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Are we unfairly bashing foods that contain genetically modified organisms (G.M.O. foods)?
Replies
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stevencloser wrote: »sunnybeaches105 wrote: »The thing I most enjoy about MFP is that people without a relevant degree, experience, or expertise have absolutely no problem telling those who do that they should "do their research" and "learn." It would be pure comedy gold if they weren't so serious. I know this isn't a new phenomenon, but it's something I think we see more often because of social media, and it's dangerous in that people vote for and support candidates who are anti-vaccine, anti-GMO, and generally anti-science. I suppose this is our generation's Scopes Trial.
I did not know what the Scopes trial was.
Wow.
Really? Never seen Inherient the Wind? Good film. Very interesting part of our history and a turning point where things could have gone very differently.1 -
Not a big movie goer. Also not American.2
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stevencloser wrote: »Not a big movie goer. Also not American.
fair enough, was being a bit culturally myopic there.0 -
stevencloser wrote: »Not a big movie goer. Also not American.
Ok, now I understand. Then you would have missed this in our history classes. I don't think the U.S. is unique in this because I've seen it in other places I've lived and visited, but we have a rather vocal anti-authority/anti-intellectual crowd and they have a long history. It has often been a religious (and right leaning) crowd, but what we are seeing now includes a sliver of the secular left attacking vaccines and GMOs. I guess it's somewhat similar to what some of the Greens are doing in Europe. Basically, science is getting it from both sides, and moderates are often the least vocal. Not to get political here, but it seems it does become necessary at some point (though I really don't want to go there so much as point out where some of this is coming from).2 -
Aaron_K123 wrote: »clicketykeys wrote: »NorthCascades wrote: »
Also, I'm not just pulling this out of my butt. A lot of people learn that a specific GMO food is safe, and think that means all GMO is safe. That's the bad thing I'm talking about; we learn that some GMOs are safe and we let our guard down, fail to test new ones adequately.Aaron_K123 wrote: »Um...honestly not sure what you are asking.
Couldn't you say the same for any other process, though? We learn that some pasteurized products are safe and fail to test the new ones.
How much research should it take on a process before we stop requiring testing? Or should all new products have required testing anyway?
But we aren't talking about testing the process, we're talking about testing the product. And yes, the new product needs to be tested because it may not do what it was designed to do.
Contrary to popular belief, one does not simply pick out a gene from one organism, insert it into another and voila - you are 100% guaranteed that it is properly regulated, transcribed, translated, the protein folds correctly and is post-translationally modified in the way one expected. Even with the precision of CRISPR-CAS, the resulting correctly modified organism may not perform as expected because we don't have perfect understanding of the target system as a whole*. Of course, the more thoroughly the source and target organisms are known, and the more simple and targeted the modification, the more likely a modification will be successful and have only the effect we intend.
Mind you, the usual result of a modification failing is simply that whatever you trait you wanted just doesn't get expressed, or it turns out that your modification interferes with another process in the target organism and you get sub-standard performance.
What you'd test for is the possibility that your modification might have had an unintended effect. For example, say you were modifying a potato and as an unintended consequence your modification increased solanine production to toxic levels across the board. Frankly, this is the kind of thing that happens occasionally even with standard breeding practices. It still warrants testing.
*If anyone is interested in an example, see: HuMouse development, history of. It's a whole series of modifications with unexpected consequences to the target organism. The current HuMouse immune system still does not function exactly like a human's - but it is a lot closer.
Agree with all of this. Are you in the biological sciences? You sound like you know your stuff.
Yes. I'm a computational biologist.
I started with the PhD in microbiology and molecular genetics and later got an MS in computer science. Been a long time since I worked in a lab*, but my thesis project included months of nothing but round after round of cloning and characterizing 'randomly' generated point mutations targeted to a particular region of a protein.
*To give you an idea, my 2nd rotation was working with anthrax when labs that did still had problems getting funding.2 -
Aaron_K123 wrote: »clicketykeys wrote: »NorthCascades wrote: »
Also, I'm not just pulling this out of my butt. A lot of people learn that a specific GMO food is safe, and think that means all GMO is safe. That's the bad thing I'm talking about; we learn that some GMOs are safe and we let our guard down, fail to test new ones adequately.Aaron_K123 wrote: »Um...honestly not sure what you are asking.
Couldn't you say the same for any other process, though? We learn that some pasteurized products are safe and fail to test the new ones.
How much research should it take on a process before we stop requiring testing? Or should all new products have required testing anyway?
But we aren't talking about testing the process, we're talking about testing the product. And yes, the new product needs to be tested because it may not do what it was designed to do.
Contrary to popular belief, one does not simply pick out a gene from one organism, insert it into another and voila - you are 100% guaranteed that it is properly regulated, transcribed, translated, the protein folds correctly and is post-translationally modified in the way one expected. Even with the precision of CRISPR-CAS, the resulting correctly modified organism may not perform as expected because we don't have perfect understanding of the target system as a whole*. Of course, the more thoroughly the source and target organisms are known, and the more simple and targeted the modification, the more likely a modification will be successful and have only the effect we intend.
Mind you, the usual result of a modification failing is simply that whatever you trait you wanted just doesn't get expressed, or it turns out that your modification interferes with another process in the target organism and you get sub-standard performance.
What you'd test for is the possibility that your modification might have had an unintended effect. For example, say you were modifying a potato and as an unintended consequence your modification increased solanine production to toxic levels across the board. Frankly, this is the kind of thing that happens occasionally even with standard breeding practices. It still warrants testing.
*If anyone is interested in an example, see: HuMouse development, history of. It's a whole series of modifications with unexpected consequences to the target organism. The current HuMouse immune system still does not function exactly like a human's - but it is a lot closer.
Agree with all of this. Are you in the biological sciences? You sound like you know your stuff.
Yes. I'm a computational biologist.
I started with the PhD in microbiology and molecular genetics and later got an MS in computer science. Been a long time since I worked in a lab*, but my thesis project included months of nothing but round after round of cloning and characterizing 'randomly' generated point mutations targeted to a particular region of a protein.
*To give you an idea, my 2nd rotation was working with anthrax when labs that did still had problems getting funding.
Very cool. The advent of high throughput sequencing and proteomics has really given bioinformations and computational biology a bit of a boom time. My PhD is in molecular biology with graduate work focused on protein engineering. Currently I work as a microbiologist in a non-profit focused on drug discovery and development. I am technically a lab scientist but as my career has progressed I've moved more and more away from the bench and into a more desk/management type of role. I get into the lab now and again but not as much as I used to.
My graduate work was a bit similar to what your lab work was from the sounds of it, I used a computational rational design approach to predict thermostabilizing mutations in proteins. My work was the first time such an approach was used to successfully thermostablize an enzyme without negatively affecting its function. After publishing the enzyme I created was picked up by a company and developed into a gene therapy for glioblastoma that is currently in clinical trials.3 -
sunnybeaches105 wrote: »stevencloser wrote: »Not a big movie goer. Also not American.
