Corn

First is your reading assignment:
Genetically boosting the nutritional value of corn could benefit millions

Informs us that genetic engineering has been used to increase methionine content in corn. That there is big money to be saved by such corn.

To those who can withstand my writing 'style' I will say more, including critiquing the seeddaily article.

Genetic engineering differs from plant breeding because in the latter, genes can only come from same or very closely related species. G. engineering now allows genes to come from any species. In crops it has mostly been used to increase herbicide and pest resistance. Used a bit to increase drought or salinity resistance. Altering amino acid metabolism of plants is new stuff. This should have been mentioned.

For humans there are 9 essential amino acids. Meaning your physiology cannot make them from other amino acids. They are histidine, isoleucine, leucine, lysine, methionine, phenylalanine, threonine, tryptophan and valine.

For cows there are 10, with arginine being added. Can be read on 'animal-feed' websites. First it may be surprising that cows have as many as us, because they have all those stomachs and all those bacteria allowing cellulose digestion. But those bacteria do not alter amino acid metabolism.

I doubt that arginine is essential for cows per se. Rather that they need a boost to achieve rapid muscle and milk production. Which is the point of having cows, unless you just like them. Same thing for chickens (substituting eggs for milk). This might suggest arginine as another genetic engineering target for husbanded animals.

Now to those seeddailly staff writers. "Most corn is used for animal feed, but it lacks methionine..." This is incorrect. Corn has methionine but not in proportion required to grow cows at the desired rapid rate. Corn actually is a sub-par human food because of its low levels of lysine. So we can anticipate another G.E. target.

"Every year, synthetic methionine worth several billion dollars is added to field corn seed, which lacks the substance in nature..." Same error but now with the lead author being tagged. Ouch.

"It's vital nutrition, like a vitamin." Perhaps it's beyond the scope of a 1-page 'general' article to describe vital nutrition in any detail. But if readers confuse vitamins with amino acids or any other 'vitals', they have unlearned something. Something I consider important.

"Then the scientists conducted a chicken feeding trial...". Article does not state they did a cow-feeding trial. If not, claims here might be a teensy bit overstated. Will read the real thing at PNAS and get back to you.

Final two paragraphs strike me as sort of a hash, but was in a bad mood when I got there.

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Corn and 4 other grains mostly feed the world, either directly or after passage through farmed animals. Everything about this, including genetic engineering, matters to us most profoundly. More important here than on most other subjects to say it right.

So to surviving readers I ask what is it the general public wants to know? Ought to know?

 

G.E. labs?@2. Certainly yes, and not limited to richer or industrialized countries. Not very expensive. Technologically limited to someone having received training in one of such countries. I'd be wary about someone having learned from utoob videos but maybe that's just me.

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Such genetic modifications are controversial now and I expect that to grow. One aspect seems generally missing from discussions though. I mentioned above (and you probably knew) that field is distinct because of 'distant' origins of the genes. A central paradigm in modern biology is genes -> ribosomes -> proteins. Were it all so simple we'd be completely justified saying "genes is genes" and one can make a DNA addition and it will work as intended.

Even more modern is epigenetics; so modern that we don't well understand how it works. It means the activity of genes is dialed up or down by interactions with other molecules and ongoing processes. This matters because genes from closely related organisms have worked within the landscape of evolutionarily nearby epigenetics. So there are clear expectations how they will work after you edit them in. In contrast, a gene from distant organism may have unexpected interactions with local epigenetics. I really ought to take this question to someone who cooks genes for a living.

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Another aspect mentioned above is that genes are environmentally mobile. This is trivially the case via pollen. Also happens via viruses. Indeed genetic engineers use viruses as insertion tools. Human DNA is 5 to 8% derived from retroviruses. This is obvious because that whole 'retro' thing can be distinguished. But other viruses must have (I think that's fair) also edited humans, but it is either impossible to quantify or we just don't know how to do it yet. Genomes are not entirely derived from parents in the long run. True across biota, not just for humans.

Taken together, unknown unknowns of genetic engineering make it a very sensible arena to proceed with substantial caution. I see controversy about the extent that 'major players' apply caution. I began by suggesting many other genetic labs exist, and they may fly under the radar. If they don't publish papers, sell products, or reveal themselves at scientific meetings, there seems no way to know what they are up too.

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Supporting the human enterprise is terribly important. So therefore are genetic tools for agriculture and medicine. But the genie (make gene pun here) is out of the bottle. I don't see that anyone can confidently predict its future.

 

Disappointed by my inability to write short posts on this (and similar) subjects. But there is a lot of 'there' there.

 

Frankly I consider viruses overall to be just as 'odd' as quantum mechanics. At certain physical scales, any value in what we find 'real' based on personal experience simply vaporizes.

One can abandon direct sensibilities and dive in. Or set the whole thing aside. Plenty of good reasons to justify the latter - we lead busy lives, we had underqualified or understimulating teachers, etc.

I read a bit more about retroviruses suggesting that only they can insert into eukaryotic genomes. looks like a substantial investment to understand this topic. Gosh we really need an avid biologist here to take up the task of PriusChat whisperer.

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Excellent book on viral 'insertions' treats virus as alive. A strong case can be made for them being not alive as they stringently require host (living) cells for reproduction. It boils down to not having an adequate definition of what life is.

So, folks just not devoting themselves to learning stuff is not the only problem. Science is full of uncertainty and disagreement. All to easy to assail on such valid basis.

All we have, in defense of science, is that it works better than any proposed alternative.