TRANSGENIC GARDENING
FOR BEGINNERS

by Iain J. Lewis
22/4/2000 (updated 15/08/2001)

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Simply map out the entire genome of a primary producer, observe
what happens when a gene is added or a gene is removed, decide which
new feature could benefit us the most, et voila! A new species is born in servitude
to our ever increasing dominance over Mother Nature.

A very exciting prospect; fraught with untold dangers and opposed outright by the green-hearted and environmentally astute; what are we to make of such a God-given creativity-cum-agricultural-potential? Whether you are opposed to such Mendelian meddling or in favour of the furtive fruits of biotechnology, one thing is for sure: hand in hand with the newly excogitated species an altogether new mode of evolution has been ushered in...

Over the course of this relatively short article, the author hopes to lead you along the transgenic garden path; to point out the pro’s and the con’s associated with the irreversible inception of new technology into a rightly apprehensive world, and to provide both scientific and analogous descriptions of bio-technological methodology on the way. Sit back, then, and imbibe the subtleties and the complexities.

CONTENTS

SPLICE OF LIFE
HOWEVER
FRANKENFOOD
TOXINS & ALLERGENS
PATHOGENESIS
SUPERWEEDS
THE PROOF OF THE PUDDING
ACEPHALOUS SCIENCE
SCRUTINISING MOTIVATION
FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF MEDICINE
FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE
FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF AGRICULTURE
FOR SHEER PROFIT
COPYRIGHT DEBATE
(UN)ETHICAL CODE
A NEW MODE OF EVOLUTION
MENZYMES
BIBLIOGRAPHY

DNA as seen through a scanning Electron Microscope.

SPLICE OF LIFE

"Animal, vegetable? It’s all the same to the gene jugglers;
a microbe, a mouse and a man are all made of the same stuff:
DNA - the 4-letter alphabet of amino acids" (Donnellan, 1994).

In laboratory talk, a transgenic crop is the result of genetic engineering. DNA is transferred between an organism displaying desirable features and another organism lacking such features. This involves cutting a sequence of DNA from one source and splicing it into another. DNA altered in this way is given the name recombinant DNA.

The process is analogous to cutting and splicing reels of film during the editing of, for example, a documentary program. The analogy is very good because each image or frame of the two films corresponds exactly to one nucleotide of the DNA sequence. In a professionally produced film, such as the epic mRNA, nothing is inserted haphazardly but is placed exactly aptly in order to generate the right biochemical response - a protein which functions in relation to the context of the cellular organism and it's environment. One single nucleotide in the wrong place, called substitution mutation, and the resulting protein is rendered defective, and the organism is diagnosed as defective. (Sickle-cell anaemia is caused by just such a ‘one-in-a-million-million’ chance error in the nucleotide sequence of the human genetic code.)

Recombinant DNA can be taken up by a plant cell following the removal of the cell wall by hydrolysis with fungal enzymes, to leave a protoplast. The isolated plant cell membrane is then permeable to naked DNA. "The property that makes plant cells good hosts is their totipotency - that is, the ability of a differentiated cell to act like a fertilized egg and produce an entire new organism" (Purves et al, 1998). Following a successful uptake, the recombinant DNA carrying the novel gene now constitutes part of the genome⁽¹⁾ of that plant.

For instance, it is now possible to engineer:

Potatoes may soon have human blood plasma genes added, and no doubt many more transgenic delights are in the scientific pipeline.

HOWEVER

All recent transgenic endeavours have concentrated solely on the removal and insertion of one gene at a time, following the one gene one protein line of thinking. This 'one gene one protein' approach has led the way simply because most biological features are often the expression of several genes simultaneously, and the steps involved to transfer biologically, radically novel characteristics between organisms are therefore numerous and complicated, and little understood. Currently impossible! The introduction of drought-resistance into a given plant species serves as a good example of the complexities involved. Drought-tolerant plants need:

Beside possession of such genes (collectively called semes), "the regulation of individual gene expression has to be considered carefully during transcription," say Jones and Jones, adding that "there is no point inserting, say, a human insulin gene into a bacterium without also inserting the gene’s promoter, operator and regulatory sequences (which are usually found thousands of nucleotides away from the coding part of the gene sequence). If the promoter is absent, the gene will not know to start making mRNA with that gene" (Jones and Jones, 1997). Likewise, if the regulatory sequences are wrong or absent the cell may make too much or too little of the extrinsic product at the wrong time and the place. Considering the transfer of semes, then, the situation becomes somewhat impossibly muddied.

