Why is biotechnology sometimes called an issue

To make animal products even safer in the future, biotech researchers are developing products to prevent animals from harboring the E.

Biotech researchers and companies are also developing DNA-based animal identification systems to quickly track future outbreaks of bovine spongiform encephalopathy BSE, or mad cow disease and quickly remove affected meat from grocery stores. After more than two decades of success in health care and food production, scientists are now looking for ways to use biotechnology to make manufacturing of common products - like plastic and fuel - cleaner, more efficient and more sustainable through the use of renewable resources.

How many plastic products can you see right now? That may be changing forever, very soon. New plastics are coming into your home made with corn and other plants, not petroleum, via a biotechnology process.

Think of the impact on the environment: the plants themselves will be taking carbon dioxide out of the air as they grow, while delivering products that do not add carbon dioxide to the atmosphere in their use or disposal. The result is cleaner air, cleaner water and a cleaner planet for your children.

New fuels like biodiesel and ethanol are coming on the market. Biodiesel is made by extracting oils from soybeans and other crops. New bio-degradable greases and lubricants for the family car also are being made from agricultural oils. Ethanol can be made from corn or, using new biotech processes, it can be made from agricultural residues such as wheat straw, cornhusks, rice straw or even grass clippings. Biotechnology is also being applied in more direct ways to environmental cleanup.

A process called bioremediation uses microorganisms to reduce, eliminate, or contain contaminants. How does all this affect your everyday life? Such common products as vitamins, paper and faded blue jeans can now be manufactured with less energy and pollution. These enzymes have replaced the phosphates that used to be a serious pollutant for the nation's rivers and streams. Crops improved through biotechnology not only improve farming efficiency, but also provide a softer environmental footprint than traditional agricultural practices.

Growing biotech crops also reduces soil erosion by up to 90 percent compared to conventional cultivation, saving valuable topsoil, improving soil fertility, and dramatically reducing sedimentation in lakes, ponds, and waterways. In developing countries with growing populations, the greatest threat to wildlife habitat and biodiversity is the need to convert these fragile environments to farmland to feed people.

By increasing yields on cropland already dedicated to farming, more of these remaining spaces can be preserved. In , the year anniversary of commercialized biotech crops, the one-billionth biotech acre was planted. Farmers in 17 countries are growing more than million acres of crops improved through biotechnology. Soybeans, corn, cotton and canola have been enhanced to resist insects and herbicides, allowing farmers to increase productivity.

Feeding the world's growing population is a challenge as the best farmland is already in production. Scientists are developing new crops that are salt and drought tolerant to produce higher yields in marginal cropland. The centerpiece of the draft protocol is an advance informed agreement AIA procedure to be followed prior to the transboundary transfer of GMOs called living modified organisms or "LMOs" in the protocol.

LMOs that will come into contact with the environment of an importing country are to be covered under the AIA, to assess them for any potential adverse impacts on biodiversity. There is debate, however, as to which LMOs should be regulated by the protocol and for what purpose. A key point of disagreement centers around whether LMOs, which are intended for food, feed, or processing rather than for use as seed in the importing country, should be covered under the AIA procedure.

These LMOs, called "commodities," would include GM crops such as soya or corn, which form a growing component of the international agricultural commodity trade in these crops. A group of major agricultural exporting countries the Cairns group argues that agricultural commodities should be excluded from the AIA procedure, because such LMOs are not intended for release into the environment and therefore cannot pose a threat to biological diversity.

This is consistent with current trade in commodities, under existing international agreements, where seed contaminated with plant diseases can be marketed internationally for consumption but not for planting. The Cairns group also contend that providing detailed information on LMOs in bulk agricultural commodity shipments is not feasible, given the commingling of genetically modified and conventional seed, as well as the lack of a direct business link between seed growers and exporters.

Other countries are calling for all first time transfers of LMOs, including commodities, to be covered by AIA, as the only way to monitor entry of such LMOs into a country. Some also believe that the protocol should allow for consideration of any human health impacts of LMOs as well as their environmental impact.

These countries also point out that "intended use" of LMOs for processing rather than planting into the environment cannot always be guaranteed once these commodities are within a country's borders.

