In-GENE-uity

June 23

I am thankful for "in-GENE-uity". If you haven't heard of that word before, it's because I made it up by combining ingenuity and GENE. I am thankful for genes and all they mean to life. DNA is quite amazing. Today's blog may be a little wordy and a lot controversial, but if you are interested, please bear with me.

I knew very little about DNA when my graduate student, Joanie, wanted to do her research on it. I told her jokingly that DNA had not been invented when I went to school. That was, of course, obviously not true because it had been invented several billion years ago and Watson and Crick had decoded its structure in 1953. But when I went to school there weren't really good ways to sequence genes. Now there are automated instruments that can do it fairly easily and the entire human genome has been sequenced. So, because of Joanie and a job I later took at LSU AgCenter, I had a crash course on DNA. Joanie did her Ph.D. research project on the importance of genes in heart disease risk,and went on to be technical director of the DNA unit at the Louisiana State Police Crime Lab. Very important stuff. She can determine who the bad guy was or who the bad guy wasn't.

But there is so much we really don't know about DNA. We do know that it works by coding for proteins. Proteins are the enforcers: the enzymes, the carrier proteins, the structural proteins, etc. DNA expression is very tightly regulated. Every cell contains the same DNA and yet each cell is expressed differently. When all works well, it is a magnificent system of checks and balances.

This is a photo of coreopsis flowers in my yard. It is a wildflower that grows in Louisiana. I am using it today as my photo because it ccarries a gene that makes it resistant to Roundup herbicide. When I was in charge of the Biotechnology Education for Students and Teachers (BEST) program at LSU AgCenter, I had to learn biotechnology, and this is one of the tidbits I picked up. It seems that when they sprayed Roundup along the sides of highways in Louisiana to kill weeds, they noticed that this little flower survived. The scientists at the AgCenter then isolated the gene that makes it resistant to Roundup and are trying to put it into various crops such as rice.

Biotechnology is the science which manipulates genes to improve products, make products, or help fight disease. I have mixed feelings about biotechnology from an ethical point of view, and I encouraged my students and teachers freely discussed these issues during our classes. But no matter what you believe, biotechnology is here and will probably stay. Most people probably don't know that the majority of the products you buy in the store have at least one genetically modified (GM) product in them. That may or may not be a bad thing. When you consider that the world's population is increasing at a very rapid rate and that fewer acres of land are being farmed, it is very important that the crops that we do produce are done so in a more efficient way than in olden days. Biotechnology offers a possible solution. One way is to produce Roundup ready crops in which herbicides can be applied to reduce the invasion by weeds which stifle the production of the crop. Another biotechnology product enables the crop to be disease and insect resistant, which allows for reduced application of insecticides and other toxic chemicals, thus reducing their environmental impact. One prouduct, golden rice, contains a gene to make beta carotene, the prevursor to vitamin A. This could theoretically eliminate vitamin A deficiency in third world countries.

Biotechnology is not new. Before the insertion of genes, people manipulated crops, ornamentals, and livestock to produce better products by crossing and by selective breeding. Biotechnology does the same thing but without the trial and error and much faster. Just as the development and widespread use of antibiotics led to 'superbugs' which were resistant to them, a problem facing biotechnologists is the evolution of resistant genes in natural weeds, bacteria, insects, etc., which allow them to overcome the effects of herbicides or the GM crop. Hopefully those problems will be solved in the future. Some people will say "It's not nice to mess with mother nature." Too late. Humans have been manipulating mother nature since the cave days.

I don't mind so much when plant or bacterial genes are altered. It is now fairly commonplace. Bacteria which have genes inserted are used widely for the production of important medical products and drugs such as insulin. Regulator genes placed into the bacteria are used to prevent these bacteria from being able to grow on their own outside the lab. These safeguards are in place so as to prevent any sceince fiction horror stories from happening in which one of these altered bacteria would grow rapidly out of control outside the lab and cause dire consequences. I have even more problems with the ethics of cloning and modifying animals so that they produce products for us. And then there's the ultimate fear, the cloning of people, which is quite scary. Just this last week, a frozen mastadon was found in Russia, which had intact preserved blood. There was talk of using the blood to clone the mastadon. Does that sound earily like Jurassic Park?

I do look forward to the day of medical genetic alteration to cure many of the genetic disases that make some people's lives very difficult, painful, and short-lived. Diseases such as sickle cell anemia, cystic fibrosis, muscular dystrophy, and perhaps cancer could, theoretically, be cured if there was a safe way to deliver and insert normal genes into a person afflicted with them. Scientists are proceeding very carefully on this to make sure there are no serious problems or bad side effects from these potential treatments. But maybe we will have gone too far if we start manipulating human genes to produce 'super humans' with higher intelligence, more athletic, better looking, or other traits that parents value. Imagine a couple going to a genetic doctor to order a child with blue eyes, ambidextrous, grows to be a 7 foot, basketball playing genious. Scary thought.

designer genes

(thanks to my son John for the title)

i’d like to go

to my designer gene store

order a few genes

that make life worth living for

get rid of that fat

grow a good foot taller

run a lot faster

tired of being smaller

strong and good looking

say goodbye to that gray hair

anything you don’t want

it doesn’t need to be there

be the best golfer

anyone could possibly be

drive it 380 yards and straight

and do it so effortlessly

but mr. gene doctor

i have a question for you

when we can all buy the best designer genes

will i not be just like you?

© rt tulley

designer drugs 2

perhaps in the not too distant future

dna they will have to test

much like they now do for drugs

performance enhancers and the rest

give them a swab

from the inside of your cheek

and they will harvest your dna

it’s designer genes they seek

just to make sure

you don’t have a genetic advantage

so the ultimate performance enhancer

it’s dna they will have to manage.

© rt tulley

clone

i have a clone

it looks exactly like me

it talks exactly like me

if you looked at him

you’d think it is i you see

but honestly i will say

if the whole truth be known

there is little similarity

between me and my clone

for what makes me me

and ultimately makes him him

is post dna processing

that makes us nearly antonyms

our experiences

and how we handle them

are what separates us

that is my prized theorem

here’s one last piece of information:

that when it’s my clone you see

be careful and remember

my clone will never be me.

© rt tulley