GMO Pundit a.k.a. David Tribe

Philippines role out for biofortified rice before 2013

2012-01-28T21:33:00.002+11:00

Golden rice compared to silver grain (Image-The Golden Rice Foundation)

Boosting the Country’s Food Security:
Re-posted in full from Truth about Trade, in the public interest

Initially : The Manilla Bulletin

January 17, 2012

MANILA, Philippines — The Philippines will be the launch pad for the marketing of Golden Rice by 2013. The launch is seen to boost global food security and reduce malnutrition. The Philippines was the first to commercialize the genetically modified Bacillus thuringiensis corn in Asia in 2002. It will once more set off to commercialize Golden Rice to help reduce mortality due to Vitamin A deficiency that afflicts children, pregnant women, and breastfeeding mothers nationwide.

World Health Organization statistics reported in Southeast Asia, that 90 million children suffer from the deficiency. A 2009 study of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition showed that a cup or 150 grams of Golden Rice, when cooked and eaten, could supply half of the recommended daily allowance of Vitamin A needed daily by adults.

A research study conducted by a team of scientists at the Philippine Rice Research Institute (PhilRice), in collaboration with the International Rice Research Institute, developed the Golden Rice. It is rice that has been genetically engineered to contain beta-carotene and other carotenoids. When the rice is consumed, some carotenoids are converted in the body into Vitamin A. Higher yield is expected compared to conventional crops. The new variety is targeted at resisting tungro and bacterial blight, the two diseases found to be most destructive to palay plants.

The search for Golden Rice started off as a Rockfeller initiative in 1982. After years of research by various groups, a meeting of experts was convened in New York in 1992. Ingo Potrykus, Professor Emeritus of the Institute for Plant Sciences, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, and Prof. Peter Beyer of the Centre for Applied Biosciences, University of Freiburg, Germany, met and decided to embark on the project that led them to develop Golden Rice in 1999.

Golden Rice is expected to find its way as a staple food on the tables of millions of Filipinos, and worldwide, by 2013. Studies are ongoing to ensure that the rice will be safe for health and to the environment. MABUHAY!

New Seeds Boost Yields for Drought-Hit Farmers

2012-01-27T10:59:00.001+11:00

allAfrica.com: Kenya: New Seeds Boost Yields for Drought-Hit Farmers: David Njagi 24 January 2012

Machakos — For a couple that has weathered the dual tests of early retirement and repeated crop failures, it might have seemed an impossible dream to former primary-school teacher Philip Ngolania and his farmer wife that their three quarters of an acre farm could one day yield enough staple food to last an entire season.
But a visit to the local office of the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute (KARI) early this year ushered in a fresh beginning for the 62-year-old father of four grown sons, whose land barely produced enough food for the family's daily meals in this drought-parched area east of the capital, Nairobi. Since that visit, he says, the family's prospects have improved dramatically.
In the seven years after leaving teaching, Ngolania has shared the burden of producing food for the family. "Now I'm assisting my wife," he says. "We are working together." But the indigenous seed varieties they were planting resulted in less than a single bag of grain each season.
At KARI, Ngolania learned about newly developed varieties that could resist drought and yield more produce. In fact, during this past season, he saw the small plot he and his wife cultivate yield five bags of maize for the first time....continues at link

GM barley trial 'success' - National Rural News - Grains and Cropping - Barley - Stock & Land

2012-01-27T09:19:00.001+11:00

GM barley trial 'success' - National Rural News - Grains and Cropping - Barley - Stock & Land:

Stock and Land are reporting Western Australian trials of GM salt tolerant barley are a success:

ACPFG researcher Stuart Roy said that in low salt areas, GM barley yielded 20 to 30 per cent higher than non-GM barley.
More impressively, in salty areas, yields were up 50 to 70 per cent more grains per plant.

Why Organic Spices Aren't Always Safe: Organics Prohibit Obvious Safety Measure

2012-01-27T08:10:00.000+11:00

The (Un)usual Suspect: Why Organic Spices Aren't Always Safe : The Salt : NPR:
January 26, 2012 , by NANCY SHUTE
June Jones, a hairdresser in Tacoma, Wash., decided to concoct a salt-free seasoning after one of her clients complained that the salt substitutes on the market tasted terrible.
But now Jones's signature product, Jones Mock Salt, has been recalled due to possible contamination with salmonella.
That recall really got our attention. How could salt be contaminated with Salmonella?
If your blog's named The Salt, you've just got to find out. So we dug into the story, and found that it's due to a collision of two distressing trends: contamination of herbs and spices, and safety issues with organic products.
One of the ingredients in Jones's secret recipe is organic celery seed. And that's the source of the trouble....continue at link

Irradiation, banned by organic food purveyers, can assure that spices are safe. But there is strong opposition.
A good discussion about this opposition is give by Matt Ridley at WSJ:

When Precaution Trumps Public Safety
By MATT RIDLEY
A technology that might have prevented contaminated produce from infecting thousands of Germans with E. coli was vetoed—by Germany—11 years ago for use in the European Union. Irradiating food with high-voltage electrons is a process that can kill bacteria on or in solid objects, just as pasteurization can kill them in liquid foods....continues at link.

Illumination sheds light on Natural News incompetence as a source of health advice

2012-01-25T12:25:00.000+11:00

Kevin Folta's blog sheds light on the dangers of believing the promotional fluff spead by the so-called natural food industry. This piece demonstrates that Big Quacka is indeed a horrible sham and a danger to good health. Go read the rest of his article at his blog.

Natural News Lies; Then Points a Finger at Big Ag

Today’s Natural News article fans the flames of the anti-GMO crowd. It is another fine piece of work by the anti-scientist, Ethan Huff, the same person that brought you the distortion of the breastfeeding and vaccination story. For those that do not read this blog often, there is a substantial section of humanity that believes that transgenic technology (GMO, GM, GE, Frankenfood, etc) is dangerous. They indict the companies that generate the plant materials and target scientists that don’t support their bogus claims. They find fringe journals and self-proclaimed experts to substantiate their positions. Ultimately the problem is that they spend a lot of time attacking a safe, proven and ubiquitous technology that presents no independently reproducible evidence of harm.

Another anti-science travesty by the self-proclaimed expertsat Natural News
Natural News is a central purveyor of their disinformation. Articles are written by non-scientists, cherry picking either legitimate science or company websites in an attempt to distort truths to garner sensationalized readership. The articles are inflammatory and are not based on real science. Of course, the articles nestle aside a rich slate of advertisements, many for items that perpetuate the naturalist fallacy. Ironically, they attack sound science and promote unvetted claims. There, we needed some backstory.
Today’s Natural News starts with the title “There is no need for, or value in testing the safety of GM foods in humans”. Of course, this is a complete lie and inconsistent with the current regulatory environment. In fact, Monsanto and their ilk like to keep regulatory hurdles high to keep out public scientists and small business, but I digress. The first line of the article says:
NN: (NaturalNews) There is a growing body of scientific evidence which proves that genetically-modified organisms (GMOs) are inherently different from natural organisms, including the way the body processes them, as well as how the immune system responds to them.
Note that this claim has no citations, and a quick review of the literature does not back these claims.
NN: But Monsanto, the largest purveyor of GMOs in the world, believes that GMOs are no different than natural organisms, and that GMO testing is both needless and valueless.
It is not just Monsanto. It is just about every scientist that understands genes and genomics. Genomes are dynamic. Genes and large stretches of DNA move about the genome with regularity. Modern plant lines, even the most wholesome of the organic favorites, result from breeding plants against other plants, oftentimes mixing tens of thousands of genes, transposons, and other regulatory molecules in ways that can never be predicted.
In short, adding a gene, or a few genes via the lab is trivial compared to what happens in breeding or in the course of natural plant growth. Transgenic plants are essentially equivalent to non-trangenics.
NN: In the Why aren't you running human clinical trials on GM crops? section ofMonsanto's Food Safety page, the biotechnology giant explains its opinion that GMOs are "substantially equivalent" to natural organisms. According to Monsanto, since concentrations of proteins, carbohydrates, and other nutrient factors vary among natural crops, as well as among natural and GM crops, then these differences are automatically unimportant in light of GMO safety.
And Monsanto’s position is supported by science. Transgenic crops are considered equivalent to those produced through traditional breeding by many international organizations with no ties to Monsanto or US agriculture.
The article also fails to point out that Monsanto absolutely does see a need to test the safety of the protein that is being introduced. These studies are performed and carefully regulated.

(Continues at link)

Many people think these bits of quackery are deliberate lies. The Pundit's view is the misinformation is largely a result of self-delusion and scientific incompetence. We are seeing modern witch doctors in action.

Update. A later post at Natural News shows they are straightforward off-the-planet nutters. A screen capture tells the story:

The Natural News worldview

Podcast interview with Nina Fedoroff on science for global agricultural challenges

2012-01-22T18:25:00.001+11:00

How many people in the world today are hungry?

Until 2008, there were perhaps between a half a billion and 800 million people that were hungry. Today, it’s over a billion people.
Think about what happened in the last half of the 20th century. Even as the population doubled from three to six billion, we managed to race ahead with all kinds of technological and scientific events in agriculture – from using more fertilizers to mechanization to advanced plant breeding. We managed to stay ahead of things so that we decreased the fraction of humanity that was perpetually hungry from half to about a sixth.
But those advances are not continuing. The number of hungry people is going up. We here in developed countries are used to paying a very small fraction of our income for food. But there are places in the world where people spend to 50 to 70 percent of everything they earn on food. And when the price of basic grains doubles, those folks are in trouble.

More of this story, and access to podcast of the interview with Nina Fedoroff at EarthSky.Org

Turkey makes a step forward to approve GM corn varieties as animal feed

2012-01-22T18:15:00.001+11:00

Todays Zaman (Turkey) (Carried by Truth about Trade)
January 15, 2012, By Noah Blaser
When it comes to genetically modified produce, public skepticism may be big, but big biotech’s reach may be even bigger, suggests a new Turkish regulation which legalizes the importation of genetically modified feed corn.
The regulation, approved in late November by Ankara’s Biosecurity Committee and put into effect at the start of 2012, gives the green light to the importation and sale of 13 genetically modified varieties of corn for livestock feed, a sign to activists and biotech lobbyists alike that Turkey’s once bio-technologies adverse climate may be coming to an end.
“The decision is an indicator of a changing regulatory climate surrounding GMOs (genetically modified organisms) in this country,” said Koray Çalışkan, an assistant professor of political science at Boğaziçi University and who has written extensively about GMO regulation in Turkey....

Refuges of susceptible cotton delay emergence of pest resistance to Bt protein

2012-01-17T05:52:00.001+11:00

Large-scale, spatially-explicit test of the refuge strategy for delaying insecticide resistance.

Abstract: The refuge strategy is used worldwide to delay the evolution of pest resistance to insecticides that are either sprayed or produced by transgenic Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) crops. This strategy is based on the idea that refuges of host plants where pests are not exposed to an insecticide promote survival of susceptible pests. Despite widespread adoption of this approach, large-scale tests of the refuge strategy have been problematic. Here we tested the refuge strategy with 8 y of data on refuges and resistance to the insecticide pyriproxyfen in 84 populations of the sweetpotato whitefly (Bemisia tabaci) from cotton fields in central Arizona. We found that spatial variation in resistance to pyriproxyfen within each year was not affected by refuges of melons or alfalfa near cotton fields. However, resistance was negatively associated with the area of cotton refuges and positively associated with the area of cotton treated with pyriproxyfen. A statistical model based on the first 4 y of data, incorporating the spatial distribution of cotton treated and not treated with pyriproxyfen, adequately predicted the spatial variation in resistance observed in the last 4 y of the study, confirming that cotton refuges delayed resistance and treated cotton fields accelerated resistance. By providing a systematic assessment of the effectiveness of refuges and the scale of their effects, the spatially explicit approach applied here could be useful for testing and improving the refuge strategy in other crop-pest systems.

PMID: 22215605 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]

Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2012 Jan 3. [Epub ahead of print]

Carrière Y, Ellers-Kirk C, Hartfield K, Larocque G, Degain B, Dutilleul P, Dennehy TJ, Marsh SE, Crowder DW, Li X, Ellsworth PC, Naranjo SE, Palumbo JC, Fournier A, Antilla L, Tabashnik BE.

Source

Department of Entomology, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721.