Ok, now I understand. Then you would have missed this in our history classes. I don't think the U.S. is unique in this because I've seen it in other places I've lived and visited, but we have a rather vocal anti-authority/anti-intellectual crowd and they have a long history. It has often been a religious (and right leaning) crowd, but what we are seeing now includes a sliver of the secular left attacking vaccines and GMOs. I guess it's somewhat similar to what some of the Greens are doing in Europe. Basically, science is getting it from both sides, and moderates are often the least vocal. Not to get political here, but it seems it does become necessary at some point (though I really don't want to go there so much as point out where some of this is coming from).
Culturally speaking I kind of have to thank the anti-vaccine and anti-GMO movement. I'm politically liberal, a bit of a social progressive and I had gotten into the belief that anti-science anti-intellectualism anti-expertise was the domain of the right wing. It took the anti-GMO and anti-vaccine movement (which are largely driven by people who consider themselves liberal) to open my eyes to this as being a much broader problem than just a political divide.
Not that it isn't overpoliticized. If I have the audacity to defend genetic engineering as a technology I get automatically assumed to be a right-wing republican pro-consumer capitalist because obviously that is the only reason one could be against the idea that GE is inheriently dangerous.6 -
tamms_1965 wrote: »My real problem with some GMOs is the fact that they're engineered to stand up to large amounts of pesticides. I don't want any extra Roundup on my plate.
Rather an uninformed statement, IMHO. You do realize, of course, that foods labeled as organic are also grown with pesticides? In addition, many of these "approved" pesticides are actually more toxic than Round Up and need to be used more often since they are usually not as effective.7 -
Aaron_K123 wrote: »Aaron_K123 wrote: »clicketykeys wrote: »NorthCascades wrote: »
Also, I'm not just pulling this out of my butt. A lot of people learn that a specific GMO food is safe, and think that means all GMO is safe. That's the bad thing I'm talking about; we learn that some GMOs are safe and we let our guard down, fail to test new ones adequately.Aaron_K123 wrote: »Um...honestly not sure what you are asking.
Couldn't you say the same for any other process, though? We learn that some pasteurized products are safe and fail to test the new ones.
How much research should it take on a process before we stop requiring testing? Or should all new products have required testing anyway?
But we aren't talking about testing the process, we're talking about testing the product. And yes, the new product needs to be tested because it may not do what it was designed to do.
Contrary to popular belief, one does not simply pick out a gene from one organism, insert it into another and voila - you are 100% guaranteed that it is properly regulated, transcribed, translated, the protein folds correctly and is post-translationally modified in the way one expected. Even with the precision of CRISPR-CAS, the resulting correctly modified organism may not perform as expected because we don't have perfect understanding of the target system as a whole*. Of course, the more thoroughly the source and target organisms are known, and the more simple and targeted the modification, the more likely a modification will be successful and have only the effect we intend.
Mind you, the usual result of a modification failing is simply that whatever you trait you wanted just doesn't get expressed, or it turns out that your modification interferes with another process in the target organism and you get sub-standard performance.
What you'd test for is the possibility that your modification might have had an unintended effect. For example, say you were modifying a potato and as an unintended consequence your modification increased solanine production to toxic levels across the board. Frankly, this is the kind of thing that happens occasionally even with standard breeding practices. It still warrants testing.
*If anyone is interested in an example, see: HuMouse development, history of. It's a whole series of modifications with unexpected consequences to the target organism. The current HuMouse immune system still does not function exactly like a human's - but it is a lot closer.
Agree with all of this. Are you in the biological sciences? You sound like you know your stuff.
Yes. I'm a computational biologist.
I started with the PhD in microbiology and molecular genetics and later got an MS in computer science. Been a long time since I worked in a lab*, but my thesis project included months of nothing but round after round of cloning and characterizing 'randomly' generated point mutations targeted to a particular region of a protein.
*To give you an idea, my 2nd rotation was working with anthrax when labs that did still had problems getting funding.
Very cool. The advent of high throughput sequencing and proteomics has really given bioinformations and computational biology a bit of a boom time. My PhD is in molecular biology with graduate work focused on protein engineering. Currently I work as a microbiologist in a non-profit focused on drug discovery and development. I am technically a lab scientist but as my career has progressed I've moved more and more away from the bench and into a more desk/management type of role. I get into the lab now and again but not as much as I used to.
My graduate work was a bit similar to what your lab work was from the sounds of it, I used a computational rational design approach to predict thermostabilizing mutations in proteins. My work was the first time such an approach was used to successfully thermostablize an enzyme without negatively affecting its function. After publishing the enzyme I created was picked up by a company and developed into a gene therapy for glioblastoma that is currently in clinical trials.
Three microbiologists on the same thread? I knew this place just felt classy!
<-Microbiologist specializing in bactrerial metabolics. I'm currently working in the evil pharmaceutical sector so you can't trust anything I say as I am for profit.
...and @stealthq sorry, but I may have been responsible for ending your anthrax funding. I was on the military side of the CDBC & EI when we figured the threat of bioterrorism is overblown and it was easier to track the experts who could fractionalize and weaponize strains.3 -
Aaron_K123 wrote: »Aaron_K123 wrote: »clicketykeys wrote: »NorthCascades wrote: »
Also, I'm not just pulling this out of my butt. A lot of people learn that a specific GMO food is safe, and think that means all GMO is safe. That's the bad thing I'm talking about; we learn that some GMOs are safe and we let our guard down, fail to test new ones adequately.Aaron_K123 wrote: »Um...honestly not sure what you are asking.
Couldn't you say the same for any other process, though? We learn that some pasteurized products are safe and fail to test the new ones.
How much research should it take on a process before we stop requiring testing? Or should all new products have required testing anyway?
But we aren't talking about testing the process, we're talking about testing the product. And yes, the new product needs to be tested because it may not do what it was designed to do.
Contrary to popular belief, one does not simply pick out a gene from one organism, insert it into another and voila - you are 100% guaranteed that it is properly regulated, transcribed, translated, the protein folds correctly and is post-translationally modified in the way one expected. Even with the precision of CRISPR-CAS, the resulting correctly modified organism may not perform as expected because we don't have perfect understanding of the target system as a whole*. Of course, the more thoroughly the source and target organisms are known, and the more simple and targeted the modification, the more likely a modification will be successful and have only the effect we intend.
Mind you, the usual result of a modification failing is simply that whatever you trait you wanted just doesn't get expressed, or it turns out that your modification interferes with another process in the target organism and you get sub-standard performance.
What you'd test for is the possibility that your modification might have had an unintended effect. For example, say you were modifying a potato and as an unintended consequence your modification increased solanine production to toxic levels across the board. Frankly, this is the kind of thing that happens occasionally even with standard breeding practices. It still warrants testing.
*If anyone is interested in an example, see: HuMouse development, history of. It's a whole series of modifications with unexpected consequences to the target organism. The current HuMouse immune system still does not function exactly like a human's - but it is a lot closer.
Agree with all of this. Are you in the biological sciences? You sound like you know your stuff.
Yes. I'm a computational biologist.
I started with the PhD in microbiology and molecular genetics and later got an MS in computer science. Been a long time since I worked in a lab*, but my thesis project included months of nothing but round after round of cloning and characterizing 'randomly' generated point mutations targeted to a particular region of a protein.
*To give you an idea, my 2nd rotation was working with anthrax when labs that did still had problems getting funding.