Another key dispute within the biosafety protocol negotiations is how decisions under AIA can be based on science and precaution. Those calling for sound science to be the basis for decision making note that reliance on an excessively precautionary approach could result in discriminatory or unjustifiable barriers to international trade in LMOs.

Those favoring additional precautionary approaches note that unambiguous scientific evidence of harm relating to LMOs may not be forthcoming in the short term.

The latter argue, therefore, for the need for precaution in the face of scientific uncertainty to ensure the safety of genetically modified products for human health and the environment. The final major issue is how a country's obligations under the CBD and any agreed biosafety protocol should relate to a country's rights and obligations under World Trade Organization WTO agreements.

The next round of negotiations for the Biosafety Protocol are to be held in Montreal in January The health effects of foods grown from genetically modified crop varieties sometimes called GM foods depends on the specific content of the food itself and may have either potentially beneficial or occasional harmful effects on human health.

For example, a GM food with a higher content of digestible iron is likely to have a positive health effect if consumed by iron-deficient individuals. Alternatively, transfer of genes from one species to another may also transfer allergic risk and these risks need to be evaluated and identified prior to commercialization. Individuals allergic to certain nuts, for example, need to know if genes conveying this trait are transferred to other foods such as soybeans and would labeling be required if such crops were to be commercialized.

There is also some concern as to the potential health risks from the use of antibiotic resistance markers in GM foods, although there is no evidence of this.

Labeling also may be needed in some countries to identify other novel content resulting from genetic modification for cultural and religious reasons or simply because the consumers want to know what is the content of the food and how it was produced to make an informed choice, independent of any health risks. Among the potential ecological risks identified are increased weediness, due to cross pollination whereby pollen from GM crops spreads to non-GM crops in nearby fields.

This may allow the spread of traits such as herbicide-resistance from genetically modified plants to nontarget plants, with the latter potentially developing into weeds. This ecological risk may be assessed when deciding if a GMO with a given trait should be released into a particular environment, and if so, under what conditions. Where such releases have been approved, the monitoring of the behavior of GMOs after their release is a rich field for future research in crop ecology.

Other potential ecological risks stem from the widespread use of genetically modified corn and cotton with insecticidal genes from Bacillus thuringiensis the Bt genes.

This may lead to the development of resistance to Bt in insect populations exposed to the GM crops. An attempt to manage this risk is being done in the early plantings of GM crops by planting "refuge" sections of Bt-cotton fields with insect susceptible varieties to reduce the opportunity of the insect population to evolve towards resistance to the plants having the Bt gene for resistance Gould, There also may be a risk to nontarget species, such as birds and butterflies, from the plants with Bt genes.

The monitoring of these effects of new transgenic crops in the environment and the devising of effective risk management approaches is an essential component of further research in risk management.

Technology-transcending risks include the social and ethical concerns that modern biotechnology may increase the prosperity gap between the rich and the poor, both internationally and within individual societies, and that it may contribute to a loss of biodiversity.

There also are ethical concerns as to the moral dimensions of patenting living organisms and the cross-species movement of genes. These risks relate to the use of the technology, not the technology itself. The management of these risks requires policies and practices that give consumers choices while also promoting environmentally sustainable development through the judicious use of new developments in science and technology.

The reduction of biodiversity is a technology-transcending risk. The reduction of biological diversity due to the destruction of tropical forests, conversion of more land to agriculture, overfishing, and the other practices to feed a growing world population is more significant than any potential loss of biodiversity due to the adoption of genetically modified crop varieties.

This is not an issue restricted to transgenic crops. Farmers have adopted new commercially developed varieties in the past and will continue to do so when they perceive this to be to their advantage.

On occasion, introduced varieties may enhance biological diversity, as for example for wheat in Turkey and corn in Mexico where new landraces are evolving by genetic introgression of genes from improved varieties into traditional landraces. To slow the continuing loss of biodiversity, the main tasks are the preservation of tropical forests, mangroves and other wetlands, rivers, lakes, and coral reefs.

The fact that farmers replace traditional varieties with superior varieties does not necessarily result in a loss of biodiversity. Varieties that are under pressure of substitution also can be conserved through in vivo and in vitro strategies. Improved governance and international support are necessary to limit loss of biodiversity.