Large-scale, spatially-explicit tes... [Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2012] - PubMed - NCBI:

High-yield maize with large net energy yield and small global warming intensity

2012-01-17T05:41:00.001+11:00

High-yield maize with large net energy yield and small global warming intensity:
Addressing concerns about future food supply and climate change requires management practices that maximize productivity per unit of arable land while reducing negative environmental impact. Onfarm data were evaluated to assess energy balance and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of irrigated maize in Nebraska that received large nitrogen (N) fertilizer (183 kg of N·ha−1) and irrigation water inputs (272 mm or 2,720 m3ha−1). Although energy inputs (30GJ·ha−1) were larger than those reported for US maize systems in previous studies, irrigated maize in central Nebraska achieved higher grain and net energy yields (13.2 Mg·ha−1and 159 GJ·ha−1, respectively) and lower GHG-emission intensity (231 kg of CO2e·Mg−1 of grain). Greater input-use efﬁciencies, especially for N fertilizer, were responsible for better performance of these irrigated systems, compared with much lower-yielding, mostly rainfed maize systems in previous studies. Large variation in energy inputs and GHG emissions across irrigated ﬁelds in the present study resulted from differences in applied irrigation water amount and imbalances between applied N inputs and crop N demand, indicating potential to further improve environmental performance through better management of these inputs. Observed variation in N-use efﬁciency, at any level of applied N inputs, suggests that an N-balance approach may be more appropriate for estimating soil N2O emissions than the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change approach based on a ﬁxed proportion of applied N. Negative correlation between GHG-emission intensity and net energy yield supports the proposition that achieving high yields, large positive energy balance, and low GHG emissions in intensive cropping systems are not conﬂicting goals.

agro-ecosystem | food security | crop intensiﬁcation |land use change |environmental footprint

Patricio Grassini and Kenneth G. Cassman

Published online before print January 9, 2012, doi: 10.1073/pnas.1116364109

PNAS January 9, 2012 Free via Open Access: OA

Epigenetics: A Turning Point in Our Understanding of Heredity | Guest Blog, Scientific American Blog Network

2012-01-17T05:28:00.001+11:00

Epigenetics: A Turning Point in Our Understanding of Heredity | Guest Blog, Scientific American Blog Network:

In a studypublished in late 2011 in Nature, Stanford University geneticist Anne Brunet and colleagues described a series of experiments that caused nematodes raised under the same environmental conditions to experience dramatically different lifespans. Some individuals were exceptionally long-lived, and their descendants, through three generations, also enjoyed long lives. Clearly, the longevity advantage was inherited. And yet, the worms, both short- and long-lived, were genetically identical.

This type of finding—an inherited difference that cannot be explained by variations in genes themselves—has become increasingly common, in part because scientists now know that genes are not the only authors of inheritance. There are ghostwriters, too. ...continues at SciAM

Jeffrey Smith is the Russ Miller of the anti-GMO movement

2012-01-15T10:31:00.001+11:00

Lithodid-Man in action on You-tube cleaning up fakery and deception on GMOs.

The Pundit's reaction: incisive, witty, biting and true.

Original Video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fa95w3JzZ3A

Lithodid-Man's citations and links mentioned in talk.

Smith's Youtube page:
http://www.youtube.com/user/GeneticRoulette

EvoGenVideos: http://www.youtube.com/user/EvoGenVideos

His series to Jeffrey Smith:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2zsyxvpw4o
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68CIY3Y3EIU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NkcJNsg78ms
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2DiQuiDge4

Info page from FDA on GM Salmon:
http://www.fda.gov/AdvisoryCommittees/CommitteesMeetingMaterials/VeterinaryMe...

The briefing packet on GM Salmon:
http://www.fda.gov/downloads/AdvisoryCommittees/CommitteesMeetingMaterials/Ve...

Study by AquAdvantage:
www.fda.gov/downloads/AdvisoryCommittees/CommitteesMeetingMaterials/VeterinaryMedicineAdvisoryCommittee/UCM224760.pdf

Study of Bovine Growth Hormone:
download.journals.elsevierhealth.com/pdfs/journals/0022-0302/PIIS0022030292781193.pdf

Smith GD, Gunnell D, Holly J (2000) Cancer and insulin growth factor-1. British Journal of Medicine 321: 847-848.

Smith's HuffPo blog about rats and soy:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeffrey-smith/genetically-modified-soy_b_735528...

The actual paper he cites:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ar.20878/full

Marshall A (2007) GM soybeans and health safety -- a controversy reexamined. Nature Biotechnology 25(9): 981- 987.

An excellent breakdown of the Ermakov study (also the entire site is a breakdown of Smith's contradictions with actual published literature)
http://academicsreview.org/reviewed-content/genetic-roulette/section-1/1-14-r...

Smith on sterility in hamsters:
www.huffingtonpost.com/jeffrey-smith/genetically-modified-soy_b_544575.html

More info on the Surov study:
http://www.bsba.ag/BSBA/Hamsters_and_GMO/Entries/2010/4/26_Day_of_longboardin... (mostly in Russian, some English)

Paper Smith claims "proves" Roundup-Ready bacteria are produced in human gut:

Netherwood T, Martín-Orúe SM, O'Donnell AG, Gockling S, Graham J, Mathers JC and Gilbert HJ (2004). Assessing the survival of transgenic plant DNA in the human gastrointestinal tract. Nature Biotechnology 22(2):204-209.

Smith, TM and the Maharishi (look especially at the contact info of the anti-GMO sites):
http://academicsreview.org/reviewed-individuals/jeffrey-smith/
http://www.safe-food.org/-campaign/about.html
http://www.foodchainadvisors.com/contact.aspx
http://www.genetic-id.com/Home.aspx
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TM-Sidhi_program
http://www.mum.edu/index.html
http://www.maharishivediccity-iowa.gov/

Category:

Education

Misinformation about food safety goes hand in glove with advertising for organic rice.

2012-01-15T09:15:00.000+11:00

The next generation of GMOs could be especially dangerous | Grist:

Recent posts have covered the dreadful article at The Atlantic about micro RNA in rice and they way in which a correction of sorts was forced by blogger criticisms.

Chinese scientists identified potential problems in conventional rice (yet to be confirmed) , but The Atlantic headline screamed GMOs are the worry.

There is a interesting follow-up web item about this rice report at Grist (screen-grab shown below), which continues the screeching about GMOs, and also gladly accepts advertising from an organic food company (Lundberg Rice).

That's modern journalistic ethics for you. Confusion of news, opinion and advertising.

Nigeria releases vitamin A cassava to improve public health for millions | Consortium of International Agricultural Research Centers

2012-01-13T21:07:00.001+11:00

Nigeria releases vitamin A cassava to improve public health for millions | Consortium of International Agricultural Research Centers:

The Nigerian Government announced in December, the release of three new vitamin A-rich ‘yellow’ cassava varieties that could provide more vitamin A in the diets of over 70 million Nigerians who eat cassava every day. The yellow color – cassava is generally white – is due to the higher vitamin A content.

Vitamin A deficiency (VAD) is widely prevalent in sub-Saharan Africa. It afflicts almost 20% of pregnant women and about 30% of children under-five in Nigeria. VAD can lower immunity and impair vision, which can lead to blindness and even death.

Children and women will be the main beneficiaries of these new yellow varieties, which could provide up to 25% of their daily vitamin A needs. Varieties with enough vitamin A to provide up to half of daily needs are already in the breeding pipeline and should be ready for release in a few years.

These new yellow varieties were bred using traditional (non-transgenic) methods by the International Institute for Tropical Agriculture (IITA) and the Nigerian National Root Crops Research Institute (NRCRI) and were liked by farmers during field trials. Cassava is an extremely adaptable crop; it is drought tolerant, requires limited land preparation, and grows well in poor soils. The new yellow varieties are also high yielding and resistant to major diseases and pests....continues at link

Monsanto company comments on much hyped microRNA paper

2012-01-13T20:16:00.000+11:00

The previous post covered the ongoing controversy about the effect reported by Zhang and others of plant components called micro RNA (miRNA) on tissue biochemical activities in animals which have been fed plant based diets.This controversy that has been recently fanned by a flawed magazine article linking the Zhang report findings to purported GMO hazards. Note that the Zhang article is not about GMOs.

Here is a technical commentary on this paper from scientists at Monsanto Company.

Monsanto ~ Technical Analysis: Zhang et al.:

Technical Analysis: Zhang et al.

Monsanto Company

1/10/2012

Zhang et al. (2011) demonstrate that, among the very large number of microRNAs (miRNAs) in plants, a small number can be detected in human and animal blood. In mice, the authors show that following ingestion of large doses of one particular miRNA (MIR168a), MIR168a was absorbed, was detectable in the serum and liver, protein from a particular gene (LDLRAP1) involved in the removal of LDL (“bad”) cholesterol from blood was reduced and as a result, LDL levels in the mice were increased.

The authors suggest that such a “cross-kingdom” effect – a plant gene product (MIR168a) regulating animal gene expression – may be a common phenomenon; and that miRNAs in food may regulate specific genes in animals based upon matching sequences between plant miRNAs and mammalian genes.

Since this paper was published, Monsanto scientists have thoroughly studied the work and its relevance to the safety assessment of genetically modified (GM) crops and foods derived from them.

There is too little experimental evidence to conclude that the regulation of animal genes by plant miRNAs is an important diet-mediated phenomenon. MIR168a was relatively abundant in the control chow diet, and yet no effect was seen on LDLRAP1 or LDL cholesterol in mice fed this chow diet. By contrast, consumption of a large amount of uncooked rice, containing approximately 8-fold higher amounts of MIR168a than the chow diet, resulted in changes in LDLRAP1 and, consequently, an increase in serum LDL cholesterol. It is noteworthy that mice were fed the human equivalent of over 73 poundsof cooked rice per person per day, which exceeds the highest rice-consuming population (97.5^th percentile group) by 80 to 100 fold. The fact that rural Chinese populations consuming high-rice diets have been shown to have lower levels of LDL than their urban counterparts (with lower rice intake) would suggest that the activity of MIR168a in humans is negligible or at least is sufficiently small that other environmental determinants are more important in regulating LDL concentration than MIR168a. In short, the relevance of dietary concentrations of MIR168a or other miRNAs in humans remains to be established.

It is important to remember that humans regularly consume plants that contain small RNAs. Recent research by Ivashuta et al. (2009, Food and Chemical Toxicology 47:353–360) demonstrated that many existing plant RNA’s share sequences with human genes. Further, humans regularly consume animal derived foods with mammalian miRNAs with 100% identity to human genes. Despite the routine ingestion of plant and animal small RNAs, no impacts on human gene regulation or health have been reported. Treatment of disease via oral ingestion of RNA-based medications has not been accomplished despite more than a decade of effort by the pharmaceutical industry. Systemic suppression of specific target genes in humans has not been possible with oral administration of small RNAs, even when using RNA constructs specifically designed to achieve gene suppression and when employing modified RNAs to enhance stability.

This is an important area of research, but given what is known about the ubiquitous nature of RNA in all whole foods and about the unsuccessful efforts to develop oral RNA pharmaceutical products, much more information is needed before it can be concluded that dietary miRNAs regularly have any meaningful impact on mammalian or human gene regulation.

Importantly, the authors state: “It is unlikely that such high concentrations of mature plant miRNAs can be achieved in serum, plasma, and organs of humans or animals via food intake.” Based on the available information, the results with the abundant MIR168a are not sufficient to support a broad conclusion that plant miRNAs present in food are part of a common and general mechanism for “cross-kingdom” regulation animal genes.

After a careful examination of the paper, we have identified a number of relevant facts that should be taken into account when looking at data and the relevancy of the findings.
Of the many thousands of plant miRNAs, only a small number are found in human or animal blood.
The absence of most plant miRNAs in serum indicates:

Absorption may be selective;
Only some miRNAs in foods have properties which allow them to survive in foods, the GI tract, and serum;
Only relatively abundant miRNAs are present at high enough levels to be detected;
Or some combination of these factors.

MIR168a is among the more abundant miRNAs in many plants, but even allowing for this MIR168a appears to be disproportionately found in animal tissues and is also considerably more stable in rice than MIR156a or MIR166a (see Table S3 of Zhang et al.) This suggests that for some reason MIR168a is preferentially absorbed and/or preserved (before or after absorption) relative to other miRNAs.
Changes in MIR168a levels with concomitant changes in LDLRAP1 expression and LDL cholesterol were observed following higher doses (raw rice diet) in mice; however no effect on LDLRAP1 or LDL cholesterol was seen when animals were fed an ordinary chow diet. Consequently, there may well be little or no effect on mice eating a more diverse, ordinary diet.
The findings with MIR168a may represent a rare or unique case, resulting from the uncharacteristically high abundance of MIR168a in rice and disproportionate absorption and/or preservation of MIR168a in combination with the high homology (gene sequence match) to LDLRAP1.
The loss of MIR168a effects occurred with less than a 10-fold reduction in diet concentration, indicating that this phenomenon is highly dose-dependant. The ability to observe this phenomenon may be related to the high-dosing regimens employed.
The authors cannot exclude the possibility that in-vivo LDLRAP1 reduction and concomitant LDL increase were due to radical changes in diet. In addition to higher levels of MIR168a, the rice-only diet was higher in carbohydrates and deficient in fats and proteins, and the animals were in a starvation-state.
While high doses of MIR168a influence cholesterol levels in mice, the relevance of dietary intakes of MIR168a or other miRNAs in the human diet remains to be established.
The fact that rural Chinese populations consuming high-rice diets have been shown to have lower levels of LDL than their urban counterparts (who have lower rice intake) suggests that the activity of MIR168a in humans is negligible or at least is sufficiently small that other environmental determinants of LDL concentration may overcome the effects of MIR168a on cholesterol.

There is a broad foundation of evidence that supports the safety of GM crops that express siRNAs. These data have been reviewed and accepted by Regulatory authorities globally. Monsanto will continue to examine all new evidence published in the scientific literature and our own studies. We are committed to the safety of our products and to safety of the food and feed products produced from them.

Blogger energy forces a correction to junk science about microRNA at The Altlantic Magazine

2012-01-13T14:49:00.000+11:00

By claiming that microRNAs (miRNAs) are a “very real danger of GMOs” The Atlantic food writer Ari Levaux has shown how trashy journalism can now get corrected by the blogosphere almost in real-time. Unfortunately trashy journalism even when corrected quickly allows confusing mis-information to get wide publicity, and the public would be better served with rigorous editorial standards being in place before a story goes to print.

