In the coming weeks, I plan to give the blog a much-needed visual and functional update. Biofortified is run with WordPress, which allows for an enormous set of possibilities. I plan to replace the blog’s current theme with a more functional updated one that will look similar. The fading features gallery seen before on the blog will return, which was lost because of a conflict between the current theme and a recent wordpress update. Along the sidebar, we have added Frank’s Twitter widget, an awards section (hopeful for more!), and a Networked Blogs widget that shows who is following the blog in Facebook. With the updated theme, I will also add a much-needed “Latest Forum Posts” section so that you don’t have to sift through the forum categories to see if people are talking about things. Of course, the recent comments and calendar are good things to have, and the tabs full of information will stay, too.

What other kinds of sidebar features have you seen on the blogs that you read that you would like to see here? (Tag cloud, Similar Posts, Google news feed…)

Now on to the other special functions and doodads we are going to include in the blog. Another great thing about WordPress if that we can quickly upload and activate plugins that give the blog new functions. There are thousands of such plugins to choose from.

As has been mentioned before, we are going to include a plugin that will enable contributors who have their own blogs to have new posts automatically (or near-automatically) syndicated on Biofortified. So for those of us who blog in more than one place, this will make life easier. But for readers who have their own blogs and would like to contribute from time to time, we will be able to set you up in the plugin to be able to do so. This has the potential to greatly expand the number of bloggers who can be a part of this group blogging effort. In fact, it might make us not only a group blog but also a blogging network! We are trying to see if the author of the Feedwordpress plugin will be able to modify the plugin to suit a few special needs we have that could make this process go more smoothly. Contributors could advertise their involvement with a special banner, and readers and fans could have one too. Here is one mockup.

Next, it would be great if we could make it possible for other bloggers to be able to show the latest posts on Biofortified on their sidebars. For wordpress, this is easy, as there are many feed-reading sidebar plugins to choose from, and we could even customize our own if we wanted to. But this leaves out bloggers without a wordpress blog. It would be great if we could make (or modify) some javascript code that will allow the latest posts (and last comment?) from the posts and comments rss feeds to be displayed on the sidebars of other sites. Here’s a mockup of what I thought it might look like. Anyone know any javascript or know someone who does? A feature like this would greatly enhance our ability to show that there is an ongoing discussion to attract readers from other blogs. Sure, we could just encourage people to subscribe to the feeds… but this would be so much cooler! Note the optimistic blog post titles in the example image!

Next, if the page on Genetic Engineering Companies is any indication, there is great potential in getting help from readers in adding content to the pages of the site. The quintessential model of group participation on the web is a wiki, would that be a good addition to Biofortified? Perhaps it could be used to build a database of terms and concepts often discussed on the blog, or going whole-hog and building a comprehensive information resource from the ground-up. The wiki could be hosted internally or on the free Wikispot site, which I have been involved with. Here is an example of a wiki on genetics that I started a couple years ago, but only got so far as to build a few basic pages and 500 placeholders for terms and concepts. A external wiki could be very useful, but it means more time spent managing the wiki and less time spent writing  posts.

Then again, there is also a wikifying plugin for wordpress that will allow us to open up certain pages for registered users to edit on their own and build content. We could do a ‘project of the month’ or something to try to add batches of pages to the blog. As with all wikis, there are issues with vandalism, however, there are ways to deal with that. Do either of these wiki ideas sound like a good idea?

Speaking of adding pages, Anastasia is working on a list of books for the blog, and proceeds of sales will go to supporting the blog.

Anything else? Video in the sidebar? Related Posts plugin? Enhanced user profile pages? I’m open to suggestions! Feel free to get lost in the WordPress plugin directory – people have all kinds of interesting ideas expressed in widget form.

Thumpetty thump thump,
Thumpety thump thump,
Look at Franky grow.
Thumpetty thump thump,
Thumpety thump thump,
In all the farmers rows.

