Glowing Plant kickstarter - helkp us reach our final DIYbio stretch goal!

[Patrik D'haeseleer]

Only 9 hours left on the Glowing Plant Kickstarter as we speak.

The final stretch goal for the project is especially important for the DIYbio community - if we reach $500K, we'll let *you* submit some creative new designs, and we'll try to actually implement some of them!

So tell your friends and family, harangue your social networks, and let's see if we can get there in the next few hours:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/antonyevans/glowing-plants-natural-lighting-with-no-electricit

Patrik

[Patrik D'haeseleer]

Meanwhile, there's a pair of small opinion pieces I wrote on the Glowing Plant project, explaining my feelings on the topic, and why I decided to support it.

The first one just got posted on the Glowing Plant blog:


http://glowingplant.com/post/52315929208/arent-gmos-evil

Aren’t GMO’s evil?

Luckily, that’s one question we don’t typically tend to get - although some people have definitely told us as much.

Like it or not, biology is the science of the 21st century, the way the steam engine dominated the first half of the 20th century. And just as there was a backlash against steam technology – it was going to put everybody out of work, and cows were going to drop dead in fright at the sight of a 20 mph steam train – there is a lot of Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt about genetic engineering and genetically modified organisms. To the point that creations like the vitamin fortified “Golden Rice” are now banned from countries where they could be saving thousands of lives. I’m sure that the first humans to discover fire were feared and reviled by their neighbors. And I’m sure those fire makers were concerned that their invention might “fall in the wrong hands”.

As with all technology, genetic engineering is not inherently good or bad – it all depends how you apply it. Science fiction stories are full of the hypothetical abuses of genetic engineering. Then again, they are also full of Midichlorians, and nobody takes those serious. More down-to-earth: yes, genetic engineering has been used to create quasi-monopolies on seeds and herbicides. But it is also being used to produce insulin and hundreds of other lifesaving drugs, develop cures for inherited diseases through gene therapy, and to make sure the next billion members of humanity will have enough to eat.

Monoculture and loss of crop diversity may be a really bad idea, ecologically speaking. And depriving farmers of the right to save and replant seed could arguably be called evil. But those are the products of a screwed up agroindustrial system, not the inevitable consequence of GMOs. As for the health concerns with GMOs – well, we’re not creating a food crop here, but as a scientist I would rate eating a tomato with fish genes about as dangerous as eating a fish-and-tomato dinner – and far less risky than eating a new tropical fruit I’ve never seen before.

When it comes to synthetic biology and DIYbio, I feel we’re standing alongside those early fire makers, discussing whether only the village elders should be allowed to handle fire, or whether we should teach everyone how to deal with it safely. Luckily, we know how that decision turned out…

Patrik D’haeseleer is a scientific advisor of the Glowing Plant project, and community projects coordinator at BioCurious, neither of which is in any way related or funded by his day job at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and the Joint BioEnergy Institute. The views presented here are his own, and do not represent those of the Glowing Plant project, BioCurious, LLNL, or JBEI.

[Patrik D'haeseleer]

“Is this Legal”?

“Is this Legal?” is probably the #1 questions people ask us when they hear about the Glowing Plant project (well, after “Can I have one?”, of course). The short answer is “Yes”. But the long answer is far more interesting…

Regulatory oversight in the US over genetically modified organisms (GMOs) is covered by an alphabet soup of laws and agencies. Different rules apply when you are dealing with a GMO food crop such as soy (covered by the Food and Drug Agency - FDA), a microbe, an animal, or anything that has been engineered using a plant pathogen. I would hesitate to call this a patchwork quilt of regulations, because a patchwork quilt isn’t supposed to have any holes in it, and these regulations definitely do: big, ragged, oddly shaped holes.

Most plant genetic engineering historically has been done by taking advantage of the plant pathogen Agrobacterium tumefaciens. You may have seen Agrobacterium at work if you’ve seen a tree with a large outgrowth on its trunk. Agrobacterium is a bacterium (duh) that infects plants. During infection, it literally injects some of its own DNA into the plant, subverting its host’s machinery to make a nice little home for the bacteria. Plant genetic engineers have been using that trick to their own advantage, by engineering Agrobacterium to inject whatever genes they want to insert into the plant instead. However, the US Department of Agriculture has been understandably cautious about releasing any plant that has been infected by this pathogen, especially an engineered strain of Agrobacterium that could potentially infect other plants in the environment. In fact, this has historically been one of the primary justifications the USDA has used for regulating GMO plants.

Now, it turns out that Agrobacterium isn’t the only tool genetic engineers have at their disposal to get genes into plants. In 1987, Klein and Sanford discovered that you can literally fire tiny bullets loaded with DNA into cells using an air gun. And when I say tiny, I do mean tiny: the usual ammunition for this “gene gun” are gold nanoparticles that are 1/100’th the width of a human hair. Each gold particle is coated with strands of DNA coding for the genes that we want to the inside the cell. The use of gold allows the bullets to be much smaller than the size of the cell, yet heavy enough to carry enough momentum to pierce the tough plant cell wall. This is the same reason that real bullets are make out of lead (or the even heavier depleted uranium) except that the gold particles will be inert once inside the cell.