First Emily Willingham asked some direct questions about why the embarrasingly bad piece was ever published.

Then Chrissie Wilcox and others got on the job:

Science Sushi
Real science. Served raw.
The Very Real Scaremongering of Ari Levaux
By Christie Wilcox | January 12, 2012 | 24
Recently, food columnist Ari Levaux wrote what can only be described as a completely unscientific article in The Atlantic claiming that microRNAs (miRNAs) are a “very real danger of GMOs.”
I won’t go point by point through the horrendous inaccuracies in his piece, as Emily Willingham has more than hacked them to bits. But I do want to make a short comment on this idea that miRNAs are dangerous, and thus something we should worry about when it comes to what we eat....

Collide-a-scape blog caught up with a lot of the back-story, and noted the final admission of problems with the story:

UPDATE: Several hours after publishing my post, The Atlantic did exactly what I suggested they should do: acknowledge the errors in the article. Here is the revised editors note:
The Atlantic
Update 1/12: Thanks to science and biology bloggers, Christie Wilcox and Emily Willingham at the Scientific American blog network and The Biology Files, respectively, we’ve learned of the scientific errors made in Ari LeVaux’s most recent Flash in the Pan column, which is syndicated by a number of newspapers and magazine websites. This column has been expanded and updated, with LeVaux discussing specific changes in the comments. We regret the errors.

Even with these necessary corrections made, the flawed story will continue to bounce around the net for many months. Fortunately editors at The Atlantic must have learnt a lesson about the need for high standards in stories about human health

FURTHER UPDATE Jan 10th 2012

The Monsanto Company has issued a detailed technical analysis of the Chinese miRNA paper that is relevant to understanding the science behind the flawed Atlantic article.

Honeybee deaths linked to seed insecticide exposure

2012-01-12T16:52:00.000+11:00

Purdue Newsroom - Researchers: Honeybee deaths linked to seed insecticide exposure

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - Honeybee populations have been in serious decline for years, and Purdue University scientists may have identified one of the factors that cause bee deaths around agricultural fields.

Analyses of bees found dead in and around hives from several apiaries over two years in Indiana showed the presence of neonicotinoid insecticides, which are commonly used to coat corn and soybean seeds before planting. The research showed that those insecticides were present at high concentrations in waste talc that is exhausted from farm machinery during planting.

The insecticides clothianidin and thiamethoxam were also consistently found at low levels in soil - up to two years after treated seed was planted - on nearby dandelion flowers and in corn pollen gathered by the bees, according to the findings released in the journal PLoS One this month.

"We know that these insecticides are highly toxic to bees; we found them in each sample of dead and dying bees," said Christian Krupke, associate professor of entomology and a co-author of the findings....continues at link

RESEARCH PAPER AT PLoS ONE:

Multiple Routes of Pesticide Exposure for Honey Bees Living Near Agricultural Fields

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Christian H. Krupke¹^*, Greg J. Hunt¹, Brian D. Eitzer²,Gladys Andino¹, Krispn Given¹

1 Department of Entomology, Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana, United States of America, 2 Department of Analytical Chemistry, The Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station, New Haven, Connecticut, United States of America

Abstract Top

Populations of honey bees and other pollinators have declined worldwide in recent years. A variety of stressors have been implicated as potential causes, including agricultural pesticides. Neonicotinoid insecticides, which are widely used and highly toxic to honey bees, have been found in previous analyses of honey bee pollen and comb material. However, the routes of exposure have remained largely undefined. We used LC/MS-MS to analyze samples of honey bees, pollen stored in the hive and several potential exposure routes associated with plantings of neonicotinoid treated maize. Our results demonstrate that bees are exposed to these compounds and several other agricultural pesticides in several ways throughout the foraging period. During spring, extremely high levels of clothianidin and thiamethoxam were found in planter exhaust material produced during the planting of treated maize seed. We also found neonicotinoids in the soil of each field we sampled, including unplanted fields. Plants visited by foraging bees (dandelions) growing near these fields were found to contain neonicotinoids as well. This indicates deposition of neonicotinoids on the flowers, uptake by the root system, or both. Dead bees collected near hive entrances during the spring sampling period were found to contain clothianidin as well, although whether exposure was oral (consuming pollen) or by contact (soil/planter dust) is unclear. We also detected the insecticide clothianidin in pollen collected by bees and stored in the hive. When maize plants in our field reached anthesis, maize pollen from treated seed was found to contain clothianidin and other pesticides; and honey bees in our study readily collected maize pollen. These findings clarify some of the mechanisms by which honey bees may be exposed to agricultural pesticides throughout the growing season. These results have implications for a wide range of large-scale annual cropping systems that utilize neonicotinoid seed treatments.

Citation: Krupke CH, Hunt GJ, Eitzer BD, Andino G, Given K (2012) Multiple Routes of Pesticide Exposure for Honey Bees Living Near Agricultural Fields. PLoS ONE 7(1): e29268. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0029268

Editor: Guy Smagghe, Ghent University, Belgium

Received: August 18, 2011; Accepted: November 23, 2011; Published: January 3, 2012

Copyright: © 2012 Krupke et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Funding: This research was funded by an award from the North American Pollinator Protection Campaign to CK, GH and BE and by an award from the Managed Pollinator Coordinated Agricultural Project (United States Department of Agriculture National Institute of Food and Agriculture 2009-8511805718) to GH. The funders had no role in study design, data collection or analysis, decision to publish or manuscript preparation.

Competing interests: CK has received funding in the past from agrochemical companies that manufacture and distribute a wide range of pesticides, including many of those mentioned in this manuscript. These entities include the Bayer Corporation, BASF and Syngenta. None of these entities were involved with this work or are aware of it in any way, financial or otherwise. This does not alter the authors' adherence to all the PLoS ONE policies on sharing data and materials.

* E-mail: ckrupke@purdue.edu

Introduction Top

Pollinator health is receiving increased attention as both managed pollinators (i.e. honey bees) and native pollinator populations decline worldwide [1]–[3]. Several causal mechanisms (including viral pathogens, parasitic mites and pesticides) have been proposed and investigated as contributing causes [4]. Pesticide exposure has received significant attention and recently-published analyses of pollen from managed bees located near agricultural environments demonstrated that many agricultural chemicals (including insecticides, miticides, fungicides and herbicides) are detectable in honey bee wax and pollen samples [5], [6]. Of the many compounds detected, the neo-nicotinoid group has arguably received the most attention. These compounds act as nicotinic acetylcholine receptor agonists in insects, causing persistent excitation of these receptors and eventually death [7]. As a group, neonicotinoids possess several key attributes that have facilitated heavy adoption in both agricultural and urban environments, including low vertebrate toxicity [8] and the ability to be translocated by plants. Neonicotinoids are also persistent, offering the potential for a large window of activity. The half-lives of these compounds in aerobic soil conditions can vary widely, but are best measured in months (148–1,155 days for clothianidin) [8]. Among the largest single uses of these compounds is application to maize seed; production of maize for food, feed and ethanol production represents the largest single use of arable land in North America. Maize planting reached unprecedented levels in the US in 2010 (35.7 million hectares [9], and is expected to increase. Virtually all if the maize seed planted in North America (the lone exception being organic production = 0.2% of total acreage [9]) is coated with neonicotinoid insecticides. There are 2 major compounds used: clothianidin and thiamethoxam; the latter is metabolized to clothianidin in the insect. The current application rates for these compounds range from 0.25 to 1.25 mg/kernel. These compounds are highly toxic to honey bees: a single kernel contains several orders of magnitude of active ingredient more than the published LD50 values for honey bees (defined as the amount of material that will kill 50% of exposed individuals), which ranges from 22–44 ng/bee for clothianidin (contact toxicity) [8],[10]. Maize seeds are typically planted at a rate ca. 12,500 kernels/hectare, making it essential that any potential routes for honey bee exposure to these compounds be quantified as thoroughly as possible. This study was initiated in response to reports of bee kills at Indiana apiaries in spring of 2010. These reports coincided with the peak period of maize planting in the area [11]. Results of analyses of these bees and pollen from the hives revealed that both clothianidin and thiamethoxam were present on dead bees and in pollen collected from a single hive. These compounds were also present in dead bees from other hives but not in bees from hives that did not show mortality. Also found was atrazine, a herbicide that is commonly used in maize production and is relatively non-toxic to honey bees [12].

These preliminary results prompted additional experiments to determine how honey bees may be gaining exposure to clothianidin and other pesticides commonly applied to either maize seed or to plants later in the season. We collected samples from a variety of potential exposure routes near agricultural fields and analyzed them to determine whether pesticides were present. We sampled soils, pollen (both collected by honey bees and directly from plants), dandelion flowers, and dead and healthy bees. We also examined waste products produced during the planting of treated seed. Sowing of maize seed in North America is accomplished using tractor-drawn planters that employ a forced air/vacuum system and a perforated disc to pick up individual seeds and drop them into the planting furrow at the selected spacing. Because maize kernels are treated with neonicotinoids and other compounds (usually fungicides) they do not flow readily and may stick to one another, causing uneven plant spacing. To remedy this, talc (a common mineral composed of hydrated magnesium silicate) is typically added to seed boxes to reduce friction and stickiness and ensure smooth flow of seed during planting. Much of the talc is exhausted during planting, either down with the seed or behind the planter and into the air using an exhaust fan. We sampled waste talc following planting to determine whether this material was contaminated with pesticides abraded from treated seeds. This waste is a mixture of the talc that has been in contact with treated maize kernels and minute pieces of the seeds themselves.

Results Top

Soil collected from areas near our test site revealed that neonicotinoid insecticide residues were present in all samples tested (Table 1), with clothianidin occurring in each field sampled. Herbicide residues were also found in these samples. Sampling of the waste talc from planting activities revealed that extremely high concentrations of clothianidin were found in talc exposed to treated seed (Table 2). Fungicides applied to the seed were also found. Analysis of talc used to plant untreated seed contained low quantities of the same pesticides, this is likely due to contamination and reflects the difficulties associated with thorough cleaning of equipment between plantings. Direct sampling of anthers revealed that many of the same compounds were present in maize grown from treated seed, albeit in far lower concentrations (Table 3). Collection of pollen from traps in the field demonstrated that thiamethoxam was present in 3 of 20 samples, while pollen containing clothianidin was present in 10 of 20 samples (Table 4). Fungicides were also frequently detected: azoxystrobin and propiconazole were found in all pollen samples, while trifloxystrobin was found in 12 of the 20 samples analyzed. Maize pollen was frequently collected by foraging honey bees while it was available: maize pollen comprised over 50% of the pollen collected by bees, by volume, in 10 of 20 samples.

Table 1. Pesticide concentrations found in soil samples taken from production fields surrounding study area, all concentrations shown are expressed as parts per billion.¹^,²

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0029268.t001

Table 2. Pesticide concentrations found in talc samples removed from planter following planting with treated and untreated maize seed, all concentrations shown are expressed as parts per million.¹^,²

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0029268.t002

Table 3. Pesticide concentrations found in pollen removed from maize anthers at anthesis. Samples were taken from the experimental field where hives were placed. All concentrations shown are expressed as parts per billion.¹

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0029268.t003

Table 4. Pesticide concentrations found in pollen samples removed from returning foragers of hives placed adjacent to maize fields at planting, all concentrations shown are expressed as parts per billion.¹

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0029268.t004

The samples collected in 2011 revealed some similar trends (Table 5); clothianidin was found on all the dead and dying bees we sampled, while the apparently healthy bees we sampled from the same locations did not contain detectable levels of clothianidin. Atrazine and metolachlor were also found, providing further evidence that these bees were foraging near agricultural fields; as these herbicides are commonly applied prior to or during maize planting. When we sampled the contents of wax combs removed from two hives at the same apiary, we found both clothianidin and thiamethoxam in pollen removed from both hives. Nectar did not contain either compound. The miticide coumaphos was found at low levels in each nectar and pollen sample as well. Both soil and dandelion flowers obtained from the fields closest to the affected apiary (soybeans in 2010, unplanted when sampled in 2011) contained clothianidin (Table 6), therefore clothianidin in/on the dandelions could have resulted from translocation from the soil to the flower, from surface contamination of the flowers from dust, or a combination of these two mechanisms. Dandelion flowers growing far from agricultural areas served as controls; no neonicotinoids were detected.

Table 5. Pesticide concentrations found in/near apiary colonies during planting period in 2011, all concentrations shown are expressed as parts per billion.¹

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0029268.t005

Table 6. Pesticide concentrations found in unplanted fields near apiary during planting period in 2011, all concentrations shown are expressed as parts per billion.¹

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0029268.t006

Discussion Top

The results we present here more clearly define some potential intersections between foraging honey bees and some of the seed treatments used during planting of maize. These results demonstrate that honey bees living and foraging near agricultural fields are exposed to neonicotinoids and other pesticides through multiple mechanisms throughout the spring and summer. The potential for greatest exposure (and the period when mortality was noted), occurs during planting time when there is potential for exposure to extremely high concentrations of neonicotinoids in waste talc that is exhausted to the environment during and after planting. Furthermore, we show that bees living in these environments will forage for maize pollen and transport pollen containing neonicotinoids to the hive. Pollen contaminated with levels of neonicotinoids similar to those shown in our results has been known to impair pollinator health [13], [14], [15]. Although we anticipated that planter dust may cause higher pesticide concentrations in samples taken immediately after planting our plots, we found the opposite trend: Pollen collected just prior to our planting period contained the highest levels of neonicotinoids detected (and not detected) in samples from both the treated and untreated fields. This may reflect the high variability in the types of pollen being brought back to the hive. Most of the maize in our study area was shedding pollen before and during our atypically late planting period (mid-July). After sampling anthers directly and identifying maize pollen in our samples, we know that pollen originating from treated seed does contain clothianidin, although not at the levels found in some of the bee-collected pollen samples, indicating the likelihood of additional pathways or sources. The levels of clothianidin in bee-collected pollen that we found are approximately 10-fold higher than reported from experiments conducted in canola grown from clothianidin-treated seed [16].