Franky the Snowmaize knew
That Greenpeace was out that day,
So he said “Let’s run and
We’ll have some fun
Now before I’m plucked away.”
Down from the city,
With pitchforks in their hands,
Running here and there
Carving circles in his hair saying
Donate if you can.
He led them down the streets of town
Right to U.S.D.A.
And he only paused a moment when
He heard a judge say “Political Hay!”
Though Franky the Snowmaize
Eliminates some sprays,
But he waved goodbye saying,
“Don’t you cry,
I will grow again someday.”

Thumpetty thump thump,
Thumpety thump thump,
Look at Franky grow.
Thumpetty thump thump,
Thumpety thump thump,
In all the farmer’s rows!

Merry Frankmas and a Happy New Year!

We have won a $1500 grant which we will use to bring more good stuff to the site, a conversation with Michael Pollan which will be sure to be enlightening for all, and an enhanced social media training session. Specific details of the last two have yet to be worked out, but what was conjecture last week is truly official now!

We will also be featured in a one-page ad in the Stanford Social Innovation Review magazine. Start the presses!

The runners-up were the Non-GMO Project and “The Campaign for Healthier Eating in America.” Although vote totals are not visible on the site, our unofficial count put us at over 800 votes, more than twice the number of votes of each of these two entries. The most-voted Latin American entry, Healthy Kids, Healthy Forests, has also won a round-trip ticket to anywhere in South America.

In what was a phenomenally exciting final few days of the contest, science bloggers and more came out of the woodwork to support us, and we would like to thank each and every one of you again for your help in promoting us and voting for us. A lot of people should deservedly share in this victory.

Not only is it a victory for science communication, but also for dialogue, honesty, and independence. There are a lot of vested interests on both sides of the debate over genetic engineering, and it is heartening to see that an independent group blog such as ours could muster support from the blogosphere and get people talking about the genetics of food like never before. I would like to see this continue, through the posts we will continue to write, more guest commentaries, interviews, videos, and conversations with each other in the new forum. We’ve been getting suggestions for new ideas, and we welcome more.

I would like to commend the Non-GMO Project and in particular their Executive Director Megan Westgate for supporting honest dialogue when things got a little ugly and accusations were flying around. And the Ashoka Changemakers people behind the scenes had to sift through almost two thousand votes to certify the contest – not a small feat so pat them on the back. I would like to thank them for hosting this contest and helping to facilitate more discussion on this important topic.

We’re now Change-Makers, so lets go out there and make some real change in the discussion about changes in the genetics of our plants. I hope you will stick around here awhile longer and help make a few changes yourselves. Let’s make our second year blogging here better than the first!

Last week, James and the Giant Corn gave us a plug with Putting Prejudice over Science. The Council for Biotechnology Information gave us a plug on Twitter, as well as Mica from Monsanto on her twitter account. Thanks for helping! We enjoyed an early lead of a dozen votes at the beginning, but when Monday morning rolled around, we were behind the Non-GMO Project by about 100 votes. They gathered an impressive number of votes from Friday through the weekend, networking through facebook and other places.

But then at a little after 8 in the morning PZ Myers of the popular blog, Pharyngula, boomed Yum, Genetically Engineered Plants! An hour later, we overtook the competition and took the lead! PZ is an immensely popular blogger, and the pulse of his endorsement was felt across the world, from California to the UK! It was almost inexplicable! Thanks for your help!

Later that day, the indomitable ‘Mean Girl’ Abbie Smith at Endogenous Retrovirus joined in with Vote for Biofortified! and chimed “DOO EEEEEET FOR THE PAPAYAS!!!!” She also liked the discussion going on at the changemakers site on our entry, and anyone that sticks up for the papayas gets an AA in their punnett square as far as I’m concerned. Thank you ERV!

With A Science-based blog about GMO, Tim Kreider at Science Based Medicine gave us a shining endorsement and sent a new army of voters our way. We are happy they like what we are doing over here, we love what you do for medicine over there! Thanks Tim!

