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Perspective: Lessons from the elephant that is biotechnology

2006; Wiley; Volume: 34; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1002/bmb.2006.49403402155

1539-3429

Norman C. Ellstrand,

Genetically Modified Organisms Research

In the popular fable, a group of blind men inspects the first elephant ever to visit their village. Each blind man approaches the elephant, but each touches a different part. They fall into an argument. The one holding the trunk declares the elephant to be like a snake. The one caressing an ear says it is like a fan. The one attempting to embrace a leg announces that the elephant is similar to a tree. And so on. It is only when one of the men is willing to move over the whole elephant, touching here and there, that its true form is made apparent. At that moment, the blind men become wise men. In the two decades that I have been involved in science-based policy associated with the risks of biotechnology, I have come to appreciate that plant biotechnology is an elephant. The “head” with its wondrous tusks, ears, and trunk is biotechnology's novelty, the opportunity to move alleles among unrelated organisms, even among the kingdoms of life. “Something new and exciting! An evolution revolution!” were claims made in the 1980s to venture capitalists and the popular press. And indeed, the benefits of biotechnology have begun to accumulate. Human insulin, now made by microorganisms, has improved and extended the lives of countless diabetics, including my brother. But when environmental scientists asked whether such a novel technology should proceed with prudence, especially for crops that would be released into the environment, they were shown the more mundane and less imposing tail end of the elephant. “Nothing new. Same as traditional crop improvement,” they were assured. However, even the traditional improvement of domesticated organisms occasionally leads to problems. For example, deliberate attempts to create better agricultural organisms resulted in Africanized bees in the New World [1] and weed beets in Europe [2], both of which have resulted in human hardship. Perhaps the tail end of the elephant is more familiar; nonetheless, it may still produce some unpleasant surprises. The educational trend in the last decades of the 20th century was to build specialists. Specialists are particularly good at accumulating depth, of disassembling a system, and gathering a lot of information about a tiny part of the system. With the accumulation of this kind of knowledge may come excessive pride, hubris. “The gene and its products are well characterized,” is commonly heard in response to fears that a transgene may have unexpected effects. This deep, but narrow, approach has its limits. For example, the allele that causes albinism in humans prevents the creation of a well characterized biochemical end product, melanin. Because melanin is the compound that accounts for much of our coloration, it is not surprising that homozygous individuals have white skin and white hair. However, homozygous individuals have characteristics that might not be anticipated without understanding the whole organism: skin roughness, high frequency of skin cancer, nearsightedness, structural abnormalities of the eye, and hearing problems [3]. The elephant that is biotechnology requires a new look at the mantra taught in basic genetics: “The phenotype is the product of the genotype and the environment.” When we consider the phenotype produced by the inserted gene we need to ask “With regard to which environment?” Classical genetics teaches us that one portion of the environment is the rest of the genome and to consider epistatic effects. All of the melanin producing alleles at all of the additive loci still won't contribute to melanin production if the pathway is blocked by homozygosity for albinism. Furthermore, molecular genetics, cytogenetics, and cell biology have shown gene expression to be affected by the gene's history and the local cellular biochemical milieu; the age of the cell, imprinting, gene order, gene duplication, polyploidy, the position of the cell relative to others, etc. There is the local organismal environment as well; is the hair white because of homozygosity for albinism, age, or that bottle of bleach in the bathroom? Or is it an ecosystem effect of spending time outside in a region that receives a lot of UV rays? The anatomy of the crop biotechnology elephant doesn't stop with the biological environment. What about the social environment? Do people perceive agricultural fields as part of the nature (as they do in much of Europe)? What about perception of food? I once asked a Mexican colleague if he could compare the Mexican value of maize to the value that Americans give certain items. He laughed, “Maize is more important to Mexicans than TVs are to Americans, but not quite as important as cars!” Clearly, food plants can have as much as a social phenotype as they have a biological phenotype, and that phenotype is still determined by a combination of genotype and environment. The elephant has lessons to teach. The solutions to the problems of the 21st century cannot come only from individuals with a deep but narrow view. As one of my colleagues recently told me, “Just because you can dig the deepest tunnel, you don't exactly have the best perspective on the world.” But the solutions to problems certainly cannot come from generalists with a broad but shallow perspective. Depth is necessary to understand the balance of simplicity and complexity in an area of endeavor. Equally important is the ability to understand that (a) disciplines interact and (b) that other disciplines have the same balance of simplicity and complexity as one's own specialty. Students must be taught to recognize that the boundaries of their expertise are artificial and that in their professional life it is possible and often desirable to step out of one's specialty and to gain enough knowledge about other areas to join and communicate with others to solve problems. The old saw of interconnectedness is becoming very real as we come to recognize that how rainfall patterns influence China's apple crop will affect the income of cranberry producers in Massachusetts. We want to teach both knowledge and wisdom. But how do we educate students in some depth and still be nimble enough to interface with other disciplines? Aren't we having a difficult enough time fitting in what we think is basic biology, chemistry, math, physics, writing, and language education in the undergraduate experience? I contend that we don't need to add curriculum to teach breadth, interconnectedness, healthy open-mindedness, and the ability to be nimble. We just need skillful modification of what we've got. For example, I teach human genetics to non-majors. One of the important lessons that I teach them is that scientists don't have all of the answers. I do this indirectly, with little case studies that make the point. One is the example that human geneticists had the number of human chromosomes wrong for years. Another more vivid example is the story of the genetic basis of “asparagus urine”. Originally, the odor of asparagus in human urine following consumption of the vegetable was assigned as a Mendelian trait. It took decades for a scientist to follow individuals into the bathroom, only to find that everyone produces the odor! It is the ability to smell that odor that is the trait! Sure, we've got a lot of memorization to teach. But let's teach the science as it really is, interconnected with the world. Let's remember to put synthetic fertilizer and internal combustion engines into the nitrogen cycle. When we teach about the evolution of heavy metal tolerance in plants growing on mine spoils, let's remind them that the Romans started those mines for the production of brass and bronze. Let's include scientists into the equation and remind students that scientists are people, too. People are complex and interesting. To illustrate, Fritz Haber received the Nobel Prize for inventing the process that makes ammonia from inert nitrogen, thereby creating synthetic fertilizer that feeds billions. He also is the father of chemical warfare. And most ironic, this German Jew invented an insecticidal gas, which, after his death, was used to kill Jews during the Holocaust [4]. What is the anatomy of the elephant that is crop biotechnology? Although it is not clear that anyone has touched every surface of the beast, the form that is emerging is one of a complicated tool. Just as a hammer can be used to build a house, so can it be used to bash out someone's brain. One cannot disengage the effects of a tool from its context. Genetically engineered crops are connected to a global economy, to the biosphere's cycling of water and nutrients, to human tradition and culture, and to their wild relatives by the potential to interbreed. This article was written during my 2005–2006 sabbatical at Keck Graduate Institute (KGI). Many thanks to my KGI hosts for the time, space, and good conversation necessary for thinking and learning. This piece benefited from the comments from Sheldon Schuster.