Detection of agricultural pesticides (and neonicotinoids in particular) in hives (including honey, pollen and wax) has been documented in the past: Bee-collected pollen was found to contain the neonicotinoid imidacloprid [17] in one study, although no adverse effects upon adults or brood were found [18]. However, a more recent study found that rearing brood in comb contaminated with pesticides (including the neonicotinoids found in our study, thiamethoxam and clothianidin) led to delayed worker development [6]. A field study examining the effects upon honey bees of clothianidin-treated canola found low levels of clothianidin in both pollen and nectar (0.93ppb and 2.59 ppb, respectively), but also found no significant effects upon honey bee populations [16]. In studies in maize, guttation droplets produced by plants grown from neonicotinoid treated seed were shown to have from 10–100 mg/L of the pesticides and were found to cause paralysis and eventual death when fed to honey bees [19], while other studies have found traces of the seed treatment imidacloprid on vegetation near maize plantings and have hypothesized that sowing treated seed can cause dispersal of dust containing insecticide [20]. Further evidence of detrimental effects of planting treated maize seed was noted by researchers in Italy, who found that honey bee mortality increased on the day seeds were planted and that numbers of foragers declined in the days following planting [21]. A subsequent study demonstrated that bees that were induced to fly near a maize planter in Europe showed up to 100 ng of clothianidin/bee upon analysis. Interestingly, however, these bees did not die unless they were kept in conditions of high humidity [22].

Detection of clothianidin in pollen, both in stored pollen in cells and in pollen traps is a critical finding because clothianidin is even more toxic when administered to bees orally, with an LD50 of 2.8–3.7 ng/bee [23], [24]. Given an average weight of 80–100 mg/bee, some of our pollen sample concentrations exceed the oral LD50. This, combined with the result that our samples of dead and dying honey bees consistently demonstrated the presence of clothianidin, suggests that the levels of both clothianidin and thiamethoxam found in our sampling of stored pollen in May of 2011 may have contributed to the deaths of the bees we analyzed. However, our analytical methods do not allow us to determine what fraction of the pesticide is on the surface of bees (contact toxicity, due to drift of soil or planter exhaust) vs. inside the body (oral toxicity, due to ingestion of contaminated pollen or guttation droplets). A combination of these exposure modalities is not unlikely.

Our results also demonstrate that clothianidin is present in the surface soil of agricultural fields long after treated seed has been planted in that field. All soil samples we collected contained clothianidin, even in cases where no treated seed had been planted for 2 growing seasons. During the spring planting period, dust that arises from this soil may land on flowers frequented by bees, or possibly on the insects themselves. Of potentially greater concern are the very high levels of neonicotinoids (and fungicides) found in the talc that has been exposed to treated seed, since part of this highly mobile material is exhausted to the outside environment during planting and after planting. The large areas being planted with neonicotinoid treated seeds, combined with the high persistence of these materials and the mobility of disturbed soil and talc dust, carry potential for effects over an area that may exceed the boundaries of the production fields themselves. A key mechanism for honey bee exposure may occur during the period when maize is typically planted across much of the Midwest (mid-April through early May). At this time, the energetic requirements of honey bee colonies are increasing rapidly and pollen and nectar resources are being gathered for colony growth. Talc and soil dusts from planting are mobile and have the potential to contaminate any flowering plants that are commonly found in or near agricultural fields and are visited by honey bees, including dandelion (Taraxacum officinale), which has been shown to be a preferred pollen and nectar source for honey bees during this period, when floral resources are relatively limited [25].

Later in the season, when planting is largely complete, we found that honey bees will collect maize pollen that contains translocated neonicotinoids and other pesticides from seed. Translocation of neonicotinoids into pollen has previously been reported for maize grown from imidacloprid-treated seed [26], although the degree to which honey bees in our study gathered maize pollen was surprising. The finding that bee-collected pollen contained neonicotinoids is of particular concern because of the risks to newly-emerged nurse bees, which must feed upon pollen reserves in the hive immediately following emergence. Pollen is the primary source of protein for honey bees, and is fed to larvae by nurse bees in the form of royal jelly. A bee will consume 65 mg of pollen during the 10 day period it spends as a nurse bee [27], therefore a concentration of 20 ng/g (ppb) in pollen would correspond to a dose of 1.3 ng (65 mg×20 ng/g) or almost 50% of the oral LD50 of ca. 2.8 ng/bee[23]. Some of our pollen concentrations were even higher, although it is important to note that LD50 is measured as a one-time dose, while exposure through contaminated pollen would be spread out over the 10 d period and that there is likely substantial metabolic decay of the compounds during this time. Lethal levels of insecticides in pollen are an obvious concern, but sublethal levels are also worthy of study as even slight behavioral effects may impact how affected bees carry out important tasks such as brood rearing, orientation and communication.

Also potentially important are the three fungicides found in bee-collected pollen samples (trifloxystrobin and azoxystrobin and propiconazole). Azoxystrobin and trifloxystrobin are frequently used in maize seed treatments as protectants and all three of these compounds are also widely applied to maize in North America, even in the absence of disease symptoms [28]. These compounds are typically applied using aerial application during anthesis. Propiconazole has been shown to synergize toxicity of some neonicotinoids (thiacloprid and acetamiprid) to honey bees in the laboratory, although the same results have not been shown in field studies [10], [29]. Although these fungicides are not acutely toxic to honey bees [5], the fact that they are routinely applied to areas that bees will frequent (i.e. maize plants at anthesis) coupled with the difficulties and uncertainties in assessing the toxicity of pesticide mixtures [30], indicate that they should be considered in future work.

In evaluating our results, it is important to bear in mind that toxicity is only one variable in addressing pesticide risks to pollinators – the intersection between toxicity and exposure is key in determining how much risk is posed by a toxicant to a given organism. These components are assessed by regulators in developing a “risk cup” which combines these parameters to assess the cumulative risks of a given toxicant to an organism [31]. In the case of honey bees, the toxicity of the neonicotinoid seed treatments used for large acreage field crops has been well-established [14], [31], although when assessing the overall threat to posed to honey bee populations, calculations are complicated even further by the observation that sublethal doses of insecticides can weaken bees and increase susceptibility to key parasites or pathogens [32].

Because we found these compounds in pollen, oral LD50 is a relevant parameter in discussing toxicity to honey bees. In terms of acute toxicity (based on the oral LD50 of 2.8 ng/bee [23]), the amount of clothianidin on a single maize seed at the rate of 0.5 mg/kernel contains enough active ingredient to kill over 80,000 honey bees. However, the overall level of risk has been more difficult to quantify, as there has not been a clear mechanism whereby honey bees could be exposed to high levels of these compounds – once the treated seed is planted, opportunities for honey bee exposure to concentrations of neonicotinoids over a wide area should drop dramatically (although see [19]). Our results suggest that of the factors we quantified in this study, used talc exhausted during and after planting (the latter would occur during routine cleaning of planting equipment) stands out as potential routes for exposure that should be prioritized for further quantification and remediation. A recently published review of the risks posed by planting treated seeds in the E.U. estimates that measures taken there may reduce the dust generated during planting by 99% [33]. In North America, different planting equipment is used and there are currently no guidelines for disposal of waste talc, nor are there devices for filtering exhaust material from the vacuum planting systems. Producers may be largely unaware that this material is highly toxic to pollinators. However, given the unprecedented levels of maize production across the United States, coupled with the increasing adoption of neonicotinoid seed treatments in other annual crops covering a wide area, including soybeans (31.3 million ha), wheat (24.7 million ha), and cotton (4.4 million ha, all figures 2010 planting) [9], it is clear that this material presents a risk that is worthy of further investigation and possibly corrective action.

Our findings have implications both for honey bees located near these crops year-round, but also for migratory colonies (bees used to pollinate winter-flowering specialty crops in western North America, such as almonds and other fruit and nut crops). Many of these colonies reside in areas where treated seed is used extensively (i.e. the upper Midwestern United States) during the period from early spring through late fall. During this period, these bees forage on a variety of crops that may be planted using neonicotinoid treated seed, including maize, soybeans and canola. Although our study was confined to honey bees, these results are relevant for any pollinators that forage in or near agricultural fields, both in the crop itself or on other flowering plants (i.e. weeds) that are present in or near the field.

Materials and Methods Top

Ethics statement

No specific permits were required for the described field studies. All studies were performed at a Purdue Agricultural Center, which is comprised of agricultural land that is owned and maintained by Purdue University specifically for research trials. All products used during maize planting (seed, herbicides, fertilizer etc.) were registered for legal use and were applied in accordance with label guidelines. These field studies did not involve endangered or protected species.

We based our study design upon planting practices, which helped us to identify several risk factors: during maize planting, tractor movement and wind generate large quantities of dust (i.e. disturbed soil) that may land directly on bees and/or the flowers that they visit, making this dust one potential route of exposure for foraging bees.

Sample preparation and chemical analysis

All samples were analyzed using a modified version of the QuECHeRs protocol [34]. The pesticides were extracted from the matrix (i.e. soil, talc or pollen) by agitation with water, acetonitrile and the salts magnesium sulfate and sodium acetate. After centrifuging, a portion of the supernatant acetonitrile layer containing the pesticides was further cleaned by the addition of solid phase dispersants (primary secondary amine, magnesium sulfate, C-18 silica). An aliquot of solvent was then concentrated and analyzed by liquid chromatography/mass spectrometry utilizing an Agilent 1200 LC interfaced to a Thermo –LTQ mass spectrometer. The MS was operated in a positive electrospray mode with a separate MS/MS scan function utilized for each pesticide monitored. This analytical technique provides both qualitative (retention time and mass spectra) and quantitative information. The combined techniques allow the various pesticides to be unambiguously identified at the parts per billion concentration level.

Pollen identification

A portion of each pollen sample from 2010 experiments was used to count and identify the types of pollen collected by the bees. The identification of maize pollen was accomplished using comparisons to reference slides prepared from maize pollen in our study area. The other pollen types were identified using comparisons to online images (www.polleninfo.org). The four pollen types identified were maize (Zea mays), common dandelion (Taraxacum officinale), plantain (Plantago spp.) and goldenrod (Solidagospp.). To estimate the proportion of maize pollen present, a subsample of pollen suspended in water was pipetted onto a disposable hemacytometer (DRM-700 Cell-VU CBC) and the pollen grains were counted. Fresh maize pollen grains are prolate spheroidal in shape [35]. The maize pollen volume was estimated measuring the principal diameters of five individual grains from each subsample, resulting in an average volume for each maize pollen grain of 3.69×10⁻⁴ mm³.

Field experiment design, planting and sample collection methods

Our experimental field was surrounded by fields that had been planted with maize and soybeans. We sampled soil collected from the experimental field and each of the adjacent fields. Soil samples of 500 cc were taken at four equidistant locations within each field on July 7, 2010. Because we were most interested in the content of dust that may arise from disturbed soil, we confined our sampling to the top 2–3 cm of soil. The soil samples from each field were pooled and mixed prior to analysis. A 500 cc sample of soil was taken from each pooled sample for chemical analysis. On July 8 2010, we placed 8 hives surrounding an unplanted field in an area of long-term maize and soybean planting. The field dimensions were approximately 142 m wide by 148 m long. This area was divided in half, and the hives were then arranged such that each field half had a hive in the center of each border. Hive entrances faced the field interior. Pollen traps (Model #M00682, Dadant and Sons, Inc. M. Hamilton, IL) were placed in the entrances of each hive and pollen samples collected daily both before and after the field was planted. Samples were labeled and stored at −10°C prior to analysis. Hives were selected for approximately equal populations. Each hive contained about 20,000 to 30,000 bees. This level of stocking is much lower than other apiaries that are kept closer to Purdue University, and not expected to result in excessive competition for resources. However, honey bees will forage up to several kilometers if necessary and individual hives will vary in their foraging needs and resource preferences. We chose this number of hives to give an adequate sampling of the agricultural fields in which they were placed, without the expectation that they would forage primarily in the experimental field.

On July 12 2010, we planted half of the field with commercial maize seed treated with 1.25 mg/kernel of clothianidin, adding talc to each seed box at the recommended rate (approx. 240 cc talc/75 kg of maize seed) [36]. Because untreated maize seed was not available commercially, we used maize harvested the previous year to plant the other half of the field. Talc was added to this seed at the same rate as above. Fields were planted using a 6-row John Deere 7200 MaxEmerge planter. Collection of waste talc for analysis was performed following planting by manually removing approximately 50 g of talc from the manifold of the planter vacuum system. The planter and vacuum system was exhausted thoroughly and cleaned with compressed air prior to each planting and following each collection at a location far from the experimental fields. Samples of fresh pollen from maize anthers were taken by removing the entire tassel from approximately 100 plants in the field while pollen was being shed. Samples were vigorously shaken into paper bags. The resulting mixture of pollen and anthers was spread over paper towels. Anthers and other large debris were removed so that only pollen grains remained for analysis.

