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Worms supply information about the meaning of DNA sequence
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News & Comment
Mouse cDNA library A collaboration between the Riken Genome Exploration Research Group Phase II team and the FANTOM Consortium has produced a collection of full-length complementary DNAs, their sequences and their physical mapping to the mouse genome (Nature, 8 February). The authors report on a cDNA set of 21 076 mouse clones (some of which are derived from the same transcripts). The work forms the basis for the production of microarrays and ways to identify new genes in this very useful animal model. D.M.
Transgenic plants are not effective colonisers in natural environments The use of genetically modified crops has generated considerable concern in many countries, in particular, the possibility that such crops can persist in the wild and disperse from their cultivated habitat. A recent article by M.J. Crawley et al. in Nature (8 February) indicates that, at least for the crops in this study, their ability to invade and persist was no better than their conventional counterparts.
TRENDS in Biotechnology Vol.19 No.4 April 2001
Four different crops were studied over a ten-year period, in 12 different habitats. The crops contained transgenes expressing tolerance for the herbicides glyphosphate (‘Roundup’) and glufosinate, and the insecticidal Bt toxin and pea lectin. D.M.
Biacore, La Jolla sense new drugs Swedish firm Biacore International Ltd has announced the first use of its surface plasmon resonance (SPR) sensor technology in the clinical development of a new drug, reports Chemweb.com. The technique has been used by US-based La Jolla Pharmaceutical Company to screen blood samples from sufferers of the autoimmune disease lupus, to assess their likely reponse to a new drug treatment. The drug developed by La Jolla is designed to halt production of antibodies for double-stranded DNA, which is believed to be responsible for kidney disease, which can often be fatal in lupus patients. In a series of clinical trials, patients with high levels of antibodies to the drug were identified through pharmacoproteomic screening using SPR. When treated with the drug, these patients had only a third as
many cases of renal complications as a control group. M.J.D.
Worms supply information about the meaning of DNA sequence If you’ve got a sequence from the human genome, the next question is ‘What does the sequence mean?’. One means by which to answer the question is to inactivate specific genes in model organisms such as the nematode worm Caenorhabditis elegans. Ikuma Maeda et al. (Current Biology, February) report the large-scale inactivation of the expressed genes in C. elegans. They have processed ~2500 genes to date. In development, 27% of inactived genes produced detectable phenotypes, such as embryonic lethality, post-embryonic lethality, sterility and morphological abnormality. D.M.
David McKay ([email protected]) and Martin J. Davies ([email protected])
Letter
The biotechnology industry’s Frankensteinian creation The past two decades have been the best and the worst of times for biotechnology applied to agriculture and food production – stunning scientifically, dismal politically. Especially in Europe there is widespread public and political opposition to importing gene-spliced, or ‘genetically modified’ (GM), seeds; vandalization of field trials; suspension of regulatory approvals; labeling required to identify GM foods and even their banishment by major supermarket chains. The cause of much of this adversity is ill-conceived public policy – in particular overregulation that singles out and discriminates against a superior new technology. Ironically, the big agribusiness companies, especially
Monsanto, have no one to blame but themselves. By insisting for years that their own gene-spliced crop plants and the foods derived from them merited extraordinary government oversight, agricultural biotechnology companies elicited regulation that lessened competition and slowed the flow of products through the development pipeline. (This strategy also played into activists’ scare scenarios, discouraging public acceptance of the new products.) The companies appear not to have learned the ‘Rule of Holes’, that is when you’re in a hole, stop digging. In a major policy speech on 27 November 2000, Hendrik A. Verfaillie, Monsanto’s new CEO, neglected to mention overregulation, let alone any (belated) commitment to seeking public policy towards biotechnology that makes scientific and common sense. Instead, he snivelled and crawled to the very radicals whose vandalism and propaganda had lopped US$ 8.6 billion off Monsanto’s
market value, so weakening the company that it was sold dirt-cheap last year to the Pharmacia Corporation. He went out of his way to endorse a new Food and Drug Administration (FDA) policy that requires a burdensome pre-market review of biotechnology foods, an approach that has been roundly censured by the scientific community. In the early 1980s, a few major agrochemical-biotechnology companies led by Monsanto approached senior policy makers in the administration of President Ronald Reagan and requested more restrictive regulation, primarily from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), than could be justified on scientific grounds. Their motive was clear – to use regulation as a market entry barrier to competitors; in particular, seed companies and biotechnology start-ups that were less able to bear the high costs of unnecessary regulation than other companies. They achieved their short-term goal. The US Department of Agriculture, the
http://tibtech.trends.com 0167-7799/01/$ – see front matter © 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. PII: S0167-7799(01)01578-5
News & Comment
Mouse cDNA library A collaboration between the Riken Genome Exploration Research Group Phase II team and the FANTOM Consortium has produced a collection of full-length complementary DNAs, their sequences and their physical mapping to the mouse genome (Nature, 8 February). The authors report on a cDNA set of 21 076 mouse clones (some of which are derived from the same transcripts). The work forms the basis for the production of microarrays and ways to identify new genes in this very useful animal model. D.M.
