Funmurphys: the Blog

Natural Frankenfoods

Where do you stand on genetically engineered crops? Personally, I'm all in favor and don't see a whole lot of difference between seed companies selecting for traits and a scientist taking a short cut and inserting the actual gene(s) they want, even when the gene comes from a completely different organism. But not everyone sees it that way, and they do raise some valid points. Certainly not all engineering is equal, but what about the most basic complaint -- that such engineering is not natural? Well, research into the past genetic history shows that such staple crops as rice and corn (maize for all you britishers out there) have undergone massive genetic alteration over time:

"Our findings elucidate an active evolutionary process in which nature inserts genes much like modern biotechnologists do. Now we must reassess the allegations that biotechnologists perform 'unnatural acts,' thereby creating 'Frankenfoods,'" said Professor Joachim Messing, project leader and director of the Waksman Institute of Microbiology at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey.

By comparing corresponding segments of two maize (corn) chromosomes with each other, and then to a corresponding segment of rice, project scientists reconstructed a genetic history replete with "reconfiguration and reshuffling, reminiscent of working with Lego blocks," Messing said.

Public awareness groups have argued that genetic engineering of crops deviates from "natural processes" when biotechnologists insert genes at seemingly random places, altering the normal order of genes in the genome. The view of genes being fixed in their position in the genome is largely based on studies in animal genomes. In contrast to those studies, however, the authors show that plant genomes evolved from a far more dynamic structure than previously believed.

Well, I think that answers the basic objection; all the rest are really ones of process and can dealt with by reasonable people -- and should be.