Very cool. The advent of high throughput sequencing and proteomics has really given bioinformations and computational biology a bit of a boom time. My PhD is in molecular biology with graduate work focused on protein engineering. Currently I work as a microbiologist in a non-profit focused on drug discovery and development. I am technically a lab scientist but as my career has progressed I've moved more and more away from the bench and into a more desk/management type of role. I get into the lab now and again but not as much as I used to.
My graduate work was a bit similar to what your lab work was from the sounds of it, I used a computational rational design approach to predict thermostabilizing mutations in proteins. My work was the first time such an approach was used to successfully thermostablize an enzyme without negatively affecting its function. After publishing the enzyme I created was picked up by a company and developed into a gene therapy for glioblastoma that is currently in clinical trials.
It really has.
When I was looking for a long term job I was fortunate enough to find a group that was really making strides with microarray and ready to believe that someone could bring that kind of data together with graph theory for their benefit.
I hear you on the changing work. I used to be so busy analyzing data I hardly had time to really think. Now I'm stuck with a bunch of IT and data management and the junior personnel run already developed analysis pipelines and packages.
ETA: forgot to add. Your thesis sounds much more interesting than mine was. Sometimes I wish I'd stuck to the 1st project I chose - studying transcription in H. salinarum. But there were a couple of labs that turned out to be way ahead of me so I chose a safer and much more boring project. Oh well.0 -
Aaron_K123 wrote: »Aaron_K123 wrote: »clicketykeys wrote: »NorthCascades wrote: »
Also, I'm not just pulling this out of my butt. A lot of people learn that a specific GMO food is safe, and think that means all GMO is safe. That's the bad thing I'm talking about; we learn that some GMOs are safe and we let our guard down, fail to test new ones adequately.Aaron_K123 wrote: »Um...honestly not sure what you are asking.
Couldn't you say the same for any other process, though? We learn that some pasteurized products are safe and fail to test the new ones.
How much research should it take on a process before we stop requiring testing? Or should all new products have required testing anyway?
But we aren't talking about testing the process, we're talking about testing the product. And yes, the new product needs to be tested because it may not do what it was designed to do.
Contrary to popular belief, one does not simply pick out a gene from one organism, insert it into another and voila - you are 100% guaranteed that it is properly regulated, transcribed, translated, the protein folds correctly and is post-translationally modified in the way one expected. Even with the precision of CRISPR-CAS, the resulting correctly modified organism may not perform as expected because we don't have perfect understanding of the target system as a whole*. Of course, the more thoroughly the source and target organisms are known, and the more simple and targeted the modification, the more likely a modification will be successful and have only the effect we intend.
Mind you, the usual result of a modification failing is simply that whatever you trait you wanted just doesn't get expressed, or it turns out that your modification interferes with another process in the target organism and you get sub-standard performance.
What you'd test for is the possibility that your modification might have had an unintended effect. For example, say you were modifying a potato and as an unintended consequence your modification increased solanine production to toxic levels across the board. Frankly, this is the kind of thing that happens occasionally even with standard breeding practices. It still warrants testing.
*If anyone is interested in an example, see: HuMouse development, history of. It's a whole series of modifications with unexpected consequences to the target organism. The current HuMouse immune system still does not function exactly like a human's - but it is a lot closer.
Agree with all of this. Are you in the biological sciences? You sound like you know your stuff.
Yes. I'm a computational biologist.
I started with the PhD in microbiology and molecular genetics and later got an MS in computer science. Been a long time since I worked in a lab*, but my thesis project included months of nothing but round after round of cloning and characterizing 'randomly' generated point mutations targeted to a particular region of a protein.
*To give you an idea, my 2nd rotation was working with anthrax when labs that did still had problems getting funding.
Very cool. The advent of high throughput sequencing and proteomics has really given bioinformations and computational biology a bit of a boom time. My PhD is in molecular biology with graduate work focused on protein engineering. Currently I work as a microbiologist in a non-profit focused on drug discovery and development. I am technically a lab scientist but as my career has progressed I've moved more and more away from the bench and into a more desk/management type of role. I get into the lab now and again but not as much as I used to.
My graduate work was a bit similar to what your lab work was from the sounds of it, I used a computational rational design approach to predict thermostabilizing mutations in proteins. My work was the first time such an approach was used to successfully thermostablize an enzyme without negatively affecting its function. After publishing the enzyme I created was picked up by a company and developed into a gene therapy for glioblastoma that is currently in clinical trials.
Three microbiologists on the same thread? I knew this place just felt classy!
<-Microbiologist specializing in bactrerial metabolics. I'm currently working in the evil pharmaceutical sector so you can't trust anything I say as I am for profit.
...and @stealthq sorry, but I may have been responsible for ending your anthrax funding. I was on the military side of the CDBC & EI when we figured the threat of bioterrorism is overblown and it was easier to track the experts who could fractionalize and weaponize strains.
Non-profit drug development for tuberculosis here, although we collaborate with Eli Lilly and AbbVie (they provide us access to their small molecule libraries for screening as well as some of their chemistry resources). Working directly with "evil" pharma makes you feel like they are actually people who care about things rather than evil sociopaths driven by greed. Weird how that happens.7 -
Aaron_K123 wrote: »Aaron_K123 wrote: »clicketykeys wrote: »NorthCascades wrote: »
Also, I'm not just pulling this out of my butt. A lot of people learn that a specific GMO food is safe, and think that means all GMO is safe. That's the bad thing I'm talking about; we learn that some GMOs are safe and we let our guard down, fail to test new ones adequately.Aaron_K123 wrote: »Um...honestly not sure what you are asking.
Couldn't you say the same for any other process, though? We learn that some pasteurized products are safe and fail to test the new ones.
How much research should it take on a process before we stop requiring testing? Or should all new products have required testing anyway?
But we aren't talking about testing the process, we're talking about testing the product. And yes, the new product needs to be tested because it may not do what it was designed to do.
Contrary to popular belief, one does not simply pick out a gene from one organism, insert it into another and voila - you are 100% guaranteed that it is properly regulated, transcribed, translated, the protein folds correctly and is post-translationally modified in the way one expected. Even with the precision of CRISPR-CAS, the resulting correctly modified organism may not perform as expected because we don't have perfect understanding of the target system as a whole*. Of course, the more thoroughly the source and target organisms are known, and the more simple and targeted the modification, the more likely a modification will be successful and have only the effect we intend.
Mind you, the usual result of a modification failing is simply that whatever you trait you wanted just doesn't get expressed, or it turns out that your modification interferes with another process in the target organism and you get sub-standard performance.
What you'd test for is the possibility that your modification might have had an unintended effect. For example, say you were modifying a potato and as an unintended consequence your modification increased solanine production to toxic levels across the board. Frankly, this is the kind of thing that happens occasionally even with standard breeding practices. It still warrants testing.
*If anyone is interested in an example, see: HuMouse development, history of. It's a whole series of modifications with unexpected consequences to the target organism. The current HuMouse immune system still does not function exactly like a human's - but it is a lot closer.
Agree with all of this. Are you in the biological sciences? You sound like you know your stuff.
Yes. I'm a computational biologist.