"Depending on their complexity, plants contain between 20,000
and 80,000 genes. Estimates for animals, including we humans, range
from 80,000 up to 150,000 genes" (Donnellan, 1994).

In short, many genes (and semes) and their corresponding promoter/regulator sequences must be transferred across in order to accomplish major changes to feature; things about which science is wont to know but currently does not. For this reason, the wider public opinion regards transgenic food as potentially promising on the one hand, and yet potentially disastrous on the other; there are simply too many variables involved, and therefore too many things could go wrong. Having sat through a brief introductory guide to DNA --of what it is and how it is used, how it can be exploited-- in what way could things possibly go wrong?

FRANKENFãÒD

"The artificial nature of GM does not automatically make it dangerous.
It is the imprecise way in which genes can be combined and the
unpredictability in how the foreign gene will behave in its new host
that results in uncertainty" (Antoniou).

TOXINS & ALLERGENS

It is inevitable that a change or disruption made at the genetic level of an organism must lead to changes or disruptions in it’s biochemical make-up (just as changing one note in a piece of music changes the overall melody). In turn, such changes can give rise to toxins and allergens never before encountered. In 1989, in the USA, this was proven to be true. Following the consumption of a food supplement called L-tryptophan, which is derived from genetically modified bacteria, 37 people were killed and another 1,500 were left permanently disabled. Many argued that this tragedy was simply due to sloppy manufacturing of the product, but scientists working at the company concerned blamed the GM process itself for producing traces of a potent, new toxin (source: Donnellan).

In the United Kingdom, GM foods are scrutinized by the Advisory Committee on Novel Foods & Processes (ACNFP) of the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries & Food. It is their job to test food novelties for anything unbecoming of a mammalian diet. How could they know? One may well ask:

On a molecular level, novel proteins are checked against a database of all known toxins and allergens resulting from the huge list of non-GM foods. Novel foods are put through a simple, some may say too simple, ‘virtual digestion’ test. This test involves the equivalent of a human stomach content into which the novel protein is immersed. If the protein rapidly breaks down into constituent amino acids it is considered non-allergenic. However, as a guide, if the catabolic protein-to-amino-acid process takes longer than one minute it is regarded as unsafe. Fair enough! And it must be pointed out that this relatively strict testing regime is far more than has ever been applied to conventionally crossbred foodstuffs. But, why should it be assumed beforehand that any novel --unnatural-- protein will digest in a conventional manner? And what happens when two or more novel proteins digest together? Mistakes, therefore, can be lying in wait!

Michael Antoniou, a molecular geneticist, outlines the wider problem well by saying:

"…what is clear is that genes and the proteins they make do not work in isolation but have evolved to exist and function in groups; the complexity of which we are only just beginning to appreciate."

The ACNFP considers only aspects of food safety taken in relation to isolated proteins, and therefore excludes the milieu of life in general: how proteins behave together. The food we eat is comprised of hundreds --thousands-- of proteins, all of which are digesting simultaneously - most of which are consciously known by us to be safe or otherwise. Nature has already tried and tested all possible combinations of proteins, and the process of Natural Selection has refined the menu over the course of unimaginable time-scales. Antoniou adds:

"Tomatoes can cross-pollinate with tomatoes but not soya beans; cows can mate only with cows and not sheep. These same genes, in their natural groupings, have been finely tuned to work harmoniously together by millions of years of evolution" (The Progress Report).

Taken out of their harmonious, time-proven context, recalling a pearl of popular wisdom which says "if something can go wrong it will go wrong;" perhaps things might be better left alone, at least until more is known about protein interrelationship. However, in order to know more we must delve deeper, while striving to avoid food science gone awry:

A scaremonger? In a recent headline case involving genetically modified potato, one Professor Arpad Pusztai noted that the immune system --hence the longevity-- of captive rats was markedly diminished if GM potatoes constituted their sole daily diet. He figured the cause to be the simple denaturation of GNA-polypeptides in the GM food-source following the quite normal process of cooking. Later, however, it was brought to public attention that imprisoned rats absolutely hate potatoes, and that Pusztai had recently been dismissed from employment - from a position in which his reputation was already strained, and his work was thought to be flawed. Transgenic Gardening For Beginners contains such chapters which serve to alarm the public to potential dangers even though there may be no cause for alarm. Does this harm a potentially beneficial technology at its outset? If this doesn't, maybe this will:

SUPERWEEDS

Besides being potentially poisonous or allergenic, our engineered crop can also effect other ‘normal’ crops by simple cross-pollination. For example, one American study showed how foreign genes introduced into radishes quickly spread to wild varieties one kilometre away. By making full use of insect pollination, new crops rendered resistant to herbicidal agents could easily pass on their trick to other ‘undesirable, economically uninteresting and nonviable’, what are called weeds. Scenarios of entire geographical regions plagued by rampant superweeds, impervious to all we might throw at them, began to emerge from the more environmentally aware and the more ecologically concerned among us.