[Image: “Give us your money, and the plant gets it!”]

The use of this gene gun technology to circumvent USDA’s regulations on non-food plants did not escape notice of the 800 pound gorilla in the field of plant engineering. Monsanto, in collaboration with Scotts Miracle-Gro, has been developing a bluegrass strain (the lawn variety, not the banjo variety) that was engineered to be resistant to their favorite herbicide glyphosate (aka Roundup). And because nobody but your dog eats lawn grass it’s not covered by FDA regulations. And because they used gene gun technology instead of our friend Agrobacterium, it’s not covered by USDA’s plant-pathogen-based regulations. Scotts/Monsanto saw a huge gap in GMO regulations, and waltzed right through it! Mind you, there were still plenty of voices saying that they should never have gotten away with this. After all, there are plenty of weed grasses that their bluegrass could potentially outcross with. And by inserting the herbicide resistance genes, they’ve given this grass an evolutionary advantage wherever there are traces of Roundup in the environment. But get away with it they did: USDA ruled that their bluegrass did not pose a risk to become an agricultural pest, and that was that.

Now, compare that Roundup Ready bluegrass with our little Glowing Plant: Arabidopsis is not a very hardy plant, and since it is self-pollinating it is highly unlikely to outcross with more vigorously growing weeds to begin with (unlike grasses). And the genes we’re inserting into its genome will drain a small amount of its energy to produce light, so it will likely do slightly worse than its unmodified cousins in the environment, rather than giving it a fitness advantage by making it resistant to herbicides. Other than that (and a multi-billion dollar company with thousands of lawyers), the two are fairly analogous.

So where Monsanto waltzed through the regulatory gap, we will be happy to sneak through after it, and give you something you really want: not just another water and herbicide guzzling lawn, but a glowing garden of bioluminescent plants.

Mind you, I have nothing against rational, sensible regulation of genetically modified organisms. This is after all a very powerful technology. We also regulate car manufacturers, because we prefer our cars not to fall apart on the roadway. But if billion dollar companies can get away with bringing a herbicide resistant grass on the market without any regulatory oversight, then surely our ragtag band of biohackers should be allowed to create a little glowing plant as well?

So – that was the long answer: yes, what we’re doing is legal. We have talked to the relevant regulatory agencies, and Monsanto already set the precedent with their Roundup Ready grass. There is still a small possibility that our Glowing Plant project might get shut down by one of the alphabet soup agencies, but then they’d need to reverse their decision on Monsanto as well. And if a bunch of DIYbio amateurs is able to insert some more rational thought into the national debate around GMO regulation, then, personally, I wouldn’t consider that a bad outcome either…

[Nathan McCorkle]

Very nice. Thanks for this, of all the other pieces big media has
done, your two you've posted are IMO the best. I am probably biased
because a lot of the other articles are background info that is second
nature to me by now... or they're just bad at writing to my interests.

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--
-Nathan

[Alex]

Thank you for these blurbs! They were very informative! I'm kind of bummed, I was liking the idea of Monsanto creating a music variety bluegrass though! Haha

Alex

[Dakota Hamill]

Good stuff, this is only the beginning. To science and beyond.

[Patrik D'haeseleer]

Yeah, Roundup is not to be confused with a Hoe-down. Common mistake.

Patrik

[matt harbowy]

FYI, re: gold nanoparticles, I think one of the other advantages to gold is that DNA tends to stick to it readily.

-matt

[Nathan McCorkle]

so could I grind up a PCR purification spin column, perform the
operations with the right buffers, pellet and decant, then load the
gun and shoot?

--
-Nathan

[Patrik D'haeseleer]

On Thursday, June 6, 2013 9:58:35 PM UTC-7, Nathan McCorkle wrote:

so could I grind up a PCR purification spin column, perform the
operations with the right buffers, pellet and decant, then load the
gun and shoot?

There's a great video on how to prepare "bullets" for a gene gun on Jove:

http://www.jove.com/video/675/preparation-gene-gun-bullets-biolistic-transfection-neurons-slice

Patrik

[Cathal Garvey (Android)]

How-down is one of the few reliable ways to kill a roundup resistant weed, though..

--
Sent from my Android phone with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity.

[Cathal Garvey (Android)]

*Hoe, not How. Damnable autocorrect..

[Patrik D'haeseleer]

Damn - now I'm going to have to talk Antony into holding a party with a hoedown-ready Kentucky bluegrass band...

[Alex]

Selective breeding and slight genetic mutations have made them Hoedown-ready! Monsanto, in partnership with Scott's Miracle Grow, presents: the Traditional Hill Grasscutters!

On Jun 7, 2013 6:54 AM, "Patrik D'haeseleer" <pat...@gmail.com> wrote:

Damn - now I'm going to have to talk Antony into holding a party with a hoedown-ready Kentucky bluegrass band...

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