2011 sampling

During the spring of 2011, we again received reports of dead and dying bees at a local apiary, located in a small wooded area near maize and soybean production fields in northwestern Indiana. As in 2010, these reports coincided with local planting and tillage activities. We collected bees from the entrances of several hives on May 10^th and 12^th, 2011. We also collected apparently healthy returning foragers from hives at the same apiary. We removed frames containing nectar and pollen from two colonies at this location: one frame was taken from a hive with dead bees near its entrance, the second frame was removed from a nearby hive without any dead bees visible. Pollen and nectar from these frames was removed from cells for analysis, and two separate analyses of pollen samples were conducted. Finally, we collected samples of surface soil (using the methods outlined above) and dandelion flowers (multiple areas sampled, approximately 7–10 flowers were collected/sample) from maize fields within 2 km of this apiary that were being planted at the time of our bee collections.

We also collected additional waste talc samples in 2011, using commercially available neonicotinoid treated maize seed from several different manufacturers. Because our goal was to develop a representative sample from a variety of maize hybrids used in our research area, all hybrids were selected based upon agronomic suitability for local planting. Both clothianidin and thiamethoxam treated seed was used, at application rates ranging from 0.25 mg/kernel to 1.25 mg/kernel. Talc was added to each seed box at the recommended rate (approx. 240 cc talc/75 kg of maize seed) (36). Fields were planted using a 6-row John Deere 7200 MaxEmerge planter. Collection of waste talc for analysis was performed following planting by manually removing approximately 50 g of talc from the manifold of the planter vacuum system using a scoopula. The planter and vacuum system was exhausted thoroughly and cleaned with compressed air prior to each planting and following each collection.

Acknowledgments Top

We appreciate the comments of anonymous reviewers whose thoughtful and thorough reviews helped improve the manuscript. We thank Alexzandra Murphy, who assisted with collation of background literature. Caitlin Race, Madeline Spigler and Nicole Parker assisted with colony maintenance and sample collection. We are also grateful for the assistance of Peter Illingworth and Larry Bledsoe who aided in planting of fields.

Author Contributions Top

Conceived and designed the experiments: CK GH BE. Performed the experiments: CK BE GA. Analyzed the data: CK BE. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: BE CK. Wrote the paper: CK GH BE. Maintained and transported honeybee colonies used for these experiments: KG.

References Top

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Girolami V, Mazzon L, Squartini A, Mori N, Marzaro M, et al. (2009) Translocation of neonicotinoid insecticides from coated seeds to guttation drops: a novel way of intoxication for bees. J Econ Entomol 102: 1808–1815. FIND THIS ARTICLE ONLINE
Greatti M, Barbattini R, Stravisi A, Sabatini AG, Rossi S (2006) Presence of the a.i. imidacloprid on vegetation near corn fields sown with Gaucho dressed seeds. Bull Insectol 59: 99–103. FIND THIS ARTICLE ONLINE
Tremolada P, Mazzoleni M, Saliu F, Colombo M, Vighi M (2010) Field trial for evaluating the effects on honey bees of corn sown using Cruiser and Celest xl treated seeds. Bull Environ Contam Toxicol 85: 229–234. FIND THIS ARTICLE ONLINE
Girolami V, Marzaro M, Vivan L, Mazzon L, Greatti M, et al. (2011) Fatal powdering of bees in flight with particulates of neonicotinoids seed coating and humidity implication. doi:10.1111/j.1439-0418.2011.01648.x.
Laurino D, Porporato M, Patetta A, Manino A (2011) Toxicity of neonicotinoid insecticides to honey bees: laboratory tests. Bull Insectol 64: 107–113. FIND THIS ARTICLE ONLINE
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Bonmatin JM, Marchand PA, Charvet R, Moineau I, Bengsch ER, et al. (2005) Quantification of imidacloprid update in maize crops. J Agri Food Chem 53: 5336–5341. FIND THIS ARTICLE ONLINE
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New assessment of toxicity of glyphosate herbicide to humans

2012-01-11T22:38:00.000+11:00

DEVELOPMENTAL AND REPRODUCTIVE OUTCOMES IN HUMANS AND ANIMALS
AFTER GLYPHOSATE EXPOSURE: A CRITICAL ANALYSIS
SUMMARY
Glyphosate is the active ingredient of several widely used herbicide formulations. Glyphosate targets the shikimate metabolic pathway, which is found in plants but not in animals. Despite the relative safety of glyphosate, various adverse developmental and reproductive problems have been alleged as a result of exposure in humans and animals. To assess the developmental and reproductive safety of glyphosate, an analysis of the available literature was conducted.
Epidemiological and animal reports, as well as studies on mechanisms of action related to
possible developmental and reproductive effects of glyphosate, were reviewed. An valuation of this database found no consistent effects of glyphosate exposure on reproductive health or the developing offspring. Furthermore, no plausible mechanisms of action for such effects were elucidated. Although toxicity was observed in studies that used glyphosate-based formulations, the data strongly suggest that such effects were due to surfactants present in the formulations and not the direct result of glyphosate exposure. To estimate potential human exposure concentrations to glyphosate as a result of working directly with the herbicide, available biomonitoring data were examined. These data demonstrated extremely low human exposures as a result of normal application practices. Furthermore, the estimated exposure concentrations in humans are greater than 500-fold less than the oral reference dose for glyphosate of 2 mg/kg/d set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (U.S. EPA 1993). In conclusion, the available literature shows no solid evidence linking glyphosate exposure to adverse developmental or reproductive effects at environmentally realistic exposure concentrations.
Amy Lavin Williams, Rebecca E. Watson, John M. DeSesso
Journal of Toxicology and Environmental Health, Part B, 15:39–96, 2012
Copyright © Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
ISSN: 1093-7404 print / 1521-6950 online
DOI: 10.1080/10937404.2012.632361

Leaving out the chlorine from the wash water leaves the Listeria in the produce.

2012-01-11T08:50:00.001+11:00

Report on the Investigation of the outbreak of Listeria monocytogenes in cantaloupe at Jensen Farms

FDA officials were highly critical of the processing methods used at Jensen Farms. According to these FDA officials, the probable causes of the melon contamination at Jensen Farms included “serious design flaws” in the processing technique used at Jensen Farms, “poor sanitary design of the facility itself,” and “lack of awareness of food safety standards by Jensen Farms.” In particular, FDA emphasized to Committee staff that the processing equipment and the decision not to chlorinate the water used to wash the cantaloupes were two probable causes of the contamination. Both of these significant factors were changes implemented at the packing facility after the 2010 audit.

from U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on Energy and Commerce

Committee Staff January 10, 2012

Pundit's thoughts:

Seems as if a mania to get rid of synthetic chemicals (and leave out chorine disinfectant), combined with lack of risk planning with process changes, killed consumers with unnecessary Listeria infection. This mistake killed 32 and sickened 140+.

Natural GMOs Part 121. New hybrid plant species suffer bursts of genetic change

2012-01-09T09:03:00.000+11:00

University of Florida News – UF research on newly formed plants could lead to improved crop fertility:

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — A new University of Florida study shows genomes of a recently formed plant species to be highly unstable, a phenomenon that may have far-reaching evolutionary consequences.

Published online this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the study is the first to document chromosomal variation in natural populations of a recently formed plant species following whole genome doubling, or polyploidy. Because many agricultural crops are young polyploids, the data may be used to develop plants with higher fertility and yields. Polyploid crops include wheat, corn, coffee, apples, broccoli and some rice species.

“It could be occurring in other polyploids, but this sort of methodology just hasn’t been applied to many plant species,” said study co-author Pam Soltis, distinguished professor and curator of molecular systematics and evolutionary genetics at the Florida Museum of Natural History on the UF campus. “So it may be that lots of polyploids – including our crops – may not be perfect additive combinations of the two parents, but instead have more chromosomes from one parent or the other.”

Researchers analyzed about 70 Tragopogon miscellus plants, a species in the daisy family that originated in the northwestern U.S. about 80 years ago. The new species formed naturally when two plants introduced from Europe mated to produce a hybrid offspring, and hybridization was followed by polyploidy.

Using a technique called “chromosome painting” to observe the plants’ DNA, UF postdoctoral researcher and lead author Michael Chester discovered that while whole genome doubling initially results in a new species containing 12 chromosomes from each parent, numbers subsequently vary among many plants.

The paints are made by attaching different dyes to DNA of the two parent species. Once the dye is applied, there is a match between the DNA of the paint and of the chromosome. Under a microscope, the chromosomes appear in one color or the other (red vs. green) depending on the parent from which they originated. Sometimes chromosomes are a patchwork of both colors because DNA from the two parents has been swapped as a result of chromosomal rearrangements.

“One of the things that makes this so amazing is that where we expected to see 12 chromosomes from each parent (the polyploid has 24 chromosomes), it turns out there aren’t 12 and 12, there are 11 from one parent and 13 from the other, or 10 and 14,” Soltis said. “We’re hoping through some ongoing studies to be able to link these results with the occurrence of another interesting phenomenon – the loss of genes – and also see what effect these changes have on the way the plants grow and perform.”

The polyploid’s two parent species, Tragopogon dubius and Tragopogon pratensis, were introduced to the U.S. in the 1920s. Because its flower only blooms for a few hours in the morning, Tragopogon miscellus is often referred to as “John-go-to-bed-at-noon,” and its common name is goatsbeard. It looks like a daisy except for being yellow in color.

“People have looked at these chromosomes before, but until you could apply these beautiful painting techniques, you couldn’t tell which parent they each came from,” Soltis said.

Of the six populations examined from Washington and Idaho, 69 percent of the plants showed a deviation from the expected 12 and 12 chromosome pattern.

“In order for most plants to be able to interbreed successfully, their chromosomes need to match up,” Chester said. “That doesn’t necessarily happen when you don’t have equal numbers, so there may be some chromosomal barriers to fertility that develop as a result of this sort of chromosomal variation. This mechanism may also explain low fertility in other plants, such as crops. This is something we are looking into with Tragopogon.”

The two-year study was funded by the National Science Foundation. Other co-authors include Doug Soltis, a distinguished professor in UF’s biology department, UF undergraduate biology student Joseph Gallagher and Ana Veruska Cruz da Silva of Embrapa Tabuleiros Costeiros in Brazil and the Florida Museum.

“Among all of the processes that generate biological diversity in the plant kingdom, genome doubling, or polyploidy, is among the most prevalent and important,” said Jonathan Wendel, professor and chairman of the department of ecology, evolution, and organismal biology at Iowa State University, in an email. “This is an area that is receiving international focus and research attention, but the system Pam and Doug Soltis are working on is unique.”

-30-

Credits

Writer: Danielle Torrent, dtorrent@flmnh.ufl.edu
Source: Pam Soltis, psoltis@flmnh.ufl.edu, 352-273-1964
Source: Michael Chester, mchester@ufl.edu, 352-392-7924
Media Contact: Leeann Bright, lbright@flmnh.ufl.edu

See also

Hybridization Alters Early Life-History Traits and Increases Plant Colonization Success in a Novel Region
February 2012
Curr Biol. 2011 Apr 12;21(7):551-6. Epub 2011 Mar 17.
Transcriptomic shock generates evolutionary novelty in a newly formed, natural allopolyploid plant.
Buggs RJ, Zhang L, Miles N, Tate JA, Gao L, Wei W, Schnable PS, Barbazuk WB, Soltis PS, Soltis DE.
Source
Department of Biology, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32611, USA. r.buggs@qmul.ac.uk
Abstract
New hybrid species might be expected to show patterns of gene expression intermediate to those shown by parental species. "Transcriptomic shock" may also occur, in which gene expression is disrupted; this may be further modified by whole genome duplication (causing allopolyploidy). "Shock" can include instantaneous partitioning of gene expression between parental copies of genes among tissues. These effects have not previously been studied at a population level in a natural allopolyploid plant species. Here, we survey tissue-specific expression of 144 duplicated gene pairs derived from different parental species (homeologs) in two natural populations of 40-generation-old allotetraploid Tragopogon miscellus (Asteraceae) plants. We compare these results with patterns of allelic expression in both in vitro "hybrids" and hand-crossed F(1) hybrids between the parental diploids T. dubius and T. pratensis, and with patterns of homeolog expression in synthetic (S(1)) allotetraploids. Partitioning of expression was frequent in natural allopolyploids, but F(1) hybrids and S(1) allopolyploids showed less partitioning of expression than the natural allopolyploids and the in vitro "hybrids" of diploid parents. Our results suggest that regulation of gene expression is relaxed in a concerted manner upon hybridization, and new patterns of partitioned expression subsequently emerge over the generations following allopolyploidization.