Transgenic plants are not effective colonisers in natural environments The use of genetically modified crops has generated considerable concern in many countries, in particular, the possibility that such crops can persist in the wild and disperse from their cultivated habitat. A recent article by M.J. Crawley et al. in Nature (8 February) indicates that, at least for the crops in this study, their ability to invade and persist was no better than their conventional counterparts.
TRENDS in Biotechnology Vol.19 No.4 April 2001
Four different crops were studied over a ten-year period, in 12 different habitats. The crops contained transgenes expressing tolerance for the herbicides glyphosphate (‘Roundup’) and glufosinate, and the insecticidal Bt toxin and pea lectin. D.M.
Biacore, La Jolla sense new drugs Swedish firm Biacore International Ltd has announced the first use of its surface plasmon resonance (SPR) sensor technology in the clinical development of a new drug, reports Chemweb.com. The technique has been used by US-based La Jolla Pharmaceutical Company to screen blood samples from sufferers of the autoimmune disease lupus, to assess their likely reponse to a new drug treatment. The drug developed by La Jolla is designed to halt production of antibodies for double-stranded DNA, which is believed to be responsible for kidney disease, which can often be fatal in lupus patients. In a series of clinical trials, patients with high levels of antibodies to the drug were identified through pharmacoproteomic screening using SPR. When treated with the drug, these patients had only a third as
many cases of renal complications as a control group. M.J.D.
Worms supply information about the meaning of DNA sequence If you’ve got a sequence from the human genome, the next question is ‘What does the sequence mean?’. One means by which to answer the question is to inactivate specific genes in model organisms such as the nematode worm Caenorhabditis elegans. Ikuma Maeda et al. (Current Biology, February) report the large-scale inactivation of the expressed genes in C. elegans. They have processed ~2500 genes to date. In development, 27% of inactived genes produced detectable phenotypes, such as embryonic lethality, post-embryonic lethality, sterility and morphological abnormality. D.M.
David McKay ([email protected]) and Martin J. Davies ([email protected])
Letter
The biotechnology industry’s Frankensteinian creation The past two decades have been the best and the worst of times for biotechnology applied to agriculture and food production – stunning scientifically, dismal politically. Especially in Europe there is widespread public and political opposition to importing gene-spliced, or ‘genetically modified’ (GM), seeds; vandalization of field trials; suspension of regulatory approvals; labeling required to identify GM foods and even their banishment by major supermarket chains. The cause of much of this adversity is ill-conceived public policy – in particular overregulation that singles out and discriminates against a superior new technology. Ironically, the big agribusiness companies, especially
Monsanto, have no one to blame but themselves. By insisting for years that their own gene-spliced crop plants and the foods derived from them merited extraordinary government oversight, agricultural biotechnology companies elicited regulation that lessened competition and slowed the flow of products through the development pipeline. (This strategy also played into activists’ scare scenarios, discouraging public acceptance of the new products.) The companies appear not to have learned the ‘Rule of Holes’, that is when you’re in a hole, stop digging. In a major policy speech on 27 November 2000, Hendrik A. Verfaillie, Monsanto’s new CEO, neglected to mention overregulation, let alone any (belated) commitment to seeking public policy towards biotechnology that makes scientific and common sense. Instead, he snivelled and crawled to the very radicals whose vandalism and propaganda had lopped US$ 8.6 billion off Monsanto’s
market value, so weakening the company that it was sold dirt-cheap last year to the Pharmacia Corporation. He went out of his way to endorse a new Food and Drug Administration (FDA) policy that requires a burdensome pre-market review of biotechnology foods, an approach that has been roundly censured by the scientific community. In the early 1980s, a few major agrochemical-biotechnology companies led by Monsanto approached senior policy makers in the administration of President Ronald Reagan and requested more restrictive regulation, primarily from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), than could be justified on scientific grounds. Their motive was clear – to use regulation as a market entry barrier to competitors; in particular, seed companies and biotechnology start-ups that were less able to bear the high costs of unnecessary regulation than other companies. They achieved their short-term goal. The US Department of Agriculture, the
http://tibtech.trends.com 0167-7799/01/$ – see front matter © 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. PII: S0167-7799(01)01578-5