Apparently, our quick influx of voters made a few people upset, and they started saying not-so-nice things about who must be supporting us. Cries of “Fixing the Competition” by the ‘biotech industry’ were flying around thanks to my newest bestest buddy GM Watch. And PZ Myers jumped back into the fray with a second post on his blog, saying …and those cheapskates at Monsanto haven’t given me a penny! Thanks PZ for the double-plug, and thanks GM Watch for keeping the attention on us! They must have thought we made a Deal with the Devil… they just didn’t know what kind. We were Pharyngulated.

Dr. ‘Orac’ at Respectful Insolence couldn’t stand to have PZ be the only one getting “all that filthy Monsanto lucre” so he posted, I may be late to this party, but I want my big Monsanto check anyway! You won’t be late in our thanks, oh acrylic-encased one. Thank you!

Thank you everyone who passed on our message through email, facebook, over the phone, etc. Your efforts are not forgotten, pat yourselves on the back – you know who you are!

And thank you Anastasia, Pam, Karl, and David for your tireless efforts to get out the vote and welcome people to the site! You’re all heavyweight science bloggers now. We have only one week to wait as the votes are tallied officially and the winner is announced next Wednesday. The votes are not visible on the entries anymore, but the last tally we had that was just minutes before the contest was closed placed the top three entries in this order:

Biofortified: 830 votes

The Campaign for Healthier Eating in America: 379 votes

The Non-GMO Project: 347 votes

These results are by no means final, as the changemakers team still has to verify that each vote came from a registered user, and we have undoubtedly made their job a lot harder. But it looks like we may have won by more than a 2-to-1 margin. Thanks for your support, everyone who managed to make it through their site to register – I know how hard it was so it means a lot to this little ear. We made a really good showing in this contest, and I hope you will stick around and read what else our bloggers have to say in the future, and check back on Wednesday for the results! Thanks again for everyone who supported us!

Enjoy this nifty graph of the voting progress:

Science is so cool!

And a good time was had by all!

Look, we just passed 600 votes!

I heard that their site was a little awkward and people were having trouble navigating around and voting, so let me show you how to do it step-by-step!

1. First, go to the changemakers registration page. (Try opening the link in a new window or a new tab with a right click so you can refer back to here.) Fill out your name, email, and username. If you are concerned about getting unwanted emails in your inbox, check the box on the right and you won’t be bothered by any. Finally, enter the words you see in the ‘captcha’ box on the bottom – if they look too confusing just click on the little circle of arrows and it will give you another one.

2. You are now registered for the site, and you will get an email in your inbox. In this email will be a random password and a link that takes you back to the changemakers site. Click on it. When you get there, there will be a login button that will automatically log you into the site. The first place it will take you after you click on it is your profile page where you can change your password to something you can remember more easily. Feel free to change it, but if you are just quickly registering to vote it won’t matter. Leave the window open and come back here.

(If you accidentally click off the site, the auto-login link will not work again, so you’ll have to use the username and password sent to your email to login again.)

3. Now that you are registered and logged in, open the Biofortified contest entry page in another window like you did before. (If you go to this page without logging in first you will not be able to vote.) On the right hand side is a Thumb’s Up that shows how many votes we have. Click on it and watch your vote be tallied up!

4. You are done! Wasn’t that easy? Pat yourself on the back for helping us out. Or leave a comment on this post saying you voted so we can pat you on your back, too!

Thank you for your vote, from the center of my pithy stalk. Check back before the 28th to see how well we are doing, and don’t forget to tell your friends!

My flight was delayed, so I missed the first part of the conference. Luckily someone filled me in on what happened. Apparently I’m 1.4 percent Helitron! Good deal.

I managed to get there just in time for the first viewing session for posters. But three geneticists barred my way saying “Is this guy legit?” I thought they didn’t recognize me, but they were pulling my leg, I was expected!