BMC Evol Biol. 2010 Sep 22;10:291.
Similar patterns of rDNA evolution in synthetic and recently formed natural populations of Tragopogon (Asteraceae) allotetraploids.
Malinska H, Tate JA, Matyasek R, Leitch AR, Soltis DE, Soltis PS, Kovarik A.
Source
Institute of Biophysics, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, vvi Laboratory of Molecular Epigenetics, Kralovopolska 135, CZ-61265 Brno, Czech Republic.
Abstract
BACKGROUND:
Tragopogon mirus and T. miscellus are allotetraploids (2n = 24) that formed repeatedly during the past 80 years in eastern Washington and adjacent Idaho (USA) following the introduction of the diploids T. dubius, T. porrifolius, and T. pratensis (2n = 12) from Europe. In most natural populations of T. mirus and T. miscellus, there are far fewer 35S rRNA genes (rDNA) of T. dubius than there are of the other diploid parent (T. porrifolius or T. pratensis). We studied the inheritance of parental rDNA loci in allotetraploids resynthesized from diploid accessions. We investigate the dynamics and directionality of these rDNA losses, as well as the contribution of gene copy number variation in the parental diploids to rDNA variation in the derived tetraploids.
RESULTS:
Using Southern blot hybridization and fluorescent in situ hybridization (FISH), we analyzed copy numbers and distribution of these highly reiterated genes in seven lines of synthetic T. mirus (110 individuals) and four lines of synthetic T. miscellus (71 individuals). Variation among diploid parents accounted for most of the observed gene imbalances detected in F1 hybrids but cannot explain frequent deviations from repeat additivity seen in the allotetraploid lines. Polyploid lineages involving the same diploid parents differed in rDNA genotype, indicating that conditions immediately following genome doubling are crucial for rDNA changes. About 19% of the resynthesized allotetraploid individuals had equal rDNA contributions from the diploid parents, 74% were skewed towards either T. porrifolius or T. pratensis-type units, and only 7% had more rDNA copies of T. dubius-origin compared to the other two parents. Similar genotype frequencies were observed among natural populations. Despite directional reduction of units, the additivity of 35S rDNA locus number is maintained in 82% of the synthetic lines and in all natural allotetraploids.
CONCLUSIONS:
Uniparental reductions of homeologous rRNA gene copies occurred in both synthetic and natural populations of Tragopogon allopolyploids. The extent of these rDNA changes was generally higher in natural populations than in the synthetic lines. We hypothesize that locus-specific and chromosomal changes in early generations of allopolyploids may influence patterns of rDNA evolution in later generations.

Curr Biol. 2011 Apr 12;21(7):R254-5.
Hybridization: expressing yourself in a crowd.
Hegarty M.
Source
Aberystwyth University, IBERS Penglais, Edward Llwyd Building, Aberystwyth, SY23 3DA, UK. ayh@aber.ac.uk
Abstract
What happens to the expression of homeologous gene copies during the formation of new allopolyploid hybrids and their subsequent evolution? Recent studies have shown that hybridisation may relax transcriptional regulation and enable subsequent allopolyploid generations to develop novel patterns of parental gene expression.
Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Comment on
Curr Biol. 2011 Apr 12;21(7):551-6.

Natural GMOs Part 120. Hybridization Increases Plant Colonization Success

2012-01-08T06:53:00.000+11:00

Hybridization Alters Early Life-History Traits and Increases Plant Colonization Success in a Novel Region | American Society of Naturalists:
What happens when hybrids invade?

Interspecific hybridization, or mating that occurs between different species, often leads to reproductive failure or infertile progeny. In contrast to this historical view of interspecific hybrids as evolutionary dead ends, or the related notion that they only occur in intermediate habitats relative to their parental taxa, a recent study shows for the first time that hybridization can enhance colonization success of invasive species in a novel region. Furthermore, by comparison with earlier work, this research suggests that identical hybrid lines may succeed via unique sets of life-history traits in different regions, implying a much greater arena for hybrid success than previously appreciated. These findings support a much discussed but poorly tested hypothesis that hybridization can enhance invasiveness in some taxa.

... “These findings are exciting in part because few studies have experimentally tested whether hybridization actually promotes invasiveness,” said lead author Dr. Stephen Hovick. “Our results highlight the importance of invasive hybrid taxa while also suggesting that invasive species management for hybrids may need to be tailored to address region-specific dynamics.” The article appears in the February issue of The American Naturalist (http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/663684).

Thu, 12/22/2011 - 18:48 — AmNat

Stephen M. Hovick (Rice University), Lesley G. Campbell (Rice University), Allison A. Snow (Ohio State University), and Kenneth D. Whitney (Rice University)

The Greenwar Chronicles Part 31. Another case of misinformation bundled in Greenpeace report.

2012-01-07T14:05:00.000+11:00

Scientists refute Greenpeace claim that genetically modified corn caused new insect pest:
From Entomological Society of America, Via Physorg.com

An article in the forthcoming issue of the Journal of Integrated Pest Management (JIPM) refutes claims by Greenpeace Germany that the western bean cutworm (WBC), Striacosta albicosta (Smith), is "a new plant pest" that was "caused by genetically engineered corn." The Greenpeace Germany report, which was written by author Richard Then of Testbiotech, offers a "surprisingly simplistic conclusion" regarding the spread of western bean cutworm over the last decade, according to the JIPM authors.

In "Genetically Engineered Bt Corn and Range Expansion of the Western Bean Cutworm (Lepidoptera: Noctuidae) in the United States: A Response to Greenpeace Germany," corresponding author William Hutchison, professor and chair of the University of Minnesota Department of Entomology, and his co-authors maintain that the Greenpeace report fails to consider broader ecological and agronomic factors which explain why the WBC's range has expanded. These additional factors include insect biology, synchrony of insect and corn phenology, reduced insecticide use, increases in conservation tillage, soil type, glyphosate-resistant crops, insect genetics, insect pathogens, pre-existing insect population densities, and climate change.

The JIPM authors focus on several discrepancies of fact and interpretation in the Greenpeace document, beginning with its title, "Agro-biotechnology: New plant pest caused by genetically engineered corn. The spread of the western bean cutworm causes massive damage in the U.S."

Despite the Greenpeace claim, the WBC is neither "new" nor has it caused "massive damage" recently. The WBC was originally collected in Arizona in the 1880s and was considered an economic pest of beans and corn as early as 1915. Over the last decade its range has expanded, but documentation of economically damaging infestations has been relatively limited.

The Greenpeace claim that the WBC has historically "been confined to very limited regions and did not cause any major problems in maize crops" is also untrue, according to the authors. Farmers in Nebraska reported major problems as early as 1962, and instead of being "confined to very limited regions," the WBC was documented throughout the western Great Plains from Mexico to Alberta, where it was found in the mid 1950s, despite the Greenpeace claim that it was found in Canada for the first time as recently as 2009.

According to the authors, "a curious theme throughout the Greenpeace Germany report, is that Then (2010) ignored the possibility of other influences on western bean cutworm range expansion, including several ecological and agronomic factors." For example, the increasing use of conservation tillage since the mid-1990s favors the survival rate of WBC larvae because less deep plowing minimizes mortality to insect pests that overwinter in the soil. Another possible reason is the reduction or elimination of insecticide applications, which has occurred with increased use of Bt corn over the past decade, likely resulting in increased survival of the WBC. Other possibilities for the WBC range expansion, such as climate change, were also ignored by Greenpeace and Testbiotech.

Out of concern that "potential misinterpretation of selected quotes" in the Greenpeace report may lead to confusion among future regulatory decision makers, the authors go on to give specific responses to other claims in the report.

More information: These responses, and the full JIPM article, can be downloaded at http://www.entsoc. … eenpeace.pdf .

Lanham, MD; 6. Januar 2012 – Eine Publikation ist im Druck im neuesten Journal of Integrated Pest Management (JIPM) weist die Behauptungen von Greenpeace Deutschlad zurück,dass der Western Bean Cutworm (WBC), zu deutsch etwa 'Westlicher Bohnenschneider', Striacosta albicosta (Smith) als eine neue Schädlingswelle verursacht ist durch Gentech-Mais. Der deutsche Greenpeace-Report, verfasst duch Christoph Then von Testbiotech enthält nach den JIPM-Autoren überraschend simple Schlussfolgerungen bezüglich der Ausbreitung des WBC über das letzte Jahrzehnt.

(READ ENGLISH VERSION)

In "Genetically Engineered Bt Corn and Range Expansion of the Western Bean Cutworm (Lepidoptera: Noctuidae) in the United States: A Response to Greenpeace Germany,"(korrespondierender Autor William Hutchinson, Professor und Direktor des Entomologie-Departments an der Minnesota University) und seine Ko-Autoren halten fest, dass der Greenpeace Bericht zusätzliche Faktoren in breiterer ökologischer und agronomischer Sicht vermissen lässt, die die Ausbreitung des Cutworms erklären. Dieses zusätzlichen Faktoren umfassen auch die Biologie des Schädlings, die Synchronisierung von Schädlings- und Mais-Entwicklung, reduzierten Inektizid-Verbrauch, Reduktion des Pflügens, Bodentypen, Einsatz herbizid-toleranter Sorten, Insektengenetik, Insekten-Pathogene, voraus existierende Insekten-Populationsdichte und Klimawandel.

Die JIPM-Autoren beleuchten mehrere faktische Widersprüche und Falschinterpretationen im Dokument von Greenpeace, die schon bei der Titelwahl beginnen: „Gentechnisch veränderter Mais fördert Ausbreitung von Schädlingen.“

Entgegen den Behauptungen von Greenpeace ist der Western Bean Cutworm (WBC) weder „neu im Gebiet“, noch hat er neulich „massive Schäden“ verursacht. Der WBC wurde erstmals in Arizona um 1880 gefunden und als ernstzunehmender Schädling bereits 1915 erkannt. Über die letzten drei Jahrzehnte hat sich sein Vorkommen erweitert, aber der ökonomisch dokumentierte Infektions-Schaden hielt sich verhältnismässig in Grenzen. Die Bahauptung von Greenpeace, dass der WBC früher auf kleine Gebiete begrenzt war und keine grösseren Probleme in Maiskulturen verursachte, ist auch nicht wahr nach den Autoren. Bauern in Nebraska berichteten von grossen Problemen bereits ab 1962 und anstelle der „auf kleine Gebiete limitierten“ Vorkommen war der WBC durch die ganzen Western Great Plains von Mexico bis nach Alberte verbreitet, wo es bereits mitte der 50er Jahre gefunden wurde, trotz der Greenpeace – Behauptung, dass der WBC in Kanada erst kürzlich erstmals um 2009 festgestellt wurde.

Merkwürdig ist nach den Autoren, wie Then im ganzen Greenpeace Bericht 2010 andere Einflussfaktoren der Ausbreitung des WBC einfach weglässt, inklusive mehrerer ökologischer und agronomischer Faktoren. So zum Beispiel hat der steigende Einsatz von Conservation Tilling seit Mitte der Neunziger Jahre die winterliche Boden-Überlebensrate des WBC begünstigt wegen dem weniger tiefgehenden Pflügen. Andere Ursachen der Ausbreitung liegen in der Reduktion oder sogar Elimination von Insektizid-Anwendungen im letzten Jahrzehnt, resultierend in höheren Überlebensraten. Auch andere Ausbreitungs-Ursachen wie Klimawandel wurden im Greenpeace – Testbiotech - Bericht ignoriert.

Um zu vermeiden, dass “potentielle Fehlinterpretationen durch selektive Zitate” aus dem Greenpeace – Bericht zu Verwirrung under zukünftigen Regulierungsexperten in ihren Entscheidungen führen könnten, geben die Autoren spezifische Antworten auf andere Behauptungen im Greenpeace – Bericht.

Diese Antworten, und die vollständige IIPM-Publikation können heruntergeladen werden: http://www.entsoc.org/PDF/2012/JIPM-Greenpeace.pdf.

Das Journal of Integrated Pest Management ist ein elektronisch offen zugängliches Journal mit externer Peer review, das das ganze Gebiet des Integralen Pest-Management abdeckt. Es ist das Organ der Entomological Society of America, der grössen solchen Organisation, die sich um die professionellen und wissenschatlichen Bedürfnisse der Entomologen und Vertreter ähnlicher Gebiete kümmert.

UPDATE - GREENPEACE RESPOND:

New discussion on the negative consequences of large-scale Bt maize cultivation
12.01.2012 - A recent article in the Journal of Integrated Pest Management by Hutchison et al (2011) discussed a Testbiotech report published in 2010 (commissioned by Greenpeace Germany): New plant pest caused by genetically engineered corn: The spread of the western bean cutworm causes massive damage in the US (Then, 2010a). Hutchison et al (2011) are criticising this report because they are of the opinion that genetically engineered maize should not be regarded as the sole factor that influenced the range expansion of the western bean cutworm....

Is Kentucky’s heritage spirit compromised by GMO corn? ( Psst. Don't mention the ethanol throat cancer risk that killed Christopher Hitchens)

2012-01-07T10:29:00.000+11:00

Bourbon of proof: Is Kentucky’s heritage spirit compromised by GMO corn? | Grist:

In 2007, Grist writer David Roberts wrote about his less-than-successful hunt for an organic bourbon. Five years of boom-like growth in the organic sector later and -- go figure -- there's still no organic bourbon on the U.S. market. In fact, finding any bourbon free of genetically engineered corn (as all certified organic products must be) has become increasingly difficult.
Bourbon gives us an interesting window into GMO grain, because the spirit must by definition be made with at least 51 percent corn. Consider the fact that 85 percent of the corn grown in the U.S. is now genetically engineered, and you can guess why organic bourbon won't be appearing in a liquor store near you any time soon....(more at link)

Pundit's thoughts:

No mention of ethanol's link to throat cancer in this interesting article. Hmmmm. I guess focussing on phantom GMO fears makes you feel better about this toxic spirit, but this look away from the proven risks attitude didn't save Christopher.)