NB: the symbiotic relationship between plant and insect ensures the survival of both; crops modified to resist or kill certain harmful insect ‘pests’ can inadvertently effect friendly and useful insects in its wake. The genetic legacy will transfer into the wider environment sooner or later because:

'The success of traditional crossbreeding relies on just such
a ‘closely related species genetic pattern exchange’.
How, then, can we expect our transgenic crop to observe a different
behaviour? In truth, we cannot.'

Consider Monsanto’s grim and greedy invention: Terminator Technology ©. Applied to a patented maize plant, biotechnology can render the once-fertive plant incapable of producing fertile seeds. The modification was planned financially in order to ensure the continued sale of seeds to hapless farmers, requiring them to purchase new seeds from the manufacturer rather than to use those that they had grown themselves. This ‘dead-end’ trait not only insults evolution (and the farmer) but also engenders visions of transferable biotic sterility - an infertile landscape, touched by the hand of man! A worse case scenario to be sure, but possible nonetheless.

"Although Terminator Technology © has only been tested in cotton and tobacco,
its designers are convinced that it can be applied to any species" (Dr Ricarda Steinbrecher).

Monsanto, meanwhile, have admitted the error of their ways, and have scrapped T1, announcing the introduction of Terminator 2 Technology ©, in which the fertility of the seeds can be recovered - brought back into play by bombardment with certain antibiotics. (It is now known that, in the American farming community, the overuse of mild antibiotics to boost growth and to warn off animal disease has inadvertently encouraged pathogenic bacterial immunity.)

BREAKING NEWS: Greenpeace worried by 'mystery DNA': Greenpeace have asked scientists to help identify a fragment of DNA discovered in genetically-modified soya (Actual BBC Article).

~

The sheer complexity of an ecosystem makes it hard to predict what may happen in the event that a relative stranger --in the strongest sense, an alien-- enters the household. Dormant genes may suddenly become promoted by external factors not foreseen during research; plants would doubtless swap cards, and dire consequences could follow. For these reasons, Jeremy Rifkin, the spokesperson for a genuinely alarmed American public, rightfully led the Pure Food Campaign, urging a boycott on all GM foodstuffs until such a time as certainty meant certainty.

In Holland, whole fields of crops were destroyed by protesters for two consecutive years. The outraged public demanded the right to know what they were eating. Calls were raised for clearer food labelling, that listed all ingredients; Unilever, Nestlé and Cadbury-Schweppes joined the biggest supermarkets in the UK and Europe to either withdraw their support for products containing modified ingredients, or to provide such a thorough listing of ingredients (citing their origin).

As though superweeds and potentially poisonous or allergenic protein upstarts were not enough, then there were:

PATHOGENES

In order to recognise and assess cells which have taken up recombinent DNA in the laboratory, scientists can --and do-- use antibiotic-resistant genes from bacteria as markers of their product. It is possible that this genetic material could find it's way back into fellow, conjugating bacteria, thus throwing hardy, future pathogens into the arena. The Australian Biotechnology Association says of virulence in microbes:

"virulence in microbes (or for that matter weediness in plants) requires many genes. The insertion of just one or two genes into the genome of a given species is therefore highly unlikely to cause any major changes…"

This seems quite logical and fair if we bare in mind the example of drought-resistance cited earlier, But, still, antibiotic-resistant markers (and viral 'promotors' and 'enhancers') positively breed uncertainty. Consider:

...says Dr. Michael W. Fox, Senior Scholar / Bioethics at The Humane Society of the United States.The British Medical Association, BMA, has called for a ban on the use of such marker genes in GM food, because "the risk to human health from antibiotic resistance developing in micro-organisms is one of the major public health threats that will be faced in the 21st Century" (source: The Progress Report).