That was a relief! I wouldn’t want to miss these posters. This is my favorite part of scientific meetings. Meeting people, seeing what cool stuff they’re working on. Like Patrice, here, who was comparing the chromosomes of some of my cousins by FISH mapping repeat sequences. That means that wherever there were repetitive segments of DNA of different kinds, she made them glow different colors under the microscope! I wish I could show them to you but this stuff is unpublished. And she was simply glowing to see me.

Later that evening, I listened to a big presentation by Pam Johnson from the National Corn Grower’s Association. My favorite part was when she talked about how the connection between corn geneticists, breeders, farmers, and the consumer was the strongest of any crop grown in the states. It was also neat to know that studying me will help them understand switchgrass and more exotic plants like miscanthus.

Saturday I had a blast in the morning talks. All about how I release Jasmonic Acid when I’m injured, or some mutant relatives of mine that look more like a grass than proper corn. And I learned that even though two corn plants may be hybrids of the same parents, it matters which parent is the mom and which one is the dad!

At the second and final poster session, I got to talk to a few people who run websites about plants. Ann, here, works on the iPlant Collaborative, a center for organizing plant biologists to answer the BIG questions in the field.

And the nice folks at the Maize Genome DataBase told me all I wanted to know about my genome and how to access it from anywhere in the world. They even created a database of my weird looking cousins. Here’s to MaizeGDB! (Always jokers, those database types)

Apparently my fans are everywhere, look at this next guy – he dressed up as a giant… me! He even got the glasses right! And who is this other scientist with you?

Oh of course, it was Karl and Anastasia from Biofortified, promoting their stuff. And lo and behold, James from James and the Giant Corn was here too, so we grabbed him for a group shot.

After dinner, it was time for my keynote address. I was pretty nervous, but I think I managed to move the audience. I felt like they could all see through me, so I tried to imagine them without their husks. I sprinkled in a few, heh, corny jokes to get them started, and then I was off! “Compost! Compost alone moves the wheels of history!” I pounded my fists. I think I had an impact.

After that was over, it was time to party. And corn geneticists know how to do that. They tore open the curtain between the posters and the dining area, cleared out a dance floor, and brought forth the ethanol. These two ladies sure knew how to get down.

I’m not much of a dancer, but I play a good game of Euchre. So while everyone was grooving I was winning the kernels off of some grad students.

The next morning there were a few more talks, and then we all adjourned to go our separate ways. Just when I thought I could slip away un-noticed, a fan called down the hallway asking for a photo op. Sure, I can do a favor for last year’s chairman. Heck, Tom was probably the matchmaker that brought one of my ancestors together!

I had a fun time at Maize Genetics. These are definitely my kind of people. They grow hard, and they yield hard. I hope to see them all again in Italy next year.

Oh, the things I’ve seen!

In the Iowa State University Memorial Union

Hello! I’m Anastasia Bodnar, a second year PhD student at Iowa State University. My major is “Interdepartmental Genetics”, an interdisciplinary program that allows me to work in a variety of fields, including plant breeding, biotechnology, and nutrition.

When I’m not in the lab or the field, I write about the science, ethics, politics, economics, etc of genetically modified plants at my blog Genetic Maize. I’m also a contributor at the blog Clashing Cultures where the interactions of science and religion are explored by people from different faiths and different scientific backgrounds. As of now, I’ll also contribute to Biofortified, writing about my favorite topic, plant genetics, and how this field affects the world around us. I’m very exciting to be working with some of my favorite bloggers on this project. I just hope I can find time to do it all!

Genetic engineering is such a complex topic, one that people (both proponents and opponents, scientists and lay people) oversimplify far too often. It is rarely correct to make a blanket statement about “all GMOs”. For example, I think most of us would agree that herbicide resistant crops created by a large corporation are fundamentally different from the flood tolerant rice created by a scientist with public funds and freely distributed to small farmers in developing countries. These two have different ethical, environmental, safety, social justice, and intellectual property issues, just to name a few. It is unfair, unscientific, and possibly unethical to lump together all products produced by genetic engineering. It is also unfair to lump genetic engineering with what is known as conventional agriculture. Some genetically engineered plants might be more suited for large commercial farming, while others are scale neutral and could fit in well with a variety of farming techniques, including organic. I hope that I can elaborate on these ideas through my posts here at Biofortified.