I started with the PhD in microbiology and molecular genetics and later got an MS in computer science. Been a long time since I worked in a lab*, but my thesis project included months of nothing but round after round of cloning and characterizing 'randomly' generated point mutations targeted to a particular region of a protein.
*To give you an idea, my 2nd rotation was working with anthrax when labs that did still had problems getting funding.
Very cool. The advent of high throughput sequencing and proteomics has really given bioinformations and computational biology a bit of a boom time. My PhD is in molecular biology with graduate work focused on protein engineering. Currently I work as a microbiologist in a non-profit focused on drug discovery and development. I am technically a lab scientist but as my career has progressed I've moved more and more away from the bench and into a more desk/management type of role. I get into the lab now and again but not as much as I used to.
My graduate work was a bit similar to what your lab work was from the sounds of it, I used a computational rational design approach to predict thermostabilizing mutations in proteins. My work was the first time such an approach was used to successfully thermostablize an enzyme without negatively affecting its function. After publishing the enzyme I created was picked up by a company and developed into a gene therapy for glioblastoma that is currently in clinical trials.
It really has.
When I was looking for a long term job I was fortunate enough to find a group that was really making strides with microarray and ready to believe that someone could bring that kind of data together with graph theory for their benefit.
I hear you on the changing work. I used to be so busy analyzing data I hardly had time to really think. Now I'm stuck with a bunch of IT and data management and the junior personnel run already developed analysis pipelines and packages.
ETA: forgot to add. Your thesis sounds much more interesting than mine was. Sometimes I wish I'd stuck to the 1st project I chose - studying transcription in H. salinarum. But there were a couple of labs that turned out to be way ahead of me so I chose a safer and much more boring project. Oh well.
I'm proud of my graduate work, but I also realize I got lucky. Science seems to be 5% skill and 95% choosing the right project in the right place at the right time.
Thermostabilizing an enzyme https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15879217 goes to suggesting it might be used in gene therapy https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18291415 goes to development of it into a gene therapy for cancer
http://tocagen.com/our-science/
I'm not part of that company at all nor do I recieve any acknowledgement or royalty because we published our work openly without patents but "Toca 511" uses the protein I produced in my graduate work. They took it and developed it into a product though which is no small feat so I'm not trying to undermine or downplay their involvement. Kind of crazy to see that happen, that company is basically based on something I made. (Not there there is an "I" in science, its always a "we" I'm not trying to claim it was all me, it was my project and I drove it forward but couldn't have done it without support of my advisors and lab).
Reason I'm bringing this up at all in this thread is to point out that I have personal experience using genetic engineering in a way to help develop a therapeutic that got picked up and developed by a company that is now in clinical trials for glioblastoma and is currently being used to treat people that previously had no hope for survival. Yet somehow I don't work for Monsanto, imagine that. That is why this anti-GE stance pisses me off.8 -
Aaron_K123 wrote: »Aaron_K123 wrote: »clicketykeys wrote: »NorthCascades wrote: »
Also, I'm not just pulling this out of my butt. A lot of people learn that a specific GMO food is safe, and think that means all GMO is safe. That's the bad thing I'm talking about; we learn that some GMOs are safe and we let our guard down, fail to test new ones adequately.Aaron_K123 wrote: »Um...honestly not sure what you are asking.
Couldn't you say the same for any other process, though? We learn that some pasteurized products are safe and fail to test the new ones.
How much research should it take on a process before we stop requiring testing? Or should all new products have required testing anyway?
But we aren't talking about testing the process, we're talking about testing the product. And yes, the new product needs to be tested because it may not do what it was designed to do.
Contrary to popular belief, one does not simply pick out a gene from one organism, insert it into another and voila - you are 100% guaranteed that it is properly regulated, transcribed, translated, the protein folds correctly and is post-translationally modified in the way one expected. Even with the precision of CRISPR-CAS, the resulting correctly modified organism may not perform as expected because we don't have perfect understanding of the target system as a whole*. Of course, the more thoroughly the source and target organisms are known, and the more simple and targeted the modification, the more likely a modification will be successful and have only the effect we intend.
Mind you, the usual result of a modification failing is simply that whatever you trait you wanted just doesn't get expressed, or it turns out that your modification interferes with another process in the target organism and you get sub-standard performance.
What you'd test for is the possibility that your modification might have had an unintended effect. For example, say you were modifying a potato and as an unintended consequence your modification increased solanine production to toxic levels across the board. Frankly, this is the kind of thing that happens occasionally even with standard breeding practices. It still warrants testing.
*If anyone is interested in an example, see: HuMouse development, history of. It's a whole series of modifications with unexpected consequences to the target organism. The current HuMouse immune system still does not function exactly like a human's - but it is a lot closer.
Agree with all of this. Are you in the biological sciences? You sound like you know your stuff.
Yes. I'm a computational biologist.
I started with the PhD in microbiology and molecular genetics and later got an MS in computer science. Been a long time since I worked in a lab*, but my thesis project included months of nothing but round after round of cloning and characterizing 'randomly' generated point mutations targeted to a particular region of a protein.
*To give you an idea, my 2nd rotation was working with anthrax when labs that did still had problems getting funding.
Very cool. The advent of high throughput sequencing and proteomics has really given bioinformations and computational biology a bit of a boom time. My PhD is in molecular biology with graduate work focused on protein engineering. Currently I work as a microbiologist in a non-profit focused on drug discovery and development. I am technically a lab scientist but as my career has progressed I've moved more and more away from the bench and into a more desk/management type of role. I get into the lab now and again but not as much as I used to.
My graduate work was a bit similar to what your lab work was from the sounds of it, I used a computational rational design approach to predict thermostabilizing mutations in proteins. My work was the first time such an approach was used to successfully thermostablize an enzyme without negatively affecting its function. After publishing the enzyme I created was picked up by a company and developed into a gene therapy for glioblastoma that is currently in clinical trials.
Three microbiologists on the same thread? I knew this place just felt classy!
<-Microbiologist specializing in bactrerial metabolics. I'm currently working in the evil pharmaceutical sector so you can't trust anything I say as I am for profit.
...and @stealthq sorry, but I may have been responsible for ending your anthrax funding. I was on the military side of the CDBC & EI when we figured the threat of bioterrorism is overblown and it was easier to track the experts who could fractionalize and weaponize strains.
No worries, the reason I didn't stay with that lab was entirely the fault of the PI. I can work with almost anyone. My job is entirely service-oriented and I deal with difficult, micro-managing know-it-alls frequently. I keep in mind I am one, too.
This woman was something else entirely. I was lucky to finish my rotation without resorting to violence.0 -
Science for the win!
Compare GMO's to the "scare" of MSG which is completely fine (unless you get migraines, then maybe not). That's been long disproven and is STILL going on.
[The difference is no legislation for MSG.]
Also it's the same with High Fructose Corn Syrup.
Sugar is basically sugar, whether it comes from corn or cane or beets. For 99%+ of consumers, it doesn't matter which one you ingest.
Or to the small extent that it does, the far larger problem for your health is that you are INGESTING SUGAR...not what type of sugar it is.
Now, if you want to choose to not eat GMO's or MSG or HFCS that's great, you go for it.
But if you want to pass legislation telling other people they can't, since laws are enforced by guys with guns, you are saying that people should be killed to meet your own personal food preferences.
