by: Jessica Holmes (@realtruthcactus)
As the year turns towards spring again, home gardeners begin pulling out the dead roots, tilling their soil, and preparing for a new year of growth. In this planning stage, many growers, especially those new to the field of backyard farming, are seeking out the best seeds to plant in preparation for a season of harvest.
Perhaps the most shocking new seed on the market is that of a very curious tomato. Vibrant purple in color, this cherry-sized tomato is not your ordinary heirloom. Norfolk plant scientists have been working to curate this deep purple fruit by splicing the genetics from snapdragon flowers (Antirrhinum majus) in with the Micro-Tom tomato (Solanum lycopersicum) (Butelli, 2008). The goal in creating this unique breed of tomato was to infuse tomatoes with substances known as anthocyanins, a type of pigment in the skin and flesh of certain fruits that is thought to offer protection against certain cancers, cardiovascular disease, and age-related degenerative diseases. By using laboratory mice with a strong tendency to develop cancer, the researchers found that consuming these purple tomatoes extended the lives of the mice by 30%. After 16 years of development and testing, seeds for the purple tomato have now been made available to home-growers as of February 2024. This is the first GMO seed that has been placed on the market for commercial and local use. While GMOs have been a divisive topic in the agricultural space for decades, the turning over of the reins to the daily consumers has made this inquiry more pressing now than ever before.
What is a GMO?
GMOs, or genetically modified organisms, have been around for thousands of years. Since the earliest days of agriculture, farmers have utilized cross-pollination techniques to selectively breed desirable traits in plants (also known as cultivars) and phase out undesirable traits. For example, a farmer might notice that a certain strain of wheat is particularly resilient to disease and then use the pollen from this breed of wheat to produce the next generation of seeds for the next growing season. If, however, the farmer notices that a strain is brittle and very susceptible to disease, he may strip the plant from his fields and destroy any trace of the seed or pollen to prevent the wind or any other pollinators from accidentally propagating this ill-suited species. In the 1800s, German-Czech biologist and Augustinian friar Gregor Mendel, also known as the father of modern genetics, demonstrated how useful this technique of selective breeding could be by experimenting with pea plants. His experiments were groundbreaking in the field of genetics in that they revealed the presence of dominant and recessive traits buried within the genetic code of a plant before DNA was discovered.
As you can see, this method of breeding is a type of modification on the genetic level in that farmers are choosing which traits they would like to see passed on in their fields and blotting out those traits that could be disastrous to the life and sustainability of continued growth in the land. This type of genetic modification, however, is not the concern of those who worry about GMOs. Whereas selective breeding still relies on nature to do the work, true GMOs are often made in a petri dish, with scientists cutting, slicing, splicing, and dicing their way to the perfect organism.
GMO: Frankenstein’s Monster
“The world was to me a secret which I desired to divine.” – Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
So were the words of Victor Frankenstein as he pursued scientific perfection in his creation. But, spoiler alert, his creations were far from perfect, and in fact were more born from a mind of mad wickedness than a true desire to understand. The comparison has been made between Frankenstein’s experiments and the scientifically cultivated GMO.
While Frankenstein may have been motivated by his own vain pride and quest for perfection, modern scientists appear to be motivated by more noble thoughts. Since it may take decades, perhaps even centuries, to selectively breed an organism with the desirable traits, it seems more straightforward to go into the lab with a pair of CRISPR scissors, so to speak, and cut and paste your way to the perfect plant, one that is resistant to all disease, hardier, has a longer shelf life, and could perhaps even impart health benefits to the consumer.
The GMO process hinges on sections of DNA known as CRISPR or Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats. CRISPRs were discovered in sections of Escherichia coli bacteria DNA by Ishino et al. at Osaka University in 1987. It was only much later, in 1995, that the importance of these sections of DNA was uncovered. Amazingly, these sequences were derived from DNA fragments of bacteriophages that had previously infected the prokaryote. They are used to detect and destroy DNA from similar bacteriophages during subsequent infections. The organism then takes a part of the DNA from an invader and incorporates it into its own DNA so the antiviral cells can recognize the danger and attack it directly. In this way, CRISPR could be described as the armor left behind by a fallen enemy, which was then picked up and brought back to base so resident forces could better recognize who they were in combat against.
Inspired by this amazing genetic power, Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna sought a method for utilizing their strategy as not only a method for immunity but for editing genetics entirely. What if, instead of picking up a combatant’s armor alone, you could change your eye color to match theirs, or your hair color, or your strength? This was the promise of CRISPR-Cas9. Cas-9 is an enzyme, a biological catalyst that can speed up biochemical reactions. This enzyme is able to recognize CRISPR sequences and, therefore, acts as a guide to locate a particular piece of genetics and open up those specific strands of DNA. It can insert the new information neatly and then copy it onto small strands of RNA to share the information throughout the organism. While this description may be a slight oversimplification of a more complex biochemical process, suffice it to say that CRISPR-Cas9 is an incredible genetic tool that can alter a sequence of As, Ts, Gs, and Cs (adenines, thymines, guanines, and cytosines) in an organism’s genetic code and allow for the presentation of different, and ultimately desirable, traits.