My major professor is Paul Scott, a USDA researcher in ISU’s Agronomy Department. Manju Reddy is our collaborator in ISU’s Department of Food Science and Human Nutrition. I have three main projects that all aim to improve the nutritional qualities of maize. You can read more about the projects after the cut.

Modern corn varieties have been selected and inbred for so many years that a lot of the genetic diversity has been lost. This means that modern corn has a smaller gene pool, so is lacking in traits like disease resistance. Modern corn also has rather un-nutritious seeds, a problem I’m hoping to help alleviate.

I’m screening two relatives of maize, the grasses teosinte and tripsicum, for interesting seed storage proteins. My studies so far have shown that the proteins in seeds from teosinte and tripsicum are much more varied than in modern corn varieties, and that some of those proteins are higher in essential amino acids. Two of my collaborators are using traditional breeding to get desired traits from teosinte and tripsicum into maize, while I plan to use biotechnology. I hope to explain the advantages and disadvantages of these methods in future posts. This type of biotechnology is called “cisgenics” or “intragenics”, using genes from the species of interest or related species. This is distinct from “transgenics”, which uses genes from an unrelated species.

Another example of cisgenics can be found in my second project, developing maize with improved iron bio-availability using the gene for maize hemoglobin. It seems that all plants have a gene for hemoglobin, but don’t produce the protein at detectable levels. We are hoping that overexpressing the hemoglobin protein in maize will cause the plant to uptake more iron from the soil and store it in the seeds in a highly digestible form. This research is important because anemia, or lack of iron, is the most prevalent nutritional deficiency in the world.

My third project aims to find new ways to use biotechnology in plant breeding and to learn how overexpressing a gene in corn seeds will affect the natural seed proteins. I’m using corn plants that have been engineered to express GFP (green fluorescent protein from jellyfish) in their seeds, selecting for plants that produce brighter and brighter seeds. The gene is controlled by the promoter for one of the many seed storage proteins, so we hypothesize that populations selected for brighter fluorescence will also have the highest levels of the corresponding natural protein. If this is true, then GFP might be used as a easily visible marker to help plant breeders select for proteins or pathways that are difficult to measure – including those that produce nutritionally important compounds.

Meanwhile, I got into food. Well, I’ve known how to bake and cook a few things since I was very young, but on my own living in an apartment I was figuring out how to make different kinds of food, across different cultures. I also had a gardening itch, and started supplementing my diet with vegetables that I tended at an organic community garden on campus. Before long, I was thinking about the biological basis for the wonderful flavors I was tasting, and the nutritional value of produce. I thought, could I make any of these plants better?

On the other side of campus, I dug into a different kind of soil. The muck of a political columnist that made outrageously false claims about climate science galvanized my desire to try to write a science column for the school paper, The California Aggie. I called it The Inoculated Mind, and I wrote it for three years before handing it off to another science writer so I could start something else. I loved picking topics every week to write at length about, and explore not only the history and current status of science, but also the social, philosophical, and political aspects as well. A love for writing (that I never knew I would have) and expressing my opinions (this was never a secret to my family) on controversial subjects had me also hooked.

While I was writing for The Aggie, I started doing a weekly science radio show on a local community station. Later, I replaced writing for the newspaper with writing a blog, keeping the naame, The Inoculated Mind. Soon enough, I turned my radio show into a podcast, which I call the Mindcast. It is available in iTunes, and at my site here.

