Is it sentimental to be disturbed by the kind of industrial processes involved in pharming living creatures? The experimental use of cows for pharmaceuticals has been widely reported but item 3 describes how silkworms are now being made part of 'large-scale insect factories'. Can't help thinking there's a model here for the entire Brave New World of bio-biz -- a world that makes Huxley's nightmare look unimaginative! Read item 3 and decide for yourself.
Excerpt: "...the institute uses... a particle gun to blast holes in the skin of the larvae and then mists them with a liquid containing the virus. By placing the larvae on a conveyor belt it might be possible to automate the entire inoculation process.... From inoculation to the synthesis of useful proteins takes around four days. [Because] too many impurities get mixed into the fluid if the larvae are simply mashed up, ...[the] larvae are first frozen, then their legs are plucked off and they are allowed to thaw. The body shrinks during thawing, creating internal pressure that pushes the fluid out of the holes where the legs once were. Finally, the institute is working to breed a strain of silkworms that are optimally suited for life in an insect factory. The ideal silkworm larvae would be big and juicy with lots of body fluid, and with weak legs that cannot grasp the trays strongly, yet durable enough to withstand handling by a robot. Then the industrialization of sericulture will be complete."
1. Russian expert sees need for international control of GE research
2. Clone killer - New Scientist on why clones may die so often
3. The industrialisation of silkworms breeds future of biotech
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1. Australia virus research prompts need for control - expert
By Vladimir Rogachev, Yelena Slepchuk
MOSCOW
Svetlana Marennikova of the Russian Virology and Biotechnology Centre, and a former WHO virus infection expert, sees the need for international control of GE research.
TASS January 31, 2001, Wednesday
The gene engineering experiments of Australian scientists which have yielded a new strain of the mouse smallpox virus show a tremendous danger of such experiments, said Svetlana Marennikova of the Russian Virology and Biotechnology Centre. She worked as World Health Organisation virus infection expert for 40 years. Marennikova said in an interview with Itar-Tass on Wednesday that the Australian experiment unexpectedly produced the new strain of the virus which kills rodents almost immediately. Its enormous virulence harbours the danger for people and prompts the need for international control of gene engineering research, Marennikova said. She said the unexpected result of the experiments showed "how little we all know about possible variability of smallpox viruses and that we do not always correctly assess the danger which is harboured by gene engineering manipulations, although molecular biologists are proud that they have learned to implant different foreign genes into DNA of microorganisms".
Marennikova said she was unsure if the "experimenters did a right thing deciding to openly publish the material about their methodology of obtaining the new variant of the virus". "This can have serious consequences, as reproduction of these experiments with the human viruses will pose a serious danger," she explained, adding that rules of research work on production of new virus versions must be tightened. "Now complete eradication of strains of the human smallpox virus is being considered," Marennikova said. However, this would be a wrong move, she said. The smallpox virus is unique in that it has a very large genome, or a total sum of genes. The virus' genes produce a huge number of proteins which can suppress the immune system of a potential victim, Marennikovfa explained. And they do it in a very cunning way, by targeting receptors for biologically active substances which the body uses to ward off the infection. This is where the smallpox virus is interesting, but also dangerous, she said. "The result of Australian researchers has shown that a situation can quite unexpectedly arise which will demand availability of just the live virus of human smallpox," Marennikova said.
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Clone killer
New Scientist 1 February
http://www.newscientist.com/dailynews/news.jsp?id=ns9999373
A few misplaced carbon atoms may be why clones die so often
A few misplaced carbon atoms could be the difference between life and death for animals produced by cloning and other reproductive technologies, say Scottish scientists.
Lorraine Young of the Roslin Institute in Scotland and her colleagues have shown that when sheep embryos are manipulated in test tube culture, carbon tags on their genes called methylation marks can be lost.
They believe this simple change reduces the activity of genes, resulting in less protein being produced. Serious and sometimes deadly effects on the animal follow.
"A lot of us have been trying to nail down what kills clones," says cow cloner Mark Westhusin of Texas A University in College Station. "This is absolutely a new twist that many people are going to follow up on."
The discovery may allow scientists to pre-screen for the health of embryos produced by cloning or other test tube techniques, eliminating the unhealthy offspring before they are ever implanted in a surrogate mother
For every living symbol of success like Dolly the sheep, cloning generates many animals that die of mysterious causes.
Recently Noah the gaur, an endangered ox-like creature, was cloned using a cow egg and a surrogate cow mother. But Noah died of an infection soon after birth and many experts suspect Noah's death was caused by cloning-related health problems
Other cloned animals grow huge, and often sickly, during their gestation. This problem is also seen with embryos produced by other technologies that require embryos to be cultured in test tubes before implantation.
