(Posted 1-12-00)
IMMEDIATE RELEASE
News Service Contact: Laurie Gengenbach, 336-334-5371
|
UNCG PROFESSOR RECEIVES $89,590
GRANT FOR GENETIC RESEARCH
GREENSBORO — The brave new world of biotechnology so far raises more questions than it answers – among them, what are the ecological risks of introducing new genetic material into the environment?
One tool to help answer that question could emerge from research now under way at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro.
Under an $89,590 research grant from Dow AgroSciences, Dr. Neal Stewart Jr. is hoping to produce genetically engineered fluorescent plants that will help farmers, scientists and agribusiness more easily monitor those risks.
"We need to identify risks so we can manage for them," Stewart said.
"This is a stewardship project for Dow.They, and other seed corporations,
need to know these risks before they introduce a product."
The project is a further step in Stewart's ongoing research into genetically
altered "sentinel plants" which have the potential to detect a wide range
of problems, including soil deficiencies, plant diseases, or even land
mines in former war zones. He and Winston-Salem biotechnology expert Eric
Button are forming Transgreenix Inc., to develop and market his research.
As it stands now, genes from Bacillus thuringiensis, or Bt as it is
commonly known, can be spliced into cash crops to increase yields, but
questions remain as to the ecological implications when such plants then
cross-breed with weeds. To answer that, farmers need a reliable means of
detecting when the new gene has "escaped" into the wild, and that's
why Stewart has developed new genetic material by combining green
fluorescent protein (GFP) from jellyfish with Bt genes.
The farmer or layman would be able to easily detect the presence of
the Bt gene in the wild with an instrument that detects GFP, Stewart said.
Corn crops aren't at issue because corn does not cross-breed
with wild plants, but it does become an issue when considering putting
Bt genes into canola and sunflower crops, Stewart said.
He said one reason Bts are used for genetic experiments is that they are non-toxic to humans, though deadly to caterpillars which feed on cabbages and corn. Indeed, organic farmers have relied upon Bts for years because of their safety to humans. Less clear is the safety of GFP to humans.
The grant is funding a post-doctoral research fellowship to Mentawab Ayelew of Ethiopia. Ayelew received her Ph.D from the Institute National Polytechnique de Toulouse in France. During the first year of research at UNCG she will be making the DNA constructs, she said. Assuming funding is renewed in the second year, she will then test it in plants. She will be introducing the new gene into canola, an oilseed crop because it is a plant which readily cross breeds with wild populations, Stewart said.
After assessing how well it performs in plants, it will be necessary to do animal experiments to assess the toxicity of the new gene before it is considered ready for food crops, Stewart said. "We think it could be used in a lot of big crops like corn and soybeans," he said.
The project entails yet another stewardship component, Stewart added. Current cloning techniques depend upon antibiotic-resistant genes. This research refines the cloning process to eliminate their use, again because of the ecological and public health ramifications should antibiotic-resistant genes escape into the wild.
Stewart joined the UNCG faculty in 1995 after two years of post-doctoral
work at the University of Georgia. He is a Winston-Salem native and received
his doctoral degree from Virginia . His work with GFP proteins was published
in the November 1999 issue of Nature Biotechnology and he was an invited
participant at the Nature Biotechnology conference in London in November
of 1999. ###
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