A conversation by the Pundit on G+ made him realise there is no corn in the bourbon anyway, so why should its organic status be compromised by GM materials. The mash is distilled and the vapours condensed to yield liquor. There is no gaseous phase to GMOs. If such bourbon still has GMO taint, we all do, as GMO emit water and CO2 gas that goes everywhere.

All in all the objective issues are ridiculous, as is usually the case with "organic product" arguments

Natural GMOs Part 119. Octopus evolution exploits editing of genetic messages to deal with cold.

2012-01-07T10:16:00.000+11:00

Eight-legged Evolution Exploits Editing - Science News:

The frigid waters of the Southern Ocean don’t slow Antarctic octopuses down, even though their nervous systems are governed by the same genetic instructions as their tropical counterparts. Now scientists know why: Edits to the creatures’ genetic instructions tweak the octopuses’ nerve cells for smooth operating in the numbing polar waters.

The discovery is the first report of such editing actually helping an organism adjust to its environment, scientists report online January 5 in Science.... continues at link

More information: RNA Editing Underlies Temperature Adaptation in K+ Channels from Polar Octopuses, Science, Published Online January 5 2012. DOI: 10.1126/science.1212795
ABSTRACT
To operate in the extreme cold, ion channels from psychrophiles must have evolved structural changes to compensate for their thermal environment. A reasonable assumption would be that the underlying adaptations lie within the encoding genes. Here, we show that delayed rectifier K+ channel genes from an Antarctic and a tropical octopus encode channels that differ at only four positions and display very similar behavior when expressed in Xenopus oocytes. However, the transcribed mRNAs are extensively edited, creating functional diversity. One editing site, which recodes an isoleucine to a valine in the channel's pore, greatly accelerates gating kinetics by destabilizing the open state. This site is extensively edited in both Antarctic and Arctic species, but mostly unedited in tropical species. Thus, A-to-I RNA editing can respond to the physical environment.

Crucial links between crop breeding innovations and elimination of poverty are put under the spotlight

2012-01-05T08:45:00.000+11:00

New crop varieties can cut poverty, study finds - SciDev.Net:
Bernard Appiah

3 January 2012 | EN

The new groundnut varieties are

resistant to major pests and diseases

Flickr/SwathiSridharan

The thorny question of whether improved crop varieties do, in fact, lift peasant farmers out of poverty has been answered positively in a study of groundnut varieties, according to researchers at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), in Kenya.

Evidence that new technologies improve small farmers' wellbeing is scarce because the impactof adopting technologies depends on many factors such as the existence of infrastructure, policies and institutions that are often not fully functional in developing countries. For example, technology that increases productivity may not reduce poverty if the farmers do not have access to markets to sell their extra crop.

In addition, some studies have claimed that building capacity is more important than technology for improving livelihoods.

Researchers from CIMMYT selected more than 900 households at random from seven major groundnut growing districts in Uganda and, in 2006, surveyed socioeconomic data and information related to the adoption of improved groundnut varieties. Groundnut is an important crop in Uganda.

Farmers who adopted any of four improved varieties resistant to major pests and diseases — developed by national and international organisations, and released in Uganda between 1999 and 2002 — were compared with non-adopters. The results of the study were published in the October 2011 issue of World Development.

"We found that the adoption of [improved] groundnut varieties significantly increased the net value of income by US$130–254 per hectare," said Menale Kassie, one of the authors of the study. "Adoption of groundnut varieties also significantly reduced poverty as measured by headcount index [the proportion of people below the poverty line] by 7–9 per cent."

In a related study, which has been submitted for publication, Kassie and colleagues found that adopting improved maize varieties also significantly improves rural households' food security and decreases the extent of poverty.

Richard Edema, a plant pathologist and senior lecturer in the school ofagricultural sciences at Makerere University, Uganda, said: "Studies [such as this one] can serve as feedback for agricultural scientists to assess whether new [crop] varieties are making real impacts on farmers' lives".

Okello David Kalule, head of the Uganda National Groundnut Improvement Programme, said that, although the new groundnut varieties produce superior yields, some farmers are still growing low-yielding varieties. The reasons for this, he said, include poor agricultural extension services and a lack of access to information about the new varieties.

"Local institutions should be strengthened to collectively improve access to seeds, credit, and information to increase both the spread and intensity of adoption," he said.

Link to abstract

REFERENCES

World Development doi: 10.1016/j.worlddev.2011.04.023 (2011)

More good news: a further quote from the Introduction to peer reviewed paper provides more examples:

In more recent studies on the impact of HYV of rice and maize in Africa, Kijima, Otsuka, and Sserunkuuma (2008, Kijima, Y., Otsuka, K., and Sserunkuuma, D. (2008). Assessing the impact of NERICA on income and poverty in central and western Uganda. Agricultural Economics, 38(3), 327–337.) found that the introduction of a new rice variety for Africa (NERICA) decreased poverty to a signiﬁcant extent without worsening income distribution. Minten and Barrett (2007; Minten, B., & Barrett, C. B. (2008). Agricultural technology, productivity, and poverty in Madagascar. World Development, 36(5), 797–822.) showed that communes in Madagascar with higher rates of adoption of improved agricultural technologies, and consequently higher crop yields, enjoyed lower food prices, higher real wages for unskilled workers, and greater food security and lower poverty. Karanja, Renkow, and Crawford (2009; Karanja, D. D., Renkow, M., and Crawford, E. W. (2003). Welfare eﬀects of maize technologies in marginal and high potential regions of Kenya.Agricultural Economics, 29(3), 331–341.) showed that maize technology adoption in high agricultural potential regions of Kenya is likely to have substantially greater positive impacts on aggregate real incomes, but may have a less-than-positive inﬂuence on income distributional outcomes, compared to technology adoption in low agricultural potential regions. Using a general equilibrium model, de Janvry (2001; de Janvry, A., and; Sadoulet, E. (2001). World poverty and the role of agricultural technology: Direct and indirect eﬀects. Journal of Development Studies, 38(4), 1–26) demonstrated that technological change in Africa will mainly have direct eﬀects.

Nature Conservancy scientist Peter Kareiva asks: Are genetically modified organisms a potential boon to poverty reduction and conservation?

2012-01-04T09:23:00.001+11:00

Could Conservation Friendly Farming Include GMOs? | Cool Green Science: The Conservation Blog of The Nature Conservancy:

Now that The Nature Conservancy and other conservation NGOs are paying attention to agriculture, it is time for these organizations to address the sensitive topic of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and whether they have a place in advancing conservation. The answer might surprise you.

Some environmental groups are adamantly against genetic engineering, whereas others are less ideological and simply raise concerns about the environmental risks of using GMOs in agriculture. The National Academy of Sciences — which recently examined the risks and benefits of GMOs in agriculture — concludes that GMOs often are more sustainable than conventional crops and reasserts its longstanding position that their environmental risks be determined on a trait-by-trait basis.

Note, however, that any potential risks arise as a result of the novel plant’s traits and NOT as a result of the technology used to create those novel traits. Thus, if a plant were modified such that it can produce a deadly toxin, then that plant would represent a serious environmental risk regardless of how the plant was created — whether by genetic engineering or traditional plant breeding methods. In other words, the technology itself is not our enemy....continues at link

Top 10 Biofuels Predictions for 2012 : Biofuels Digest

2012-01-03T09:29:00.001+11:00

Top 10 Biofuels Predictions for 2012 : Biofuels Digest:

Rewind to 2011 with a “best of” New Year’s story? Bah, humbug! Today, we look forward to the sunny possibilities of 2012 in bioenergy.

As the sunset of 2011 gives way to the dawn of 2012, here at the Digest we resist the holiday temptation to look back over the challenges and highlights of the year gone by, and instead once again roll out our crystal ball as we list the Digest’s 10 Biofuels Predictions for 2012....

When is gene flow from transgenic plants a problem?

2012-01-03T09:12:00.001+11:00

Biotic and Abiotic Stress Tolerance in Transgenic Plants:

Greater Gene Flow and Fitness?

Photo D Tribe, 2008

ISB News Report November 2011, C. Neal Stewart, Jr

Even before the first transgenic crops were commercialized over 15 years ago, regulators and scientists raised questions about the effects of transgenes that move from agricultural fields into wild and weedy populations of crop relatives.

When I first studied the magnitude and consequences of crop-to-wild transgene flow in 1994, I thought it was an interesting topic that would result in an interesting career of positive important data; i.e., gene flow would be a significant environmental risk. That is to say, my initial expectation was that biotic-stress-tolerance proteins, such as those conferred by insecticidal Bacillus thuringiensis crystal endotoxin (Bt cry) genes, would enhance fitness to their host plants—both crop and wild × crop hybrids.

While my initial expectation proved to be false, it has nonetheless been interesting. Indeed, there was a fitness boost observed in Bt canola (Brassica napus), a crop that has a wild relative, wild turnip/birdseed rape (Brassica rapa), that hybridizes easily with canola. However, in nature, few plant species are observed to produce interspecific hybrids and even fewer species produce stably introgressed hybrids. This is also the case for B. rapa and B. napus—few introgressed hybrids have been observed in nature and only one instance of a transgenic introgressed hybrid has been observed—this single plant was a backcrossed B. rapa plant harboring a glyphosate-resistance transgene originally from B. napus.

These worst case transgene flow scenarios—the ones that many scientists and regulators originally feared—have not come to pass; the reasons why are still unknown. One possible explanation could be the genetic hitch-hiking effect of crop genes linked with wild relatives. Yet, gene flow to wild relatives is still a regulatory and scientific concern. A recent scientific workshop held at the Lorentz Center at the University of Leiden (the Netherlands) had a title that comprises the key question “Transgenes Going Wild?” (http://www.lorentzcenter.nl/lc/web/2011/451/info.php3?wsid=451) in which several presentations showed results from computer simulations of these hitch-hiking effects...continues at ISB

Regulatory paralysis in Europe, and ways forward?

2012-01-03T08:30:00.001+11:00

GM crops: A new way forward - 12/29/2011 - Farmers Weekly:
Mike Abram

Thursday 29 December 2011 15:31

Just two genetically-modified crops have ever been approved for cultivation in Europe. In comparison, the USA has 90 approved GM crops. At the heart of those striking differences lies European politics.

For a GM crop to be grown in Europe, a qualified majority of the 27 member states has to approve its use, following a positive European Food Standards Authority assessment that the risk to human health or the environment is acceptable.

But almost regardless of the assessment presented by EFSA, many member states vote on political, rather than scientific grounds. That has resulted in political stalemate, where GM traits neither get approved nor rejected, and seemingly spend an eternity being passed back and forth in the system....

Looking back on 2011: Nature Method of the year: slicing and dicing with gene-editing nucleases

2012-01-02T10:16:00.001+11:00

Nature News Blog: Method of the year: slicing and dicing with gene-editing nucleases:

NATURE NEWS BLOG

Method of the year: slicing and dicing with gene-editing nucleases

28 Dec 2011

Gene-editing nucleases can make targeted and precise changes to an organism’s genome. This has opened up new possibilities for the study of gene function, as well as the treatment of disease. While gene-editing nucleases have been in use since the mid-1990s, in the form of zinc finger nucleases, the more recent discovery of TALENs (transcriptor-like effector nucleases) has created new interest. In the video above, Nature Methods technology editor Monya Baker explains how gene-editing nucleases work and why they were chosen as Nature Methods ‘Method of the Year’ for 2011.

Go to link for video

Natural GMOs Part 118. Of Genes and Genomes: Challenges for the Twenty-First Century

2011-12-28T18:56:00.000+11:00

Frontiers | Of Genes and Genomes: Challenges for the Twenty-First Century | Frontiers in Plant Genetics and Genomics:

In McClintock’s own words: “I believe there is little reason to question the presence of innate systems that are able to restructure a genome. It is now necessary to learn of these systems and to determine why many of them are quiescent and remain so over very long periods of time only to be triggered into action by forms of stress, the consequences of which vary according to the nature of the challenge to be met [emphasis added]” (McClintock, 1978).

Read more of the grand challenge article accessible in the link to learn more about genes.

The Greenwar Chronicles Part 30. Multinational company earns $ hundreds of millions and pays Green warriors generously for PR work

2011-12-28T07:50:00.000+11:00

In a recent interview, Mr. Martín Prieto (50), Executive Director of Greenpeace Argentina , aired interesting facts regarding the organization.
According to Mr. Prieto, a lawyer, Greenpeace Argentina collects U$S 660,000 each month, or close to U$S 8 million a year from its 85,000 members (exchange rate $ar 4.50 per 1 U$S) . As Greenpeace is operating in 42 countries (according to his quoted statements), the total income of Greenpeace worldwide would be around U$S 330 million per year, considering always the individual data as averages.
Local salaries of Greenpeace Argentina personnel range from U$S 1,300 ($ar 6,000) to 3,500 ($ar 16,000) per month, a good salary considering the minimum wage of U$S 410.00 ($ar 1,840) per month (www.wageindicator.org) last year.

Nutrition not improved by agriculture alone

2011-12-28T07:26:00.000+11:00

New Agriculturist: News brief - Nutrition not improved by agriculture alone:

Agricultural projects that are nutrition-focused do not automatically improve nutrition, a new briefing has concluded. "It's not that these interventions are unsuccessful in agriculture terms - they do increase the production of the food in question," explains Laurence Haddad, director of the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) and author of the briefing. "But because they are often a relatively small part of a farm portfolio they don't increase household income sufficiently to improve diet and child growth."