THE PROOF OF THE PUDDING

Here in the UK, due to an immense blunder (or perhaps a contrived attempt) on behalf of the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (MAFF), it has come to light how hundreds of farmers have unwittingly used Monsanto's own 'Roundup Ready ©' rapeseed for the past two years. An estimated 11,750 acres of prime farmland are now 'tainted' with GM stock resulting from the mistaken use of rapeseed harvested in the general vicinity of GM test crops (a mere 800 meters away), grown on the Canadian prairies. Here is a prime example of the 'symbiotic-genetic-transfer-mechanism' that was guaranteed by biotechnologists never to occur!

The mistake reached public attention in the UK following intense questioning on behalf of Swedish authorities, although the UK government knew about the matter for at least three weeks prior to its announcement. The reason for the delay was to seek scientific advice, said government officials. The seeds have not undergone any proposed 'strict and rigorous' testing, and therefore the outcome is wholly uncertain. Even so, to-date, the government has negated the need to destroy the untested, ill-trusted crops?

It also transpires that approximately 1% of all seed on sale throughout Europe is inevitably suffering the same GM impurity, says Jeffrey Smith, spokesperson for Genetic ID, an American-based company who screen agricultural products for GM material. "12 out of 20 random consignments of maize seeds were found to contain detectable levels of GM maize", says Smith, revealing his findings in New Scientist.

A call for the resignation of those responsible for the mix-up is simply not enough - and is too late! In what turns out to be the ultimate test case, whatever fate awaits the human guinea pig consumers of margarine and vegetable oil products derived from the crop will prove either way --once and for all-- whether GM is safe or unsafe; fingers crossed? The bigger picture is, of course, that natural rapeseed is a thing of the past!

On the subject of government departmental mistakes, the Department of the Environment (DOE) recently gave permission for GM crop tests in Sealand, North Wales, thinking that the intended site was in England. A local spokesperson rightly pointed out that: "if the Department of the Environment cannot be trusted to read maps how can they be trusted with something so important as GM Food"? What is more, the planned site is a mere stones-throw away from a fairly busy public through-fare, meaning that pollen can be transported to all corners of Sealand not only symbiotically by insects but willy nilly by locals.

Is there anybody keeping a check on this potentially disastrous practice?

AN ACEPHALOUS SCIENCE

Having just released his conclusions from an OECD⁽⁵⁾ meeting, John Krebbs, head of Britain’s own Food Standards Agency, proposes that governments the world over should set up a panel on GM foods. Such a panel would consist of experts in all related fields, and would function similar to other panels dealing with major naturally occurring and human-induced environmental issues such as Climate Change. The group would also serve to unravel delicate scientific arguments from commercial, political and ethical agendas, says an article in New Scientist, 15 April, 2000. Krebb’s group would be a good way to bring sense to the GM debate, said the article, adding it would stress the need for improved testing on GM foods for allergens and toxins (and pathogens). Consumer groups are not convinced, however. Sue Mayor of the pressure group GeneWatch UK is sceptical of such a committee of ‘grandees'. She thinks that the academic tone of the proposed forum would exclude ordinary people, and could therefore make matters worse.

SCRUTINISING
MOTIVATION

With so much evidence to the contrary; with so many reasons not to change the wining team that is food chemistry, why are we doing exactly that? All across the globe food scientists are trying fixedly to make food into a science. What is it that is motivating these biotechnologists and these food scientists? What is their problem - their aim?

Here is a run down of reasons considered most likely. In no particular order:

"People readily accept new drugs and medicines that have been modified,
and rarely think twice about swallowing pills for the slightest ailment,
often seizing new research before it is proven safe" (Donnellan, 1994).

Hailed as a medical breakthrough by the Daily Express (20/5/2000), 'Biosteel ©' has just arrived! Goats can now be engineered to produce strands of spider silk in their milk. Long known for its incredible strength, spider silk can be used for purposes as diverse and as seemingly unrelated as surgical stitching and body armour for military personnel, quotes the Express. Dr. Turner, president and spokesperson for Nexia biotechnologies, the company in possession of the patent for goat-milk-silk, claims that the product "is going to improve many peoples lives".

Biotechnology has produced many useful medical products including: brain-derived neurotropic factor (which stimulates regrowth of brain tissues) and colony-stimulating factor (which stimulates production of white blood cells in AIDS sufferers). Clearly, the medical spin-offs brom biotechnology will be of great benefit to medicine - to mankind.