Work by the Scottish researchers and others had suggested that unusual levels of proteins that regulate fetal growth could be partly responsible (New Scientist magazine, 23 Jan 1999).
Since genetic methylation is known to regulate the genes for some of these proteins, cloning experts wondered whether they were altered in enlarged animals. "We and others have been investigating the idea," says Young. "However, this is the first proof of the theory."
Young and her colleagues studied sheep with so-called Large Offspring Syndrome produced by artificial insemination and growth in culture.
They found that in LOS sheep, the methylation marks were often completely absent on the gene for the IGF2R protein, resulting in a 30 to 60 per cent drop in the level of protein. IGF2R helps stop the fetus from overgrowing the womb. In contrast, about 70 per cent of the same genetic sites were methylated in control animals.
Young thinks that clones may suffer from an even greater array of defects than these animals because cloned embryos undergo greater manipulation and therefore may lose more methylation marks in more genes.
More at: Nature Genetics (vol 27, p 153)
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3. Silkworms breed future of biotech
January 29, 2001 The Nikkei Weekly
HIROSHI KATO Staff writer
Sericulture institute finds way to automate output of proteins by larvae
The craft of sericulture - raising silkworms to produce raw silk - is truly ancient, yet silkworm breeding is at the forefront of modern biotechnology. The National Institute of Sericultural and Entomological Science is riding the latest technological wave, tapping the resources of a craft that can trace its roots in China back thousands of years. Silk is a fiber of great strength and beauty. In the biotech industry, the silkworm larva is of interest not only for the silk it can spin but also for the proteins it can be genetically engineered to produce. In silk production, the larvae are bred to spin cocoons. However, in the biotech version, the larvae themselves become "insect factories" to mass-produce useful medical compounds such as growth hormone and interferon. Synthesized compounds The institute has already established the technology for bioengineering silkworms to synthesize useful compounds.
Simply put, the larvae are inoculated with viruses that carry the gene for the desired protein, then raised and harvested for their body fluids, which harbor the target protein. Now the institute is perfecting ways to commercialize the technology. Foremost is an automated system to raise the larvae. The unmanned silkworm- raising system is the key to low-cost mass production of useful proteins in insect factories. For the institute, it is also the key to life as a newly independent administrative agency. Scheduled to be reorganized along those lines in 2002, the institute hopes to use the automated raising system to win orders from private industry for consigned production of useful compounds in genetically engineered silkworms. The silkworm larva is a fussy eater by nature, feeding voraciously on an almost exclusive diet of mulberry leaves before spinning its silky cocoon for metamorphosis into a silkworm moth. It is also a difficult insect to breed, as centuries of sericulture have demonstrated. Yet the institute has overcome the obstacles to develop an unmanned raising system for the breeding of massive numbers of silkworm larvae, and it is now hurrying to perfect the other elements of a large-scale insect factory.
...An efficient way is still required to inoculate larvae with the genetically modified viruses. Lab technicians can inject the larvae one at a time with a viral cocktail, but this is not practical for large-scale operations.
Particle gun
Instead, the institute uses what is called a particle gun to blast holes in the skin of the larvae and then mists them with a liquid containing the virus. By placing the larvae on a conveyor belt it might be possible to automate the entire inoculation process. Another idea is to mix the virus into food. From inoculation to the synthesis of useful proteins takes around four days. After that an effective way is needed to isolate body fluid from the larvae so the proteins can be recovered. Too many impurities get mixed into the fluid if the larvae are simply mashed up, so the institute has come up with a solution that is more practical, albeit not for the squeamish. The larvae are first frozen, then their legs are plucked off and they are allowed to thaw. The body shrinks during thawing, creating internal pressure that pushes the fluid out of the holes where the legs once were. Finally, the institute is working to breed a strain of silkworms that are optimally suited for life in an insect factory. The ideal silkworm larvae would be big and juicy with lots of body fluid, and with weak legs that cannot grasp the trays strongly, yet durable enough to withstand handling by a robot. Then the industrialization of sericulture will be complete.
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QOD: "Scientists are very good at getting hot under the collar, firing pompous round-robins to national newspapers, complaining about "irresponsible" media and the "ignorant" public (that's us, folks). They should get off their high horses; remove the beams from their own eyes; ask whose side they are on; consider that they are citizens, too, and as such are moral beings; consider that the morality of the scholarship they espouse is not just that of the prevailing government, or of commerce." -- Colin Tudge