Biotechs Mine Bacteria for Industrial Use

New York Times
By The Associated Press
June 25, 2004

PALO ALTO, Calif. (AP) -- The creatures are known as "extremophiles", and they earn the name: They live in toxic Superfund cleanup sites, boiling deep-sea rift vents, volcanic craters and polar glaciers -- some of the planet's harshest environments.

These single-celled creatures owe their hardiness to genes, and that has drawn the attention of a few biotech companies. The companies train the genes to mass produce industrial-strength enzymes for such products as better detergents, cleaner chemicals and more effective DNA fingerprints.

Such "bio-prospecting" efforts have huge potential for good. They just might make hazardous waste cleanup more affordable, reduce pollution and make better medicines if the microbes' genetic durability can be exploited and controlled.

But tough questions are being raised as well -- about the morality of allowing private companies to patent and profit from Mother Nature.

The extremophile candidates are numerous. There's Deinoccus radiodurans, dubbed Conan the Bacterium by its legions of fans because it withstands 10,000 times the amount of radiation that would kill a human. Found on radiated food, it has a unique ability to repair broken DNA.

In Chile's moonlike Atacama desert -- one of Earth's driest spots -- lives another extremophile scientists say could give them clues to what life might look like on Mars.

And the Pentagon's research arm, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, is sponsoring experiments on genetically engineering extremophiles to extend the shelf life of blood-clotting platelets in extreme conditions. The idea is to help treat battlefield wounds.

Objections to such work often come from activists who complain that Third World countries aren't properly compensated for microbes extracted from their deserts, mountains and sea shores.

"The concern with bio-prospecting is that the people who consider themselves to be the stewards of the biodioversity in a region often aren't consulted or are ignored," said Beth Burrows of the Edmonds Institute, a environmental nonprofit based in Edmonds, Wash.

Native Hawaiians are angry over a deal between the University of Hawaii and a biotechnology company to share in potential profits gleaned from lava sludge. Now the Hawaiian Legislature is considering a moratorium on the transfer or sale of extremophiles found on public lands so environmental and profit-sharing issues can be worked out.

Antarctica is governed by an international treaty that vows to keep the continent open and free to scientists dedicated to peaceful pursuits. But some 92 patents have been filed in the United States and another 62 in Europe that claim ownership of biological property found there.

While such patent applications appear to be legal, "some scientists active in Antarctica worry about whether outright commercial exploitation and patents are within the spirit of the treaty," said Sam Johnston, who co-wrote a report on the subject for the United Nations this year.

The Edmonds Institute sued the National Park Service in 1997 after it gave San Diego-based Diversa Corp. commercial rights to prospect for extremophiles in the fabled hot springs of Yellowstone National Park. The prospecting, involving fees and royalties paid to the government, was ultimately approved by a judge on the condition that an extensive environmental review be completed.

The park service has defended the deal -- which remains on hold pending the review -- as a way for it to profit on scientific research without disrupting the park's environment. Four decades ago, the park service wasn't so financially savvy when a University of Wisconsin researcher discovered the extremophile Thermus aquaticus in a Yellowstone hotspring.

Today, that bacterium provides a key enzyme -- polymerase -- used for polymerase chain reaction, better known as PCR, a Noble Prize-winning DNA fingerprinting technique used widely by crime labs, hospitals and university researchers.

Yellowstone doesn't receive any income from sales of the PCR enzyme, now a key tool in the $300 million-a-year DNA fingerprinting business.

The companies involved say that without the ability to patent extremophiles, they can't make good on the many promises of this area of biotechnology.

David Estell, a researcher at Genencor International Inc., said bio-prospecting requires the collecting of just a few samples, which hardly disturbs the environment.

Genencor is one of the few profitable biotechnology companies in existence, earning $13 million in the first quarter of 2004 on $94 million in revenue.

Genencor has the genetic material of 15,000 strains of microbes stored in deep-freeze in Palo Alto and the Netherlands. It already has 11 industrial products on the market, and is using living material -- enzymes and proteins, rather than fossil fuels -- to develop cleaner and cheaper ways of making industrial chemicals.

For instance, Genencor takes a gene that gives a microbe alkaline resistance and uses it to create enzymes for laundry detergent. One enzyme is used in Tide detergent, another is used to give jeans a faded look.

Both are produced by extremophiles found thriving in highly alkaline lakes in East Africa and Kenya. The extremophile genes responsible for making these enzymes are genetically engineered into commonplace bacteria, which are then coaxed to grow by the trillions in giant brewers' vats at Genencor's nine factories around the world.

"The goal," Estell said, "is make proteins do something they've never done before."

Statement of the South African Council of Churches (SACC)

May 2004

As participants in the first SACC consultation on GMOs held at the ESCOM Convention Centre, Midrand, South Africa from 26-28 May 2004:

We welcome the initiative taken by the SACC in convening this consultation on a topic which needs in-depth and more urgent and focussed attention by Christians and the churches.

We thank the organisers for providing us the opportunity to enhance our understanding of GMOs by means of a well-balanced program, thus enabling us to broaden and deepen our contribution to the debate. We were given the opportunity to listen to presentations from different sides of the debate, and to reflect on and affirm our own Christian and indigenous spiritual heritage and traditions.

African Hunger and GE Food Crops

Dulcie Krige
June 2004

Vast public relations efforts are being made to convince the world that genetically engineered (GE) food crops can prevent starvation in Africa but the mechanics of how this would happen are never explained. GE crops do not necessarily increase yield, in fact extensive research shows GE soy yields 5 - 10 % less than non-GE high-yielding varieties. The purpose of most GE is to reduce the need for labour by permitting the use of herbicides to kill weeds rather than by using manual weeding.

I have been fortunate enough to have visited numerous subsistence and small commercial farms in South Africa and it is clear that the labour to hoe and cultivate is abundant but the capital to obtain expensive inputs such as herbicides and patented seed is non-existent. Even the cost of pipes and pumps to get water from the river to the field, of fencing a field to stop goats eating the crop and of providing secure storage to prevent rain and rodent and insect damage makes farming difficult for the small farmers who produce over seventy percent of Africa's food crops.

In Africa the cause of hunger is not an absolute shortage of food but:

Many African governments are afraid of the health risks of GE food crops. This is because where people are poor they depend on a major cheap staple such as corn for most of their food requirements. If this is the only food they eat and there are health risks associated with it then people will be affected much more dramatically than in a country such as the US where people eat a range of food and where the major GE crops such as corn and soy are used predominantly as livestock feed rather than human food. There is concern regarding the use of antibiotic resistant genes in GE and of possible allergic and toxic effects of GE food crops. Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt), an insecticide gene incorporated into GE corn, would be consumed in far greater quantities than in countries where there is not reliance on a single staple food.

Is there a cost-effective alternative to expensive biotech solutions for the very real problem of insect damage to crops? Farmers have developed indigenous solutions which have been shown to be highly effective. There are many studies which show better profit for farmers who practice organic methods than those who use pesticides and fertilizers.

An interesting commentary on whether GE does reduce malnutrition is that in the world's third largest producer of GE crops, Argentina, according to the social services agency of the Catholic Church, forty percent of children are undernourished.

If the financial resources that are poured into the development of biotechnology - and into wars and arms deals - were instead used to remove constraints on small farmers through the development of irrigation, fencing, seed-fairs for the exchange of seeds, transport, storage, agricultural extension officers, and most important of all the attainment of political stability, Africa would be able to feed itself in a truly sustainable fashion once more.

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