TEC 154 2014S, Class 26: Biotechnology (2) ========================================== _Overview_ * Preliminaries. * Admin. * Questions. Preliminaries ------------- ### Admin * Today's note takers: TD and DS * Reading for Friday: Read the "Launching the Innovation Renaissance" e-book from the beginning through the section "The critical need for patent reform." * Upcoming extra credit: * Convocation, Wednesday, The Sixth Extinction * Talk on Science Writing, Today at 4:15 pm * Technology in the Liberal Arts Symposium, Thursday, various times ### Questions Key Points from TD ------------------ Key Points from DS ------------------ Dr. Robertson's Notes --------------------- ### New products under development * Foods with improved nutrition - Golden Rice * Edible vaccines * Antibodies produced in plants ### Plants and Animals as Protein Factories Products produced in tissues or milk - much cheaper to produce than in bacteria or animal cells grown in bioreactors. ### Xeno-Transplantation Use of organ transplants from non-human speciies, primates or pigs, for instance ### Animal Cloning Dolly and many others (Copy Cat, Tabouli and Bab Ganoush) ### Problems * Legal issues - Percy Schmeiser (Canadian canola grower) vs. Monsanto * Contamination of food supply by crops not approved for human consumption - Starlkink corn in taco shells * Weeds developing resistance to Round-up - serious problem today * Gene flow into related weeds or into other fields of same crop that may be organically grown * Bt - harm to non-target species like Monarch butterflies SR's Live Notes --------------- Newer developments - Things not yet available commercially * Things from Monday were mostly for the benefit of the producer, not the consumer. * Affect the consumer mostly in the consumers are eating these foods with altered composition. * If you look at the genetically engineered foods, you see that Canola and Soybeans have been altered for different kinds of lipids. * Similarly, potatoes that have higher starch content to make better McFries. Golden Rice * One of the first geneng products developed "without commercial interest" * GR contains higher levels of beta carotine * Beta carotine leads to vitamin A * Lack of vitamin A leads to blindness * Lots of people in the world * Researchers thought we could engineer into rice a gene for vitamin * Publically funded * Ingo Potrykus - Swiss researcher, "His brain child" * Peter Beyer - German researcher * Interesting/complex because it requires several genes working in sequence in a pathway. * They were successful * Intended for developing world, intended as good * Opposed by Greenpeace and others, more or less from the start * Worry that it's a thin edge of a wedge of big agricultural and big pharma getting into countries and such * Another issue: This uses patented technologies. Patent holders allowed researchers to develop, but once it was to be commercialized, they wanted their money. * Amazingly, Monsanto donated its patent rights * Started to work with Syngenta (I think), who agreed to give freely (at cost?) to developing world with the understanding * Syngenta improved it by about a factor of 20. One bowl makes 60% of the daily RDA of vitamin A. * Controversy still continues. * The Pope blessed a backet of golden rice. (Is this a big deal? Who knows.) * Phillipine government is ready to begin testing. * Also issue of adapting to different varieties of rice, since their are different varieties of rice that do best in different locations. * Question: Do people address the cultural issues of the meaning of the color of rice? Dr. Robertson is not sure. Plants as Protein Factories * Sometimes called *Pharming* * Why? Normally because we're producing the proteins for pharmaceuticals * Finding ways to make it cheaper to make these proteins * Traditionally produced with bacteria; ends up being very expensive * Keeping the bacteria "sterile" is important (you don't want contamination) * Using animal cells is also an approach; even more expensive than bacteria * Monstanto (as you might expect) came up with a way to use corn to make copies of proteins * You give them your gene * They put it into corn * (Not clear who grows the corn) * "Goodness knows, we know how to grow corn easily/cheaply." * New company "Integrated Protein Technology" or IPT. * But it seems to fold. * Corn is not the only plant you can do this with. Tobacco is also used. * Medicago acted like it was close to making the commercial market. * Robertson has not heard of any product from anyone making it to market. * "Plantibodies" Transgenic Animals * Process is similar to what you do with plants. * Example: Chinese/American hogs * Chinese hogs have bigger litters * American hogs have more meat * Still use direct injection, in the zygotes. Grow slightly, then implant into mother. * Low percentage yield, but often the only approach * Alternative: Use modified viruses (retroviruses), which transmit part of their genome into the host genome. * Infect few-cell embryos (e.g., 8-cell embryos) * Idea: Genetically engineer animals so that compounds of interest come from milk. (Goats, Cattle, Sheep, even pigs (in the picture)) * Has been done for some time. See ad for Pharm. Proteins Limited (the folks who cloned Dolly) * PPL went bankrupt * No evidence that they made it to the commercial market Xeno-transplantation * The use of organs from a non-human source for human transplant * Makes up for the huge deficiency in needed organs * There are some kinds of swine whose organs are about the same size as human organs. * Issue: The organ would be recognized as "non self" and then attacted. * Goal: Change the markers on the cells. * PPL were among the people trying to do all of this * Gene-knockout pigs * Once they created the gene-knockout pigs, they were able to clone them. * Note: Getting rid of the main marker is not enough, but it's a big start. * They've started testing (e.g., transplanting from pigs to baboons) * Organs currently last for a few months Cloning Dolly (and others * Has been an interesting field to watch * Dr. Robertson assumed that we'd never be able to clone mammals * Given that we turn off genetic information during cell specialization, most scientists were surprised that the info could be turned on. * Plants can be cloned easily form single cells. * Background: Tutorial on embryos * Zygote contains all of the genes to make the creature * As cell division occurs, the first cells all contains the same genetic code. Each cell is identical to the zygote, until we're up to sixteen cells. * After that stage, each cell strats differntiating. * Up until that stage, you can separate the cells and treat each one as a zygote. * So you can save and freeze and reuse cells. * "Embryo twinning" * Easiest way to clone: Split the embryo when there are few enough cells. * Slip into the eggs * Back to Iowa: There is a company in Sioux County Iowa, Trans Ova, that is the premier company in this stuff * They do a lot of different things * E.g., they can "sex" sperm with 99% accuracy * It doesn't seem like they use embryo twinning * Cloned bull won Iowa State Fair * Some controversy The hard way to make an embryo: Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer (SCNT) * You need the embryo in order to do embryo twinning * What if you have an adult, instead? * You need to turn a cell into an embryo * Dolly: Born in 1996, not announced until 1997. * During lifetime, produced 4-6 offspring * Strategy: * Mammary cell donor (the animal we are cloning): Grabbed mamary cell * Took egg cell from ovary. Removed nucleus * Fuse cells. Let it grow. It's like a zygote. * Grow in culture. * Grow for a bit into an early embryo * Implant into uterus of a third sheep (the surrogate mother) * Was the first to work out of 256 attempts * In 2002, develped a sheep. Rare at that age. Questions of whether that's a relate of cloning. * In 2003, euthanized after getting a lung tumor. (Not unusual.) * But we've seen some interesting issues with the offspring of cloned animals since then. * Researchers in texas cloned a cat (2001) * "Genetic Savings and Clone" - $50K to clone your cat. * Dropped to $25K * Now out of business * It appears that cloning cats is much easier than cloning dogs. * South Korean lab claimed to clone human embryos * That was proven to be false * But the cloning of dogs in that lab was successful. It costs $150K to $240K. * Lots of laws intended to prevent cloning of human * The whole stem cell area is part of an attempt to help with therapy * Embryonic stem cells are best Problems and Issues * Contamination of other crops. * Contamination story one * Percy Schmeiser was a farmer who was not using Roundup-ready canola * He discovered that his canola had acquired that gene. * He knew that it was illegal to cell it, but he did save the seed (which he had always done) * Monsanto sued. They won. He did not have the permission to replant the seed from his own plants. * The StarLink case * Someone was testing things on shelves * Found Bt corn in taco shells and corn chips, Bt corn that had not been approved for human consumption. (It had been approved for cattle feed.) * Issue: Accidentally got mixed into corn for human consumption. * "They lost buckets of money trying to recover the corn" * A known danger: Nut genes getting into things * Many countries have concerns about growing GE crops and then selling those in the EU, which has a long-standing embargo against GE crops.