Steve Jones - The Language of the Genes

Most of the brouhaha turns on economics and emotion rather than science. Science, indeed, has got rather lost in the fuss. What might genetic manipulation of plants do, given the chance?

Some of the technology aims to increase the range of places in which particular crops can live, with genes that make them tolerant to salty soil, or high temperature, or shortage of water, or allow growth for a larger portion of the year. The Green Revolution turned on a natural mutation that caused plants to grow less tall than normal. Now the gene involved (which prevents the plant from responding to growth hormones) has been cloned and could be introduced into other crops, to give an instant revolution in unexpected places.

Other genes might fight biological enemies. Many creatures produce natural pesticides as they are at constant risk of attack. Such genes from one species can be shifted into another, to cut down the use of chemical sprays. A pesticide much used by organic farmers is taken from a bacterium, Bacillus thuringiensis, which is lethal to many insects. The toxin genes have now been introduced into cotton, reducing the chemicals used on the fields. A related trick inserts a gene that makes the plant resistant to artificial weedkillers. 'Round-Up' is much used by soya-bean farmers. 'Round-Up Ready' plants (which represent about three quarters of all genetically modified crops) have a gene that breaks down the chemical, so that the field can be sprayed to kill the weeds but leave the harvest untouched. Plants can even be 'vaccinated' by introducing a few genes from their viral enemies. When the virus strikes it uses the plant's machinery to make copies of itself. If parts of its own structure are already there, the mechanism is disrupted and the attack fails. Virus resistance has been introduced into rice and peppers, and genes that resist parasitic worms into potatoes and bananas, although none has yet been used on farms.

We grow plants because they make useful things; food, for example. As most plants lack certain amino acids it is hard to stay healthy on a strict vegetarian diet. Much could be done by moving the right genes in and many hopes are pinned on 'golden rice', which has within it a new gene for vitamin A (whose deficiency causes half a million third-world children to go blind each year). Some foodstuffs, such as broccoli, contain anti-cancer substances and the DNA responsible might be introduced to other species. Plants could even be used as biological factories, with the prospect of using potatoes to make antibodies or other blood proteins. Already, rice can make a human protein used to treat cystic fibrosis and other lung diseases.

Other species might be persuaded to make natural oils for use in plastics or fuel. Another option is to interfere with the DNA of trees to reduce the toughness of the wood and to cut down the amount of energy needed when it is converted into paper. Blue cotton and black carnations are on the horizon. The great hope for agricultural engineers is to introduce genes that allow crops to make their own fertiliser. Clover has evolved an arrangement with certain bacteria. The bugs take nitrogen from the air and turn it into a form which can be used by the plant. In return they gain food and protection. Farmers have long used mixtures of grass and clover that are more productive than either grown alone. To put nitrogen-fixing genes into crops would much reduce the need for fertilizers. The potential rewards are huge. All this may mean that plants may rule and that animals will fade in importance as — perhaps — the salmon-flavoured banana takes over.

To develop such new crops is expensive and the research is, of course, done with profit in mind. It must, like the transistor or the vacuum cleaner, be protected. The first known patent was granted in 1421 in Florence to the architect Filippo Brunelleschi for his invention of a barge with hoisting gear used to transport marble. The idea that inventions need protection spread, and — in spite of attempts to do without in places such as China — is now universal. The law works; and without it capitalism would not have developed.

But what about the idea of patenting life (or, at least, genes)? It seems somehow wrong, but the pass was sold long before the days of DNA technology. In the 1970s it possible to protect agricultural varieties and in 1980, the US Supreme Court gave the green light to a patent for a bug whose genes had been altered to chew up oil spills. Such creatures were the products of years of work by those who sold them, with a real claim to be inventions, in the legal sense, rather than mere discoveries that cannot be patented.

With life, the boundary between the natural and the invented is soon blurred. Can genes themselves be patented? After all, they evolved and are not products of human ingenuity. In spite of much argument thousands of genes are now under legal protection. The law is still dubious about just how far this should be allowed, and an aggressive attempt to patent segments of DNA without even knowing what they do has failed. Patenting, though, is here to stay. It can, like capitalism itself, be unfair; but, like that economic system, seems unavoidable.

The interesting question is not about ethics, but about who owns the patents. 'Biopiracy' is the theft of genes from the third world. The sums involved are large. Seven of the globe's twenty-five top drugs are derived from natural products; aspirin from willow-bark, a cholesterol-lowering medicine from a Japanese fungus, and cyclosporin, a powerful anti-cancer agent, from a Norwegian equivalent. Those nations have gained from such drugs; but vincristine and vinblastine, developed in the 1960s as a treatment for leukaemia, came from the Madagascan rosy periwinkle. That impoverished land has gained nothing from a trade worth millions (although had it obtained patent cover it might have done so). And what about the anti-cancer chemicals found in Asian corals or the material two thousand times sweeter than sugar made by a West African tree? Those genes will be worth millions when cloned — but who owns them? Some companies are quite blatant in their attempts to cull profit from ancient expertise. Basmati rice is an aromatic (and expensive) variety that has long been used in India and Pakistan. Both governments were outraged to find that, in 1998, the Ricetec Corporation of Texas had filed a patent application for its seeds — and, to add insult to injury, that they had been collected by American scientists invited in to search for new genes that might help feed the third world.

The West itself is dubious about the actions of its citizens. In 1997 the United States Patent Office overturned an attempt to patent the active ingredient of turmeric as an aid to wound-healing as this had long been used as a folk remedy in India. Indeed, the nation's own fingers have been burned. The enzyme used in the polymerase chain reaction comes from a bacterium collected in a hot spring in Yellowstone National Park. The Swiss company that owns the patent makes a hundred million dollars a year in royalties, while the Federal Government (the owner of the spring and presumably of the bacteria) gets not a cent. Now, the Parks Service charges a hundred thousand dollars a go (plus a guaranteed share in profits) for any company that wants to prospect for DNA on its land. Although the claims of wealth from tropical nature may be exaggerated — after all, only one of fifty thousand plants tested by the US National Cancer Institute gave a usable drug — the third world is understandably enraged. Now it is fighting back. Amazonian tribes use the skin of certain frogs as a source of poison for their darts. That substance is a pain-killer if used in minute amounts, and an American company is keen to patent it. But, counter the governments of Ecuador and Venezuela, was not the discovery made by their own people and should not at least some the profits come back to them? The Americans disagree (and are annoyed by the Venezuelans, who have put a stop to the collection of frogs by outsiders).