Actually or potentially useful biological resources should not be lost simply because we do not know or appreciate them at present Leisinger, This was one of the largest community-based studies for children. For 12 weeks, the probiotic was given, and for another 12 weeks the children were followed. For this study, they conducted fecal microbiota analysis, in collaboration with researchers at the University of Osaka, Japan, using a sensitive culture independent reverse transcription RNA-targeted quantitative PCR.

At 5 points during the study, stool samples from the study group and the control group were collected and analyzed: at the start of the study, then 6, 12, 18, and 24 weeks after the beginning of the study. At every collection period, healthy children were found to be excreting Vibrio cholera, V. The enterobacteria as a group was much less represented. What surprised Nair and his group was that these were healthy children excreting toxigenic Vibrio cholera. The collated data showed that The bacterial counts were low, so if they had followed the culture results, they probably would not have identified these pathogens.

In How do the children manage? They also examined the detection of other pathogens in the feces collected from the 70 carriers of Vibrio cholera and they found that many of them shed Campylobacter jejuni and E. The fourth key message was that the intestines of apparently healthy children carry enteric pathogens for extended periods of time at low levels in disease endemic settings reflecting the effects of constant exposure to fecal bacteria and enteric pathogens.

The next study in this sequence examined the gut microbiome of Indian children of varying nutritional status. This study was conducted at Birbhum, which is in West Bengal. They did not have large numbers of children in the study; approximately 20 children were selected with the exclusion criteria normally used in such studies.

This study was from a larger study known as the Birbhum Population Project, which is a health and demographic surveillance system. To assess the health of children in the study, Nair used the three z-scores recommended by WHO to assess child growth.

They made a cumulative z-score that was a cumulative nutrition index in which the 20 gut metagenomes were divided into three groups: apparently healthy, borderline malnourished, and severely malnourished. The microbial membership in these 20 samples was the main phyla and were not unusual. They were the ones generally found in these kinds of studies. The microbe was Prevotella, which is not unusual for this region.

It is the kind of genera that one finds in people consuming dietary fibers, dietary peptidoglycans, and other polysaccharides. A consortium of pathogens—Escherichia, Shigella, and others—was found and the abundance of pathogens increased with decreasing nutritional status. This meant that as the nutritional status declined, these genera were dominant. In other words, Nair believes that the presence of common, beneficial bacteria, showed a direct relationship to nutritional status, where the beneficial bacteria decreased with decreasing nutritional status.

These undernourished children enter the whole infection cycle. Beneficial bacterial were found more frequently in the apparently healthy group, which correlates with positive nutritional status of the child in these settings. For another part of the study, they analyzed the genera co-occurrence networks obtained for the gut microbiomes among apparently healthy,.

An interesting set of sequences showed that despite having contrasting trends in abundance, some of them showed strong positive associations amongst each other. However, as the nutrition level declines, there seems to be a network formed by the pathogens, which becomes more tightly bound when it appears in the severely malnourished state, which means that there was a consortium of pathogens in the malnourished child or in the undernourished child.

They found positively correlated clusters of orthologous genes COGS , and negatively correlated COGS, with the positively correlated tending to reflect function in terms of digestion and similar functions whereas the negatively related COGS were related to the infection process or the virulence.

In summary, pathogenic microbial groups seem to abound when the nutritional status declines or when there is an impaired nutritional status. There is also a depletion of several commensal genera. There is a higher number of virulence genes in children with a lower nutritional index.

Nair noted some of the research questions that have arisen from the studies that they conducted. When is the balance between pathogen and commensal intestinal microbiota disrupted? How does the host deal with the presence of pathogens? Immunologically, how are multiple pathogens perceived in polymicrobial infections? What is the nature of the immune response to pathogens in the healthy child? In addition, Nair noted, the environment did contribute to the presence of pathogens and a lack of nutrition contributed to the proliferation of pathogens.

The extent to which this relates to epidemiology, transmission, and to a whole set of other variables is an interesting facet of research that they are increasingly trying to address. A participant asked if the cases with multiple infections were using shared toilets or perhaps open toilets.

Is it possible to provide them with private toilets? Nair replied that this is difficult in a setting where there are many people in a very small space.

The transmission of fecal pathogens is intense. Among healthy children, anything that goes into. Nair then suggested that the presence of these pathogens in low numbers may be protective in an endemic setting, although this was not part of the research conducted.