Drawing on a recent systematic review by Edoardo Masset, the briefing also states that while biofortification is a promising technology for improving nutrition, it is not yet a proven solution. Before biofortified crop are scaled up, therefore, positive impact study results are required to demonstrate that biofortified crops are able to increase profitability, gain consumer acceptance and increase the intake of micronutrients.

Another key finding was that while nutrition-focused agricultural interventions increased consumption of fish, dairy or fruit, participants may have reduced their consumption of other protein-rich foods, such as meat, resulting in no overall improvement in nutrition. The briefing also revealed that interventions are not reaching people who are most at risk of chronic hunger. "Capturing detailed information about who vulnerable children are, where they live, their characteristics, how to reach them, and how to ensure they participate in the right programme is essential, if initiatives are to succeed," Haddad adds.

Despite these challenges, the briefing states that because agriculture commands large resource flows, the potential for improving nutrition through agriculture is vast. However, Haddad warns that converting 'nutrition focus' to 'nutrition delivery' will require higher levels of resolve, planning and measurement than are commonly used. "We need to know which types of nutrition-focused agricultural interventions actually deliver improved nutrition. We also need to know the factors behind the successes," Haddad states. "The way to do this is through rigorous impact evaluations."

Masset E, Haddad L, Cornelius A and Isaza-Castro J (2011),

A systematic review of agricultural interventions that aim to improve nutritional status

of children. (pdf file) London: EPPI-Centre, Social Science Research Unit, Institute of Education,

University of London.

ISBN: 978-1-907345-09-8

The EPPI-Centre reference number for this report is 1904.

From the comments:

Robin ColemanJan 4, 2012 10:37 PM

Lawrence Haddad from the Institute of Development Studies has his own blog at http://www.developmenthorizons.com/ and you can find out more about him via http://www.ids.ac.uk

Natural GMOs Part 117. Gene silencing helped create flowering plants

2011-12-27T11:36:00.000+11:00

GENOME TREE OF LIFE IS LARGEST YET FOR SEED PLANTS | American Museum of Natural History:

Phylogenomic reconstruction of the evolutionary diversification of seed plants E.K. Lee et al.

Scientists at the American Museum of Natural History, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, The New York Botanical Garden, and New York University have created the largest genome-based tree of life for seed plants to date. Their findings,published today in the journal PLoS Genetics, plot the evolutionary relationships of 150 different species of plants based on advanced genome-wide analysis of gene structure and function. This new approach, called "functional phylogenomics," allows scientists to reconstruct the pattern of events that led to the vast number of plant species and could help identify genes used to improve seed quality for agriculture.

"Ever since Darwin first described the 'abominable mystery' behind the rapid explosion of flowering plants in the fossil record, evolutionary biologists have been trying to understand the genetic and genomic basis of the astounding diversity of plant species," said Rob DeSalle, a corresponding author on the paper and a curator in the Museum's Division of Invertebrate Zoology who conducts research at the Sackler Institute for Comparative Genomics. "Having the architecture of this plant tree of life allows us to start to decipher some of the interesting aspects of evolutionary innovations that have occurred in this group."

The research, performed by members of the New York Plant Genomics Consortium, was funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) Plant Genome Program to identify the genes that caused the evolution of seeds, a trait of important economic interest. The group selected 150 representative species from all of the major seed plant groups to include in the study. The species span from the flowering variety - peanuts and dandelions, for example - to non-flowering cone plants like spruce and pine. The sequences of the plants' genomes - all of the biological information needed to build and maintain an organism, encoded in DNA - were either culled from pre-existing databases or generated, in the field and at The New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx, from live specimens.

With new algorithms developed at the Museum and NYU and the processing power of supercomputers at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory and overseas, the sequences - nearly 23,000 sets of genes (specific sections of DNA that code for certain proteins) - were grouped, ordered, and organized in a tree according to their evolutionary relationships. Algorithms that determine similarities of biological processes were used to identify the genes underlying species diversity.

"Previously, phylogenetic trees were constructed from standard sets of genes and were used to identify the relationships of species," said Gloria Coruzzi, a professor in New York University's Center for Genomics and Systems Biology and the principal investigator of the NSF grant. "In our novel approach, we create the phylogeny based on all the genes in a genome, and then use the phylogeny to identify which genes provide positive support for the divergence of species."

The results support major hypotheses about evolutionary relationships in seed plants. The most interesting finding is that gnetophytes, a group that consists mostly of shrubs and woody vines, are the most primitive living non-flowering seed plants - present since the late Mesozoic era, the "age of dinosaurs." They are situated at the base of the evolutionary tree of seed plants.

"This study resolves the long-standing problem of producing an unequivocal evolutionary tree of the seed plants," said Dennis Stevenson, vice president for laboratory research at The New York Botanical Garden. "We can then use this information to determine when and where important adaptations occur and how they relate to plant diversification. We also can examine the evolution of such features as drought tolerance, disease resistance, or crop yields that sustain human life through improved agriculture."

In addition, the researchers were able to make predictions about genes that caused the evolution of important plant characteristics. One such evolutionary signal is RNA interference, a process that cells use to turn down or silence the activity of specific genes. Based on their new phylogenomic maps, the researchers believe that RNA interference played a large role in the separation of monocots - plants that have a single seed leaf, including orchids, rice, and sugar cane - from other flowering plants. Even more surprising, RNA interference also played a major role in the emergence of flowering plants themselves.

"Genes required for the production of small RNA in seeds were at the very top of the list of genes responsible for the evolution of flowering plants from cone plants," said Rob Martienssen, a professor at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. "In collaboration with colleagues from LANGEBIO [Laboratorio Nacional de Genomica para la Biodiversidad] in Mexico last year, we found that these same genes control maternal reproduction, providing remarkable insight into the evolution of reproductive strategy in flowering plants."

The data and software resources generated by the researchers are publicly available and will allow other comparative genomic researchers to exploit plant diversity to identify genes associated with a trait of interest or agronomic value. These studies could have implications for improving the quality of seeds and, in turn, agricultural products ranging from food to clothing.

In addition, the phylogenomic approach used in this study could be applied to other groups of organisms to further explore how species originated, expanded, and diversified.

"The collaboration among the institutions involved here is a great example of how modern science works," said Sergios-Orestis Kolokotronis, a term assistant professor at Columbia University's Barnard College and a research associate at the Museum's Sackler Institute. "Each of the four institutions involved has its own strengths and these strengths were nicely interwoven to produce a novel vision of plant evolution."

Other authors include Ernest Lee, American Museum of Natural History; Angelica Cibrian-Jaramillo, American Museum of Natural History, The New York Botanical Garden, and New York University - currently at the Laboratorio Nacional de Genomica para la Biodiversidad, Mexico; Manpreet Katari, New York University; Alexandros Stamatakis, Technical University Munich - currently at Heidelberg Institute for Theoretical Studies; Michael Ott, Technical University Munich; Joanna Chiu, University of California, Davis; Damon Little, The New York Botanical Garden; and W. Richard McCombie, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory.

Media contacts:
Kendra Snyder
American Museum of Natural History
212-496-3419
ksnyder@amnh.org

Hema Bashyam
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
516-367-6822
bashyam@cshl.edu

Stevenson Swanson
The New York Botanical Garden
718-817-8512
sswanson@nybg.org

James Devitt
New York University
212-998-6808
james.devitt@nyu.edu

American Museum of Natural History (amnh.org)

The American Museum of Natural History, founded in 1869, is one of the world's preeminent scientific, educational, and cultural institutions. The Museum encompasses 45 permanent exhibition halls and galleries for temporary exhibitions, the Rose Center for Earth and Space with the Hayden Planetarium, state-of-the-art research laboratories and five active research divisions that support more than 200 scientists in addition to one of the largest natural history libraries in the Western Hemisphere and a permanent collection of more than 32 million specimens and cultural artifacts. Through its Richard Gilder Graduate School, it is the first American museum to grant the Ph.D. degree. In 2012, the Museum will begin offering a pilot Master of Arts in Teaching with a specialization in earth science. Approximately 5 million visitors from around the world came to the Museum last year, and its exhibitions and Space Shows can be seen in venues on five continents. The Museum's website and growing collection of apps for mobile devices extend its collections, exhibitions, and educational programs to millions more beyond its walls. Visit amnh.org for more information.

Scientific paper at PLoS Genetics

Citation: Lee EK, Cibrian-Jaramillo A, Kolokotronis S-O, Katari MS, Stamatakis A, et al. (2011) A Functional Phylogenomic View of the Seed Plants. PLoS Genet 7(12): e1002411. doi:10.1371/journal.pgen.1002411

Author Summary Understanding the genetic and genomic basis of plant diversification has been a major goal of evolutionary biologists since Darwin first pondered his “abominable mystery,” the rapid diversification of the angiosperms in the fossil record. We develop and deploy a functional phylogenomic approach that helps identify genes and biological processes putatively involved in species diversification. We assembled a matrix of 22,833 orthologs from 150 species to reconstruct seed plant phylogenetic relationships and to identify gene sets with a unique evolutionary signal. Our analysis of overrepresented biological processes in these sets narrowed down possible genetic mechanisms underlying plant adaptation and diversification. The phylogenetic relationships we uncovered support the hypothesis that gnetophytes are closely related to the rest of the gymnosperms at the base of the living seed plants. We also found that genes involved in post-transcriptional silencing via RNA interference (RNAi)—increasingly important in understanding plant evolution—are significantly represented early in angiosperm and gymnosperm divergence, with an apparent loss of specific classes of small interfering RNAs (siRNA) in gymnosperms. Our functional phylogenomic approach can be applied to any taxa with available sequences to enhance our knowledge of the evolutionary processes underlying biodiversity in general.

Natural GMOs Part 116. New genes get told to shut-up.

2011-12-26T07:58:00.000+11:00

New research illustrates how genome adapts to transposon invasion:
December 22, 2011 www.physorg.com

Small, mobile sequences of DNA left over from viruses, called transposons or "jumping genes" because of their ability to move around the genome, pose a significant threat to the genetic integrity and stability of an organism. Considered genetic parasites, these transposable elements are believed to comprise as much as 50 percent of the human genome. Because of the damage transposons can do to an organism's DNA, an immune-like response has evolved to turn off, or silence, these mobile genetic elements.

New research published in the journal Cell by the labs of William E. Theurkauf and Zhiping Weng at the University of Massachusetts Medical School sheds light on how the genome defends itself from these invading DNA parasites.

While it's known that specific small RNAs called Piwi-interacting RNAs (piRNAs) are responsible for silencing transposons, how this biologically critical system reacts to the introduction of a new transposon isn't fully understood. "The genome is littered with these transposons," said William E. Theurkauf, PhD, professor of molecular medicine at UMass Medical School and lead author of the study. "In Drosophila there are over 120 different forms of transposons and these are the active pathogen that we are looking at in this host-pathogen response. Meanwhile, piRNAs are produced from regions of the genome that contain bits and pieces of these transposons, and are the foundation for how these elements get silenced."

To understand how a genome responds to the introduction of a new transposon, Theurkauf and colleagues turned to a wild Drosophila, or fruit flies. Unlike standard lab-bred fruit flies, wild Drosophila contain a transposon called the P element that first began appearing in the population after scientists started breeding fruit flies to study genetic heredity in the early part of the 20th century. As a result, lab-bred fruit flies lack the P element transposon and the maternally inherited piRNA necessary to silence it. When these lab-bred females are crossed with the P element-carrying wild fruit flies, the off-spring are unable to silence the invading transposon and are sterile as a result.

Jaspreet Khurana, a PhD student in Theurkauf's lab, made the keen observation that as these flies aged the hybrids were gaining fertility. "Based on the observation that the flies recovered, it seemed likely that they were learning how to shut down transposons. We decided to use this system to look at the process of adaptation to a new transposable element," said Theurkauf.

Using a multi-disciplinary approach that included next generation sequencing, Theurkauf and colleagues were able to get complete genetic sequences of the sterile, hybrid flies at various stages of development. Jie Wang, PhD, a postdoc in the lab of Zhiping Weng, PhD, professor and director of the Program in Bioinformatics and Integrative Biology at UMass Medical School, analyzed the genetic information to see how the genome was responding to the introduction of the new transposon.

What they found was startling. In the hybrid off spring, the new transposon had triggered a response that disrupted the entire piRNA machinery. Not only was the newly introduced transposon jumping around the genome and causing a problem – which was expected – but most of the 120 plus transposons in the Drosophila genome had also become active. "This massive destabilization of the genome is probably why they're sterile," said Theurkauf.

As the hybrids aged, however, the new transposon and all the existing, resident transposons, got shut down and fertility was restored. "We found there were two mechanisms responsible for silencing the transposons," said Weng. "For P elements it turned out the flies learned to process the piRNA transcripts inherited from the father and turn them into mature piRNAs and silence the transposon. Resident transposons, by contrast, jump into piRNA clusters and alter the architecture in a way that makes new piRNAs that can silence the resident elements."

"The bottom line on our study is when you introduce a single, new transposon it leads to a genetic crisis that activates all the transposons in the genome and compromises fertility in these hybrids," said Theurkauf. "Remarkably, what emerges at the other end is an organism with an altered genome architecture that functionally recharges the piRNA clusters so they more effectively silence transposons."

Provided by University of Massachusetts