Pulled in two separate directions, my interest in plant genetics and the genetic basis of flavor and nutrition in crops, and my desire to communicate and editorialize about science in the press, were pulling me in opposite directions, so it seemed. Scientist, or Journalist? How about Journalist Scientist? I’ll do both. Many people expressed doubt that plant genetics and journalism could ever go together. I’ll explain how they’re a perfect match for me below.

I worked in another plant genetics lab, screening tomato DNA for mutations in specific genes, and when I was finished with that and my then-girlfriend, now spouse Ariela finished her degree at Davis, I applied for graduate school in plant genetics. I wanted to enroll in a good plant genetics program at a school with a strong journalism program as well. My first pick was the University of Wisconsin, Madison, which was top in plant breeding, and had a great journalism program, as well as a similar program called Life Sciences Communication. When I was visiting schools to check out their programs, I met a professor at Madison named Dr. Shawn Kaeppler, who had a project that fit me perfectly.

He received a grant to fund a research project on a gene in sweet corn called Sugary Enhancer. It makes already sugary corn even sweeter, but we don’t know where it is or how it works. On seed packages at your local nursery, it has this gene (or the recessive allele of this gene, technically) if it says “Sugar Enhanced.” At the same time, funded by the same grant, Shawn had an educational video project he wanted to start up to promote plant breeding to prospective students and the general public.

So that’s where I find myself today. Working through the five or more long years of graduate student level coursework to get my Ph.D., conducting research on the Sugary Enhancer gene, doing a minor in Life Sciences Communication, and on top of it all, a two-year video project. I’m already working on ideas about what I’ll do when that is complete.

I'm the one in the hat - not the best picture of me at work on my vids!

Maybe I might do something about biofuels, perhaps genetic engineering. But I plan to continue this combinatorial approach to life: doing science, and communicating science at the same time. There’s a lot that can be gained by having people who are knowledgeable about a particular topic who can also communicate the issues surrounding that topic to people who don’t have specialist training in those fields. And lately, there has been a widening public knowledge gap and a deepening controversy over one such topic, Genetic Engineering.

It strikes fear in its opponents, and worry in those who have only barely heard about it. Tinkering with the genetics of the crops that grow our food? Moving genes between species? Altering the nutritional content of produce, or adding compounds toxic to insects? How unprecedented! Actually, it’s not.

We’ve been tinkering with the genetics of our crops for thousands of years, we just haven’t known what we were doing. Genes have moved between species on their own (it’s called Lateral Gene Transfer) over the course of evolution, and we’ve been doing it for a long time by crossing our crops with wild relatives. We’ve been duplicating chromosomes, combining entire species together to form new species (ever eaten wheat?), and enhanced the nutritional content of the carrot, which didn’t used to be orange, by the way. As we have come to understand the ways that plants defend themselves from insect pests, we have come to understand that breeding pest resistant plants was all about increasing the activity of compounds that kill insects.

The few genetically engineered crops that have been on the market have been very widely adopted by farmers, yet, there is a steady distrust and rejection of these crops by consumers. Why? Is it because the first traits engineered into crops benefited the farmers and not the consumers? Is it because large companies were the first to take advantage of the new technology, rather than public institutions? Or is it because it is being perceived as ‘more of the same,’ an extension of problematic farming practices that are damaging the environment, and even our own health? Or does it go deeper than that into philosophical views about the nature of life, and humanity’s place in the Universe?

Or does it stem from a vocal contingent of activists that know only a little about the subject, and the lack of scientists communicating this topic effectively?

Count me in on this debate. It is one of the more important scientific discussions of our time, and not everyone realizes this. We have the ability to directly alter the genetics of our crops (and more), with increasing precision and complexity. We need to discuss how to use this technology, and how this will affect our cultural, social, political, and philosophical views. There are problems that can be solved with it, and issues raised by it, but most of all – scientists need to get involved and keep a clear head about what we want out of it. I think I can do that, to help people learn about this fascinating topic, and give the information necessary and arguments that are helpful in forming opinions about genetic engineering.