NEWSFLASH 2012: No sooner had Professor Chiral elucidated the genetic control mechanisms underlying the ageing process, switchboards the world over jammed solid, and a stampede of would-be immortals headed downtown to New Delhi to obtain more info on what is, after all, B.I.G. business. "Mastering the ripening gene of a tomato was just the beginning of ultra-fantastic possibilities," said Chiral, childless, aged 74. Ijl, BBC-7.

Science means ‘to know’, and to know is what every more or less cognitive person strives toward. (Although, a complete state of knowing --of enlightenment-- might best be pursued in several ways simultaneously - i.e. art, poetry, meditation, introspection). There is no going back now; modified plants are here already and stand testament to our growing knowledge of the world we model. However, there is more to genetic engineering than simply the desire to know or to understand. The data acquired from our genetic endeavours is interpreted and made use of according to the paradigm of the age. That is - having deduced the full genome of a species, out and out meddling must follow. This we do because we cannot stop ourselves pulling an apparently non-purposive world to pieces and remodelling it according to our own finite understanding: science means to know, which implies that we do not know! Here we have scientists, those that proclaim to be knowers or seekers, openly and proudly messing with the very biochemical fabric of nature as though masters of their subject, for, let's face it, no clear reason.

"If teleology must be avoided at all costs then the whole enterprise is eternally without purpose, as far as we are concerned! On the other hand, if we observe mankind with the ability to find or to make a purpose, evolution has found a purpose via mankind, for mankind is evolution, just as pikaia and pongid were before him".

"Genetic Engineering and other assorted biotechnologies promise
crops that will grow faster and bigger, in all types of soil; vegetables
altered to last longer on the shelf are with us right now!"
(The Genetics Forum, Nov. 1993).

The industry itself says "Biotechnology is a friendly science - benefiting man and environment, and is the growth industry of the 21^st century". This is a rather rosy statement, but it is true that the widespread use of chemical pesticides has left many regions needing extra treatment to return the soil back to fertility. Chemicals used to improve food flavouring and shelf-life are just as man-made and artificial as GM additives; biotechnology is an attempt to use alternative substances that are from natural resources. Selective breeding can also produce tastier food. But what is all-of-a-sudden wrong with the tastiness of our food? Nothing! So why, I implore you, do we need GM food?

By the year 2050ad it is predicted that close to 8 billion hungry mouths will overburden the current world agricultural output; much of what we call prime agricultural land may be reduced to inhospitable desert - whether or not global climate change deals an unfavourable hand. Food-wise, Earth can be seen as a petri dish of finite resources. Mankind is clearly the dominant culture, and can either curtail his own growth consciously/deliberately or have it enforced upon him mechanically/reciprocally. The options available to us all, then, WILL be:

Brazilian scientists are close to altering maize to grow in typically aluminum-rich, phosphate-poor soils. In solution aluminium is acidic. A gene can be added to the plant which releases a protein into the soil, entrapping the aluminium, raising the pH, and releasing essential phosphate in the process. Thumbs up to The Stuff of Science! This one modification could prove invaluable to the touch-and-go Brazilian economy. However, work is now at a halt following environmental concerns. Not only must the food be tested on animals but a thorough impact assessment needs to be run in order to gauge the effect of the inevitable, gradual build-up of protein-entrapped aluminium in the soil. (Also, as seen earlier, nothing is to stop this trait from spreading to related species in surrounding districts by insect cross-pollination; aluminium-trapping maize may come to inhabit soils where this element is in trace quantities, shifting soil pH away from an optimum required for neighbouring food webs. What then?)

NEWSFLASH 2013: Twenty years after students at Newcastle University successfully introduced a cellulase-synthesising gene into the stomach of a pig, allowing it to live on grass alone, vegetarian doctor-cum-bio-genius, Scott Fraser realized that the same potential existed for himself. In what should have been a scientific milestone, Fraser inserted the same gene originally found in bacteria lining the rumen of cows into the epithelial cells lining the stomach of a willing human patient. "Bingo", thought Fraser, aged 38. In one fell swoop he stood not only to settle the world’s growing food shortage but also to render all further need for GM foodstuffs unnecessary simply by allowing Mankind to obtain 82% of necessary carbohydrates from a diet of grasses and other acrogens - perhaps the most abundant foodstuff on Blue Earth. However, following a watershed legal battle involving the world’s (mis)leading food lawyers, Fraser was forced to shelve the all-singing technology because of a ruling in favour of the 'Food Magnates and Monopolies Corporation Ltd', awarding them full compensation and costs for massive loss of income. Money ruled the day and not humanitarian striving! Ijl, BBC-7.

