'Not natural' doesn't mean not useful

There is a great suspicion towards science and anything which is ''not natural''. On top of that, ''pseudo-science'' - where people take something which is moderately proven and turn it into gospel - means that we struggle to know what to believe any more.

We turn to medicine to survive, yet we have a dislike of pharmaceutical companies. Similarly, we want food to be cheap and readily available all year round, but that requires large-scale farming and food systems. Needles in strawberries make us want to cling to simpler days and rightly so. How do we keep safe and value simplicity while using technologies for the betterment of our health and society?

I read of a natural phenomenon recently which delighted me. Apparently, sweet potatoes from all over the world naturally contain genes from the bacterium Agrobacterium.

This finding has been published in a reputable science journal: (Kyndt et al, 2015). Researchers were analysing the sweet potato genome when they found sequences belonging to Agrobacterium.

They were able to show that the gene sequences were not due to contamination, i.e. the bacterial genome being a contaminant within the samples. Rather, the bacterial gene sequences were inserted into the potato genome as a result of likely horizontal (cross species) gene transfer that happened thousands of years ago.

The sweet potato is now recognised as a stable, naturally occurring, genetically modified organism!

Fascinating, and to get you thinking a bit more about all this genetic modification stuff, scientists have now come up with smarter and more targeted methods of modifying genomes, using a mechanism called ''CRISPR/Cas 9''.

Let me explain a little . . . the CRISPR/Cas9 is a system found in bacteria and involved in immune defence. Bacteria use CRISPR/Cas9 to cut up the DNA of invading bacterial viruses that might otherwise kill them.

Scientists have adapted this molecular machinery for an entirely different purpose - to change any chosen nucleotide in an organism's DNA code. If you Google CRISPR, you will find a multitude of great diagrams, but very simply, what it allows scientists to do is alter the function of a selected gene in an organism.

Mutations which alter gene sequences are a natural part of evolution. This makes it impossible to differentiate genes edited via CRISPR/Cas techniques from naturally occurring mutations. Unlike other genetic modification techniques, there is no gene present which has been inserted from another organism (no transgene). How are we going to regulate such technologies?

In the United States, plants edited using such techniques are not considered to be genetically modified. However, in Europe, plants produced in such a way are considered to be genetically modified and as such, have to go through the associated regulatory systems. Australia is still deciding what to do and New Zealanders are starting to have conversations.

We don't need to be scientists to have an opinion on how we might use these types of technologies in the future, but in my view, we should not rule them out simply because they are ''not natural''. Flying in an aeroplane never feels particularly natural to me, yet I do it fairly regularly.

It is my belief we should be making these decisions on the basis of the value of the end product to society, rather than the way that end product was developed.

If you are interested in getting informed and joining the debate there is a lot more information on how we might use gene editing technologies in medicine, for pest control and in agriculture. Check out https://royalsociety.org.nz/major-issues-and-projects/gene-editing-in-ao.... The Royal Society of New Zealand is running gene editing workshops to garner public opinion.

I hope we can have a mature and open-minded debate for the future of our communities.

-Anna Campbell is managing director of AbacusBio Ltd, a Dunedin based agri-technology company.

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