But I couldn’t do it alone, especially with my busy schedule as a grad student. So that’s why I started the Biofortified blog project, and invited other scientists and grad students who are interested in educating and fostering public discussion. Together, we can build a valuable public resource and public forum for discussing issues and responding to current events related to the field.

I like to cut deep into the scientific details that I love to study, but I also cut deep into the other reasons why people believe what they believe. I like to think of introducing people to new facts as ‘Inoculating’ them with science, and forming arguments against false or ‘pathogenic’ ideas as inoculating people against those ideas, like a mental vaccine. Yes, I like to debunk or ‘fisk’ poor arguments and you’ll see quite a bit of that from me here. I am interested in biofuels, and as UW-Madison is a part of the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center, I sit in on seminars and a few meetings and I will get to see this project progress first-hand. I’m also intimately connected to the food that I eat, and I might post a few recipes or fun genetic facts about foods that you may or may not yet enjoy. Finally, my opinions on ethical topics will be tempered by a humanistic outlook, where my views are based on verifiable facts and human values, rather than prior philosophical commitments.

I hope you’ll stick around and be a part of the discussion.

But as scientist continue to shine light into the dark corners of the world in search of basic truths and their application to our lives, they are sometimes met with resistance. And as research accelerates and discoveries are made at a rapid pace, it can seem like an insurmountable deluge of information.

Change is an important part of this process. New ideas, approaches, and discoveries change the way we look at things. New technologies change the way we do things. And fear of change is often a major reason why the culture pushes back against science and its achievements. But there are many more factors involved, such as perceived benefits, whether these changes require altering deep-seated emotional or philosophical factors, and campaigns to support or oppose them. But one final important factor is knowledge – it is easy to fear something if you do not understand it.

There are many contentious areas of science today, some are more culturally contentious than scientific, but to put together a short list we have:

• Evolution
• Stem Cell Research
• Global Warming and Climate Change
• Nanotechnology
• Genetic Engineering

What do these topics have in common?

The first and most obvious is that they are complicated. Think about piecing together the evolution of billions of organisms from trillions of dead organisms with only millions of dollars in your budget – and at the same time trying to figure out how to break it down simply for those who aren’t very science-savvy to begin with? How about trying to explain how climate scientists tease apart the tiny details of slow changes in a very large, uncontrollable climate system? Or the ways that pieces of DNA are pieced together and spliced into a cell to produce a protein that alters a plant’s metabolism to produce more of a specific vitamin? It practically takes a Ph.D. just to begin to understand these topics!

Another common element is that they are new. (Well, evolution has been around for almost 150 years, but it is still new to many people and keeps getting re-newed as new discoveries are made, or teaching it gets challenged in public schools…) Stem Cell research holds promise but hasn’t produced any therapies yet, Nanotechnology is already here but most people don’t know how it affects their lives, and genetic engineering has only been around for a couple decades. Like a fall lineup on cable TV, how are we to know what’s good and what isn’t when we’ve only just started watching?

Third, many of these are tied up in politics. Save perhaps this presidential election, opposing evolution has been politically-expedient, and although there have been improvements in the last couple of years, political motivations underlie attempts to undermine the acceptance of climate change. Stem Cell research has been picked up in recent political discussions as a lightning-rod to motivate certain groups of voters, and genetic engineering also comes up, particularly in international politics.

Fourth, every single one of these affects how we view ourselves, at a deep philosophical level. The idea that human beings evolved from single-celled organisms and were not dumped here as-is says a lot about who we are as a species. Considerations about when a single-celled organism becomes a person matter both in how we define ourselves as persons but also whether we can take some of those cells to study or treat diseases that affect us. The idea that human beings are affecting the climate of their home planet in a negative way has profound implications for our future, and approaching our world from a microscopic scale makes you wonder how we can think to comprehend our common-sense view of the world when at scales of nanometers there can be so much going on? Finally, we have the technology to know how we have been changing the basic biology of life itself, and can more precisely direct changes in new directions, at a level never before realized. If we could even directly change our own genetics, what are we then?