"So, it’s good news for the producers…"

Certain biochemical companies (i.e. Rhone-Poulenc) actively research new biotechnology in collaboration with vested interests-cum-subsidiaries to their own company - the antithesis of ‘for the good of mankind’. Rhone-Poulenc, a company in league with Calgene Biotechnology, Ca, have developed not a plant resistant to bacteria but a plant resistant to the herbicide that Calgene manufactures! "This arrangement means that a liberal sprinkling of the herbicide, toxic to the plant, can now be used to replace more widespread usage of potentially dangerous agricultural chemicals", says a spokesperson on behalf of Rhone-Poulenc-Calgene. TOXIC to the plant? However undesirable a scenario, it would make more sense to develop a plant that was resistant to the insect to which the herbicide was targeted so as to dispense with the >toxic< herbicide altogether - although, as outlined here, not financially!

Again, scenarios such as these rouse negative public opinion to a potentially good thing. And yet, these are financial rather than biological or ethical matters. If the plant had been engineered with greater pest resilience, and exhaustive tests had shown that not too much damage was inflicted by the sudden disappearance of one insectile link in the ultra-delicate food web, and crop harvests were greater that year because of this modification (and the crop had eventually fallen in price, the consumer being better off), GM products might stand in a very different public light.

SUMMARY: The death of one species can save you a few pennies on your next cotton blouse, but objectively there are no pests! Everything is part of a finely-tuned system, shifted out of tune by out of tune men. The carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus and sulphur cycles are all aided by 'pests' - hindered by us! If anything can be considered a pest it is us!

Clearly, the copyright issues now under debate around the world are but a farce! Who can possibly lay claim to the information within DNA within genes within chromosomes within living things (yourself included)? Long court hearings accompanied by (mis)leading lawyers do nothing but show to the world the wampumpeag factor underlying pledges of help to Mankind. Do Nexia own or have any right to claim ownership of the product that is and always has been spider silk? If I were to cross two famous books by plagiarising from both does that make me the author of a new book? Do Monsanto own or have sole access to the recoverable fertility in maize, the fertility which they removed? Simply ommitting one chapter from a book with a promise to put it back later at a price, can I claim that book as my own work? Not likely!

So, what can biotechnologists rightfully copyright? The technology? Bacteria mastered the art billions of years ago⁽²⁾! Biotech companies seek protection of their investment, true enough, but their product is not the genome, nor any part of it, nor the techniques used throughout! One has to wonder why endeavours to help Mankind and to further our understanding of life and universe should attract so many investors!?

BREAKING NEWS 2001: A firm is offering to copywright stars' DNA: A US corporation is trying to persuade famous people to copyright their DNA to prevent fans from cloning them! (Actual BBC Article).

On the subject of gene copyright, a good friend recently, aptly said:

"it captures most profoundly what is wrong with our current paradigms about life and nature", (Simon G. Powell - author of ‘Natural Intelligence’)

(UN)ETHICAL CODE?

Do we have the right?

Traditional crossbreeding methods limit the extent of genetic exchange to similar or related species, and such techniques are long-since accepted as natural. With the onset of transgenic engineering, on the other hand, the species barrier is crossed with the insertion of genes from any species into any other species - a fig into a pig. It is perhaps this aspect more than any other that disturbs and offends.

Do we have the right to make modifications; to invent life-forms which are improbable without our direct intervention, and therefore somewhat unnatural?

A recent long-running thread housed on the Internet newsgroup ‘uk.environment’ tried to answer the burning question of the week: ‘what is natural'? Searching long and hard for definitions, some net users replied that Nature is "an environment left alone" or "a state or thing devoid of interference;" both implying processes arising and continuing untouched by one particular fruit of the tree of evolutionary life, as though that fruit were an outsider, an alien, not at all belonging, and doing nothing but interfering and bringing wholly unnatural order or disorder, corruption and impurity!? Others, interestingly enough, said that ‘everything under the sun is natural’. Whatever and however, if we cannot agree between ourselves what is natural --cannot define nor comprehend what is natural-- how can we say what is unnatural, hence to state if and where a biotechnologically moral line should be drawn?

If life on Earth constitutes a vast sea of slowly unravelling biochemical possibilities,
which of those possibilities should never be realized, and why?

