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Team:UEA-JIC Norwich/Human practices/Interviewone
From 2011.igem.org
http://www.4shared.com/audio/2hpVb6Mu/interview_1mp3.html
Interview One
Interviewer:
‘’The first question is basically, do you know what Synthetic Biology is?’’
Interviewee:
‘’Yes I do. ‘’
Interviewer:
‘’Can you elaborate, and give us a definition?’’
Interviewee:
‘’I’d probably site the work of Craig Venter and others who’s been playing around with synthetic genomes and trying to create organisms with the minimum amount of genes necessary.’’
Interviewer:
‘’How do you personally feel about Synthetic Biology?’’
Interviewee:
‘’Well i think it’s very very interesting subject and also it’s going to reveal a lot about the base number of genes that are required to make an organism function. And I think the more we understand about that, then I’m sure there will be potential applications. These are very important concepts, I can image why lots of people will not be entirely happy with it, there are all these issues with containment and other things. But I think it’s going to help us answer some important, fundamental questions about the minimum number of genes and number of functions required to create an independent living organism.''
Interviewer:
‘’Has the media influenced your opinion? Have you seen anything on the media about it?’’
Interviewee:
‘’I don’t follow media coverage of that, only at a very superficial level in that I would listen to BBC news, sky news, that’s where I heard a lot of the first disclosures about the achievements of Venter. I try not to allow that to influent my particular conceptions about what the good and bad aspects of that might be. ‘’
Interviewer:
‘’It is relatively scarce on the media, because it’s not that old.’’
Interviewee:
‘’It is yes, and I think that I’m surprised that many more groups who are sceptical about or scared about these potential technologies have not been more vocal or achieve more air time than they might have done. A good example of that is the anti GM lobby about ten years ago had the media eating out of their hands about this, the media was very sympathetic towards them but now I think that things have turned around. But I’m surprised in a way that there not been a similar back clash against Synthetic Biology. Certainly not on the same scale. ‘’
Interviewer:
‘’Yeah defiantly. Maybe some people are not aware of Synthetic Biology.’’
Interviewee:
‘’Yeah, I think as people become more educated about these things they come to realise a lot of the criticism led on against these technologies are not justified, and a very good example of that is genetically modified plants.’’
Interviewer:
‘’That leads us on to our next question. So do you know what Genetic Modification is? And do you know what the difference between that and Synthetic Biology are?’’
Interviewee:
‘’Yeah, I hope I do. I teach on the subject. Well Genetic Modification means different things to different people. A lot of the crop blast, obviously domesticated crop blast are a result of a Genetic Modification process, there are no equivalent wild species of those cultivated plants out there, they’ve been hybridised, selected by man and domesticated. So you can think of that as a form of Genetic Modification. And most people’s contemporary opinion of Genetic Modification is moving genes between species, different species or within a species. Which is something that’s happened a lot that happens in wild populations. Many people are of course sceptical about it and I think a lot of that steams from their misunderstanding of what Genetic Modification is. A lot of the early examples of Genetic Modification in crop plants were unfortunate in a way because the genes that we used – herbicide resistance, insect resistance, pest resistance had a lot of knock on effects, so if you make herbicide resistance plants it obviously has an effect on biodiversity which people did not foresee. And the same with insect resistance transgenics as well. But there are ways in which people have tried to address that. Particularly the case of insect resistance by having non GM plants around standard procedure or having insects which encourage biodiversity. It’s a lot more complicated than that of course but I think what those two examples show is the power of Genetic Modification and I think that many people think they are associate Genetic Modification as a whole with those first ways of genetic protoplast that were used in agriculture and had adverse effect on biodiversity. But those are quite extreme examples but these no reason why you can’t take a gene...a very good example of this is golden rice, it’s been genetically modified to enhance its beta-carotene content. That’s a very good example, and it’s taken fifteen years for that technology to get from the lab to a test state where people can actually grow it in the field and determine how well it’s going to be performing in a field. It’s a very good example of a scientist thinking, I can do something good for mankind here by addressing this problem of beta-carotene deficiency in rice by introducing a few genes. Unfortunately for him he stumbled upon problem of infringing other peoples in sighting property, so he wasn’t in a position to market it