I'm not okay with that.
Requiring labeling is more innocuous, but there are issues with that, as well.
http://www.popsci.com/problem-with-gmo-labeling1 -
Aaron_K123 wrote: »Aaron_K123 wrote: »clicketykeys wrote: »NorthCascades wrote: »
Also, I'm not just pulling this out of my butt. A lot of people learn that a specific GMO food is safe, and think that means all GMO is safe. That's the bad thing I'm talking about; we learn that some GMOs are safe and we let our guard down, fail to test new ones adequately.Aaron_K123 wrote: »Um...honestly not sure what you are asking.
Couldn't you say the same for any other process, though? We learn that some pasteurized products are safe and fail to test the new ones.
How much research should it take on a process before we stop requiring testing? Or should all new products have required testing anyway?
But we aren't talking about testing the process, we're talking about testing the product. And yes, the new product needs to be tested because it may not do what it was designed to do.
Contrary to popular belief, one does not simply pick out a gene from one organism, insert it into another and voila - you are 100% guaranteed that it is properly regulated, transcribed, translated, the protein folds correctly and is post-translationally modified in the way one expected. Even with the precision of CRISPR-CAS, the resulting correctly modified organism may not perform as expected because we don't have perfect understanding of the target system as a whole*. Of course, the more thoroughly the source and target organisms are known, and the more simple and targeted the modification, the more likely a modification will be successful and have only the effect we intend.
Mind you, the usual result of a modification failing is simply that whatever you trait you wanted just doesn't get expressed, or it turns out that your modification interferes with another process in the target organism and you get sub-standard performance.
What you'd test for is the possibility that your modification might have had an unintended effect. For example, say you were modifying a potato and as an unintended consequence your modification increased solanine production to toxic levels across the board. Frankly, this is the kind of thing that happens occasionally even with standard breeding practices. It still warrants testing.
*If anyone is interested in an example, see: HuMouse development, history of. It's a whole series of modifications with unexpected consequences to the target organism. The current HuMouse immune system still does not function exactly like a human's - but it is a lot closer.
Agree with all of this. Are you in the biological sciences? You sound like you know your stuff.
Yes. I'm a computational biologist.
I started with the PhD in microbiology and molecular genetics and later got an MS in computer science. Been a long time since I worked in a lab*, but my thesis project included months of nothing but round after round of cloning and characterizing 'randomly' generated point mutations targeted to a particular region of a protein.
*To give you an idea, my 2nd rotation was working with anthrax when labs that did still had problems getting funding.
Very cool. The advent of high throughput sequencing and proteomics has really given bioinformations and computational biology a bit of a boom time. My PhD is in molecular biology with graduate work focused on protein engineering. Currently I work as a microbiologist in a non-profit focused on drug discovery and development. I am technically a lab scientist but as my career has progressed I've moved more and more away from the bench and into a more desk/management type of role. I get into the lab now and again but not as much as I used to.
My graduate work was a bit similar to what your lab work was from the sounds of it, I used a computational rational design approach to predict thermostabilizing mutations in proteins. My work was the first time such an approach was used to successfully thermostablize an enzyme without negatively affecting its function. After publishing the enzyme I created was picked up by a company and developed into a gene therapy for glioblastoma that is currently in clinical trials.
That's awesome. Now find something to help DIPG!
2 -
Aaron_K123 wrote: »Aaron_K123 wrote: »Aaron_K123 wrote: »clicketykeys wrote: »NorthCascades wrote: »
Also, I'm not just pulling this out of my butt. A lot of people learn that a specific GMO food is safe, and think that means all GMO is safe. That's the bad thing I'm talking about; we learn that some GMOs are safe and we let our guard down, fail to test new ones adequately.Aaron_K123 wrote: »Um...honestly not sure what you are asking.
Couldn't you say the same for any other process, though? We learn that some pasteurized products are safe and fail to test the new ones.
How much research should it take on a process before we stop requiring testing? Or should all new products have required testing anyway?
But we aren't talking about testing the process, we're talking about testing the product. And yes, the new product needs to be tested because it may not do what it was designed to do.
Contrary to popular belief, one does not simply pick out a gene from one organism, insert it into another and voila - you are 100% guaranteed that it is properly regulated, transcribed, translated, the protein folds correctly and is post-translationally modified in the way one expected. Even with the precision of CRISPR-CAS, the resulting correctly modified organism may not perform as expected because we don't have perfect understanding of the target system as a whole*. Of course, the more thoroughly the source and target organisms are known, and the more simple and targeted the modification, the more likely a modification will be successful and have only the effect we intend.
Mind you, the usual result of a modification failing is simply that whatever you trait you wanted just doesn't get expressed, or it turns out that your modification interferes with another process in the target organism and you get sub-standard performance.
What you'd test for is the possibility that your modification might have had an unintended effect. For example, say you were modifying a potato and as an unintended consequence your modification increased solanine production to toxic levels across the board. Frankly, this is the kind of thing that happens occasionally even with standard breeding practices. It still warrants testing.
*If anyone is interested in an example, see: HuMouse development, history of. It's a whole series of modifications with unexpected consequences to the target organism. The current HuMouse immune system still does not function exactly like a human's - but it is a lot closer.
Agree with all of this. Are you in the biological sciences? You sound like you know your stuff.
Yes. I'm a computational biologist.
I started with the PhD in microbiology and molecular genetics and later got an MS in computer science. Been a long time since I worked in a lab*, but my thesis project included months of nothing but round after round of cloning and characterizing 'randomly' generated point mutations targeted to a particular region of a protein.
*To give you an idea, my 2nd rotation was working with anthrax when labs that did still had problems getting funding.
Very cool. The advent of high throughput sequencing and proteomics has really given bioinformations and computational biology a bit of a boom time. My PhD is in molecular biology with graduate work focused on protein engineering. Currently I work as a microbiologist in a non-profit focused on drug discovery and development. I am technically a lab scientist but as my career has progressed I've moved more and more away from the bench and into a more desk/management type of role. I get into the lab now and again but not as much as I used to.
My graduate work was a bit similar to what your lab work was from the sounds of it, I used a computational rational design approach to predict thermostabilizing mutations in proteins. My work was the first time such an approach was used to successfully thermostablize an enzyme without negatively affecting its function. After publishing the enzyme I created was picked up by a company and developed into a gene therapy for glioblastoma that is currently in clinical trials.
Three microbiologists on the same thread? I knew this place just felt classy!
<-Microbiologist specializing in bactrerial metabolics. I'm currently working in the evil pharmaceutical sector so you can't trust anything I say as I am for profit.
...and @stealthq sorry, but I may have been responsible for ending your anthrax funding. I was on the military side of the CDBC & EI when we figured the threat of bioterrorism is overblown and it was easier to track the experts who could fractionalize and weaponize strains.
Non-profit drug development for tuberculosis here, although we collaborate with Eli Lilly and AbbVie (they provide us access to their small molecule libraries for screening as well as some of their chemistry resources). Working directly with "evil" pharma makes you feel like they are actually people who care about things rather than evil sociopaths driven by greed. Weird how that happens.