The Goldblum Problem
“Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.” – Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum), Jurassic Park.
Since the epic release of Jurassic Park, which depicts the disastrous results of scientists meddling in the realm of genetics and mutations, this quote has hung around the neck of the scientific community like an albatross. And yet, many seem to forget the lessons of the Goldbloom Problem, featuring a scientist who seeks the means for glory at the expense of a possible horrific end. This is particularly true in the realm of genetics. In pursuit of this incredible power, what are the consequences waiting on the other side?
The first problem to consider is the question of the DNA itself. Sadly, much of DNA has been written off as ‘junk’ DNA, useless and irrelevant to everyday life. Yet, as recently as 2021, Berkeley geneticists discovered that previously labeled ‘junk DNA’ was invaluable in mammalian development. So often in science, mankind discards something that is poorly understood as ‘junk’ or ‘irrelevant.’ Because we cannot see the immediate benefit of a trait or the presence of a set of DNA, then, like a high schooler who can’t understand the value of his math class, we assume it must be irrelevant, an embarrassing leftover of the evolutionary process. And yet, it is this short-sightedness that caused scientists to overlook the fact that these pieces of DNA are invaluable to growth and development. Where else could this be true, particularly in the genetics of the seeds we tend so carefully? Such scientists are genetic thieves, throwing out the precious family treasures perceived as valueless in search of a greater gain.
If, however, our scientist is not so quick to toss the baby out with the bathwater, consider also that often these scientists are working with legos rather than solid wood. Researchers admitted that genetically modified DNA in organisms like rice can experience degradation during food processing. While baking leads to minor degradations, frying leads to the worst degradations within the rice samples. Considering how many different processed foods contain rice as a base, using GMO rice that degrades during processing could remove all of the nutritional value from the rice at best or turn the rice into a human toxin at worst.
However, the large-scale food industry isn’t the only entity that should be considering the greater ramifications of GMOs. Backyard gardeners do not have the carefully controlled environment of large-scale agriculture. They rely on local pollinators to come in and assist their plants in propagation. This means neighboring plants often cross-pollinate, GMO plants with non-GMOs, and seeds collected from these plants might have traits unknown to the growers themselves. What if the consumption of these new crossbreeds sets off an allergic reaction in the family’s toddler? Or starts producing a seed that releases a substance to drive away predatory consumers but is also toxic to humans?
The FDA has admitted that it has no plans to regulate GMOs, simply assuring us that they are safe. In a world in which large-scale agriculture has taken on the flavor of Big Business, can we really have faith in such claims? What if these new GMO crossbreeds become aggressively resistant and turn into an invasive species that chokes out the life of native species? While this proposition may seem like a terrifying fiction (as depicted in Blake Crouch’s scientific thriller Upgrade), such fantasies often contain a kernel of reality. GMOs are unknown, and placing them into the unregulated hands of the everyday consumer means releasing their pollen into the wild to create a host of multivariate cultivars. Who knows where the results will lead?
Ye Shall Be As Gods
“Acquired new and almost unlimited powers; they can command the thunders of heaven, mimic the earthquake, and even mock the invisible world with its own shadows[CH2] .”
Here lies the implicit fear – if mankind has such incredible power over genetic code, who can stop him from changing everything?
Pilot tests of golden rice – a rice variant high in beta carotene (pro-vitamin A) – have started in the Philippines with the hope of introducing more vitamins into a hungry populace. While the end is noble, do the scientists producing these GMOs understand the full ramifications of including a vitamin in the genetic code that is not natural to the plant itself? If golden rice replaces the biodiversity of natural rice in the region, a single disease could wipe out the golden rice and leave the populace starving and worse than before. When man consumes an organism, we are consuming it for fuel, processing and adding its genetic code to our own. Ultimately, how could the presence of golden rice affect the genetic makeup of the people of the Philippines?
This power is not being utilized just in plants. In an effort to combat Zika, yellow fever, and dengue, GMO mosquitos were released in the Florida Keys in 2022. These mosquitoes, created by biotech firm Oxitec, were non-biting Aedes aegypti males engineered to only produce viable male offspring, per the company. In a few short years, the native species of mosquitoes could become endangered or disappear entirely exclusively because of the intervention of man.
While the possibility of influencing nature is worrisome, the story gets worse. In 2018, Chinese Scientist He Jiankui experimented and created the first human GMO twin girls. He was later imprisoned for three years for unethical scientific practices. While reports suggest these girls are currently doing well, this is a pandora’s box that many should fear the opening of. How long until parents walk into a clinic and ask geneticists to tailor for them the perfect embryo, one with ideal eye color, gender, projected height, and disease-hardiness? How long until scientists begin cloning human beings, taking this god-like power into their hands to unleash such devastating evil?
Mankind is working with a philosopher’s stone he little understands. What starts with creating purple tomatoes evolves into human engineering and eugenics. Perhaps it is time to take a step back and consider the Goldblum problem once again. Just because mankind can, does that really mean he should?
References
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