A participant asked if it is possible that Nair and his colleagues were just measuring pass-through rather than something that is actually colonized in the gut. Nair replied that they conducted frequency studies and there were some children which excreted steadily for a couple of weeks. The questions that they keep asking are: How do they colonize? Why do they prevail there?

For how long? Is their presence protective? Nair acknowledged that he and his colleagues do not have answers for all of these questions, but he wanted to share these results with the experts at the workshop. However, the participant realized that this is very difficult to achieve because the participant has seen the telltale bacteria in the stool of humans who do not have diarrhea and yet that bacteria causes cholera. Even Koch saw that there was asymptomatic carriage in people with the cholera organism.

It is an interesting and very difficult problem, almost a teleological problem. What does constitute true colonization and what are transients? Rao introduced his presentation by stating that containing or mitigating problems related to infectious diseases requires early diagnosis, and he provided examples of collateral damage that occurred due to delayed diagnoses, and how it can be prevented.

He also provided examples of innovative steps that are being taken in resource poor situations to improve diagnostics. In India, the disease is especially correlated with agricultural activity particularly the harvesting of crops. The eye heals in almost 40 percent of the cases, but the cornea is scarred and vision is compromised. This fungal parasite sits on the cornea and produces enzymes for its nutritional purposes, which, in turn, degrade the cornea. An antifungal drug eliminates the infection when it is treated, but in the meantime the fungus could have consumed the cornea, leaving a scar and compromised vision.

In approximately 60 percent of cases, the antifungal medications did not work, requiring keratoplasties to remove the cornea as the only treatment option, possibly leaving the patient blind. Thus, there is a critical need to develop novel therapeutic approaches for treating fungal keratitis. Rao and his colleagues examined fungal keratitis under several conditions as organisms in culture, and found them to be very clever organisms. If they are grown on casein, they will produce casein enzymes.

If they are grown on coleitem, they produce colidenen enzymes. In other words, the organism produces different enzymes to adapt to different substrates.

Their study identified all fungal and host responses that are associated with corneal damage. They then produced a rabbit model and developed a combination of particular enzymes and antifungals that were able to completely cure the disease. They have a combination of protolytic inhibitors that prevent the damage and also remove the fungi. The problem is that, as with any other eye drug, when a person blinks, the drug is removed. This requires continual reapplication, which is difficult.

They then considered developing a nanotechnology-based approach for this problem. The important parameter is an increase in time that the antifungal would remain on the eye because the fungi have some mucosal properties. They stick on the cornea. To counter those properties, the residential period of the drug is increased.

The drug contains alternative substrates for host and fungal enzymes so that the cornea is protected from degradation by fungal enzymes. Inflammation also needs to be controlled, so this component is added to the drug particle.

This is the concept with which they designed something similar to a smart nanoparticle. The nanoparticle is a polymer that is biocompatible and biodegradable. When the fungi produce enzymes, they can consume this nanoparticle instead of the cornea. The particle is decorated with peptides so that it can be utilized for this purpose.

Integrin starts coming out. If application occurs later, integrin-binding peptides, anti-inflammatory peptides, and antimycotic material are available. This process can continue on the eye for more than 24 hours, which means one drop or one dosage per day should be sufficient. At this point in the production process, having excised and characterized particular nanoparticles, they prepared the peptides and attached them to the nanoparticles.

The drug has been tested in vitro. The corneal binding and anti-inflammatory effects of the nanoparticle have been tested on human lenses.

Rao then turned to molecular diagnostics. His group started a project several years ago on a novel molecular diagnostic for eye diseases. The object of the project is to develop a rapid, simple, and inexpensive diagnostic method to detect mutations of eye diseases and a signature sequence of pathogenic organisms.

They asked eye hospitals in India to identify the types of organisms existing in their patients. They have 54 primers and 27 probes in one piece and the diagnostic was developed. When they developed the diagnostic, they were unaware that it is not easy to make a multiplex piece with the 54 primers. This is very complicated but they started anyway. They attempted to address all of the possible issues, although when they made the final, commercial product, it was made into several elements.

The probe selection was the key step in the molecular based technologies. Rao said that they were at the clinical trial stage and it should be available in a year or two.

