
>I do think it has the power to save us from various current and future problems.
These two sentences seem to carry opposite meanings.
>The current state of medicine has helped COUNTLESS more people than it has hurt. Yes, we will look back on it someday the way we look back at medieval barbers. Does that mean we should halt all current efforts?
No. Nobody is talking abouthalting current efforts. What I would like to se
Not in my backyard (Score:2, Interesting)
Liability (Score:1)
What about liability issues? When it was discovered that asbestos caused cancer, the company who manufactured it was liable. Who's liable if something goes wrong with open-source GM crops?
www.empiresofsteel.com [empiresofsteel.com]
Ironic (Score:2)
Aren't most of the open source licenses based on the open exchange of information that is a major component of research? The BSD license is a good example of it, you can use the code as long as you attribute it correctly. GPL is just placing safe guards so that the information cannot be 'locked up'.
It looks like the wheel has come full circle.
The Journal Nature (Score:2)
If the purpose of the announcement is to reach as many as the biological sciences community as possible, you want to put the announcement in the journal that most of them read.
*Boo-Hoo* (Score:1, Flamebait)
You lie! (Score:2)
Open source just requires you release your source code. It does NOT require anyone else release their modifications.
This is the GNU model, forcing others to release their changes.
Pay more attention!
This is gzip (Score:2)
Agrobacterium is compress. It's basically the only game in town for gene transfer into plants, wh
You have a FEW good points...but here is more info (Score:1)
They do tend to incourage monoculture farming. However this is nothing new. Farmers have been trying to monoculture for the last 10,ooo years. In the last 50-100 years they have gotten to the point of true monocultures. But just like any other plant they will only thrive in the enviroment they were designed for (by nature or man). If farmers see that they are not doing as well with GM crops THEY WILL STOP USING THEM.
GM foods can be hea
Re:GMO crops danger and risks are unacceptable (Score:2)