Abbvie and janssen have done great things for Crohn's and colitis Canada (and i assume in other countries too) They sponsor and donate tons of money to patient advocacy, education, awareness and research projects. Abbvie also has post secondary scholarships for IBD sufferers. Oh yeah, big pharma is evil (janssen saved my life so I am biased lol)3 -
Aaron_K123 wrote: »Aaron_K123 wrote: »Aaron_K123 wrote: »clicketykeys wrote: »NorthCascades wrote: »
Also, I'm not just pulling this out of my butt. A lot of people learn that a specific GMO food is safe, and think that means all GMO is safe. That's the bad thing I'm talking about; we learn that some GMOs are safe and we let our guard down, fail to test new ones adequately.Aaron_K123 wrote: »Um...honestly not sure what you are asking.
Couldn't you say the same for any other process, though? We learn that some pasteurized products are safe and fail to test the new ones.
How much research should it take on a process before we stop requiring testing? Or should all new products have required testing anyway?
But we aren't talking about testing the process, we're talking about testing the product. And yes, the new product needs to be tested because it may not do what it was designed to do.
Contrary to popular belief, one does not simply pick out a gene from one organism, insert it into another and voila - you are 100% guaranteed that it is properly regulated, transcribed, translated, the protein folds correctly and is post-translationally modified in the way one expected. Even with the precision of CRISPR-CAS, the resulting correctly modified organism may not perform as expected because we don't have perfect understanding of the target system as a whole*. Of course, the more thoroughly the source and target organisms are known, and the more simple and targeted the modification, the more likely a modification will be successful and have only the effect we intend.
Mind you, the usual result of a modification failing is simply that whatever you trait you wanted just doesn't get expressed, or it turns out that your modification interferes with another process in the target organism and you get sub-standard performance.
What you'd test for is the possibility that your modification might have had an unintended effect. For example, say you were modifying a potato and as an unintended consequence your modification increased solanine production to toxic levels across the board. Frankly, this is the kind of thing that happens occasionally even with standard breeding practices. It still warrants testing.
*If anyone is interested in an example, see: HuMouse development, history of. It's a whole series of modifications with unexpected consequences to the target organism. The current HuMouse immune system still does not function exactly like a human's - but it is a lot closer.
Agree with all of this. Are you in the biological sciences? You sound like you know your stuff.
Yes. I'm a computational biologist.
I started with the PhD in microbiology and molecular genetics and later got an MS in computer science. Been a long time since I worked in a lab*, but my thesis project included months of nothing but round after round of cloning and characterizing 'randomly' generated point mutations targeted to a particular region of a protein.
*To give you an idea, my 2nd rotation was working with anthrax when labs that did still had problems getting funding.
Very cool. The advent of high throughput sequencing and proteomics has really given bioinformations and computational biology a bit of a boom time. My PhD is in molecular biology with graduate work focused on protein engineering. Currently I work as a microbiologist in a non-profit focused on drug discovery and development. I am technically a lab scientist but as my career has progressed I've moved more and more away from the bench and into a more desk/management type of role. I get into the lab now and again but not as much as I used to.
My graduate work was a bit similar to what your lab work was from the sounds of it, I used a computational rational design approach to predict thermostabilizing mutations in proteins. My work was the first time such an approach was used to successfully thermostablize an enzyme without negatively affecting its function. After publishing the enzyme I created was picked up by a company and developed into a gene therapy for glioblastoma that is currently in clinical trials.
It really has.
When I was looking for a long term job I was fortunate enough to find a group that was really making strides with microarray and ready to believe that someone could bring that kind of data together with graph theory for their benefit.
I hear you on the changing work. I used to be so busy analyzing data I hardly had time to really think. Now I'm stuck with a bunch of IT and data management and the junior personnel run already developed analysis pipelines and packages.
ETA: forgot to add. Your thesis sounds much more interesting than mine was. Sometimes I wish I'd stuck to the 1st project I chose - studying transcription in H. salinarum. But there were a couple of labs that turned out to be way ahead of me so I chose a safer and much more boring project. Oh well.
I'm proud of my graduate work, but I also realize I got lucky. Science seems to be 5% skill and 95% choosing the right project in the right place at the right time.
Thermostabilizing an enzyme https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15879217 goes to suggesting it might be used in gene therapy https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18291415 goes to development of it into a gene therapy for cancer
http://tocagen.com/our-science/
I'm not part of that company at all nor do I recieve any acknowledgement or royalty because we published our work openly without patents but "Toca 511" uses the protein I produced in my graduate work. They took it and developed it into a product though which is no small feat so I'm not trying to undermine or downplay their involvement. Kind of crazy to see that happen, that company is basically based on something I made. (Not there there is an "I" in science, its always a "we" I'm not trying to claim it was all me, it was my project and I drove it forward but couldn't have done it without support of my advisors and lab).
Reason I'm bringing this up at all in this thread is to point out that I have personal experience using genetic engineering in a way to help develop a therapeutic that got picked up and developed by a company that is now in clinical trials for glioblastoma and is currently being used to treat people that previously had no hope for survival. Yet somehow I don't work for Monsanto, imagine that. That is why this anti-GE stance pisses me off.
Excellent. I had a very good friend die from glioblastoma.
Most of the work done where I am now is vaccine and therapeutics development and research. I don't think people realize how large a role genetic engineering plays and how crippled medical research would be if we were no longer able to use it and its products.3 -
Aaron_K123 wrote: »Aaron_K123 wrote: »Aaron_K123 wrote: »clicketykeys wrote: »NorthCascades wrote: »
Also, I'm not just pulling this out of my butt. A lot of people learn that a specific GMO food is safe, and think that means all GMO is safe. That's the bad thing I'm talking about; we learn that some GMOs are safe and we let our guard down, fail to test new ones adequately.Aaron_K123 wrote: »Um...honestly not sure what you are asking.
Couldn't you say the same for any other process, though? We learn that some pasteurized products are safe and fail to test the new ones.
How much research should it take on a process before we stop requiring testing? Or should all new products have required testing anyway?
But we aren't talking about testing the process, we're talking about testing the product. And yes, the new product needs to be tested because it may not do what it was designed to do.
Contrary to popular belief, one does not simply pick out a gene from one organism, insert it into another and voila - you are 100% guaranteed that it is properly regulated, transcribed, translated, the protein folds correctly and is post-translationally modified in the way one expected. Even with the precision of CRISPR-CAS, the resulting correctly modified organism may not perform as expected because we don't have perfect understanding of the target system as a whole*. Of course, the more thoroughly the source and target organisms are known, and the more simple and targeted the modification, the more likely a modification will be successful and have only the effect we intend.
Mind you, the usual result of a modification failing is simply that whatever you trait you wanted just doesn't get expressed, or it turns out that your modification interferes with another process in the target organism and you get sub-standard performance.
What you'd test for is the possibility that your modification might have had an unintended effect. For example, say you were modifying a potato and as an unintended consequence your modification increased solanine production to toxic levels across the board. Frankly, this is the kind of thing that happens occasionally even with standard breeding practices. It still warrants testing.
*If anyone is interested in an example, see: HuMouse development, history of. It's a whole series of modifications with unexpected consequences to the target organism. The current HuMouse immune system still does not function exactly like a human's - but it is a lot closer.
