Threadless recently hosted* a t-shirt contest for Jeffery Smith‘s Institute for Responsible Technology: the No GMO t-shirt design challenge (see Karl’s post Vote for talking, not fighting for more details). One of the shirts really struck me: GMO Shortens Life Span by Michael. The artist proposes an equation:
plants + DNA = death
This slogan really makes me wonder – does the artist know that plants have DNA? Does he know that his own cells are teeming with DNA? That without DNA, life wouldn’t exist? Do most people know that DNA is essential for life? What would the average person say if told that they eat about 100 thousand miles of DNA in the average meal?
If this is the level of understanding, or rather, misunderstanding, that persons have, can we ever expect to have useful discourse on the subject of biotechnology or even biology itself? This worries me greatly. Just in case anyone out there reading this is concerned that DNA is dangerous, I’d like to provide a simple recipe that anyone can use to see and touch DNA for themselves.
Cotton like Candy
Or Cottonseed you can Eat thanks to Genetic Engineering.
A few years ago, I read about a research group that had used genetic engineering to remove a poisonous compound from cotton seed. Now, it seems, they are one step closer to making a positive impact on the availability of food for people in developing countries and beyond. Time Magazine reports that Dr. Keerti Rathore and his team, who made the development years ago have now moved on to field trials, a necessary step to test the resilience and effectiveness of the trait in real-world conditions.
RNA that Interferes
Let me tell you how this works. They used a technique called RNA interference, or RNAi. When plants (and other organisms we are finding) are infected with a virus that uses RNA as its genetic material, they defend themselves by chopping up the offending molecule. Cells use the double-stranded DNA as genetic material, and use the very similar single-stranded RNA to carry information from the genes to the rest of the cell for making proteins. But the RNA that these viruses use is double-stranded, like DNA. Since plants don’t use RNA as a double-strand, this gives them something different to detect and destroy, and that’s what they do.
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