His Royal Highness, Prince Charles recently addressed the media with his own burning question: "what sort of a world do we want to live in?" Be his heart in the right place, his question somewhat missed the mark, and is typical of our attitude to life: that we call the shots in a world intended just for our own perusal. By stepping back to consider "what sort of a world do we live in", science has, in every way, arrived at an apparently godless, mechanical, third rock from the sun, in which class-driven social engines and light/heavy industry "tear to pieces" the all-supportive environment as suits itself, to quote Mr. David Bellamy. With the world as our oyster other than as our home, the pearl has long since been stolen by the paradigm of the age: a reductionist / ‘merelyist’ mentality, which boils everything down to nothing and encourages a free-for-all rape of what we call otherwise pointless resources. In reality, however, those otherwise pointless resources are sentient entities collectively comprising a finely tuned geohomeostatic mechanism⁽⁴⁾, and, in this sense:

Life is perpetually --perhaps unwillingly-- in the balance!

Gaia⁽⁴⁾ herself, taken in the soft sense, is geared to maintaining biospheric conditions far from equilibrium that life and evolution might continue. There is no guarantee that it will... Sooner or later, however, the flow of development of material complexity that is 4 billion years of continuous evolution must come to a crossroad or fork in the road allowing mind-matter to take a more decisive, conscious (and conscientious) role in it’s own destiny, and the destiny of all life. Such a crossroad is upon us right now as we enter the new biotechnological age. Armed with recombinant DNA technology, evolution, via mankind, is now no longer left to chance; it seeks direction, and it seeks ever greater self-maintaining stability:

A NEW MODE OF
EVOLUTION

"GM brings about combinations of genes that would never occur naturally" (Donnellan, 1994).

Until the sudden advent of genetic engineering in the last century, evolution was deemed to be solely the random mutation of nuclear DNA (Deoxyribonucleic acid). DNA carries the blueprint of life from cell to cell. Micro-miniature in size, it nonetheless holds all the information needed to reproduce sucessful, sensible function (some 3 billion bytes of nucleotide code). It is a form of digital memory, capturing the entire history of evolution within a chemical code so fundamentally simple, and yet so complex in it’s further transcription and regulation that we are only just beginning to crack it.

There are several reasons why DNA changes with time: despite rigorous error-checking, errors can occur during the initial stages of DNA replication (mutation); tonic-like DNA can be introduced into an organism from its environment; chromosomes can overlap during mitotic division. These methods, it is said, have ultimately led evolution to the incredible levels of diversity, individuality and species-specificity we see around us today. Further to this, random genetic mutation which aids the reproductivity of an organism adds those genes responsible into the gene pool, hence aids the progeny of the species. This fact cannot be disputed (an organism which produces the most offspring adds the most genes into the gene pool, and adds his own genes into the future) and is therefore set firmly in the hardest of scientific stone.

A bacterium is said to evolve by acquiring additional DNA from one of several observed methods⁽²⁾. Note that these methods are considered natural because they do not break the species barrier - about which I have mentioned already. The recipient stands a better chance of surviving to reproduce if the genetic modification enhances any of several features defining life itself⁽³⁾. Adaptation by such means is, however, still defined as the random mutation of DNA, because as-of-yet we discern no clear driving force other than random, accidental acquisition of new DNA or changes to the already existing genetic information stored within the DNA molecule. To metaphrase - science states that it all happens in the absence of knowing.

>>> Whether accidental mutation can ever be beneficial continues to be a moot point. By analogy, if each word on this page were to represent an amino acid residue, and each paragraph therefore represented polypeptide chains and structures, it is clear that no amount of random, accidental mutation will improve the article itself. Try it and see. If you are using Internet Explorer you can use edit to access the actual code underlying this page. Try closing your eyes and randomly 'mutating' any aspect at whim. It is the same for DNA. One base in a thousand out of place and the protein (or parararagraph) become sincreasingl ydisfunctiona li nth eorganis m.

On the other hand, such a distinctly different and relatively novel⁽⁶⁾ mode of evolution surpasses the random, introduces predefined purpose, and implements an undeniable source of intelligence. (Although, one needs only to read the enlightened words of Deepak Chopra, MD, to realize that intelligence is everywhere and everywhen in nature). By definition, DNA that has been altered in any way other than by random mutation must constitute an exception to that mode, because it has factors pulling at the reins other than those of a random character. Exceptions are the driving force behind scientific investigation. A simple point, admittedly, but an important point to grasp if we are to be fully objective about the true nature and value of biotechnology.