Agree with all of this. Are you in the biological sciences? You sound like you know your stuff.
Yes. I'm a computational biologist.
I started with the PhD in microbiology and molecular genetics and later got an MS in computer science. Been a long time since I worked in a lab*, but my thesis project included months of nothing but round after round of cloning and characterizing 'randomly' generated point mutations targeted to a particular region of a protein.
*To give you an idea, my 2nd rotation was working with anthrax when labs that did still had problems getting funding.
Very cool. The advent of high throughput sequencing and proteomics has really given bioinformations and computational biology a bit of a boom time. My PhD is in molecular biology with graduate work focused on protein engineering. Currently I work as a microbiologist in a non-profit focused on drug discovery and development. I am technically a lab scientist but as my career has progressed I've moved more and more away from the bench and into a more desk/management type of role. I get into the lab now and again but not as much as I used to.
My graduate work was a bit similar to what your lab work was from the sounds of it, I used a computational rational design approach to predict thermostabilizing mutations in proteins. My work was the first time such an approach was used to successfully thermostablize an enzyme without negatively affecting its function. After publishing the enzyme I created was picked up by a company and developed into a gene therapy for glioblastoma that is currently in clinical trials.
It really has.
When I was looking for a long term job I was fortunate enough to find a group that was really making strides with microarray and ready to believe that someone could bring that kind of data together with graph theory for their benefit.
I hear you on the changing work. I used to be so busy analyzing data I hardly had time to really think. Now I'm stuck with a bunch of IT and data management and the junior personnel run already developed analysis pipelines and packages.
ETA: forgot to add. Your thesis sounds much more interesting than mine was. Sometimes I wish I'd stuck to the 1st project I chose - studying transcription in H. salinarum. But there were a couple of labs that turned out to be way ahead of me so I chose a safer and much more boring project. Oh well.
I'm proud of my graduate work, but I also realize I got lucky. Science seems to be 5% skill and 95% choosing the right project in the right place at the right time.
Thermostabilizing an enzyme https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15879217 goes to suggesting it might be used in gene therapy https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18291415 goes to development of it into a gene therapy for cancer
http://tocagen.com/our-science/
I'm not part of that company at all nor do I recieve any acknowledgement or royalty because we published our work openly without patents but "Toca 511" uses the protein I produced in my graduate work. They took it and developed it into a product though which is no small feat so I'm not trying to undermine or downplay their involvement. Kind of crazy to see that happen, that company is basically based on something I made. (Not there there is an "I" in science, its always a "we" I'm not trying to claim it was all me, it was my project and I drove it forward but couldn't have done it without support of my advisors and lab).
Reason I'm bringing this up at all in this thread is to point out that I have personal experience using genetic engineering in a way to help develop a therapeutic that got picked up and developed by a company that is now in clinical trials for glioblastoma and is currently being used to treat people that previously had no hope for survival. Yet somehow I don't work for Monsanto, imagine that. That is why this anti-GE stance pisses me off.
Excellent. I had a very good friend die from glioblastoma.
Most of the work done where I am now is vaccine and therapeutics development and research. I don't think people realize how large a role genetic engineering plays and how crippled medical research would be if we were no longer able to use it and its products.
I'm alive and still have my colon because of a biologic so I appreciate genetic engineering
thanks cool scientists who develop ground breaking new treatments 2 -
Aaron_K123 wrote: »Aaron_K123 wrote: »Aaron_K123 wrote: »clicketykeys wrote: »NorthCascades wrote: »
Also, I'm not just pulling this out of my butt. A lot of people learn that a specific GMO food is safe, and think that means all GMO is safe. That's the bad thing I'm talking about; we learn that some GMOs are safe and we let our guard down, fail to test new ones adequately.Aaron_K123 wrote: »Um...honestly not sure what you are asking.
Couldn't you say the same for any other process, though? We learn that some pasteurized products are safe and fail to test the new ones.
How much research should it take on a process before we stop requiring testing? Or should all new products have required testing anyway?
But we aren't talking about testing the process, we're talking about testing the product. And yes, the new product needs to be tested because it may not do what it was designed to do.
Contrary to popular belief, one does not simply pick out a gene from one organism, insert it into another and voila - you are 100% guaranteed that it is properly regulated, transcribed, translated, the protein folds correctly and is post-translationally modified in the way one expected. Even with the precision of CRISPR-CAS, the resulting correctly modified organism may not perform as expected because we don't have perfect understanding of the target system as a whole*. Of course, the more thoroughly the source and target organisms are known, and the more simple and targeted the modification, the more likely a modification will be successful and have only the effect we intend.
Mind you, the usual result of a modification failing is simply that whatever you trait you wanted just doesn't get expressed, or it turns out that your modification interferes with another process in the target organism and you get sub-standard performance.
What you'd test for is the possibility that your modification might have had an unintended effect. For example, say you were modifying a potato and as an unintended consequence your modification increased solanine production to toxic levels across the board. Frankly, this is the kind of thing that happens occasionally even with standard breeding practices. It still warrants testing.
*If anyone is interested in an example, see: HuMouse development, history of. It's a whole series of modifications with unexpected consequences to the target organism. The current HuMouse immune system still does not function exactly like a human's - but it is a lot closer.
Agree with all of this. Are you in the biological sciences? You sound like you know your stuff.
Yes. I'm a computational biologist.
I started with the PhD in microbiology and molecular genetics and later got an MS in computer science. Been a long time since I worked in a lab*, but my thesis project included months of nothing but round after round of cloning and characterizing 'randomly' generated point mutations targeted to a particular region of a protein.
*To give you an idea, my 2nd rotation was working with anthrax when labs that did still had problems getting funding.
Very cool. The advent of high throughput sequencing and proteomics has really given bioinformations and computational biology a bit of a boom time. My PhD is in molecular biology with graduate work focused on protein engineering. Currently I work as a microbiologist in a non-profit focused on drug discovery and development. I am technically a lab scientist but as my career has progressed I've moved more and more away from the bench and into a more desk/management type of role. I get into the lab now and again but not as much as I used to.
My graduate work was a bit similar to what your lab work was from the sounds of it, I used a computational rational design approach to predict thermostabilizing mutations in proteins. My work was the first time such an approach was used to successfully thermostablize an enzyme without negatively affecting its function. After publishing the enzyme I created was picked up by a company and developed into a gene therapy for glioblastoma that is currently in clinical trials.
It really has.
When I was looking for a long term job I was fortunate enough to find a group that was really making strides with microarray and ready to believe that someone could bring that kind of data together with graph theory for their benefit.
I hear you on the changing work. I used to be so busy analyzing data I hardly had time to really think. Now I'm stuck with a bunch of IT and data management and the junior personnel run already developed analysis pipelines and packages.
ETA: forgot to add. Your thesis sounds much more interesting than mine was. Sometimes I wish I'd stuck to the 1st project I chose - studying transcription in H. salinarum. But there were a couple of labs that turned out to be way ahead of me so I chose a safer and much more boring project. Oh well.
I'm proud of my graduate work, but I also realize I got lucky. Science seems to be 5% skill and 95% choosing the right project in the right place at the right time.