Now they are addressing the question of whether they can use microfluidics or paper microfluidics, which would make them affordable.

This is where they can develop novel diagnostic approaches. Many of the workshop. Paper microfluid devices will be ideal for this purpose because they are very cheap, and the cost of medical diagnosis can be reduced significantly for the developing world. Disposal is also easy; they can be thrown away or burned. During this diagnostic process, biological fluids spread through the paper devices—through the fibers and the micropulse available in the paper—without the need for electricity, an external pump, or any other devices.

However, because the fluids spread, a device was needed to place the reagents at different locations so that they diffuse only in specified directions, not everywhere. They dissolve the wax in particular solvents and make a solution that can be put in a pill, and with a blotter the structures can be drawn onto the paper diagnostic chip. Pawan Dhar spoke about synthetic biology in a very broad sense, providing a foundation on current issues for workshop participants, and then moved to more practical aspects.

Biological systems have traditionally been studied by reducing the complexity of systems to individual components and by down-regulating the expression of the genes. In other words, by creating junk out of what was a gene or throwing the gene out gene knockout , we have learned biology.

Our food crops today are in fact very different from the original wild plants from which they were derived. About 10, years BC, people harvested their food from the natural biological diversity that surrounded them, and eventually domesticated crops and animals.

During the process of domestication, people began to select better plant materials for propagation and animals for breeding, initially unwittingly, but ultimately with the intention of developing improved food crops and livestock. Over thousands of years farmers selected for desirable traits in crops, and thus improved the plants for agricultural purposes. Desirable traits included crop varieties also known as cultivars , from " culti vated var ieties" with shortened growing seasons, increased resistance to diseases and pests, larger seeds and fruits, nutritional content, shelf life, and better adaptation to diverse ecological conditions under which crops were grown.

Over the centuries, agricultural technology developed a broad spectrum of options for food, feed, and fiber production. In many ways, technology reduces the amount of time we dedicate to basic activities like food production, and makes our lives easier and more enjoyable. Everyone is familiar with how transportation has changed over time to be more efficient and safer Figure 1.

Agriculture has also undergone tremendous changes, many of which have made food and fiber production more efficient and safer Figure 1. There are negative aspects to having so few members of society involved in agriculture, but this serves to illustrate how technological developments have reduced the need for basic farm labor. Figure 1: A timeline showing how human transportation systems have evolved. A timeline showing how human transportation systems have evolved, from primitive, slow, and inefficient vehicles, to modern, faster, and more efficient options.

Corresponding advances in agricultural biotechnology are shown below, similarly illustrating how advances changed our ability to develop new agricultural crops.

Wieczorek and Mark G. All rights reserved. Mutations Figure 2 are changes in the genetic makeup of a plant. Mutations occur naturally and sometimes result in the development of new beneficial traits. In , plant breeders learned that they could make mutations happen faster with a process called mutagenesis.

Radiation or chemicals are used to change the plant's DNA, the basic molecular system of all organisms' genetic material. The goal is to cause changes in the sequence of the base pairs of DNA, which provide biochemical instructions for the development of plants.

Resultant plants may possess new and desirable characteristics through this modification of their genetic material. During this process, plant breeders must grow and evaluate each plant from each seed produced. Figure 2: The effects of genetic mutations in carrots. Induced mutation breeding was widely used in the United States during the 's, but today few varieties are produced using this technique. As our understanding of genetics developed, so new technologies for plant variety development arose.

Examples of these that are used today include genetic marker assisted breeding, where molecular markers associated with specific traits could be used to direct breeding programs, and genetic engineering. Some of the significant steps leading to the current state of the art are explained below.

Many different tools are available for increasing and improving agricultural production. These tools include methods to develop new varieties such as classical breeding and biotechnology. Traditional agricultural approaches are experiencing some resurgence today, with renewed interest in organic agriculture; an approach that does not embrace the use of genetically engineered crops. The role that genetic engineering stands to play in sustainable agricultural development is an interesting topic for the future.

American Association for the Advancement of Science. Annual meeting Land Grant Universities Can GM crops harm the environment? McLintock, B. The origin and behavior of mutable loci in maize. Pray, L. Nature Education Knowledge 1 ,