MENZYMES

Not wishing to go too far into the philosophical aspects of genetic engineering, but here we hit a dilemma already! Purpose! Is it simply man’s own purpose that pushes him ever forward into the hazardous realms of biotechnology, in order to ensure his own survival? Or, in the dazzling light of the Gaia Hypothesis⁽⁴⁾, which slowly gains scientific acceptance and credulity (even in the strongest sense), are we still not seeing how we humans are as symbiotically interwoven within life's meta-matrix as mitochondria are symbiotically interwoven within our own cellular matrix, and that therefore whatever we do in life is, in effect, nature doing to itself - through itself? Everything under the Sun is Natural! "In one of life's great, self-referential loops, changing DNA has led to the consciousness that enables us to change DNA" (Sagan & Margulis, 1986), as though that were the intention --if not an inevitability-- all along!

Returning to the point of view of evolution taken as one teeming sea of biochemical potential (leaving aside all notions of God or purpose or intelligence for one moment), for any constituent part of that mass potential to reach a platform whereby genetic change is henceforth undeniably deliberate --other than apparently accidental-- is a major evolutionary leap on behalf of the whole. It is perhaps on a parallel with the appearance of life from lifelessness itself. On the one hand we have Man playing at God playing at Russian Roulette, but on the other hand we have an evolutionary branch-point in time between accidental mutation and deliberate recombination, with outcomes as much Mankind’s own as Nature’s own; as Life's own! Either way:

Somewhere in the sprawling metropolis that is the Universe
there is now the potential for mindfully deliberate evolution!

In this sense, then, we men act as catalysts for evolutionary change; ever-busy meta-molecular enzymes; breaking apart, splicing in and resealing hitherto genetic strangers in order to fulfil a wider, as of yet, wholly nonplus purpose within an enclosed unit - the biosphere. Mankind is thus responsible for the ever-further complexification and ordering of matter over and above that which can happen in the absence of science (of knowing), just as biochemical enzymes catabolically or anabolically undertake changes within the living body of a smaller cosmos in the absence of energy. And, in this sense:

"Man fails to realize to what extent all life is cellular"

Radically new species (and technologies) can only occur through the interaction of menzymes. At a critical point in the evolutionary process help is needed which could come from no other source than a knowing (sic) mind. Knowing reshapes, makes more resilient the biosphere, which seeks eternity. But, not knowing, the antithesis, is currently destroying it!

What is evolution, and where is it leading us to lead it?

---

1. The full DNA sequence of an organism; one haploid set of chromosomes with the genes they contain.

2a. By Transformation (loose DNA is taken up from the environment and incorporated into the genome); b. by Transduction (DNA introduced during the survival of bacteriophage attack); c. by Conjugation (DNA exchanged between two bacteria through a conjugation tube - thought to be the forerunner to cellular fusion).

3. Respiration, Growth, Feeding, Excretion, Sensitivity (to the environment - to any recognizable degree), Reproduction and Motility (movement).

4. The weaker version of the Gaia Hypothesis demonstrates how conditions for life on Earth are maintained by processes of geohomeostasis (i.e. the near constant composition of the atmosphere, the salinity of seas and oceans, carbon, nitrogen and sulphur cycles, all are kept in balance by living organisms). This denotes geoproprioception (the ability to sense the position and location and orientation and movement of the body and its many component parts). The human neo-cortex is the most complex biochemical conglomeration of living matter in the known universe, and is just one example of the many devices by which all of life can measure and monitor variables within itself.

The stronger version contends how the onset of the digital age and the positioning of high-speed cable and satellite networks constitutes the formation of a global nervous system (each computer functioning analogously to a synaptic cleft within the infinite, growing medium of the Internet). Cities resemble cells, factories are analogous to cellular organelles, roads are striking like veins and capillaries. People are embedded within a living, fractal-like matrix, and Earth is analogous to --or directly representative of-- a living, evolving, super-organism or super-cellular entity.

Lynn Margulis, a prominent microbiologist, and James Lovelock, a leading NASA atmospheric scientist, who jointly proposed the hypothesis during the mid-seventies, both adhere to the weaker version – at least publicly.

5. The Organization for Economic Co-operation & Development.

6. Micro-organisms have been doing it for billions of years (see 2b above).

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