Thermostabilizing an enzyme https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15879217 goes to suggesting it might be used in gene therapy https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18291415 goes to development of it into a gene therapy for cancer
http://tocagen.com/our-science/
I'm not part of that company at all nor do I recieve any acknowledgement or royalty because we published our work openly without patents but "Toca 511" uses the protein I produced in my graduate work. They took it and developed it into a product though which is no small feat so I'm not trying to undermine or downplay their involvement. Kind of crazy to see that happen, that company is basically based on something I made. (Not there there is an "I" in science, its always a "we" I'm not trying to claim it was all me, it was my project and I drove it forward but couldn't have done it without support of my advisors and lab).
Reason I'm bringing this up at all in this thread is to point out that I have personal experience using genetic engineering in a way to help develop a therapeutic that got picked up and developed by a company that is now in clinical trials for glioblastoma and is currently being used to treat people that previously had no hope for survival. Yet somehow I don't work for Monsanto, imagine that. That is why this anti-GE stance pisses me off.
Excellent. I had a very good friend die from glioblastoma.
Most of the work done where I am now is vaccine and therapeutics development and research. I don't think people realize how large a role genetic engineering plays and how crippled medical research would be if we were no longer able to use it and its products.
The focus of the institute I work at is mainly vaccine and diagnostic development, I just happen to work in the one drug development group. I'd link to where I work but not sure that is the best idea in the word knowing what people on the internet can sometimes be like (not you personally, just putting it out there makes me a bit nervous). Probably said to much already on that front. my username on here used to have my last name in it and I learned quickly that wasn't a good idea.1 -
Aaron_K123 wrote: »Aaron_K123 wrote: »Aaron_K123 wrote: »Aaron_K123 wrote: »clicketykeys wrote: »NorthCascades wrote: »
Also, I'm not just pulling this out of my butt. A lot of people learn that a specific GMO food is safe, and think that means all GMO is safe. That's the bad thing I'm talking about; we learn that some GMOs are safe and we let our guard down, fail to test new ones adequately.Aaron_K123 wrote: »Um...honestly not sure what you are asking.
Couldn't you say the same for any other process, though? We learn that some pasteurized products are safe and fail to test the new ones.
How much research should it take on a process before we stop requiring testing? Or should all new products have required testing anyway?
But we aren't talking about testing the process, we're talking about testing the product. And yes, the new product needs to be tested because it may not do what it was designed to do.
Contrary to popular belief, one does not simply pick out a gene from one organism, insert it into another and voila - you are 100% guaranteed that it is properly regulated, transcribed, translated, the protein folds correctly and is post-translationally modified in the way one expected. Even with the precision of CRISPR-CAS, the resulting correctly modified organism may not perform as expected because we don't have perfect understanding of the target system as a whole*. Of course, the more thoroughly the source and target organisms are known, and the more simple and targeted the modification, the more likely a modification will be successful and have only the effect we intend.
Mind you, the usual result of a modification failing is simply that whatever you trait you wanted just doesn't get expressed, or it turns out that your modification interferes with another process in the target organism and you get sub-standard performance.
What you'd test for is the possibility that your modification might have had an unintended effect. For example, say you were modifying a potato and as an unintended consequence your modification increased solanine production to toxic levels across the board. Frankly, this is the kind of thing that happens occasionally even with standard breeding practices. It still warrants testing.
*If anyone is interested in an example, see: HuMouse development, history of. It's a whole series of modifications with unexpected consequences to the target organism. The current HuMouse immune system still does not function exactly like a human's - but it is a lot closer.
Agree with all of this. Are you in the biological sciences? You sound like you know your stuff.
Yes. I'm a computational biologist.
I started with the PhD in microbiology and molecular genetics and later got an MS in computer science. Been a long time since I worked in a lab*, but my thesis project included months of nothing but round after round of cloning and characterizing 'randomly' generated point mutations targeted to a particular region of a protein.
*To give you an idea, my 2nd rotation was working with anthrax when labs that did still had problems getting funding.
Very cool. The advent of high throughput sequencing and proteomics has really given bioinformations and computational biology a bit of a boom time. My PhD is in molecular biology with graduate work focused on protein engineering. Currently I work as a microbiologist in a non-profit focused on drug discovery and development. I am technically a lab scientist but as my career has progressed I've moved more and more away from the bench and into a more desk/management type of role. I get into the lab now and again but not as much as I used to.
My graduate work was a bit similar to what your lab work was from the sounds of it, I used a computational rational design approach to predict thermostabilizing mutations in proteins. My work was the first time such an approach was used to successfully thermostablize an enzyme without negatively affecting its function. After publishing the enzyme I created was picked up by a company and developed into a gene therapy for glioblastoma that is currently in clinical trials.
It really has.
When I was looking for a long term job I was fortunate enough to find a group that was really making strides with microarray and ready to believe that someone could bring that kind of data together with graph theory for their benefit.
I hear you on the changing work. I used to be so busy analyzing data I hardly had time to really think. Now I'm stuck with a bunch of IT and data management and the junior personnel run already developed analysis pipelines and packages.
ETA: forgot to add. Your thesis sounds much more interesting than mine was. Sometimes I wish I'd stuck to the 1st project I chose - studying transcription in H. salinarum. But there were a couple of labs that turned out to be way ahead of me so I chose a safer and much more boring project. Oh well.
I'm proud of my graduate work, but I also realize I got lucky. Science seems to be 5% skill and 95% choosing the right project in the right place at the right time.
Thermostabilizing an enzyme https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15879217 goes to suggesting it might be used in gene therapy https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18291415 goes to development of it into a gene therapy for cancer
http://tocagen.com/our-science/
I'm not part of that company at all nor do I recieve any acknowledgement or royalty because we published our work openly without patents but "Toca 511" uses the protein I produced in my graduate work. They took it and developed it into a product though which is no small feat so I'm not trying to undermine or downplay their involvement. Kind of crazy to see that happen, that company is basically based on something I made. (Not there there is an "I" in science, its always a "we" I'm not trying to claim it was all me, it was my project and I drove it forward but couldn't have done it without support of my advisors and lab).
Reason I'm bringing this up at all in this thread is to point out that I have personal experience using genetic engineering in a way to help develop a therapeutic that got picked up and developed by a company that is now in clinical trials for glioblastoma and is currently being used to treat people that previously had no hope for survival. Yet somehow I don't work for Monsanto, imagine that. That is why this anti-GE stance pisses me off.
Excellent. I had a very good friend die from glioblastoma.
Most of the work done where I am now is vaccine and therapeutics development and research. I don't think people realize how large a role genetic engineering plays and how crippled medical research would be if we were no longer able to use it and its products.
The focus of the institute I work at is mainly vaccine and diagnostic development, I just happen to work in the one drug development group. I'd link to where I work but not sure that is the best idea in the word knowing what people on the internet can sometimes be like (not you personally, just putting it out there makes me a bit nervous). Probably said to much already on that front. my username on here used to have my last name in it and I learned quickly that wasn't a good idea.
It isn't just that - it's also that if you did so, any thing you post here could potentially come back to haunt you at work. All it takes is one joke, and a disgruntled co-worker ...
I don't ever bring up specifics on my workplace, either. Granted, I may be scarred from years of HR classes in how (not to) handle media outlets and the consequences for doing so.1
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