and the hurdles a genetically modified plant has to overcome to the market place are much more server than introducing a new variety of a crop. So I think that genetic modification will be important for agriculture in the future but i think that many people think that many of the significant improvement in plant breeding, crop productivity will come from conventional breeding but using modern genetic techniques to speed up the breeding process. And i don’t think any believes for one moment that genomic modification is going to be the answer to every body’s problems as regards to a constrainable food supply, etc. Because it’s not, but it should be something available to scientists to use as there are many examples where you can’t transfer genes into crop that you want to because of conventional hybridisation barriers, and the only way then is through genetic modification. Genetic Modification the way its achieved these days is much more precise than conventional breeding procedure because when your doing conventional breeding, when your bring a new gene from a new variety into an existing variety your bringing in whole load of other genes and you cannot predict what the consequences will be. But it’s much easily to predict the consequences of introducing a single gene are into a new variety. ‘’
Interviewer:
‘’Do you think people are more introduce to the more negative aspect of GM, and a bit brushed away from the positive aspect? For instance, in medicine whether you use genetic material in bacteria to product a synthetic thyroid hormone for people who suffer from Hashimoto’s disease.’’
Interviewee:
‘’Yes, and I think if you look at Genetic Modification, and obviously bacteria don’t naturally produce insulin. But that’s one way we can use bacteria that has direct application in human medicine for a type of diabetes. And I think a lot of the anti GM feeling is not necessarily because of the technology itself, but the way its controlled and I think many people perceive that genetically modified plants are going to be controlled by a few multi-national companies that will build a strangle hold over farmers and allow them to make huge amounts of money for the products. Essentially abuse that position. But the way it is at the moment, most of the conventional crops that are grown around the world at the moment are owned by multi-national companies anyway so genetically modified versions of those crops are not going to be a significant difference.’’
Interviewer:
‘’Would you say the media has influenced your opinion in any way of GM?’’
Interviewee:
‘’I try not to take too much notice to what’s going on in the media on this subject, certainly not the past ten years where they’ve been very pro anti GM lobby. And a lot of the hysteria that’s grown up around genetically modified crops is a direct consequence to how it’s reported in the media. And it’s been quite frustrating hearing how the anti GM lobby have really stolen the initiative and the anti GM lobby have been really well organised in getting their case together and promoting that though the media. The pro GM lobby have only started getting their act together to sort of fight back. And I think that slowly but surely people’s attitudes towards GM crops, as they become more educated about them, and also they realise that GM crops are already grown on a large scale in the US, and in a large scale in Asia, that many of the scenarios, the doomsday scenarios people predicted with GM plants have not happened, people have been eating, growing modified corn in the united states for the best part of twenty years, I think if there was going to be a serious risk to human health as a consequence to that we would have known about it by now.’’
Interviewer:
‘’Do you think either the approaches; Synthetic Biology and GM could further help the world in terms of food being more scarce in the future, you know with the growing population? Or do you think scientists will go in the other direction, it may be proven to be more harmful or scientists might abuse it?’’
Interviewee:
‘’I think there’s always room for people to abuse technologies and there are many more ways in which it could be used in a positive way. One of the things we have to think about in a sustainable food supply, obviously its something everybody is very conscious of, it’s something that’s happening here and now. If we try to do that through a conventional breeding approach I think it might work. One of the things about the crops that we have at the moment their bred on a very narrow genetic base, there’s lots of wild relatives of those species, growing in arid environment, growing in areas where there’s drought and high salt concentrations. And that’s something that happens and affects the current domesticated crops that we use, we’re going to have to grow them in warmer climates with less water. So we can either do that through conventional breeding as I’ve said, or we can sometimes do it through single gene fix through a Genetic Modification programme. So there’s huge potential there for addressing the serious issue of a sustainable food supply. There’s always the capacity for people to abuse it as well. But there are many many ways I can see it being used in a positive way, rather than a negative way.’’