Sometimes the staunchest opposition to the developments in these fields can be traced to unwillingness to consider, or re-consider some of these basic philosophical elements of our existence.

Fifth, they are all important. there’s no need to explain the significance of climate change, and perhaps not the potential medical benefits coming out of stem cell research. But the others may not be so obvious. Evolution matters a great deal in medicine – understanding how our species evolved to resist diseases, or became prone to other maladies, can directly benefit from discoveries about our own evolution. Knowing how viruses and bacterial pathogens evolve in response to our defenses and our medicines is of even greater importance. Nanotechnology may benefit manufacturing, medicine, building stronger materials, faster computers, and many more areas. Genetic engineering in agriculture can help alleviate hunger, malnutrition, reduce dependence on pesticides, and help agriculture become more sustainable. In other areas it may have untold more benefits.

Sixth, as with all new things, there are risks involved. If global warming science is faulty, there could be economic hardship for little to no reason, or if nanotechnology gets out of hand the surface of the world could be turned into grey goo. (Just kidding) In the case of genetic engineering, what unforeseen consequences could there be from changing the genetics of the plants that we grow, or even ourselves? The potential risks involved in these topics contribute to their controversial nature. But in many of these cases, many of the objections raised have been answered, and risks are comparable or even favorable to the status quo? Sometimes the risk of inaction can be worse than the risks of action.

With new internet communications technologies such as blogs, podcasts, and more, science has gained a new way to reach people. Many scientist bloggers have joined together to form group blogs that have become quite successful in fostering discussion:

The Panda’s Thumb is a world-class resource for discussing new research in evolutionary biology and responding to anti-evolutionary political movements. From creationist quote-mines to new fossils, for some science enthusiasts it is a daily read.

A group of climate scientists also banded together to form Real Climate, where climate myths are flayed and temperature graphs are made readable. Any and all questions about global warming research can be asked here.

Recently, a cadre of medical doctors joined together to respond to medical myths, ‘medicine’ that could practically be called mythological, and discuss other issues related to medicine. They may only talk a little about stem cell research, but Science Based Medicine is another great read.

Another site that is worthy of note isn’t so much a group blog as it is a collective of science blogs, where many of the above topics are discussed. Check out ScienceBlogs.com

But one topic is conspicuously missing from the larger discussion – Genetic Engineering. It gets discussed briefly here or there, but until today there has been no equivalent home for talking about this expanding area of research and development. Until today, that is.

Biofortified is a new group blog devoted to educating the public about genetic engineering, and discussing how it intersects many aspects of our lives. From politics to cultural issues, from genes that affect farmers to those that affect your lunch, there’s going to be a lot to talk about. On the science side, there’s a lot more than genetic engineering itself to discuss, and we’ve got a small but growing group of professors and graduate students who are eager to bring the bring the science behind what’s on your dinner table into your dinnertime conversation.

The name Biofortified comes from biofortification, which is when the bioavailable nutritional content of a food crop is enhanced. Literally, strengthened through biology. Like fortifying foods with vitamins, biofortification through breeding or genetic engineering can allow the plants to produce the nutrients that people need on their own. This can be good for people in industrialized nations, but a boon for developing countries. It is also a topic that several of our authors find personally very interesting!

One by one, our bloggers will introduce themselves to you and then we’ll get this blog going. Over time, we will add more scientists to our ranks, but to start with we have four bloggers. We’ll let them tell you more about themselves, but here they are by name:

• Karl Haro von Mogel
• Anastasia Bodnar
• Pamela Ronald, Ph.D.
• David Tribe, Ph.D.

We will also invite guest experts to write about topics that they are close to, and if you want to write something too, do let us know! We hope that you will stick around and fortify your brains with some food for thought on this increasingly important and expanding aspect of agriculture. Welcome to Biofortified!