Interviewer:
‘’Do you think the positives out way the negatives?’’
Interviewee:
‘’Absolutely! I can’t image who would want to use it in a negative way, I mean there’s always potential for somebody to make plants that produce toxins for example, the capability is there. Don’t think it can be done on a large scale because you’d need quite sophisticated procedures and laboratories to do that, and most of them are regulated so I don’t see that as a huge problem. It’s no different to someone making a dirty bomb or a chemical bomb. If terrorists wanted to make an impact they’d probably do it through a dirty bomb rather than going through the trouble of making a genetically modified plant.’’
Interviewer:
‘’I suppose people from more religious aspect with Synthetic Biology, creating new organisms not naturally found in the environment, it’s definitely quite controversial.’’
Interviewee:
‘’Yes, because we don’t know how they are going to behave. That’s the issue about containment. Again you can think about genetically modified plants on the Norwich Research Park for the best part of thirty years now. And using genetically modified plants for a tool for plant biologists has been used for thirty years and that’s what people do. The issue is deliberate release of them into the environment. And the same thing applies with Synthetic Biology. It can be used to address significant biological issues but what most people will be concerned about containment. Wouldn’t want to make a more virulent form of a pathogen. So as long as it’s controlled and it’s contained, and at the moment it is, then I don’t see anything to fear from it. But when people start talking about deliberate release of an organism which has been engineered synthetically then that’s a completely different issue. Clearly that’s something which needs to be strictly regulated.’’
Interviewer:
‘’Do you think you or the public would feel different about either the approaches, GM or Synthetic Biology if more information was more readily available.’’
Interviewee:
‘’Oh yes absolutely. One of the reasons why people more receptive to the idea of genetic modified plants now is that there much better education about what the process involves. The fact that its exploiting a natural process of a bacterium transferring part of its DNA into a plant, which is a completely natural process. You’ll find evidence of that in disease, Cracknell disease in most gardens , in most people’s roses, their vines and things. As people come to understand there’s nothing inherently dangerous about the genetically modifying processes itself, which is what the anti GM lobby argued for many years. This is an inherently dangerous technique. Well, it’s not. It can be used as a precision tool, and there are other ways now of doing genetic modification in plants and animals where you can do very precise gene replacements in a chromosome. That has implications for somatic gene therapy in humans, and also for Genetic Modification in plants. The ability to take out a defective gene from a cell, animal cell, and replace it with a functional copy and put it back into an individual. It’s something that’s really exciting; it’s something that can be used in important applications that will affect the equality of life, or number of people in the future. People will be ready to do Germline therapy, see if you can pass on that gene or if your just going to replace that gene in that individual through somatic gene therapy. Those are ethical issues that will need to be decided. But no I think as people become more and more educated about these, and they see more examples of these. I mean you can look what’s happening in Asia and the US in terms of genetically modified plants basically you realise its going on. There are many people saying well we’re effective handcuffed. We can’t move forward on at the same pace because we have all these restrictions. But it’s very important that its debated and that people have a choice, GM or not GM.’’
Interviewer:
‘’Do you think like, in a school aspect...I don’t know how much the curriculum has changed now but when I was in secondary school I think as far as GM went for me I only knew like a definition, and in primary school I didn’t know anything about GM. Do you think that’s such a big thing?’’
Interviewee:
‘’I think primary school; yeah it’s something that needs to be introduced at all levels really. I guess in my experience in recent years I’ve been going around doing outreach work in schools in the area of genetics one thing that strikes me is students not only do they have quite a good grasp of basic genetic principles, they also understand about the application, and they also understand something about the ethics of using those technologies. Mainly, because there’s a big component about biology in society. And so I think they have a much greater opportunity to debate the issues , whereas before they didn’t. And there’s a lot more information in the media which they can draw from and that information is something they can have an informed debate about. Which is good.’’
